tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88593739790509694762024-03-12T23:33:13.893-06:00A Mystic in The Church of Jesus ChristChristian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.comBlogger293125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-9989862604020269522020-03-07T10:53:00.001-07:002020-03-07T10:53:52.995-07:00"By the Water" Third Episode: On Religion, Nothingness, and True RealityHere's the latest episode!<br />
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<i>In this episode, Christian and I dive into the work of the Japanese
philosopher, Keiji Nishitani, of the Kyoto school. We discuss his book,
Religion and Nothingness. In this episode, we address nihilism, the
meaning crisis, the Buddhist notion of nothingness, the subject object
divide, its role in religious experience, and practices to free oneself
from the burden of self. </i><br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="102px" scrolling="no" src="https://anchor.fm/mackenzie036/embed/episodes/On-Religion--Nothingness--and-True-Reality-eb9v2g/a-a1h441m" width="400px"></iframe>Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-18206060623283754122020-02-21T15:08:00.001-07:002020-02-21T15:08:18.465-07:00"By the Water" Second Episode: "Prayer, Authenticity, Time, and the Multiplicity of Self" Here you go!<br />
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<a data-reactroot="" data-token-index="0" href="https://anchor.fm/mackenzie036/episodes/Prayer--Authenticity--Time--and-the-Multiplicity-of-Self-eat7l8" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: inherit; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: underline; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">https://anchor.fm/mackenzie036/episodes/Prayer--Authenticity--Time--and-the-Multiplicity-of-Self-eat7l8</a>Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-40141352403597300542020-02-10T14:29:00.000-07:002020-02-10T14:29:11.117-07:00"By the Water" Podcast First EpisodeHello! I began recording a podcast with my friend Mackenzie. It's called "By the Water." Here's the first episode. Enjoy!<br />
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<a href="https://anchor.fm/mackenzie036/episodes/By-the-Water-eai0gh">https://anchor.fm/mackenzie036/episodes/By-the-Water-eai0gh</a><br />
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Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-54601983784532879422019-07-23T11:27:00.003-06:002019-07-27T00:21:44.844-06:00The Zookeeper's Manifesto<i>Archaic Cultures also kill animals on the altars of the gods. Of course: like unto like. By taking the animal to the altar, we are not ridding ourselves of it nor making it more pure and holy. It goes to the altar to feed the animal in the god, the divine that is partly animal, thereby keeping the god alive, and alive there in that temenos, that altar. The altar is an animal's keeper, keeps the god from roaming, its dreadful power tethered to a concentrated location. Get back, stay there behind the smoking candles and the grillwork. Don't cross over suddenly. The altar is a cage, each cathedral a great zoo."</i> - James Hillman, "Going Bugs"<br />
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<i>The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the dearth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. </i>- Isaiah 11:6-9<br />
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<i>Oh Newt. You never met a monster you couldn’t love. - </i>Leta Lestrange in <i>The Crimes of Grindelwald</i> by J. K. Rowling<br />
<i></i><br />
Have you ever been to a zoo? What am I saying, of course you have. You’ve walked the sticky pavement, heard the vaguely ethnic music playing the background, seen the bears, the giraffes, the crocodiles. But have you really? That’s a better question. Do you just walk past the kangaroo exhibit, do you maybe just stop and pay the minute or so of attention that justifies your money, or do you really, truly, pay attention to the animal?<br />
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It’s worth it. You’ll see that the kangaroo, the boa constrictor, and the elephant are not something that you just passively look at. You can’t: these beasts are lumbering, crawling, hopping, swimming beings. They transcend one space and find themselves in another. You have to track them, follow them with your eyes. For the animal is not an animal unless it moves. And it is the movement that makes the animal.<br />
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Nowhere is this more the case than in your inner zoo, the zoo of the mind, the ecosystem of your thoughts and feelings. See how rage thumps its way along, dashes out toward the periphery only to be pulled back by the leash you’ve set it on. Watch the sadness droop, folding its wings. See the mania thump the tree crazily. You are not one but many. There is a thriving ecosystem in your head, your heart, with both a food chain and a circle of life. But this inner zoo isn’t “inner,” not exactly. Just as much as anger throws itself against the glass of your soul does it do so in the soul of you neighbor. You can see it in their eyes. They bear traces of the animal passing behind them. They are animated by extra-human presences. A good psychologist is therefore a good zoologist: they will watch these animals in the zoo of the mind, notice them, and let a reciprocal acknowledgement pass between them and it. The person whose heart is their stomping ground need not even notice. The animal has seen itself in the other’s eyes, and it rests content.<br />
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The psychologist does this by listening, watching, and remaining curious. By doing so they give the animal a habitat, gives it a bigger enclosure, gives it space. This is a kind of dreaming, a kind of rapid-eye movement that darts between chaos and order, a way the unformed data in the brain’s right hemisphere can can embody itself in the left. Categories loosen. Cramped legs stretch themselves out. But we are bad at this, I daresay. For what is Facebook, what is Twitter, what is the entire political spectrum but a great velt, a great savannah, where these beasts hope to take up a place? Scroll through your feed and you will see them. The conservative mood, the right, is itself an animal. As is the left and its mood. And they are both a sight to behold. Their extended necks and delicately placed paws gives you goosebumps when you see them. What immortal hand or eye dare frame either one’s fearful symmetry?<br />
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But their fur is a little disheveled of late. Both of their eyes have a gleam of manic desperation in them. They jump at the slightest noise. They lash out when touched. They are on edge, scared. And for good reason: the other has encroached on its territory. Each one is constantly wounded by the other. So they attack, preemptively, to protect themselves. They both do this. And so they both feel a need to do this, and it gets worse and worse and worse.<br />
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For they have forgotten that they are not unlike each other. Both are protecting what they think is under attack. Both feel that life would be better without the other. Both launch their attacks with a sneer, a desperate manic certitude, that somehow believes every time the other will just fall down dead. And both fail to see that their defense is perceived as an attack by the other, and that their defense in turn will strike you as an attack, and so on ad infinitum.<br />
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This is the apocalypse that threatens. Two animals, two great lumbering things, who long to annihilate the other. If they do, we will be their casualties. You’ve already felt it, haven’t you? The rage you feel on Twitter that is not quite human, the compulsion you feel that comes from a presence not your own, the weird belief you feel that somehow, this time, they’ll learn? You are a pawn in a battle of the beasts. You know that it feels like drowning, that you post in a manic rage more than anything to be free of that manic rage. It’s getting harder and harder to breathe.<br />
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This is the Flood. For when Noah built the ark, he was not just saving the animals. He was saving us from them. For each animal needs its space, needs its stomping ground, needs a home. This is its right. When he built the ark, when he made the compartments large enough for the giraffe and small enough for the gecko, he was attentive to those spaces. He knew that not every animal can live with another. Some spaces are incompatible. But each animal is priceless.<br />
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So how are we to house the lion and the lamb together? Or better, how are we to house the lion and the tiger together? Noah’s answer was simple: give each one a mate. An animal with a partner will be occupied. Like in the therapist’s gaze, it will see itself. It will already have a home. This partner in the ark, moreover, is its space there. An animal that feels itself in the outside world, that has a mirror for its feelings and its thoughts, exists in both the brain’s hemispheres, so to speak, is able to stretch itself into into a form appropriate for it. It exists as a pair, as all things should, and as nearly everything in the body does.<br />
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This bipolarity is the ark. It is the space that prevents catastrophe. It is the thing that delimits the flood. And this is our quest too. You know the feeling of being triggered. We all do: that is the spirit of our age. To live in 2019 is to be offended, to be scared, to be irritable. Often, you lash out to protect yourself, and this too is something you have often had no choice in doing. The animals roosting in you are trying to join themselves, to stake their territory, to win their mates, and they are rending you in the process. But choice enters, as with Noah, when you give each animal its mate. Crucially, it is when you give the other animal its mate. The one that threatens you.<br />
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Try this sometime: when someone threatens you, when someone triggers you, imagine them getting everything they want. You, at this point, have little to do with this fantasy, and if you appear in it, it is just their manic caricature of you. Feel the way they triumphantly defeat that caricature, the joy they feel in defeating their enemy. Without even having to do anything physical, this will register with them. And then watch, almost magically, as their expression softens and their eyes relax their manic openness. For you have given the animal its partner. If you are braver, actively agree with your enemy. Say, yes, you’re absolutely right. There’s no need to abandon your own position when you do this. Even if their contention is that you’re devilishly wrong, there’s no reason you can’t be devilishly wrong and right at the same time. The law of excluded middle is a misguided antique from ancient history.<br />
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And if you are braver still, have radical faith in your enemy. Believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that if you let them finish their sentence, if you actually listen, if you listen as if you could learn something, that they can become more than they are now. For most people just want to talk. They are using you as a tool to flesh out the thoughts that they can’t flesh out in their journal (if they have one). You have very little to do with it. But you could gain much from the beauty in the thought once it’s allowed to blossom. And this is true even if it’s ugly, pathological, or hateful now. Wouldn’t you like the other to give you the same courtesy?<br />
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All this is boat-building. And we must build a boat, for the flood is coming. It is up to our waists, and we doggedly refuse to notice. This boat is a temple, a temple to the god, to each god, to each animal. It is a great zoo. We all feel this. Many of you will have had dreams about a flood in the past few years. J. K. Rowling, who, for all her faults, is tuned in to the archetypal realm of being, has articulated this with her modern-day Noah and his suitcase-ark. We must each be Newt Scamander. We must each love the animals, especially the ones that are the most unlovable. We must soothe them, pet them, watch their fur slowly relax and their tight shoulders droop. For, as Heidegger said, we are shepherds of Being. And Being is furry.Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-60866859357394787172019-07-22T22:00:00.003-06:002019-07-22T22:00:31.256-06:00Drop out of "School"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"[The "school" mindset] speaks with immense authority not just about itself, but about life in general. It is sold to us as a preparation for the whole of existence. But of course, the main thing it does is to prepare us for yet more school; it is an education in how to thrive within its own profoundly peculiar rules - with only a tenuous connection to the world beyond. Knowing all this, we might do a very strange-sounding thing, finally work up the courage to leave our inner school, be it at 28, 35 or 62 - and enter the wider boundless world we have been in flight from for too long."<br /><br />What they identify as the mindset that "school" drills into us is, I feel, the demon of abstraction, which sells us the lie that a thought's "what" is more important than it's "who," the pretend authority of a thought (you're fat, you're stupid, you're evil, etc.) that desperately doesn't want you to look behind the curtain. This demon, these thoughts, this authority, is the moment when you think you'll be miserable forever when you were laughing uproariously just yesterday. It's the obsessive, myopic focus on the part at the expense of the whole. This abstraction, this tyranny of accuracy, forgets that what a thought does is far more important that what it says. Would you trust a person who told you that you're stupid, evil, etc.? Why would you trust your own thoughts that say the same thing? We give our thoughts the authority of schoolmasters. But you shouldn't. Be a rebel. Graffiti the walls of their classrooms. For they are *not* the real world.Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-26679304350210670132019-07-20T10:44:00.000-06:002019-07-20T10:44:11.571-06:00CMLIT 212: Romantic Nature (with perhaps some of the best lecturing I've ever done)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-2246125354390392942019-06-18T00:24:00.001-06:002019-06-18T00:24:55.399-06:00"The Red Book as a Ritual Embodiment of Trauma" - My 2019 Art and Psyche Presentation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-22910034641370005162019-04-10T14:39:00.000-06:002019-04-10T14:44:06.687-06:00CMLIT 212: Things Fall Apart, Day 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-69476087221674770712019-02-26T18:52:00.000-07:002019-02-26T18:52:04.771-07:00CMLIT 212: The Tempest, Day 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-38425494255681656922019-01-08T22:23:00.002-07:002019-01-08T22:23:27.493-07:00How my Friend *Literally* Saved His Father From the Underworld: A Letter to Jordan Peterson<div class="s69d4o1-6 kzeptY s1hmcfrd-0 ckueCN">
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
I just posted this to the r/JordanPeterson subreddit.</div>
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Dr. Peterson,</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
I
just got off the phone with a friend whose father, last Saturday,
attempted suicide. This friend (who'd like to remain anonymous) saved
his life and narrowly risked death himself. He told me to post this
poem here, and every word in it is true. I heard his tears, heard the
progressively worsening trauma in his voice as he narrated the story up
to its climax. The father is alive and recovering, thank heavens.</div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<br /></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
My
friend *literally* descended into the Underworld, *literally* rescued
his father. The myth that you teach all of us, the myth that you say
lights our eyes up when we hear it-is what my friend literally embodied.
My friend's father was suffering from crippling depression, a chaos
that formed itself through that father's actions into a handgun pointed
at his own chest, a darkness that my friend faced and didn't run away
from. He didn't defend himself against this darkness. He didn't hide. He
didn't hesitate. He didn't need a safe space, and his father is now
alive.</div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<br /></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
Thank you, Jordan Peterson, for inspiring us to leave our safe spaces and save our fathers:</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Safe Spaces</b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I got the phone call that my father had gone missing, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I began desperately driving the city streets to find him, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I kept praying that I wouldn’t find his dead body, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I raced through rush hour traffic to his office, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I kept pounding on the building doors, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I kicked his locked office door off its hinges, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I saw the gun he was holding to his chest, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I begged him to put the gun down, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I told him how much I loved him, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I told him I was gonna stand right behind him, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I told him that I wasn’t quitting on him, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When he shot himself through the chest, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I used my bare hands to stop the bleeding, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I told the paramedics exactly where to find him, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I told the detectives what happened, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>When I stood down and faced darkness itself, I didn’t need a safe space.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>No, I needed the conviction that I could do the impossible.</i></div>
<div class="s90z9tc-10 fHRkcP">
<i>That I had the courage to walk through hell and back and survive.</i></div>
</div>
Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-21759847718678266982018-12-03T12:51:00.002-07:002018-12-03T12:51:35.375-07:00CMLIT 211: The Divine Comedy, Day 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-36926018350480273702018-12-03T10:30:00.001-07:002018-12-03T10:30:14.341-07:00Message to a Friend Who is StrugglingA dear friend messaged me and told me he's struggling. If you feel like you're trapped in an invisible prison, watch this.<br />
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Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-59525381386648910162018-12-03T00:20:00.004-07:002018-12-03T00:20:48.613-07:00The Secret Meaning of the BIble: Genesis 13<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-3187040397220646782018-11-28T20:26:00.000-07:002018-11-28T20:26:04.478-07:00CMLIT 211 on Genesis 1-11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-35028183426006311572018-11-28T12:17:00.001-07:002018-11-28T12:17:26.966-07:00Response to the CES Letter / My Testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
An hour-and-a-half long video where I address Jeremy Runnells' CES
Letter point by point. A lot of rambling in between. A testimony at the
end. The Spirit was there.
With continual reference to the Rudolf Steiner, Satanic cults, and
chewed-up pieces of gum.Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-23884998315135774692018-11-27T17:16:00.003-07:002018-11-27T17:16:52.578-07:00The Secret Meaning of the Bible: Genesis 12, Banjo-Kazooie, and the King's Speech<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Continuing my account of Swedenborg's symbolic take on the Bible, here I'm continuing my case on Genesis 12 giving literary parallels from Amelie to the Elder Scrolls to Daddy Long Legs. With continual reference to Teal Swan, Jordan Peterson, and the patriarchy.
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<br />Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-87287235975760644722018-11-25T19:41:00.003-07:002018-11-25T19:41:49.479-07:00The Secret Meaning of the Bible: Intro and Genesis 12My explanation of Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg's spiritual interpretation of the Bible, starting with Genesis 12.
With continual reference to Jordan Peterson, Rupert Sheldrake, Gaston Bachelard, and how I think the CES Letter is imperialist.<br />
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Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-63890058188360522342018-11-19T00:44:00.000-07:002018-11-19T00:44:09.985-07:00Why Contradiction Will Save the World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The solution to world conflict? Work out contradiction in your soul and
not in what you do or say to others. Become a contradictory creature.
With continual references to Swedenborg, psychedelics, and the Stanley
Parable.Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-54731176738893637152018-11-11T15:44:00.001-07:002018-11-11T15:45:58.776-07:00My EndowmentWhen I was endowed last June, something shifted in me. The walls between me and the outside world cracked, and nothing has ever been the same. Especially after I return, I see others as extensions of myself. "Yes..." I say, "Of course I've always been them, just like I've always been <i>them</i>, just like I've always been me. Don't you remember?" Like the things you just <i>know</i> in dreams, the endowment kindles a memory that seems to come out of nowhere, that you didn't know before, but which you, nevertheless, have always known. We are all one. Tied together in God.<br />
<br />
I distinctly remember looking at the brothers and the sisters in the room then, that June, and thinking "They are me, part of me body, just as I am a part of theirs." We surface into each other. Each one is my hand, my navel, my chest. All one, and the body is Christ's.<br />
<br />
You walk through the world, afterward, changed. Everything gives a sense of nostalgia. You are home, home anywhere, everywhere. Love beckons. A light peeps out. <i>Come on</i>, they say<i>, we have something to show you</i>.<br />
<br />
And this light, this Addams-Family hand, beckons you into another world. You see, now, yes...the world is more than you thought it was. Everything opens. Everything a veil, a veil now parted, which you can now see through. And there is light. And through the light, in the light, <i>as </i>the light, <i>you </i>are, <i>all </i>of you, each part of you, the parts of you scattered, in the things you see, in other people, in your childhood, all of you, all of <i>you</i>, now come home.<br />
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The world become beautiful again. The colors you knew in your childhood come back. You realize they were never meant to leave. The cartoons, the shiny toys, the grass, the trees, the apples, all of it, radiant as the first day, the first time, there in the Garden. You know who you are. You come home. And in that home, in that flesh, that first time, that primordial playpen, the corridors, nooks, and crannies of your primal, cosmic home, you<i> </i>remember, you <i>remember</i>, and <i>nothing </i>can ever be the same.<br />
<br />
This is a time for play, a time for innocence, a time for trusting Father and Mother like you used to do. You've hidden, but you don't have to now. You can bear your scrapes proudly. Look!, you say, <i>this </i>is my scar<i>, </i>where I fell, where my body became mine. Where the blood came out. But now the blood is out there, part of the scar, no longer hidden, there for all to see. And so is everything. My face, yours, your eyes, mine, all linked together inextricably, unremittingly, all a circle, all, endlessly, a circle.<br />
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You see now! The scales have fallen from your eyes! The light comes back! Come out from hiding! I found you! No need to be afraid. Father and Mother have made lemonade, and it's time for us to go exploring in the woods out back. I'm excited: it's almost summer, and we have an eternity of worlds to explore. Come on!Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-61599051792200710662018-10-13T10:17:00.002-06:002018-10-13T10:17:35.884-06:00Teal Swan's Most Powerful Video To DateI've had a love-hate relationship with the spiritual teacher Teal Swan for about five years now, but this is the most powerful thing I've ever seen her do. She is emotionally "speaking from," first, the part of her that likes traditional gender roles, and, second, the part of her that hates them, in order. It made me want to cry. Please watch.<div>
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Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-86982907275691794352018-10-12T08:52:00.002-06:002018-10-12T08:52:19.478-06:00Christ in the Nightmare Before ChristmasThe Nightmare Before Christmas was always one of my favorite movies. Jack Skellington longs for something more, something he can't find in Halloween, something new, something different. He is just a skeleton, and he longs for life. He is empty, but he longs for fullness. So he goes into the wilderness, into the periphery, into the Underworld, and he finds a tree, a tree with a Christmas sign on it. And as he falls into it, he discovers exactly what he had always longed for.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDVicKKlWFJicbKnYX0BZ3ZyTcLRHM_RqiVt2m4MFNrvZivM_fdu2IGTalA6hO3mViicPhJ9bOjWG6qGdVxw-HkZJ3wMOtpOWQrZMgRvc3q6PPxfX00pUegWKJlLNgJgKIU39KUjTR_-oq/s1600/Poor+Jack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDVicKKlWFJicbKnYX0BZ3ZyTcLRHM_RqiVt2m4MFNrvZivM_fdu2IGTalA6hO3mViicPhJ9bOjWG6qGdVxw-HkZJ3wMOtpOWQrZMgRvc3q6PPxfX00pUegWKJlLNgJgKIU39KUjTR_-oq/s400/Poor+Jack.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Christmas is what we all long for, really. Christmas is what's real, the time when men open their shut-up hearts freely and give without restraint. Christmas is being free of oneself, being free of the burden of being oneself, of looking only to the other, of letting the other be born in you, of receiving the gift of the other. We are not the point, after all. We are just a frame, a canvas, where the other can be revealed, where the ultimate other, the ultimate point, God, can reveal himself, where he can be born in us, in our manger. We are skeletons, not the flesh, not the heart, not Christmas. Christmas is born in our ribcage, but we are not what is born. What is born is Christ, and Christmas is the gift of Christ, the grace of Christ, his birth and rebirth in us perpetually, the link of love that binds us together.<br />
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But we cling to it, like Jack Skellington. This year, we say, Christmas will be ours. And we ruin it. We clutch onto it with our bony fingers, we cling, we say "mine!," and the gifts no longer give. The bread of life, God's mess of pottage, we claim as our own. The flow is dammed. The son of man has nowhere to lay his head. But God is relentless. Though we have held Santa Claus captive, though we have appropriated what can never be ours, he will exaggerate our grasp until we can't hold on anymore. Until we give up. Until we say "God, I can't do it anymore. Take over. I will just be a skeleton, forever and ever. I am not You." And then we realize that "Yes, I am a skeleton! I am my body and its poverty. We humble ourselves. We don't raise our ambitions to God's throne, to Santa's sleigh. We become dust.<br />
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And in that moment, everything changes. No longer trying to capture Christmas, no longer appropriating, skeletonizing it, Christmas comes for the very first time. Christmas is a gift, after all, and gifts can never be demanded, never captured. Christ, the ultimate gift, is born in our hearts. Flesh begins to grow on our skeleton, a flesh that we aren't, God's flesh, on our skeleton. We are remade in His image. His face becomes ours. And though we have died, because we have admitted that we are nothing but death ourselves, we are reborn. We are resurrected. We fall upon God's neck, weeping. Christ is born. And Christ never stops being born.Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-44515520271724640932018-09-15T09:47:00.000-06:002018-09-15T09:47:08.291-06:00Why Everyone is Miserable Right Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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An unlisted, experimental attempt at collective psychology:<br />
<br />
I'm not doing well at the moment. Neither are many people I know. My
friend said that he noticed how "everyone is miserable" right now. That
got me thinking: if he's right, why?<br />
<br />
My answer: we're all
responding to a collective Ur-event that would integrate the parts of us
we don't want to look at, but instead of letting those parts in, we're
rejecting them, and we're becoming exaggerated caricatures of our
conscious<span class="text_exposed_show"> attitudes.</span><br />
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This could be projection, but I suspect it's not. Anyway, I give a
solution to the problem that, if I'm right, could fix it. Watch.<br />
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<br />Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-78701674766848592992018-09-12T18:56:00.002-06:002018-09-12T19:00:51.795-06:00My Testimony (Why the Book of Mormon Opens History)<div class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_u">
An attempt at a testimony:<br />
<br />
I could have left the Church a long time ago. I have more than every
reason to - I went to Westminster as a philosophy major, for heavens
sake. Statistically speaking, I *should* have apostatized. I also know
about all the skeletons in the Church’s closet, and I know firsthand the
injustices that can be perpetrated by church leaders both local and
general. But I’m still here. And the *reason* I’m still here has to do
with my understanding of history and covenant.<br />
<br />
What is history?
Is history what *really* happened, what *factually* happened? Is it
*only* this? If you think so, you share in a bias that westerners have
held that, put under scrutiny, is not only not very old, but is also
inconsistent. For one, most (if not all, I’m open to exceptions but
haven’t found any) indigenous cultures do not treat history as
something that happened in an irrretrievable past. The past is something
that we can return to, something we can act out and accomplish. Ritual,
for them, is an attempt to return to *first* time things were done, to
do things in the same way that the mythical ancestors did them for the
first time, and so make action something that isn’t only a function of
something “discovered” in the past tense but a present-tense, repeated,
ongoing “discovery.” The past isn’t dead but repeats itself whenever we
return to it in ritual. If you’re noticing parallels to the temple, this
isn’t an accident, but I’ll hold off of that for now. To assume that
history, however, is merely something that happened factually in the way
we naively assume today not only ignores that this seems to be the
default setting of human beings but also ignores the fact the all-seeing
eye of history is purely hypothetical, never has, and never will exist.
Though we can retrieve accounts of the past, artifacts from it, and
though this is very very useful and sorely needed in many ways, it has
the drawback that (like all modes of knowledge nowadays) it assumes it
can understand something without at the same time *enacting* something
in it. History places no demands on the historian to act in a certain
way. Of course, history demands good historiography, and the study of
history can demand good action from what you learn there. Not contesting
that. Instead, I mean that the historian (like the chemist with his
test tube or the biologist with her dissected animal corpse) assumes
wrongly that she can understand history from the outside, by
*describing* it, and not by acting it out. If this *were* the case, the
study of history would be sacred ritual. But it isn’t.<br />
<br />
To
summarize my point so far, you can only ever understand something
completely by *putting it on* and *acting it out*. To describe from the
outside, and to assume that description can suffice, is to confuse
motricity and perception, to confuse time with space, to confuse verbs
with nouns and the present tense with the past tense.There is no
all-seeing eye, no view from nowhere. For if there were, it would not be
able to see the conditions for its own seeing, the lens of its own eyes
or the back of its head, in the same way that a book which purports to
include everything can’t exist because if it were to include everything,
it would have to include itself, which would then include itself in
this itself, and never get to the point but only regress indefinitely.
This infinite regress that happens when you represent representation, by
the way, is not only what you see when you face two mirrors against
each other but also what happens when you take psychedelics and you see
the mandalic flower tunnel that leads off into infinity. Sight is
cracking under the perception of sight and reality (i.e. The
participative, self-transcending, motor factor that precedes sight) is
making itself clear. But that’s neither here nor there
(literally...ha!).<br />
<br />
So when I hear things like how the Book of
Mormon has little to no historical evidence (open to correction here) or
how there were no horses or wheels in ancient America, this doesn’t
bother me in the slightest. The Book of Mormon is still true even if it
has no evidence, even, crucially *if it didn’t happen in history*. Why?
I’ll put it a few ways. First, to paraphrase Joe Spencer, it’s not
because its history or lack thereof is or ever was in question or,
really, the point; it isn’t; its point is to call *your* history into
question. In other words, the Book of Mormon is an act of updating
history as a closed system, and history is closed, as I talked about
above, because it posits an object without a subject. The Book of Mormon
gives you no such luxury. Like no other book from the time period, it
*addresses* and *challenges* you. *You*, the reader, the one who then
has to either accept or reject its challenge and who, thereby, is cast in
and acts out a role *that the Book of Mormon itself put you in.*
There’s a reason the church’s exoduses parallel the journeys in 1 Nephi,
Mosiah, and Ether, a reason why missionary accounts are often so
similar to stories from ~Alma 20, even a reason why the typical ex-Mormon
claims (this is just confirmation bias; you lay clergy are, somehow,
after our tithing money) parallel Korihor’s soliloquies: these people
are all responding to the Book of Mormon’s claims about itself in ways
that make them, unwittingly, cast as types of people in the Book who
were, likewise, also responding to scripture. The Book is a call to
action, an action *itself*, that not only describes the action it is but
also furthers it. I.e. It is proprioceptive: it not only describes, not
only acts, but, in acting, describes itself, and in describing, acts
itself out according to its description of itself. This, like the
psychedelic tunnel with perception, is a window out of and into history
that, crucially, *remakes history in its image.* You don’t have to
believe in it to help accomplish its project in this way. You just have
to read it. Your reactions will do the rest.<br />
<br />
But I, for one, want
to be on the right side of (this rip in) history. And that’s where the
covenant bit comes in. The Book of Mormon is a covenant in the sense
that, if I believe it and act in the way it commands me to act, I will
then receive blessings in the way that it decribes: i.e. I will receive a
witness that it is true, will speak with the tongues of angels, will
become sanctified in Christ. The Book of Mormon is, then, an “If-then”
statement, a proprioceptive if-then statement, a description of a chain
of events where it and its effects on me are among those events. I want
those blessings, I want to speak with the tongues of angels. Moreover, I
want the world that the Book of Mormon promises is possible: a world
without contention, a world with centuries of peace, a world where the
daughter(s) of Zion arise from the dust and put on their beautiful
garments. So I try to follow the commandments, and I try to obey the
covenant.<br />
<br />
This is how I see the Church at large. It seems out of
its depth at times, it reeks of hierarchy and senility, but it is
predicated not only on the opening into history that the Book of Mormon
(and prayer, patriarchal bessings, and the temple ceremonies, etc.) is
and are, but also on the continual capacity to revise and update based
on that opening. The brethren are mortal men cast by the Book of
Mormon, God and their encounter with both in certain ways, and they are
trying to act out those roles with unwearying (if sometimes uninformed
or tactless) diligence and faith. And it shows. General Conference talks
have a profound effect on me often *without regard to what the speaker
says.* It’s because something in it speaks to me from that place before,
above, and within time, reminds me of the covenants I have made,
teaches me how to be me in God’s way. I will not apologize for my
faithfulness in and to the Church. God is at the helm, and what this
means is that we are each cast in a role based on our reactions to the
divine impulse in the Book of Mormon and everything that came from it.
We will transform the world if that Book has its way, and I intend to
assist in that process, the way it hisses forth from generation to
generation, the way Zion strengthens her stakes and enlarges her borders
forever and ever, the way God transforms history.<br />
<br />
I say these things, as I occasionally do online, in the name of Jesus Christ, my savior. Amen.</div>
Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-5083471355057685352018-09-11T18:07:00.003-06:002018-09-11T18:07:51.491-06:00Response: The CES Letter (Why Jeremy Runnells is Halfway to Neckbeard)Just re-read Runnells' CES Letter. A few troubling things about his approach:<br /><br />1) He assumes that the only valid mode of viewing the world is one of western rationalism from the last few centuries. Never mind that this point of view is a historical aberration compared with the vast swathes of human history and pre-history (tens of thousands of which were unchanged in shamanic, tribal systems). Never mind how this rational aberration is associated with western imperialism and is, arguably, its root. Never mind how talking about "magical thinking, superstitious, inconsistent, and treasure digging men" as Runnells does uses the same kind language that we *could* use to describe, say, indigenous tribes in Africa or the Amazon in ways that we would find deeply offensive and subject to imperialistic bias.<br /><br />2a) Along the same lines, he assumes that a vision can only ever be "imagination." Not only is this part of a centuries-long act of making the imagination, the psychic factor, into an enemy, something that can't be real (part of the above rational-imperialistic factor), but this attitude ignores that imagination is a) something *very* real, at least subjectively (ask someone suffering from schizophrenic hallucinations), and b) is arguably real in a way that is ontologically primary. There is no encountering the world *without* imagination (that's not a couch; that's a bunch of quarks).<br /><br />2b) Moreover, I consider that part of the essay nonsense because I and many other people I know have had super-sensory experiences (i.e. visions) that are both difficult to explain scientifically and self-evidently real to us. You can say visions are *mere* hallucinations, but (in the words of Swedenborg, who not only had visions, but had visions that told him things he shouldn't have been able to know) "by all this I am not deterred, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt."<br /><br />3) He just skips over the fact that the Book of Mormon is remarkably self-consistent and the witness accounts to the translation process (some of them by enemies) that say he just dictated, line-by-line, sometimes picking up mid-sentence from where he left off. He also ignores that the Book of Mormon's history has a remarkable internal consistency (both in terms of time, geography, internal reference, and narrative voice, though, to be fair, he gives an explanation of the Book's geography that could explain it in that realm). This is a human impossibility. That didn't stop it from happening, however, not only with people like Joseph Smith but also with Helen Schucman, the one who received the book A Course in Miracles and (no doubt) others.<br /><br />4) And, the piece de resistance, this work is about history and historical weirdness and inconsistencies. He seems to only be concerned *about* history. Never mind the problem of gay marriage or about the dysfunctional sexual complexes acted out and perpetrated in the church at large. If there's going to be a problem in the Church, says Runnells, it's going to be the fact that Joseph Smith was a treasure seer. I *like* weirdness, everything New-Age and woo-woo, and the fact that Runnells sees it as something *self-evidently* worth rejecting is symptomatic of not only Runnells' biases but also the biases of the people swayed by the letter. I have no patience for people who leave the Church because of history. None. Leaving for political or present-day practical issues - I respect *that*. It means you care MORE about the living than the dead, more about people than ideas. But if you're going to leave because of dowsing rods and peeping stones...you're halfway to neckbeard, bucko.Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859373979050969476.post-43819047621785586792018-09-08T22:41:00.001-06:002018-09-08T22:41:49.695-06:00Response: Why People Leave the Church and Never Come Back (With Weeping Angels)<div class="_5pbx userContent _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_u">
So
this is a fantastic article that you should read. It's devotional,
upbuilding, and real. I had two sets of thoughts while reading it:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://medium.com/s/story/why-people-leave-the-church-and-never-come-back-410e3e817a3a">Why People Leave the Church and Never Come Back</a><br />
<br />
First, I realized how perniciously focused we are as a church culture
on how much either I or other people measure up to certain expectations,
be they commandments or mere norms, and how much we equate both a)
commandments and norms, and b) the act of measuring up to these
expectations with the act of obtaining worth. This is wrong. Worth is
not a function of following norms or even commandments. Worth is a way I
conceive of myself that, if I adopt this conception as an assumption or
an act of faith, will both justify that assumption insofar as I believe
and act on it and lead me to follow commandments as an expression of
love for He who loves me and whose love is presupposed and believed in
with that assumption.<br />
<br />
Second, I realized that I haven't
experienced judgment from church culture for a long time, even though I
used to, and even though I'm probably more unorthodox now than I was
then. I wondered why this was, especially considering that others can
and do experience said judgment. I came to the provisional conclusion
that it's because I stopped considering *myself* as unorthodox a few
years back. It makes me wonder how much of judgment from others is a
function of self-judgment (as well as vice versa, which is also very
true), since perhaps insofar as I treat myself as someone who belongs,
the others in my group will treat me in the same way I treat myself.
Judgment or the lack thereof, then, are maybe acts of of reciprocal
"role-casting," where the role I/the group casts me in is the same role
the group/I cast me in. This is a problem. How do you break the cycle?
I'm not sure how I did it, and I don't know if it would be as easy for
someone who, say, struggles with same-sex attraction. But here are some
thoughts anyway:<br />
<br />
To stop casting myself or others in a
problematic way that reinforces itself cyclically over time, I'd need to
realize that this cycle is, first and foremost, a way of organizing my
being-in-the-world that gives certain elements of my being-in-the-world
(me, you, the church, the bishop, that guy, that girl, God) certain
significances. This is always true, and (crucially) it is objectively
true across persons. I am "the one who is judged" both to me and to
others. Since our motor, affective models of the world and our
collective situation in it cohere together, reciprocally co-implicate,
and depend on each other, affective "roles" for certain people or types
of people will reinforce themselves across time. This is true
politically: a liberal person is someone who is cast both by themselves
and by conservatives as "the opponent of conservatives." That, funnily
enough, is something that almost everyone agrees on across the spectrum,
in this era of partisan politics: "That conservatives are the opponents
of liberals and liberals are the opponents of conservatives." But I
digress.<br />
<br />
To heal from this state where these co-implicating
significances rule ( like "I am an unorthodox person," say), we'd need
to introduce not merely a new meaning but a new meaning-generative
complex. That is, I not only need to reconceptualize myself (since this
would use and operate within the same mode of conceptualizing; I'd just,
maybe take a different role in the same generative system; I'd become
someone orthodox, but then someone else would take the unorthodox role
and I'd be the aggressor instead of the victim) but instead change my
*method* of conceptualizing *and* reconceptutalizing both myself and the
world. I'd need to *signify* in a different way.<br />
<br />
This can happen
in innocuous ways, like with me above. For instance, a mode of
representing both me and the world can expire, and a new one can take
its place. You can never will this, obviously (since the will would come
from the old representative place), but it can happen incidentally.
But you can pray, and not just to God. If you ask for a representative
state to represent itself in you, it often will, without you knowing.
These representative modes of beings are archetypes, gods, if you will,
and can be talked to and acted from. And you can "fake it till you make
it." In the same way that deliberate rhythmic breathing in bed will turn
into sleep's deep breathing on its own, and in the same way that the
Dionysian initiate would *become* Dionysus by mimicking him in the
mystery center, if you pretend that you're orthodox, you eventually will
be.<br />
<br />
But, interestingly, *sin* is a generative, representative
state like this. We are all born into this state. We can't get rid of
it. But Christ can. Christ is the factor in me that not only gives me
something to know or learn (i.e. a different way of seeing myself) but
more importantly gives me a different way of knowing and learning.
Christ does not operate within our modes of representation; he doesn't
work with these reciprocal co-implications; he breaks them open. He
frees us from the prison not only of our thoughts but of our systems for
generating thoughts.<br />
<br />
And how does this work? Not by our works
(those works represent themselves, of course, from a mode of "working"
that is itself sinful, is itself what Christ is here to save us from),
and not by a mere verbal declaration of faith (which also comes from a
sinful place). Instead, Christ's redemption and liberation comes by
magnifying the sinful mode of working and speaking in us until, in a
moment of despair that we can't plan and can't facilitate, we abandon
the representative model at the lowest level of representation, of what
precedes representations, words, or works themselves, on the level of
*representing*. Why? Because it consummates itself and you don't go down
with the ship.<br />
<br />
Two parables to illustrate this point: first, if
you do zazen in full-lotus pose with your ankles above your knees, and
if (like me) you're not too flexible, it will hurt. But then you'll
realize that the reason it hurts is because the regular muscle tension
in your legs (i.e. what *situates* and *represents* your movements) has
been exaggerated to the point of pain. So you relax them. And then you
realize...wait...I *can* relax them. I can do that? Oh...*that's* what
peace feels like. I had forgotten.<br />
<br />
<br />
Second, the episode "Blink" of
Doctor Who's third season ends with an almost insoluble problem: Sally
and Larry (I looked up their names!) are trapped by weeping angels in
the Tardis, but, oh no!, the Tardis is disappearing and the angels are
surrounding them. They will die. It is certain. How could it not be? But
in the Doctor's genius, the angels, who turn themselves to stone if
ever looked at, are *looking at each other*. In the moment of despair,
in the moment of hopelessness, is when evil destroys itself in its own
crossfire (this type of escape is also, btw, a crucial plot point in
Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary, which was written by the same guy).<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBv-byTe3hSLyhy2o4R3EA0uJCVJVDSV6LfauDMInM9H-dvw0CE3wGjzuBd9tCRC48UZqh3LjwZZIlWrMwiJDOIwKt7onUTOvQdBDtRFqjsLaZ0_dKao-92oDO2kM_B_BwIIHUBaKgUDdS/s1600/He+tricked+them.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="480" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBv-byTe3hSLyhy2o4R3EA0uJCVJVDSV6LfauDMInM9H-dvw0CE3wGjzuBd9tCRC48UZqh3LjwZZIlWrMwiJDOIwKt7onUTOvQdBDtRFqjsLaZ0_dKao-92oDO2kM_B_BwIIHUBaKgUDdS/s400/He+tricked+them.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
So, in short, evil needs to be let out and allowed to self-destruct.
The painful, sinful representative mode must exaggerate itself to the
degree where the mode *as such* becomes apparent and not just what that
mode represents. But you can't expedite the process. The only thing you
can do is pray to God to do so, to pray to be surprised by the grace of
despair and, thereby, by the freedom that flees despair's shipwreck, the
Ark that survives the Flood.<br />
<br />
But I lie. You *can* expedite the
process. But not directly. Instead, you must give God something to work
with. Every time you read scripture, you give the aspect of you that can
and will liberate itself in this crisis tools to a) liberate itself,
and b) to allow evil to condemn itself (a and b are the same). Good, or
God, does not condemn evil; He and it disclose evil as evil and let evil
destroy and condemn itself. God loves the souls in Hell (as we all are,
to an extent) too much to do anything but expel it slowly.</div>
Christian Swensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10985278706342174458noreply@blogger.com0