My metaphysical position is this:
The universe is one consciousness exploring its infinite creative possibilities. We are aspects, expressions, fractal shards of that consciousness in its ever-evolving inquiry into itself. There is no bedrock phenomenological reality, nothing firm to grasp or hang onto, outside of this consciousness. Even something as basic as “cause and effect” may be an illusion of our limited minds, as Nietzsche noted. This is too terrifying for most people to handle, so they retreat into narrow beliefs or parochial certitudes like nationalism, Yoga practice, therapy, or scientific materialism
When people start to seek deeper purpose, they often put their faith in a guru, shaman, or maestro—it might be someone with a fantastic beard, draped in an exotic outfit who conveys a certain mystique. Later they are surprised when they learn their faith was misplaced; the guru turns out to be a charlatan, uber-capitalist, or sex fiend; the ancient esoteric practices something they concocted out of whole cloth.
But this is another way the universe winks at us.
The universe—the universal oneness, us, in other words—doesn’t choose for comfort or security. It chooses for adventure, surprise, intensity and novelty. It chooses for the crazier, wilder story. What’s best for the long scope of narrative development may be nasty, cruel, even devastating, in the short span of a human life. The barbaric acts reported by Russian soldiers in Ukraine remind us, yet again, that this experiment of consciousness is fragile, tentative. It can easily take a terrible wrong turn and suddenly we are back in a hell realm.
We generally sense that everything is amping up, accelerating… dissolving, coagulating, reforming. “Everything solid melts into air,” Karl Marx wrote about modernity. History appears to be entering a phase of exponential acceleration. This suggests, perhaps, another threshold ahead. Hopefully we will eventually attain a new level of stability and homeostasis, however transitory.
Or perhaps this acceleration of history has no particular end point, redemptive meaning, or moral closure?
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