By Michael Murphy, Ed.D.
From the perspective of liberation the questions, if not the answers, become clearer.
Most importantly, one learns not to ask questions that are irrelevant to the process of self-actualization. It is so easy to waste time and energy and matter, all of which are one, in id-motivated acts of self-reconstitution. Frenetic is the word; anything frenetic takes precious resources and tosses them into the timeless void, where they drift until reclaimed by some more spiritually industrious soul. Emotion itself, which lends texture to experience and which at one point had evolutionary importance, in modern life becomes the noise that accompanies vast accidents. A lot can be learned from the study of this noise, but it is important not to precipitate it unnecessarily. To do so is the greatest ontological sin – waste.
Humanity naturally craves ecstasy, whether experienced through childbirth or material achievement or ingestion of a magical chemical. But, in this earthbound domain, what goes up must come down and by implication that which goes up the highest must come down the hardest. The higher one gets, the more the contrast of return to ordinary baseline will be experienced as odious. There is no such misery as the loss of bliss.
Physicists will insist that these laws of ascent and descent do not apply outside the earthly domain – in a vacuum, a directed force will continue forever. But the universe exists in a subtle balance between being and ostensible nothingness, vacancy and stuff, and so energy and matter will always be oscillating, vibrating in a rhythm determined, to some extent, by its location, by the specific potentialities of presence. A human narrative defines these oscillations as gain and loss, joy and suffering, ecstasy and misery.
Balance is only achieved through detachment from the vagaries of oscillation; the maintenance of a lucid presence that experiences both ecstasy and misery as epiphenomenous – this is a lucid presence that can be described as self-mastery. Thus, enlightenment carries with it the necessary sacrifice of ecstasy; the benefit is that it also carries with it the avoidance of misery. As material beings we may not be able to prevent being affected by the existence of stuff, but we can be liberated by the realization that the dance of stuff is a necessary and inherent potential woven into the very fabric of being and nonbeing – nothing more or less.
Identification with stuff provides the energetic oscillations with a passenger – us. Embarked on this tortuous ride we work and strive and struggle to mitigate and control the oscillations that are inherent in the very fabric of being, contributing to disastrous interventions that in the end come to nothing, though they do waste a lot of time and energy. Identification with stuff entails raising questions that, because they are irrelevant, have no answer. Most importantly, identification with stuff distracts and diverts awareness from a focus on what matters – and that is what matters most.
LIBERATION IDENTIFICATION
From the perspective of liberation the questions, if not the answers, become clearer.
Most importantly, one learns not to ask questions that are irrelevant to the process of self-actualization. It is so easy to waste time and energy and matter, all of which are one, in id-motivated acts of self-reconstitution. Frenetic is the word; anything frenetic takes precious resources and tosses them into the timeless void, where they drift until reclaimed by some more spiritually industrious soul. Emotion itself, which lends texture to experience and which at one point had evolutionary importance, in modern life becomes the noise that accompanies vast accidents. A lot can be learned from the study of this noise, but it is important not to precipitate it unnecessarily. To do so is the greatest ontological sin – waste.
Humanity naturally craves ecstasy, whether experienced through childbirth or material achievement or ingestion of a magical chemical. But, in this earthbound domain, what goes up must come down and by implication that which goes up the highest must come down the hardest. The higher one gets, the more the contrast of return to ordinary baseline will be experienced as odious. There is no such misery as the loss of bliss.
Physicists will insist that these laws of ascent and descent do not apply outside the earthly domain – in a vacuum, a directed force will continue forever. But the universe exists in a subtle balance between being and ostensible nothingness, vacancy and stuff, and so energy and matter will always be oscillating, vibrating in a rhythm determined, to some extent, by its location, by the specific potentialities of presence. A human narrative defines these oscillations as gain and loss, joy and suffering, ecstasy and misery.
Balance is only achieved through detachment from the vagaries of oscillation; the maintenance of a lucid presence that experiences both ecstasy and misery as epiphenomenous – this is a lucid presence that can be described as self-mastery. Thus, enlightenment carries with it the necessary sacrifice of ecstasy; the benefit is that it also carries with it the avoidance of misery. As material beings we may not be able to prevent being affected by the existence of stuff, but we can be liberated by the realization that the dance of stuff is a necessary and inherent potential woven into the very fabric of being and nonbeing – nothing more or less.
Identification with stuff provides the energetic oscillations with a passenger – us. Embarked on this tortuous ride we work and strive and struggle to mitigate and control the oscillations that are inherent in the very fabric of being, contributing to disastrous interventions that in the end come to nothing, though they do waste a lot of time and energy. Identification with stuff entails raising questions that, because they are irrelevant, have no answer. Most importantly, identification with stuff distracts and diverts awareness from a focus on what matters – and that is what matters most.