In a world where we ought to develop - like a child develops to an adolescent then an adult - the primary importance is not to be certain about some total-truth of things.
Because, how could a child be certain about anything, when he is not yet developed? If, indeed, the child was certain about something - he would almost-certainly be mistaken.
And if we believe that we are ourselves divine and capable of communion with the Holy Ghost; that our destiny is to become more divine, to become Children of God and siblings of Jesus Christ; then this state of non-certainty will continue after biological death.
And if our God is believed to be an open-ended, learning God; whose capacity increases (forever) in response to the growing divine creativity of his Children - then uncertainty is a permanent condition - indeed a desirable condition.
What this reveals is that the quest for certainty is a delusion; an ill-formed question; a self-refuting activity - it makes no sense.
The thing is - we are at present dual beings. Before we were conscious, we were unified - living from instincts and unconsciously; but as our self-awareness developed as an alternative 'self' it took-over as the centre of our being.
So modern Man is a conscious self and a divine self; and our problem is that division.
Our destined future is again to be a divine self- but consciously so. However, since we are located-in consciousness, we begin our quest for re-unification in consciousness - and therefore this future must be consciously-chosen.
The conscious self must yield-up its supremacy, and voluntarily subordinate itself to the divine self - and despite that the conscious self can never know the 'inner-workings' of the divine self; because the divine self is a primary cause (an uncaused-cause), hence a unity and unanalysable.
Our future state of restored integration with our-selves (and The World) is therefore one in which we cause to make conscious choices! - except for the choice to follow the guidance of god-in-us. We will know what we do, but we will not, and cannot know, why we do it.
The conscious self can, if it wishes, model the divine self and make hypothesis why the divine self says such a thing. But any model is selective, simplified and ultimately false; so the conscious self can never be in a position to disprove the divine self - even though the divine self is always incomplete, and with potential to develop further; to become more divine, more comprehensive...
So, instead of seeking certainty of knowledge; we ought to seek always and at all times to think and do The Right Thing in any specific situation. We should seek to live consciously and by choice according to the dictates of the divine self; which will (in communion with the Holy Ghost) guide us to do the right thing in any specific situation, in light of our personal development and circumstances.
We cannot know for certain any particular chunk of knowledge; but we can be certain about what is the right thing for us to do, here and now.
In younger days as a Christian I was always curious about what God's will was for my day to day, for those matters that pertained to me specifically. I never seemed to get a satisfactory answer, and I also saw that here was danger in claiming more certainty about it was God's will, because what if you're wrong? I never liked when someone said "God told me" or "God laid it on my heart". Because maybe He did, or maybe not. And I know I'm not just taking your word for it, because I'm really confident I shouldn't.
ReplyDeleteThere's a way out though and it is simpler than I thought. God promises that He will guide us but of course He doesn't promise that things will work out in the earthly sense perfectly. The short answer is trust in God and act, the trust is the important thing more than the specific course of action. You can absolutely "get it wrong" but that's not God's fault and I find it impossible to believe that God wants us hamstrung and timid. There's more to say, I could probably write a lengthy essay. It's paradoxically complex in theory and simple in practice.
For a second I thought there was an April Fools in there! Although I don't expect that to be a occasion you enjoy or set much stock by.
ReplyDeleteWhat gave me pause and made me think that: the 'we cease to make conscious choices except for the choice to follow the guidance of god-in-us' makes Final Participation sound a bit too much like Original Participation, except with 'passive' immersion in an inner-divine-self rather than the outer-Paradise-environment.
Perhaps technically correct strictly from the point-of-view of the completely-alienated consciousness self. But the inner-divine-self would surely beg to differ.
When I'm acting from final-participation-self, I know what I'm doing and I'm doing whatever I choose to do.
When I stuck in alienated-consciousness-self, my body is following a program while I wonder 'what the Hell am I doing?' I can, if I so choose, switch to a different program. But there are Hopes and Desires beating on the doors of this constructed reality, with no program to achieve them. If I pay enough attention to these, suddenly I may be acting without a program.
@Michael - That all seems right to me!
ReplyDelete@Seijio - It's the usual story of coming back to the beginning, but in consciousness, so everything is changed!
One must bear in mind that here I am using a simplified 'model' which must therefore be wrong, ultimately. It is just a step, and *must* be left-behind.
My point here is that the aimed-at state can't be one that leaves consciousness 'in charge' because that is where we are now. It also can't be a state that dispenses with consciousness and operates from instinct.
We know taht consciousness has no 'wisdom' because it is cut-off from the divine; also, we also know that to become more divine, we need to become more conscious. All I'm really saying here is that the desired result is not one that presents the desired behaviour as a kind of branching model; but one that tells us exactly what we ought to do, and in which we know this explicitly.
We may know that something is good, true, beautiful, right - but usually we will know know why; because the why reasons are often known only to the divine mind; and the divine mind is an uncaused cause, which means its 'workings' cannot be explained.
This has been a major feature of my life. The *insistence* on having an explanation 'why' is destructive; since it merely leads to the construction of a model, and the insistence that the model captures the reality of the situation - i.e. the standard procedure of (Ahrimanic) totalitarian bureaucracy. Yet the Luciferic unconscious-instinctive is closed to us (as well as being an evolutionary step backwards).
The best I can do is to say that we need to become conscious of the instinctive - but this is an inner matter. To translate our conscious knowing into language (to 'explain to ourselves') is a process of modelling (and therefore Ahrimanic); to try and communicate this entails a further simplification and reduction.
What is aimed-at (to escape both Luciferic and Ahrimanic) is what I currently term 'direct knowing' - and this should be taken as primary.