No thank you. A God that would demand the sacrifice of the intellect or even the crucifixion of the intellect is not a God worthy of worship. Imagine moving at death from the shadow lands of this life into the divine presence only to find that God is nothing but irrational power personified, the apotheosis of arbitrarity. What could be more horrible? Far, far better would be to be annihlated at death.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
Ersatz Eternity
What has been, though it needn't have been, always will have been. What time has mothered, no future time can touch. What you were and that you were stands forever inscribed in the roster of being whether or not anyone will read the record. You will die, but your having lived will never die. But how paltry the ersatz eternity of time's progeny! Time has made you and will unmake you. In compensation, she allows your having been to rise above the reach of the flux. Thanks a lot, bitch! You are one mater dolorosa whose consolation is as petty as your penance is hard.
Our Humble Port of Entry
We humans are surprisingly proud given our lowly and inauspicious entrance into the world. In a line often attributed to St. Augustine, Inter faeces et urinam nascimur: we are born between feces and urine. And we revert soon enough to something of equal value: dust and ashes. Entry through a vagina, exit through a smokestack. On and off the stage in a manner most unbecoming and most unlike our proud strut upon it.
Courtesy
I suggest that we think of courtesy as a mean between rudeness and obsequiousness. The courteous are neither churls nor courtiers. This despite the etymology of 'courtesy.' (As a separate post could argue, there is no such thing as the true meaning of a word, and even if there were, etymology would not guide us to it.) To put it crudely, so that even a contemporary can get the point: the courteous neither show, nor kiss, ass.
Passion
Passion dies out in the old, but there is no credit in that. If your vices abandon you before you abandon them, you are no candidate for praise. The trick is for the young and the midstreamers to learn to control passion while there is time left to enjoy the passion-free state.
The Recluse Aphorizes, Laconically
By oneself one can be oneself.
Limits
The young should test their limits. The old, having tested them, should respect them. Two misfortunes: never to learn what one is capable of; to come to grief from attempting what one is incapable of.
They Refused to Look Through the Telescope
There were churchmen and other contemporaries of Galileo who, standing fast on convictions swotted up from the lore of Aristotle and his commentators, refused to look through the Italian's telescope. Similarly, there are atheists and mortalists today who, standing fast on convictions derived from less reputable sources, refuse to engage in the spiritual practices which could serve as their 'telescope.'
Just as the scientific attitude demands of us an openness to one range of experience, the religious attitude demands of us an openness to another.
Talk is Cheap?
Talk is cheap, they say, but the right word, at the right time, spoken from the heart with purity of intent to the right person can be priceless.
What Socializing and Whisky Have in Common
A little socializing, like a little whisky, is good. But more is not better. The sobriety of solitary silence is superior to the sloughing off of self into the social, and the value of the latter is to enhance, by way of contrast, the delights of the former. Thus spoke the introvert.
Why Run?
If the sky is the daily bread of the eyes (Emerson), then hiking, running, and cycling are the daily bread of the legs and lungs. And what better way to appreciate the sky, and the lambent light of the desert Southwest, than by running over mountain trails at sunrise? Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.
Happiness and Outflow
Cogitative and seminal efflux are both in need of control, and it is reasonably surmised that control of either helps in the control of the other. It is more than reasonably surmised that control of both is necessary for happiness. But difficult it is to stem the tide of thought and seed.
Purgatory is Other People
Other people are mirrors in which we perceive distorted images of ourselves. But in these distortions truths lie hidden which we do well to discern.
This Life
Too dream-like to be real, this life is too real to be a dream. We cannot literally be "such stuff as dreams are made on" (The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1), but the spiritually percipient will catch the Bard's drift. "Our little life rounded with a sleep" is not a candidate for plenary Reality.
Memory and Happiness
It is we who supply the blood that enlivens the spectral vampires that haunt us from our past. A part of mind control is purgation of memory, and without mind control happiness is achieved with difficulty, if at all.