Hidden purpose/Exposed intent/Prostate Radiation Treatment

Life is messy. We would like to imagine it all squeaky clean with each hair in place. But ideas and experiences are birthed like newborn babies. We like to think of them handed to us neatly wrapped in a blanket. But really the ideas and experiences of life emerge from pain and effort covered in piss and shit just like babies. But they are full of potential and possibilities.

They ask that I show up for treatment with empty rectum and full bladder. So I drank prune juice before bed and am up drinking water so my bladder will be full. Waiting on bowel movement. That is how I begin my day for the next month. Start with piss and shit but full of potential.

 This same duality is a feature of our lived experience. The binary/low context orientation of euro-culture would have us think that the way we should experience things is as distinct, "pure," and abstracted from all the contextual factors that contribute to and create our experience.

I am making a distinction between "duality" and "binary." I am using duality as a noun and in its sense where it reflects "interchangeability"  or the equivalence of two seemingly different things. I am using "binary" as a verb in its sense where it reflects two mutually exclusive conditions. 

We see this concept of non-binary duality in conditions and circumstances such as:

 System change = self change

Biomimicry = Nature Culture

Fractals = As above, so below

Inelligent Design/Divine Design = chaos theory

mundane = divine

secular = sacred

dialectical = Tao



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Valentine's Day -Love, Lust and Enlightenment

It is that time of year when the commecial demand for consumerism captivates and overtakes the spiritual connection that occurs when the vibratory fequency of two beings harmonize.

I have long attempted to differentiate the term "love" from its fraternal and its physical manifestations. We use the same word to describe the sexual experience and the filial experience. During a sermon on 'desire' a new way of articulating the connection and the contradiction occurred to me. The distinction in reflected in the Greek language with the terms "agape" or friendship and "eros" or eroticism.

Love is caring. Desire is wanting. One of the simplest ways to contrast the two experiences is to look at what we mean when we say we "love" a parent, a sibling or a child versus what we mean when we speak of "love" regarding a mate or sexual partner. Caring and wanting are not mutually exclusive but each has a distinct manifestation in its own domain. Caring connects with wanting in terms of memory in the Agape domain. Desire connects with caring in terms of romance in the Eros domain.

Love is light. Desire is heat. Love creates the desire to be responsive to the needs of the other. This means we look for what we can do or how we can interact and relate to them. This seeking is analagous with light. Desire is heat. Desire is often described with the metaphor of fire. This refelects the tendency for desire to consume us emotionally and stimulate us physically resulting in physical heat and emotional heat. Love and desire joined and connected offer both heat and light.

Love is attachment. Desire is attraction. Love results in our connection with another even when apart. This connection is an important component of fidelity. Desire is attraction. Desire results in our moving towards our target and seeking the object of our attraction. It can be fleeting, impermanent and transitory but powerful nonetheless. This duality is often a source of confusion due to the imprecision of our use of terminology related to the concept "love." When men are attracted to women based on desire it does not mean they will feel attached to them but often this is not the case due to their lack of interest or understanding of the person. It mght take me a few more minutes to clearly articulate this analogy.

Love is contentment. Desire is yearning. These two descriptions are in line with the same distinction of the agape and eros domains. Caring, light, attachment all contribute to the contentment of agape love. Wanting, heat, attraction contributes to the yearning of desire. What we must do is to understand that either domain has both its strengths and its weaknesses. We must choos wisely for our own emotionand and spiritual health and that of the one we love.



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The magic in the mundane

 We look at a world where the assmuption is that the world variables that affect our material existence is understood well enough to manage it in a way that will allow us to head off catastrophes. But do we? I mean do we really?

We have seen the narrow definitions of what is an what is not held by European societies prove themselves wrong and usher in a new orthodoxy. The latest shake up in the financial markets does not bring us new knowledge rather it subjects us to a chastening that is a recurring theme. The golbalization of the twenty-first century is no grander than that of the seventeenth century (or was it the eighteenth?). The most well remembered depression that occurred in the 1930s is considered by some to have been outshone by the one in the late 1800s. But neither the pattern of the past which incorporates the point of existence that we are currently experiences or the repeated repetitions within the various aspects of our life that demand reciprocity and create it in ways that are devastating enough to shake the desire for something for nothing.

Science is showing the limits of taking without giving, consuming without producing, and getting something while trying to give nothing. Global warming is an example of dumping product into the environment poisoning the air, water and body of living creatures.

Now the financial arena is wreaking its own havoc on those who would take and take without giving back. 

Human health is experiencing all kinds of problems with cancers of all kind on the rise, endocrine disruptors, precocious puberty, etc., etc., etc.

Then ther are all kinds of problems affecting animal health with disappearing bees, disappearing frogs, deformities and frailties that are evidence of threats to the non-human animal world.

Each of these situation are representative of the spiritual era many of us, not excluding myself, are experiencing.

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