the conversation elsewhere deals with alienation. in the course of trying to explain to another how/why i find the discussion to be clouding, the following was written… just now, actually… this ‘in the moment’ stuff is rocking my brain in its casing. interesting, since the things coming out have been here all along.
i can’t help but ask myself why it is that it has taken this long to get to them.
then i realize, i didn’t choose it.
hah.
the leading question was:
Alienation from others results from asserting ourselves on them — from not letting them be. That seems right. Criticism establishes distance.
But now I am not so sure, because I also think not being open to the assertions of others alienates us. We are unable to be moved by them. And I think not asserting ourselves on others — not reaching out and making a difference in their lives — alienates us too. We do not participate in their lives if we only watch but make no difference.
But then this pushes us back onto the question I asked you: how much and what manner of self-assertion and receptivity?
how can it be anything other than determined within ‘how much’? seriously, how much suffering comes from trying to live up to or down to determinations of ‘how much’ that are set like some mandate without?
here, it is found to be an ultimate paradox. somewhere along the continuum, there arrives/arises the point at which any two opposites co-exist in the same space in our minds. most think it is necessary to have one ‘win’, become ascendant, supreme — that the only state of truth is an absolute.
i find just the opposite. which is funny to me, because it both reflects what i see as truth as well as defines it.
the lowest common denominator, where each extreme on the spectrum stand, staring at the other, that state of ultimate contradiction is the only marker of truth i’ve ever found to be consistent across all such examples.
all things that we define as existing do so in extreme states, in both of them at once, since one extreme cannot exist without its opposite… they create each other. and over it all, the ultimate paradox, that none of it exists. triad. heh. it would take too long to explain why that is meaningful.
we do choose our reactions. but we do not always know that we choose them. but does not knowing excuse? for some, yes, for others, no.
does everyone know that the body obeys the mind? well, sure, they know it when they don’t have to think about it… how they pick up the apple they wish to eat. how they use a pen or pencil to write.
but does everyone know the body obeys the mind? do they know it when they’re sick? do they know it when they’re angry or grieving or fearful? or alienated? what does it take to know it then?
it takes the very same thing. the real question is, why do people only want to know this when it makes things ‘convenient’ or ‘simple’?
how hard can it be to acknowledge that alienation is chosen when within because we choose how we feel?
how hard can it be to acknowledge that alienation is chosen when without because we choose how we react and thus, choose the actions that motivate others to turn from us, to alienate?
it’s all the same. universal application is like a knife, it cuts through the illusion of relativity and the situational. when we begin to see the heaping mountains of contradictions that we ask our minds to endure, the pain that rises from them, how hard can it be to decide to be honest within?
apparently, very.