I do not know what this chapter is about

I do not know what this chapter is about

Samuel Bird

What do we want and why do we want it? If we want something, how can we then also want something else, especially given that it could cost us achieving the first thing? How do we reconcile and sacrifice wanting one thing for another? Once we identify what we want, how do we acquire it? What is our next step when we fail to obtain it after doing what we thought we would? Finally, what does all of this wanting and seeking say about us, and how do we address that? The modern mind is trained to categorically compartmentalize rather than to relationally connect. We don’t look for degrees of familial connection, but make up lines about what makes the cutoff of the familial. This model then privileges itself over the phenomenological experience such that we begin to ignore large swathes of the experiential world. The most egregious instance of this is activity toward an objective. Let’s say that we want to do something in our model in a given category. We then assume we can engage in activity in that category and, from such, assume we can obtain the outcome in that category. This is extremely dangerous. We instead would benefit from what relationally is closest connected to the outcome. Let us say that we seek to experience sex. The modern thought would be to do those explicit activities most closely associated with experiencing sex, such as meeting someone whom you then begin to communicate your interest. This may work in the short term, but in sustainable perpetuity, this model fails to obtain. You damage delicate social roles, ignore our ontology, and forget the larger system at hand. As a surprise consequence to the modern mind, this then results in markedly less sex being had in a society. The explicit activity of the sexual revolution failed to reach its intended end. Failing to reach the intended aim is worse than causing unfortunate side effects, as one did not travel to their intended destination. However, let us say that we held that same objective of maximizing the number of sexual experiences a person had in their life. What would be the historically most effective model to achieve this? We ask them to abstain from sex with the full hope that they succeed in doing so for the designated season. This loses the mind of modern man. If you want something, you should go after something. Fate has its way of saying no. To get something consistently and controllably, you will most often need to do something entirely different. Meditate on this for a moment. An effect of any meaning is always distinct from its cause. Let’s say we assume that if we have sex, then we have sex. This is an absolute truism as long as all categories as used consistently, but yet is meaningless. It is then the same as simply saying, “sex.” Clearly, if we had something, then we would have that thing, but how do we have that first given thing? By doing something else entirely. The man who knows himself best is he who denies himself. The man who experiences the most love is he who gives it away. The man who knows the most is he who sits with knowing the least. This mystic traditional means of thinking is to certify that the antecedent and consequence are divorced and offered up as a given by fate. By a society and even a given person seeking sex, but being willing to experience maximally as fate offers, has some parties at some times experience none. We wait in faithful virginity for our beloved, who we will then be delicate enough in soul to connect to them in a bond that can’t be broken, even by our foolishness. We are then in a position to experience greater degrees of total sexual experience by stepping away from the immediate effect to focus on the cause. To get something, you need to look away from it. The reason I say this is because we engage with existence for its own sake and not because it gets what we want, because it does not. It could impress fate, however.  Kingship is found on battlefields, not palaces. Divine transcendence requires the writhing rotting of mortal experience. To obtain something, we must look away from it for its cause. No valuable experience is made in sustaining order without well-placed and directed, and dedicated suffering. You may note this can seem to be a problem for our philosophy as we prize the effort of obtaining as the controllable objective. However, you will note I have not said and will not say that this certifies, yet infers that we will obtain. It is rather to say that any controlled obtaining is only on the other side of activity. We at least need to strut in front of fate to impress her before she offers the impossible gift. If you come to God for what you want, He has the liberty to offer it to train your mind toward Him, but you will note it rarely coincides with His will. It is the man who suffers for God that has the greatest joy in Him. Perhaps a small miracle in your providence teaches you He is there, but His ends are not in your wealth. He seeks for you to come to Him and want what He wants. However, what core will could betray its peripheral points to God? One that needs to align the rest of its wants. I want this, and want that. In many possible model means, those wantings are at odds. What is the means to consolidate and direct these wants, before I even start to wonder about the obtaining of their object? God. We still have a will toward our being, but it is laid at His feet for Him to order our will. It is then in good faith that if we trust Him with our will, He will give us what we can will. What “can,” however? Let us pause to step back and address some thinking I have embarked on that borders between mystic and fallacious. Is our wanting something available for change, and if so, where internally can we ground that imperative? Firstly, let us hope that it is, because if our wantings are naturally at odds between aspects of ourselves and points of time, then our nature dooms us to a hell of our own will manifest in shredding us from the inside out. However, as we order those peripheral wants, we do it in accordance with one will. Let’s say we meditate and attempt to rid ourselves of all these wantings that disintegrate our psyche; we still do something. And why do we do it? Another want. The transcendent effort of this sort is not an abandoning of wanting, but a hope that if we ignore them, we will somehow acquire them. This is not unwise, but it reminds me of myself as a child who told God that since I didn’t care either way if He showed Himself to me, He may as well. However, how could He believe that when I cared enough to let Him know that, and kept one eye partially open. We have to really live in our designated misery and forget about reward to be mercifully reminded later of what we suffered for. It is not the wanting we fight, but the effort to centralize it in something worthy of holding ourselves. Before I go one moment more, I will note that the older I am, I find everything other than the bloodline, nature, and God to be fake and foolish. Everything else seems to be a poor receptacle for the soul, whose vessel cracks and spreads our contents back onto the floor we attempted to rise from. I am then inferring God is a worthy holder of the souls that commit themselves to Him, and any claims and definitions of “realness” would do little to affect this. We now have two ideas here: To get what we want, we have to step away from what we want, and to not have our wants disintegrate whatever we are, we need to centralize them in something worthy. Let me call your attention to your reading this chapter. Why do you read this? What ends are these words a hoped-for means? If you seek to address your existence, certainly explicit activity about existence would be a good place to start, but is it the uncorrelated antecedent that brings about the consequence we both don’t know and yet need. Philosophy is the asking about the object and subject of the wanting, with an occassional questioning of the wanting. However, I don’t find philosophers to be famous for even their assertions of their obtaining. Couldn’t they at least have the dignity to lie to us? Perhaps philosophy, as the conceptual compartmentalizing of existence, has failed us. Perhaps to achieve in a given field, we need to go to another. I loathe democracy and yet love tradition. Isn’t this in error, as tradition is just democracy across time? While there is more to it than this, in any given setup, people can be subject to a contingent system that is at odds with their nature, but people across time have the added benefit of at least more of themselves. This is why a society that doesn’t feel subject to history will be its saddest entry. Is there a field in tradition that addresses human existence by this means of stepping away from it? We have had desires to ground thought in something, reality, and the world of math and reason. Today, we seek to ground our will. What centralization can we place all such in? Well, of course, in our Esse Maxim. Esse Maxim, as I express it, is an existential generalization, however. It is the description of how subject and object interact and reconcile, not the ought or act of what it is in specificity. Place yours in God, my friend. You are your will, but your will wants unreasonably. Place yours in His to find it to be at peace in recursive homeostasis. But if I am my will, it is not an object I give to God, but my subject. How can I offer this to Him? It is He who accepts who He will, but it is we who can reach. If God’s subject becomes the object of my wanting, but the peripheral ends of philosophy fall into place. The new and revitalized philosophy is just another means to know and be with Him. I have no idea what this chapter is about. I woke up from a nap after feverish dreams with these ideas carreening through my mind until I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them broke free from my skull. All I know is the sense of desire I had when I wrote them. I wanted to identify how to bring oneself into harmony with oneself. However, efforts of this sort are never done best with a soul search within, but with a soul surrendering without. Every time I pull at my will and think I have found myself, I find it a want that could be offered to God. To get what I want, I must suffer what I don’t. It is in this that man shapes the world and himself, but it is in this that he must be careful not to lose himself. He must go back and forth between this seemingly unreconcilable paradox between evaluating and instantiating our wants. If only he had the occasion at the end of fighting fate to love it. Perhaps the means to do so is to surrender his will toward a greater One that has a towardness for Him. God’s affection is the guarantee that offered will, will be in our best interest, whatever that may be. God needs no granting or permitting of what is in our best interest, as we don’t know ourselves as well as we do. Rather than to embark on the fallacy of explicit activity in a category to obtain, let us seek to address ourselves by stepping outside of ourselves. I again have no idea what this chapter is about in any meaningful sense, but let me summarize my rambling thoughts thusly: Heaven is when we want what is and want nothing that isn’t. Hell is when we want nothing that is, and want everything that isn’t. God is He who rules and resides in heaven. If we are going to come into harmony with ourselves in this heavenly state, it is only via the coming into communion with Him.