The experience of painting one’s self into a corner, of going so far out on a limb that even any motion to return to a firmer branch or seek backwards toward what once appeared a sturdy trunk is full of all threat of catastrophe, may be familiar to most. The place of knowing one is “stuck”. “The limb is barely supporting me…and if…I now make any move…” it might just be enough to snap it. And “skating on thin ice” also comes to mind.
Stuck in a situation that appears of one’s making; “How high can I go? How far out can I go before losing it?” Or “How fast can I paint this floor, get this “done” without taking time to pay attention to other things that might slow me down?” like…planning for a proper exit.
Yes, (by another analogy) I have bitten off far more than I can chew. Frankly, I don’t know of any time or circumstance in which I have not eventually found this true. And it has always been “my surety”, my assumptions and presumptions of some firm foundation from which to make that first step “out” that I do make, will remain as first support. That it may be called upon, this thing “I left” for venturing or adventuring from. Intrepid seeker…until…”Yikes! Does 911 even work out here?” when I find any and every summit that has ever beckoned has by nature, a precipitous edge.
Just as the question or any question about consciousness holds more questions than answers, so do any questions regarding “what is real?”. And in regards to the analogy above about summits that beckon, it is no less applicable that we can consider digging a hole. We can “dig down” seeking answers for what is bedrock, what is true, real, and firm; no less than we can seek to ascend to some pinnacle whence we believe we can view unimpeded as to what is “all there” or really there. But both hold some peril, heights from which one can fall, or depths that threaten to collapse in on themselves and bury us. And men falling suddenly lose all and every sense of everything but of that falling, men being buried alive are only aware of being swallowed up.
But the point remains can we ever escape ourselves in this endeavor? We are digging, or we are ascending, and this thing of “us” in our consciousness, even any desire, will, or purpose to know is still always predicated upon the presumption that one can…know. Traps have been spoken of, frustration has been spoken of, even a place (call it home) we believe we step “out from” as a surety (believing we already know it firmness very well…or well enough to step out from) in our further quest to know. But what can we face?
Can we face that every step up, or every shovel full set aside in descent has absolute effect upon this place we once believed we knew as “home”? Un-surety as we seek surety there begins to “work its way backward”, or inward, so that as we discover only more un-surety (questions) to be resolved and thus it begins to touch this place we thought we knew very well. Or at very least…well enough to venture out from.
And that once surety about it now displays a failing, fault lines, a foundation not so very sure…as once we presumed. But who has ever been able to escape this? This matter, in all, that may be summed up in any and every matter of movement in what we call “our lives” (and who escapes, if any, this moving…even this thing we call “growing”?) a very frank and often found question “why in the world did I do that?”
It can be in response to a word (or words) spoken, it can be when finding a frail support is revealed as more frail than we hoped for holding up, or recovering in a hospital bed post splenectomy thinking we could jump our bike to a ramp 10 inches too distant from where we landed, or surveying the dank walls of a jail cell the morning after we abandoned that fleeting thought of calling an Uber instead of driving home from the bar.
No (or yes), there are millions of examples we can each either imagine or find of ourselves in having experience of, “I never should have left that stove on to take that phone call”. I should have…known better.
“Why in the world did I do that?”
And they may range from the relatively benign to those of such dire consequence from which some seem to find no relief. But who can avoid either literally or figuratively “taking steps” with their equipment; in this case, consciousness? One could ask Oppenheimer what he meant when he said “I am become Shiva destroyer of worlds” when his success(es) culminated before his eyes.
Or as a surgeon friend once had the honesty to admit to a “lesser” as myself, “If I knew the crushing responsibility that I would find in this work, I am not sure if knowing of it I would ever have pursued it”. Such honesty is rare as a gem.
But no man, we might clearly see…could ever “know then” what he “knows now”. His knowing in “that” then is all and only what has led him to “this” now. Otherwise in “his knowing” in the “then” would mean a very different man in the now…and would be “here” speaking.
How many men does one man imagine he himself could be?
Please remember it was said that I offer (nor can) any proof of God, even the God I am coming to trust as being in indivisible union with and in Himself; that is one in truest sense of unity and integrity. No, I cannot. But I can only speak of what may remain of illusion in man, even in every man that he is of himself, one. Even of some demonstrable mathematics of how utterly divisible he is. For the moment he thinks or speaks “I should have” he is in de facto admission he believes he could be “other”. Even “that man” that knew better.
And yet what man is not sure “he is what he is” or could be other…in “the now” whence he presently thinks, acts, or speaks? Yes, we all seem to know, or like to, who we are. Where we are. What we are. This place where we are both in, and by, our own knowing. Or at least imagine we know who we are.
But if, or when, this starts to shake…who knows how deep the tremors may go, or long continue? Are we falling? Are we being swallowed up? For if we ever come to that place of it being revealed “I am not the man I thought I was”, what could ever inform our knowing in the now that presently…we could even think or say it with any knowing? If I “didn’t know then”…how can I know…now?
And I am way over my head here in any speaking or writing. No matter referenced as pinnacle nor depth, all still remains over my head, and beneath my feet. A sky I still know nothing of spreads above and what remains beneath in any digging I may imagine accomplished. Have I ascended at all in steps? Have I truly dug at all?
I can only fix my position in all relativity, and by relativity. I cannot escape this, do you? I am as stuck in consciousness as every other no matter in how much of self convincing I might like to think I can “stand apart” from it for any examination or understanding. It is all I “have” to do anything with. I have nothing with which to measure my yardstick against for any sure accuracy.
If in a closed system.
For if I, or even we, am/are the only consciousness to be found in it where I presume it once wasn’t…but now is… and is that very thing (the only thing?) informing me (or even us) that things are, even that any thing…is…how could I know? How would I even know consciousness as a thing? And so much more…as a “real” thing? This “thing” by which I/we…have all and only, and everything…to do?
Do you think perhaps in some wild imagination some alien will show up to explain? Yet if “it” is from the same system of closed-ness, how could you trust it? Do you imagine you will progress (or even humanity or some form of it) to being “another man”, who in some “then” will understand to surety? Ascend, develop, evolve, progress…to some surety of knowing? Is this what the amalgam of proteins “thought” in some primordial ooze? “We’ll know ourselves…someday?” The molecules before?(Be very careful about attributing any, or even most rudimentary form of consciousness to “know” anything, for where does that come from, initially, then…if once it “wasn’t”?)
I am told a very smart man (very smart being in all only relative, truly) once said that:
“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”
Did it…want to?
The cosmos is an “itself”?
What “law” governed to this end?
And some think theists hold quaint notions.
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