Bruce Charlton's Notions

Marriage is not passive - however, being in love is a passive experience - it is spontaneous, overwhelms us, sweeps us along. And that is a good thing - an ideal thing - so far as it goes...

Marriage (a thing of mature adults, maker of mature adults) needs to be active, the husband and wife need to make an effort - they need to be conscious of what is happening, what are the options - and they need to make choices. Presumably some choices will be made wrong, need to be identified and repented, and so on.

But it is clear that a loving marriage is not sustainable nor will love grow if the husband and wife do not take an active part, are not motivated.

A marriage is a microcosm of Life; because ultimately Life is about love, and about the relationships between entities - men, women, angels (the premortals and the dead), God the Father, and Jesus Christ - for example.

Truth and Reality are a part-of, embedded-in, derived-from this network of relationships - they are not abstractions. They are more like a 'meeting of minds' (and a meeting of bodies) than anything else.

We need both to be in love, and to be deliberately motivated toward love.

'Life's like that'. 

We can't be passive in married love, nor in Life; but both need elements of being overwhelmed by impinging reality. We can't merely be active in married love, nor in Life - we are not 'given' marriage and we cannot construct a marriage or the world entirely from our own minds.

(This is good, because we are meant to become free - free in our chosen, loving, eternal 'collaboration' with God's creation.)

It's quite simple really! In Love and in Life we are given half what we need, and the other half we must provide: reality, Life, Truth and Reality are the product. They are not present until both halves are brought together - in the activity we call thinking.

Thinking is necessary to (adult, mature, divine) Love and Life, both.

I suggest that there is a prevalent fantasy that anything valid is something that we will be compelled to believe; that we will be swept-along by reality, willy-nilly, like-it-or-not...

That a true religion or ideology is one where will be forced (by overpowering conviction) to be good, happy, fulfilled.

And that we should believe nothing less than this; that the real truth is non-optional and enforces itself - pushing aside all agency, all freedom.

We feel that we ought to be helpless in the face of reality - that we do not need-to meet reality halfway; because if it was really-real then we would not need to make any effort or choice. To deliberate, discern and choose to acknowledge truth is seen as dishonest self-manipulation.

This fantasy is encouraged, and is deadly - because Man's destiny is to become ever-more conscious, free, agent and divine - which means we must remain autonomous, active, clear-headed and knowingly-detached.


That which is good can only be chosen, from the depth of our true self.

And if we absolutely insist on passivity in-face-of truth, then we insist upon evil: and, of course, that is precisely what we are getting...

Christians, from the Apostle Paul onwards, have always had the problem of trying to explain Jesus - especially what he did and why.

In other words the problem of trying to fit Jesus into a system.

We do this for not better reason than this is what we do; or for a host of 'bad' (or at least temporary, expedient) reasons to do with 'running society' - all of which seem to conflict with Jesus in some very fundamental, deeply-worrying sense.

But Jesus was a person, and when it comes to people (or at least, refers to any actual person whom we love) we don't try to fit them into a system that explains what they are 'really' doing, or what they are really 'for'. Rather, we recognise that persons come before systems; and systems are merely fitted-around people for secondary, temporary and expedient reasons - and these reasons are indeed often bad reasons; reasons that end-up with us regarding persons as mere cogs, subordinate-to and in-service-of the system.

The decision is stark - either we see Jesus as primary, or the systematic explanation of  'what Jesus did' as primary. And the proper answer ought to be obvious, once the matter has been lucidly stated.

The Gospel of John (my core source) gives us a Jesus who is a man, deep, utterly consistent yet absolutely unpredictable - judging each 'case' correctly, yet not according to system. A Jesus so unsystematic that he will not even reject the totality of a system (such as the Hebrew Law) because that would be merely to fall-into yet another system.

Jesus is fully divine, as well as a Man, hence he discerns, evaluates, judges from that divine self; above which nothing stands, because that divine self knows more than any system.

This is the nature of true judgement. It is not a means to an already-known end, neither is it subjective nor arbitrary - true judgement is a knowing of the reality of the situation, hence knowing what - specifically and exactly - should be done in this exact instance. And this true judgement is true morality.

Jesus is presented as exemplifying this - the example of Jesus is to show us the nature of correct discernment, true judgement, true morality (and not to provide us with yet-another-system to shackle, distort and usurp knowledge of the truth).

Jesus - across the gospel - is asking us to accept him, personally (not some system), as the primary reality, and the bottom line.

And knowing Jesus is not, never has been, an abstraction, because as well as God he is a person, an eternal person, who (since his resurrection and ascension) remains always in-this-world as well as 'not of this world'. 

And we can know a person. A person is something we can know.

Clearly The News is one of the primary mediators of evil in the world; but what to do about it?

Obviously we should not 'believe' The News; and should try to avoid exposure to it - but we cannot avoid it, it is forced upon on and literally demands a response. If we do not believe it, then what do we believe instead?

Simple negation or reversal would be ludicrous and counter-productive (on the basis that the most dangerous lies are veined with truth - contradiction of The News would be merely to exchange one falsehood for another). Another trap is to 'decode' the news, using a balance of sources, or 'alternative media' sources. This is just another loop back-into News obsession and enslavement - obsessive and addictive News-engagement disguised by 'trying to get to the bottom' of a 'story'...

A first step is to recognise that those who produce The News have 1001 tricks to manipulate us, and so long as we rely upon News we cannot outwit The News. Since we do not know the 'real' answers underneath the manifold deceptions of The News, and cannot find relevant information except via the media itself, even the attempt to find 'the real answer' increases the domination of The News.

Yet, if we don't believe The News, what do we believe? What 'alternative source' can there be which is untainted?

Churches are no use; because they are tainted as well - and as long as they comment on The News in public discourse they also rely on The News; the churches are drawn-into the problem and become part of it - The News gets woven-into the church teachings, into prayer, into priorities...

The News is public communication, and what opposes The News is intuition: private knowing. Direct knowledge of ultimate reality - which is, in principle, universally accessible; but accessible only by intuitive thinking of our Real (which is divine) Self.

But typical modern Man lacks access to intuition - because his mind has been filled with automatic cognitive processes such that his real Self is inactive; and because modern Man denies the reality of the divine, and his fundamental assumptions therefore regard intuition as necessarily a subjective delusion rather than direct knowing.

Consequently, even when modern Man knows in his heart that The News is wrong (a common feeling, perhaps), and even when he knows what is real and true - this state-of-knowing is ignored and indeed suppressed; because of its provenance in (presumed) mere-subjectivity and wishful-thinking. 

The location of News in public discourse leads to the requirement that we communicate about it; and the discourse is poisoned with lies, evil perspectives and covert materialist assumptions. One who speaks from intuition, and who tries to justify and defend intuition using the resources of public discourse, will find in doing-so he is weaving and strengthening one or other element of corruption.

So - we encounter News, we are compelled to respond in some way, we can neither believe nor automatically-contradict; yet we cannot be selective and interpret without accepting corruption...

The answer is to interpret from our own intuitive and direct knowing, and be honest about the provenance of our direct knowing - to state our conclusions, but not to engage in trying to defend or convince.

Of course this speaking-from-intuition is a conversation-stopper; but when it comes to News, that is necessary. And of course, it seems crazy or simple-minded - but that too is unavoidable: evil is held-in-place by expediency.

We must do the inexpedient for the sake of our salvation and spiritual development. And in doing so there is a chance - but no guarantee - that we may point others at the same intuited truths we have come to know.

The Owen Barfield Blog continues to grow swiftly - two posts today; one of which is about a topic I would recommend to almost everyone: polarity.

Because this is an idea about the fundamental nature of reality, polarity is not easy to get-ahold-of. But, equally, because it is an idea about the fundamental nature of reality, once grasped it 'changes everything'. You will realise to what extent, and for thousands of years, unjustified assumptions have led to insoluble pseudo-problems, and confidence-sapping incoherence.

In a sense, in putting forward polarity, ST Coleridge was pre-equipping Western Civilisation with the weapon it needed to resist exactly what has since destroyed it: anti-Christian, secular Leftism. 

But polarity is more than that: it is what is needed to rationalise, and explain to ourselves, the next and destined step in the historical development of human consciousness - of our self-awareness in relation to reality.

So polarity is about as important as anything in philosophy - yet it is terribly hard to communicate; indeed it cannot be communicated. The best that can be done is to point people in the direction that they should be searching, and to encourage them to find-out in the only way possible: for themselves.

It is difficult - I would say impossible - satisfactorily to define The Spiritual, except as a 'diagnosis of exclusion'.

In other words, the spiritual is that which is not material;

or, the spiritual is the immaterial.

This was, indeed, the definition of spiritual suggested by Owen Barfield (after are careful examination of the history of language); and while it is correct, it is not fully satisfactory - because the definition of 'the material' has been fluid through time, in a way that shows the reality of the spiritual as being (more or less)

that which contemporary modern culture regards as unreal.

For example - mathematics was, at one time, regarded as spiritual, mystical - and Mathematicians were if not theists (believers in a personal God) then at least deists (believers in an impersonal creating-deity). This was the case for many - perhaps all - of the great early scientists such as Newton. However, the development of modernity included mathematics within science, and excluded all non-scientific uses and functions of mathematics to the realm of pseudo-science or 'superstition'.

A more recent example is quantum theory. As Barfield remarks, this branch of physics has many spooky and immaterial aspects which would normally have made it a spiritual subject; however, it has been included in mainstream science and any consideration of the general implications of quantum theory for human life have been ruled-out and (as with mathematics) consigned to the realm of pseudo-science and ignorant superstition.

In sum; mathematics and quantum theory are now regarded as de facto material...

Continued at Albion Awakening

In 1986 I read a book by Don Cupitt called Life Lines - which purports to provide a complete typology, a map, of possible spiritual lives. It failed to do so, because its assumptions were wholly reductionist, materialist and positivist.

(The book's, the author's assumption were indeed, covertly typical of modern intellectuals, and perhaps especially those like Cupitt engaged in what they suppose to be Radical Theology; in that for them the bottom line of reality - that which was assumed but not argued-for - was the Leftist agenda. In other words; the moral concerns and impulses of then-current-Leftism are the only assumptions that are Not subverted - everything else is up-for-grabs.) 

Life Lines was, indeed, a typical 'postmodern' book of that era - critiqueing The System, but - because its critique was based on System assumptions, in-the-end arguing that it was incoherent to suppose that there was anything but The System - there could be no escape, no opt-out - because there was nowhere (no coherent thought-space) to opt-out-into...

At any rate, this was a work representative of the assumptions and mood among mainstream humanities intellectuals over recent generations.

Its error was that it excluded the divine; and the divine is that place and space which is outside The System. That which is divine in Man is beyond The System; and that is why and how we can (almost all of us) be dissatisfied by The System - because we do not always-and-inevitably view The System from inside-it; instead we are able (and sometimes compelled) to view The System from outside - when we are thinking from our Real Self, which is our divine self.

So it is neither unusual nor paradoxical to view The System from outside, to dwell outside The System, to yearn for a better life outside The System.

No matter how large, complex, pervasive The System becomes; we know what it is like to live differently. Of course, for much/ most of the time we are being propagandised, exploited, pandered, numbed and compelled by The System. But - unless we choose otherwise - we know with intuitive and experiential certainty - that there is more.

The role and function of modern intellectuals such as Don Cupitt and the other mainstream Postmodernists (such as Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, and the hegemonic theorists of liberalism, feminism, antiracism, postcolonialism etc.) has been to persuade us that what we know by intuition and experience is actually delusional. That the only reality is The System, and it is incoherent, ignorant, exploitative to assert otherwise.

The surface plausibility of this idea comes from the fact that The System controls communication and interpretation - so any writer, artist, musician (etc.) can (and will) be interpreted within-system - at least by 'authoritiative' and mass communications. The System assumes it is everything, and everything considered by The System thereby becomes a part of it.

As usual, the fault lies in metaphysics - postmodernists were/ are merely restating their own assumptions; they make assumptions, forget them, then rediscover them wherever they look - and take this as evidence proving their original (forgotten) assumptions...

Meanwhile, we - each of us - know differently. What is needed is (merely) a metaphysics that explains the validity of what we already-know.
 

A truly gorgeous aria from Tannhauser, which shows that (in his early years, when the mood took him) Wagner could be a great melodist. Here played beautifully by the Vienna Opera House band and sung by Tom Krause - one of the best baritones of his era: a performance noble, focused, lyrical and powerful; which caused horripilation, then loosening of the tear ducts...

The proper answer is: It All Depends On Motivation; or, to be clearer: it ALL depends on motivation.

There is not 'safe way' to be a Christian - at least there is not in the modern West. All denominations, all churches, all unaffiliated Christians - no matter what their organisational structure, creed, traditions, practices, discipline or lack of it, direct personal experiences; all and every one of them are going-to slide down the slippery slope into apostasy IF they aren't properly motivated.

And, by contrast, if they are properly motivated, then they may be found in almost any denomination; because of the extreme variation in persons, circumstances, and between specific churches or congregations.

Motivation is (pretty much) everything. Doing everything right for the wrong reasons is utterly worthless - that is crystal clear from the New Testament. And on the other hand being properly motivated suffices (with repentance) no matter what.

But do we know our own motivations for sure? Well, we better had (and if we do not know, we had better find out as quickly as possible) - that is all I can say; because nobody else knows for sure. And if we know our own motivations are correct, then we can and should Stand Against The World (because the world is badly-motivated, and sure to be wrong). 

Does this uncertainty mean that we should refrain from judging the motivations of others? Of course not! We absolutely must do this - but again, we must know our own motivations for judgement, if we are not to be dangerously wrong. 

Motivations are everything; therefore conscious and correct awareness of our true motivations is also everything.

This is one reason (not the only reason) why - in this era - consciousness has become imperative; that of which we are unconscious will avail us nought.

None of this is of any use in persuading other people of the rightness of our own motivations - and that is as it should be. We never should try to persuade people of such things... If they cannot intuit our true motivations, and are unmotivated to try; then there is Absolutely Nothing we can do about the fact. 

All systems lead (whether fast and direct, or more slowly and via loops) to the same end-point.

All systems treat individuals as components, less-than-fully human, less-than-divine - hence all systems are alienating and coercive: all systems are un-free (since system has priority, and unless coercive and un-free the system will not function).

From this perspective, literally-ALL organisations, institutions, ideologies and religions - all laws and rules and principles and procedures - all mathematics and science - are merely-systems.

Yet (of course) this world is made and sustained by systems - that is by abstract, incomplete, biased mere-models. Even our criteria of what works, what is wanted, are expressed in terms of systems...! Man creates system, and then is enslaved by it.

Confronted by apparently hopeless odds, we first become resigned to system - then we try to love what cannot be avoided: we try to love our submission, our dehumanisation - we count-our-blessings and ignore the rest; we 'focus on the positives'... we seek distraction, displacement, some combination of rationalisation and intoxication.

That is, we try to suppress consciousness, one way or another. Which happens to be the very worst thing we could do - the only certain road to self-damnation (self-damnation being the only damnation).

We strive to be happy and willing servants of evil, actively working for the imposition of greater evil - because we see no other option; yet this cannot be done, since under-all we know what we are really doing. Hence the modern malaise, hopelessness, despair - self-hatred, slow suicide, a desperate self-damnation.

Read the rest at Albion Awakening

To read William Blake's work with sympathy, with empathy - as I am currently doing - is to discover an exposure of cultural error of far, Far greater depth and extent than is currently acknowledged almost anywhere.

Blake sees the deep problem in a way of thinking - 'system': which is adopted for all kinds of reasons that boil down to power; and all kinds of reasons that reduce to an evasion of Christ's deep teachings.

The way of thinking that Blake excoriates has been given so many names - reductionism, positivism, scientism - but if considered as system thinking, or thinking in terms of abstract models, then it is pervasive among intellectuals as far back as history goes.

The thing is... modern culture is so familiar by Blake's kind of insight that people are bored by it. Presumably they regard 'system' as unavoidable - and certainly it is necessary to civilisation. We know it, and 'know' that nothing can be done about it - so we would rather not think about it.

But with system comes the absolute necessity of alienation, compulsion, the use of men as functionaries, the degradation of men to something much less... To accept system to to accept all this. To accept system is a fundamental statement of human priorities.

And with system, generation upon generation, cumulatively - as system becomes bureaucracy, all bureaucracies link, and bureaucratic system expands into every corner of life, in finer and finer detail - monitoring and regulating and defining thought - comes loss of our true selves (replaced by selves which serve the system, or react-against it).

Comes the destruction of any possibility of a true relation of our-selves to reality...

And comes a frantic state of distraction, of displacement activity, of despair and of a state of inner deadness that is almost indistinguishable from death - Man as walking dead: Man as zombie.

Hardly any individual - and no group or institution - stands outside this corruption. The Christian churches were apparently overcome by system not long after the death of Christ, and all modern churches are systemised, massively, too.

System has, indeed, infected and swiftly overcome all movements intended to expose, critique, or destroy system; such that all 'escape routes' merely loop-back-into the system... such are the temptations of power.

(This we see in the counter-cultural radical movements of the 20th century, many of whom embraced Blake as a hero - somehow ignoring that Blake's work is saturated in lived, experienced, primary Christian sensibility. Because Blake rejected Christianity as system - they supposed that he rejected the primacy of Christ!) 

But system is not inevitable, it is not a part of the human condition, Blake depicts the opposite to system in his works, and it is not just attainable - but natural to everybody. Instead, we persist in a metaphysics which generates system, we persist in asking questions that presuppose system, we assume system almost as our first assumption - then lose sight of this primary assumption...

If Man's future depends on discarding and going beyond system-thinking, as Blake assumed and I agree; then we have a long way to go before we reach a point at which such a colossal decision could be made and held-to.

But we can glimpse such a situation in the work of Blake - if we are prepared to approach it empathically and individually; and not merely to re-systemise it...

 Having had some interesting and enjoyable comments on this theme, over at The Notion Club Papers; I invite readers of this blog to contribute their own memories and reminiscences...

William Wildblood writes: 

The notion of Albion Awakening is tied up with the so called British myth as described by Geoffrey Ashe in his book Camelot and the Vision of Albion. This includes such ideas as the discovery of the Holy Grail and the return of King Arthur. 

Taking the second first, the well known story is that Arthur did not die after his final battle against a treacherous usurper, a kind of Judas figure, but was spirited away to a realm somewhere between heaven and earth to be healed of his wounds prior to one day returning and leading his country to a new Golden Age... 

The Holy Grail is more mysterious. Was it the cup used at the Last Supper and therefore symbolically or even literally the container of Christ's blood? This is how it is usually presented but it has antecedents in a Celtic cauldron which had the power to bring dead men back to life... Its loss has led to the desolation of the natural and spiritual worlds as experienced by human beings ever since. Its rediscovery by the worthy leads to spiritual transformation. 

Nowadays King Arthur is just seen as a legendary figure built up from a composite of real and imagined sources. He's not even a king, just a war leader who may have won an important battle against the Saxons and perhaps held them at bay long enough for them to have become more Christianised when they eventually did conquer this country. Clearly a real dark age Arthur was more like this. 

But the Arthur of the imagination is not like this at all. He is a far grander and more noble figure. The trouble is that by reducing Arthur to history we lose contact with the imaginative version and with the power of that version to inspire... 

Read the rest at Albion Awakening...

Considering the implications of the current fulfilment of Owen Barfield's 60 year old prophecy which I posted earlier today, this brings out the vital difference between imagination - on the one hand - and what might be termed intuition.

Imagination is (roughly) the pictures and other representations in the mind; while intuition can be understood as direct knowledge of reality. Imagination refers to reality, inuition is reality (albeit fragmentary).

Direct knowledge of reality is, of course, a divine attribute - and attainable by humans only to a partial and intermittent degree (at most!). Such intution happens during what I have recently termed primary thinking, which I consider to be the same thing as what Owen Barfield terms final participation.

Primary thinking means thinking in the universal realm of reality (not thinking inside our heads, but thinking in a universal realm) - which is necessarily true; while final participation refers to the fact that this is a participation in creation - 'final' because it is to join with God in this ongoing work, and there is no further for participation to go than this.

So - imagination is a higher form of thinking than the literalistic, yet it may be false and distorted - it may be dishonest and ugly. In fact, nowadays in The West, most products of imagination are thus corrupted; and even among the greatest geniuses of imagination (in the arts, for example) there is a great deal of such corruption, especially over the past 200 years and more as we get more recent, until at present most of the best products of Western imagination (novels, poems, movies, TV, music, painting, sculpture etc) is net-evil.

Whereas intuition is always real, true, good and beautiful. And it is intuition for which we must all strive as our very highest priority - for each of us as individuals, and for our society at every level up to the highest.

Barfield was a Christian; who understood the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ as an event of cosmic significance - the inflexion point of human (and divine) history.

He saw history as centred upon the divine destiny of enabling the increasingly divine nature of each person and of humankind in general - of both Men and Man. And the centre of this divine destiny is the evolution of consciousness towards the god-like state of Final Participation - that is full consciousness of everything; which is a necessary prerequisite for becoming full Sons and Daughters of God.

 Yet our divine destiny of Final Participation has been ignored, then rejected, by nearly all individuals and all the Western societies; and this is the cause of Barfield's prophecies negative coming true - indeed leading to a spiritual situation even worse than he articulated.

On the other hand; it is not too late. As individuals we may - by our irresistible free agency - choose to return to the path of destiny; and if enough individuals do this - then so will society at large.


More at the Owen Barfield Blog. 

The main reason is that they lack an underlying metaphysical system which would not merely notice things, but regard them as significant exemplifications of reality; then they lack the religious imperative to do anything about it (when doing anything would probably lead to short-term suffering with a high degree of probability).

So the blindness of modern Man is not difficult to understand - he has no reason not to be blind.

But what is God doing all this time? Modern Man avoids reality - yet reality is truth beauty, virtue in unity - unreality is evil... How come nearly everybody is living in a state of evil, and yet regarding themselves as Good?

Well, of course they don't really regard themselves as Good all the way down to the core of their true being - however their delusion does go a long way down; probably far enough that they would choose to reject Christ even if 100% convinced of his reality and truth - they want damnation - want to reject eternal life in Heaven, because ultimately they prefer it.

But again why? Or, how could it be expected that people be better in a society of such pervasive corruption? When all the leaders of all the institutions are corrupt? When the mass media, and the linked bureaucracy of government, corporations, law, police etc... are all corrupt. When the mass media and bureaucracy are united in propagating corruption, pushing surveillance and micro-control, punishing deviation...

Why has God allowed such circumstances to develop - and at the same time be 'invisible' to the great mass of the hedonic-utilitarian soul-denying populace?

We are being pushed back and back, being stripped of all valid authority, the churches are doing more harm than good, we have nowhere to turn...

Until we recognise that we have everything we need, available to us each and personally. And that is the point.

We need to be weaned of passivity, dependence, secondary-ness - we need to know all directly, for ourselves, by experience. And we are being forced-back into exactly that situation...

Eventually we will be confronted by stark reality, and the reality of our own capacity, our adequacy, the adequacy of Life for its necessity - and will choose then either to live by reality, or against it.


Note added: My assumption is that God ultimately intends for us to become like him in nature, which means an evolution (theosis) towards autonomous agency; towards knowing directly and for-ourselves, rather than indirectly from others via communications. This is more a question of shifting the balance between ways of knowing, than it is a matter of either/ or, all-or-nothing. But part of becoming spiritually grown-up is the transition from immersion-in and child-like passive obedience to external communications  from God - towards active-knowing-of Reality based on that which is divine-in-us; and conscious choice in-favour-of working-with God. A move from unconsciously participating in God's creation; to consciously participating in the work of God on creation.

Further note: We really must hold-onto the fact that the reason why people are so blind is Not that they don't know; the answer is not that people be shown - the answer must go much deeper: the answer must go as deep as revising our primary and most fundamental assumptions. Only then will seeing lead to knowing.  

At its most fundamental level, our Will is divine and therefore harmonises with our divine destiny - our true Will is therefore something we can be true-to, or false-to; but the true Will is not something we can choose or command.

Furthermore, for most people (not everybody) our strongest experience of beauty is related to love and the opposite sex - hence (for Christians) with marriage. This combination of factors raises the possibility that the right marriage partner for us (that is, our soulmate) will one day arrive in our vicinity.

This would not be an accident; but the result of exactly that same divine power which is causing us to know ourselves via our experiences in this world. The right partner in marriage is the best possible experience we can have of our unconscious and unrealised nature.

Such a partner may well be chosen, but in our pre-mortal spirit life; as a major element of our destined experiences.

(Such experiences may be destined - however, our response to experience is not destined; since we are free-agents.)

The physical aspects, emotions, desires, aspirations of sex can be seen as the true Will working through at many levels through mortal experience. And sex is extremely complex and far-reaching, since it represents destined purposes and desires that our conscious personality may know little or nothing about.

The power of sex is therefore the power of Will; and therefore not subject to our choice - we cannot decide to fall in love; we can only decide whether to live truly by love, when it happens, or not.

And this is a part of the decision whether to live truly by everything, or not.

And this is to be true to our real-Self, or not.


Paraphrased and adapted to express my own views more exactly, from William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (1974) - mostly the chapter Beauty, plus elements of the chapter Will.

My new Owen Barfield Blog is continuing to grow, daily. Today's post is about the great sweep of human destiny:

In the beginning Men were merely primordial selves immersed in the ocean of universal consciousness; and the history of everything has included the progressive and incremental separation of these selves from the universal primary reality.

We began as immersed in universal reality - joined with everything, and everything joined with us - with permeable selves... We end with a Self that is aware of its own separation from things, from other people, from memories - and even from its own thoughts...

Why? Because separation is necessary for freedom, for agency; we must first be separate in order to be free. And free in order, ultimately, to share the divine status of the Creator - because God is free...

So we begin by participating in the whole of reality - that was given. But our selves were only feebly independent, and not sufficiently separate that we could be free agents. Then a process began in the history of the human race, which is recapitulated in individuals - we developed agency by separation of the self from everything else.

At some moment the self is cut-off from everything else - and therefore unfree, because isolated. So there is a step beyond, which is a return to participation with universal reality...

The self now needs to - voluntarily and by an effort - engage with universal reality in a free relationship; knowing that this is happening...

This is not a matter of thinking about universal reality - it is a matter of thinking universal reality; in other words, by thinking in order to become part of it: by-doing-thinking to participate-in-it.

My views, my 'ideology', changed often and frequently through my teen years and adult life as I zig-zagged ny way to Christianity in middle age - in one such phase I was a pretty-much a post-modernist (more-or less from late eighties to early nineties - but publications listed below took a while to reach print).

My most-cited publication of this sort was probably this book chapter about post-modernity in health promotion - published in a multi-author sociology volume.

I also wrote about medicine and post-modernity.

And my essay on Robert M Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance was written while I was deep into the shallows of Robert Rorty.

I find it hard to imagine myself in this postmodern phase - but the evidence is there. One of the perils of prolific publishing, I suppose...