Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Life as Mystery
If the whole of life were not looked at as a problem or a series of problems but as a mystery, wouldn't it make a difference? But can we look at the mystery or abide in the mystery without it being turned into a problem, especially by the philosophers? If thinking can be allowed to be an act of appreciation or simply abiding in the experience, then the mystery doesn't have to be turned into a problem. Thinking about life as problems reduces thinking to calculative reasoning. But beholding the mystery enables the kind of appreciation- or better, wonder- that allows thought to heal, create and love.
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So I began to draft a response to your entry, "Life as Mystery" and I nearly filled a page in MSWord before I stopped and took a look at what I was writing.
ReplyDeleteI was taking things apart...I started to break things down into how and why questions (problems to solve), which I then attempted to "answer" (calculative reasoning).
Anyway I closed Word, reread your post, and then decided perhaps I ought to just try it. Try as an experiment to allow my thinking to be an act of appreciation, and/or simply abide in the experience. That said, I suppose in my Word document I was trying to understand “what” that means so I could attempt “how” to do it. Could you tell me if I am way off base? The way I interpret at least some of what you are saying is roughly as follows: think without judgment or evaluation of the thoughts (since judgment and evaluation start the process of framing things in terms of problems?) Accept the whole of life as mystery rather than resist this fact, since resisting “what is” seems to color our perception of life…we again see it as a series of problems we try to reason or predict our way through?
Hi Melanie, If we could only admit that the fact of the matter is that life is a "mystery," that would make it easier to see. The origin of it all and the ultimate end remains in the 'unknown.' Problematizing life is endless, building into life a structure of dilemma's that aren't really there. And, yes, the key is to not resist the mystery, without of course mystifying the mystery. The mystery is really an experience of awe and sublime appreciation. Problems are addictions. Addictions themselves are resistances to living in the moment of mystery, the falling away of the temporality of waiting, solving and 'getting there,' etc. But rather than even use the word thinking, the "appreciation" is a feeling of one's experience of life such that what would ordinarily be seen as "problems" resolve themselves. The Avatar experience is a journey of feeling whose power of insight and abidance transcends anything we ordinarily know as thought. It's 'source awareness' "resolves" rather than "solves" artificial problems of the "analytical" mind.
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