Penguins

Penguins

Samuel Bird

Don’t think about penguins. Now, stop thinking about penguins. Don’t think about their adorably adorned black and white suited bodies. Don’t think about their small eyes and yellow beaks. Don’t think about their huddling together to stay warm in a tundric blizzard. Don’t imagine them jumping from a floating iceberg to swim gracefully through the water in search of a meal. Don’t think about their sitting upon their nests to keep a single large egg warm. Don’t think of their little waddle they do, their communicative squawks, or any other fact about these little animals. You failed. You still thought of them. And this thing you thought of, you have very little personal sensory experience with. It would have been so easy for you to not imagine a penguin, assuming that you are willing to heed my commands. All you needed to do was glide past these words, denote their meaning, and not bring it to the mind's eye. However, there was some degree of inevitability in you doing this. You may worry if this is another article about the difference between an entity or its perceived thought or a word and an instance of that word. However, this is an exploration into why the mind offers up that which we think we do not desire, and the objectivity and balance this could entail. 

I have said that dreams will be that which unravels modernity. From the materially sequential world, they have little sense to them. There is another thing we can think on dreams that could be a lesson from the mystical practice of living out scenarios in dreams. I have recently read that most dreams are negative, in the sense that they negate what the dreamer would want to dream about. Losing something vital takes the place of getting something desired. Rather than finding true love, a monster lurks that you can’t run from. Rather than order, as we imagine it, there is chaos and even causality is no longer our friend as there is no permanence to facts as people and places shift to one another. How could this be? Even if only one person had ever had a “bad” dream, we would have to ask why the mind brought about something that it did not want. Why in a world of pure cognition that originates in us, do we not have happy stories every night? It would make sense if something external made this undesirable impression, but they happen within us. This could demonstrate the necessary, essential, and valuable nature of suffering. Whatever initiated our mental program found it to be valuable, or at least, something deep within us does. This also points to the multiplicity of man. There could be a part of you that wants something, and a part of you that does not. The bad habit has a state of consciousness that is ashamed to continue, while something more in the recesses that has access to the controls at times wants for the habit to continue. I think of myself. In prayers and pondering, I am concerned with how lonely I feel and wish for love. However, when a time presents itself, I shun away the events and parties that would have made that possible. How can I say I want it when I have consistently refused it? Different aspects of me do and do not want love, or at least seem to. This is where a great practice can be employed. I have no guess to how the different aspects of the self relate, but I have wondered if they could meet on some plane. Sometimes I feel the the spokesman for the raging army that is the rest of me. I apologize for that which I ad hoc pretend I did. In a possible remedy, I sit at bed's edge and refer to a goal. I ask myself if the rest of me could value this goal. If not, I could make deals with it. Perhaps my organism would like more time in nature or my mind more philosophical content. I will make a deal with them to provide them such if they will come together in harmony in this larger goal. I feel each of them is powerful enough, I do whatever I do at their whim and will. I have recently noticed how the powerful emotive states of the body, which are their own inferential logic, limit me from doing so much of what I value. I am not writing this to teach you how to make deals with yourself, however. Rather, I want to illustrate that even within a subject, there are countering facts and opinions that balance out to a possible objectivity. 

If God is, then He made man. If man is, he may have created God. Looking up from a swaying cradle we look for a strong figure to completely rely on for all facts and values. Above us, a father, and to our side a mother. Our minds are molded in their sensitive years under these circumstances such that it becomes a given of cognition and sets a framework. I fault man not at all if he grows from that cradle to look around and find the maternal and look above to find the paternal. Additionally, I think there is some mind-independant nature to this God, but if not, we can see why we would have made Him. This God is that which words can’t refer to when a gesture is made to all beings. It is consciousness maximally and thus has values that pertain to us. These values then place our behaviors on an axiology. At times they intersect with what we generally wish for, but often they are at odds. We then are asked by this Deity to deny our values, adopt His, and act in accordance. So, assuming man made God, why did He make a God that denies him his baser wishes? You may think it was a tool of social power, but I have heard how people pray alone. You may say that it is a giving up of a lower value for a higher, but why did we pick the higher values we did? I think we discovered rather than created God, but yet, even when we fill in the missing words in His mysteries, we pick words that require a stepping outside of ourselves and a denial. 

Schopenhauer demonstrated that we can acquire what we want, but we cannot will what we want. Furthermore, I add, do we really want what we want? I will later talk more about the inconsistency of wanting, but I seek to clarify this could clarify facts of Esse Maxim. I am often asked if the subjective nature of Esse Maxim could make it relative, arbitrary, or simply become a means for exacting what you want. However, Esse Maxim will call you from what you want to something more. We have found here today that something within the inner world is already doing this. The multiplicity of entities and voices brings balance that keeps us from running off into the world to pillage what we want from it. These different aspects of selfhood can then be invited to participate in the structuring of values that is Esse Maxim. Esse Maxim can’t become a tool for the singularity of consciousness to oppress the mind and organism, because it simply doesn’t have that degree of control. Somehow deep within the self and psyche, we can want what we do not want. We can also have wants that trump other wants to one part, and wants that are trumped by others in another recess of ourselves. Explore your soul to see these values. Where do they intersect? Where can the council that makes up your cognition come to a consensus? What will break a tie? What judgments can be used for a series of gradients and scalars to grade them? I have no answers here. What I can say is that there may be some degree of discovery here. This is not to say that you are all essential. It is rather to say that there are some facts of how your physical aspect works and some facts that come from the character that you have written so far that need discovery. When they do, there it will stand. That great values above values and truth undergirding all truth. It will have sprung up within you and yet, require something of you. It will have an aspect of self-denial and plenty more of you stepping outside yourself. No more hidden in the folds of the mind or escaped to the sensed world, but rather engaged between the two worlds. Between the pink of your eyelid and the blue of your eye, have your value call you to that place where you meet all else. 

Values exist only in the mind from instances in the world. As they exist in a subject, they are relative to that subject in is as far as it does or does not relate to another subject. Fortunately, as much as we vary, the structure of the mind and the values of our organism share enough we can approximate a rough value system. The issue that the old and new schools of thought struggle with is how to find consistent qualities in something found within ourselves. If the law is written in stone, we can all see it but in our hearts, we must learn to read them. Words such as subjective, relative, and arbitrary float around for facts and values. However, we can first identify shared characteristics. We can then secondly realize that our values don’t have this quality within us. I can certainly tell you that they do so that I can get away with behavior that feeds my basest desires. However, out of the social worlds of signs and masks, I can’t lie to myself. The different aspects of myself are called into council and I know what their net values are. I will need to identify later what the exact demarcations could be for a baser and higher value. I will also need to explore those parts of thought that are not additionally accompanied by awareness. What we were able to do this day, however, was see that the desires of the heart may be fickle, but our own mind counters that fickleness to give us those things we don’t desire and yet may be in line with a higher value. In your loyalty to yourself, your Esse Maxim will not be the god you make yourself, but the God you find outside of you. 

I have done much in my life to control myself. The core of my being has practiced dominion over its peripheries. Running into suffering, denying wants, and even minimizing what is needed has allowed me as the part writing this, to become more master than I would have been. Still, the master has to rely on the subjectification of those he rules or the quality to which they do so. I am at the mercy of the rest of me. Today, we saw how much the rest of the self can rebel from me. We can find this as valuable or not, but we can certainly find how to make it so. I ask these different aspects of me to keep me honest and guide me. They balance out my extremity and center my values in something much more objective. From this, we learn that the creation and evaluation of Esse Maxim can be more than lazy pinings, but can have the same quality as God, in making us want that which we do not. As I have said of the great, I think there is something to say for the teacher whose belief calls them from themselves. Let us in this way be great and be called from ourselves to something more. If it helps, I couldn’t help but think about penguins when I wrote this.