Bruce Charlton's Notions

We create the world (more specifically, we participate in creating the world - in interaction-with the real phenomena of the world) through our thinking ; and the -ing of thinking is what requires special attention. Thinking it is not the abstract category of 'thought' but the active process of think-ing, by which we co-create the world. 

The world is real, but its reality is inextricably bound up with our thinking - it is the active process of thinking that is primary (and we must not kill it in our attempt to comprehend it).

We change our thinking, and it is-changed by the experiences of our lives (and often for the worse - often in ways which sabotage our lives, and prevent their spiritual progression - induce spiritual corruption instead. Look around!). So, thinking can be changed and is changed - and we ourselves might want to take-over this process rather than being passive recipients of changes imposed by our environment... what do we do?

The answer is: Thinking-about-Thinking - that is, we need to think about, become aware of, our own Thinking and its assumptions and characteristic (habitual) processes. Another word for this activity is Metaphysics.

Why is Metaphysics so difficult? Why is it blocked by external distractions and internal incapacities and obstacles? These seem legion - and the worst is that, to some degree and sometimes very completely - our selves (who are trying to do the Thinking about Thinking) are actually false selves; mere personae that have developed to do automatically the business of interacting with the world in ways that are short-term expedient.

There is a tendency (at times almost irresistible - because habitual) to make the seeking of understanding into a static and deadly analysis - we distinguish, divide, organise and kill the concepts we need. Like subjective and objective - we distinguish them, divide them and separate them - and then they both die.

What is needed is to be able to analyse without killing - which means that instead of laying-out reality before us, inert, on a dissecting slab - reality must have at its heart and as its prime term, a thing which is dynamic, alive and existing through time (with a past and future - not seen as a timeless 'present').

Analysis must not be allowed to kill the livingness of the central phenomenon. Rather, analysis must go-on around the livingness of the central phenomenon. In other words, the central pheonomenon can be delineated - but cannot itself be analysed (or else it will be killed). If the central phenomenon is Consciousness, or Quality, or Reality - then it cannot be dissected without killing it and thereby making it no longer the central phenomenon.  

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When think-ing changes, the world changes - and not just 'my' world: but the actual world. There is, indeed, no division between 'my'-world, and the-world (if there was, the world would not be my world). To change the world requires changing our think-ing (it is a fallacy to talk about the outer-realities as if they could be divided from our think-ing); and the difficulty of changing our think-ing is a measure of the difficulty in changing the world.

(As usual, it is far easier to change things for the worse: to destroy --- than it is to change things for the better: to create.)

On the other hand, if - by thinking about thinking - we can gain metaphysical understanding and can cure/ improve the mainstream metaphysical corruptions as they operate in our minds - can improve our habits-of-think-ing to make the process more Christian, loving, creative... then by this we have improved the world (not just for ourselves, but for everyone). 

Metaphysics is therefore a prime task for everybody now, not just intelectuals (although they need it more than most). And since metaphysics is intrinsically difficult, and being made ever more difficult by modern culture, and deliberately so - we need to enable it in our lives by ceasing to crave distraction, intoxication, and passive absorption: by seeking to make our thinking active, awake, aware and concentrated on what needs to be done.

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And what is it that does the thinking about thinking? And how is it able to do it?

Ah - there's the crux of the matter! It is our eternal and (embryonically) divine selves that are what does real metaphysics. And it is its eternal position and and divine nature which makes possible the detachment required for thinking about thinking.

Metaphysics is our eternal self contemplating our mortal self - but actively: that is eternal think-ing contemplating the mortal personae which have been built by experience and expediency, and which now do so much of our thinking and being, that we have often lost or encapsulated the eternal self...

Yesterday I made a conceptual breakthrough in understanding the concept which is at the heart of that alternative metaphysics which seems to have emerged in the Romantic era - in the life of Goethe and the philosophy of Coleridge, but to have been rejected by the Zeitgeist and to have since led an underground and marginal or unarticulated existence in the likes of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield (from whom I mostly got it).

Barfield focuses on the term polarity, derived from Coleridge - but I have found that this term - with its inner picture of a solid, rectangular bar magnet - is making it harder for me to grasp and use. The essence of the concept is not its having poles but that it is a dynamic process, an active thing: an -ing, as in think-ing, reason-ing, understand-ing, and imagin-ing.For me this philosophy only makes sense if I regard reality as happen-ing.

So I have decided to replace polarity with '-ing' which is the name and sound of a rune - more often called Ingwaz (and of a Norse god, also called Freyr - not the same as Freya). So the rune Ingwaz can serve me as a symbol of 'polarity', in my notetaking.

Like most good metaphysics, Ingwaz comes from the solid, primary, necessary intuition that we are thinking. From this comes the inference that whatever we think, do, know or whatever - thinking is involved. There is no way of getting-at any objective reality that does not involve thinking - it is nonsense (makes no sense) to be thinking there is an objective realm of 'facts' that are autonomous from thinking.

However, this is NOT the 'idealism' of stating that there is only mind, and 'reality' is an illusion; what is being stated is that thinking is involved in everything - therefore, everything includes thinking. The thinking cannot be detached from anything, thinking is always involved in everything.

So the division of inner mind and outer reality/ nature is nonsense; we are always and inevitably involved in everything we ever consider by thinking.

However, this thinking can be (usually is) something of which we are unaware. We therefore tend (unthinkingly) to regard the 'outside' world as if it was independent of our thinking. We tend to suppose that the outside world is real and solid, while our thinking (which is reality is involved in everything we know or imagine about that outside world) is merely ephemeral and pointless.

This is because if we divide thinking from the outside world, thinking dies - it becomes static, inert, it stops '-ing' and is a mere dead specimen ('thought'). What is really happening is that we have started thinking about a situation where there is no thinking, and are unaware that in thinking this we have not actually imagined a situation where there is no thinking - we are merely unaware of the thinking that is engaged in imagining it!

This is the modern condition. Modern analysis is unaware of - and denies - the pervasiveness of thinking at all times and in all situations. This state of unthinking doubt about thinking can be called cynicism.

So, the first move is to become aware of our own thinking in any and every situation - to recognize that everything involves thinking - we are therefore always engaged with everything, involved with everything: there is no objective alienation.

But is thinking valid? That is the fear that haunts cynical, nihilistic modern man. The fear is that - even though it makes no sense and cannot be done to use thinking to doubt the validity of thinking; maybe thinking is not valid anyway - maybe we just live in an un-avoidable delusion? The idea accepts that it makes no sense to be thinking about thinking being 'unreliable' - but maybe that is true anyway!

This cynicism, I believe, is the modern condition; it is a fear rather than a philosophy, it is a cynical suspicion that there is really no purpose, meaning or reality - and this state was facilitated by Natural Selection which seems to have 'discovered' that that is how nature works. This is untrue, and makes no sense; but the effect is rather to implant a fear, a suspicion that it might all be a delusion than to make any kind of logical point.

That has been the point at which Western thought has been stuck for more than 200 years - the fear that everything we think we know about everything comes from thinking, and that thinking - the very basis of knowing itself - might be a circular system of unavoidable but nonetheless false assumptions.

This places Man into an existential state where he does not know where to start in escaping. Once he has come to doubt thinking, then he cannot get out. All he can do is try to manipulate his emotions so as to feel better, here and now.

In fact this sense of existential nakedness is the perfect basis and understanding and clarity for feeling the necessity and reality of religious faith - which is trust - and only a loving God can be trusted... So the modern condition points to Christianity in a clearer way than anything ever has done.

(Kierkegaard probably said this too - but I can't read enough of him to be sure, and if he did say it, then he has usually been misunderstood or at least ignored.)

But the actual modern condition is an incomplete state of doubt - therefore it does not compel Christianity. The modern condition is a combination of doubt and arbitrary faith - which is so perfectly engineered to create despair, so perfectly being constantly adjusted to maintain this sense of hope-less-ness, that it implies the modern situation is a product of purposive evil (i.e. of demonic influence).

Because modern Man is not cynical enough. Or, rather, the cynic is flawed by its lack of questioning - his questioninsg of superficialities and his unthinking acceptance of deep assumptions. The modern cynic (i.e. pretty much everybody) uses thinking to deny the necessary validity of thinking on some topics (sex, esepcially), but leaves intact enough unthinking to prevent him seeing the situation as it really is.

He is obsessed by some illusions of thinking - but not others, and cynical about all positive faith - but unthinking and credulous about so much else.

Modern Man will go so far as to deny even the reality of thinking-about-thinking (i.e. metaphysics) - he will state that there is no such thing as metaphysics - simply because he does not DO metaphysics (or stops himself if he happens to start thinking about his own thinking).  He arbitrarily decides that thinking about thinking is meaningless nonsense - and is therefore trapped by his own despair-inducing assumptions - which would dissolve if ever recognized as involving thinking.

It is the residual unthinking 'faith' in thinking about some subjects (for example, faith in the idea that cynicism implies that hedonism is rational) which is destroying modern Man.

From here we can go back into unthinking acceptance of thinking - or forward into thinking about thinking: becoming aware that Everything necessarily involves thinking.

Thinking is process: Everything therefore includes process, and the world can only validly be analyzed into processes - analyzed into -ings and not into things.

This is, in fact, the metaphysical solution to the modern condition: the solution to alienation, purposelessness, meaninglessness, relativism and so on. Once grasped, the problem for each of us as individuals is then to make it our normal, indeed habitual, way of thinking.

A big problem, perhaps The problem, is that we have an incoherent metaphysics - that is, our basic assumptions are incoherent; or, at least, if all metaphysics is incoherent to some extent, ours is incoherent where metaphysics are most needed, where incoherence does the most damage.

Of course nobody wants to talk about, let alone think about, metaphysics - and especially their own metaphysical assumptions. I know that for a fact, and I don't know what can be done about it - but I need to sort out these matters for myself, and writing helps...


Fundamentally, we think of Things in terms of static categories (like A Being, Love and Creation) - but we ought to think of Things in terms of dynamic 'processes' (like Be-ing, Love-ing and Create-ing). We need a metaphysics that some have called 'polarity' - but this has proved almost impossible to explain, at least I have thus far failed to make it clear - probably due to the tendency to begin the explanation by stating categories...

I agree with Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner (as I interpret them) that a vital aspect of the work of Jesus Christ was, in some poorly understood and ill-defined sense, to divide History between a passive, unconscious mode of being BC, and the advent of (what was intended to be) an active and conscious mode of being AD.

For example, BC the idea of a Good life was strict obedience to external laws, rules, rituals (static categories) - whereas Christ brought the ideal of conscious agency, personal discernment, and and loving - all of which are active, dynamic (or polarities, if you prefer).


But mainstream Christianity made an unfortunate error in trying to assimilate the Christian message - which was one of radical metaphysical change - to the pre-existing systems of Greek and Roman Philosophy; leading to intractable contradictions and confusions, lack of understanding and clarity.

For example, if you understand agency/ free will as a category or Thing done by A Being - they you can't make any sense of it. But if you understanding it as a process done by an entity whose essence is Be-ing... then its importance and nature become clearer (or, would do, if this whole way of thinking was more less alien, familiar).

The problem is that no matter what mainstream 'static' Christianity asserts - in matters such as the reality of agency, or the primacy of Love - its deep structure contradicts. Mainstream Christian metaphysics cannot help but see Love as a static thing, maybe like a force or like a feeling; but working by a sort of attraction between categorical persons - because it envisages a reality that is, in essence and reality, eternal, unchanging, perfectly perfect.

It can be expressed in terms of Time. Mainstream Christianity and the near universal metaphysics of modernity regards Time in a static way as identical with a moment. In the Hindu/ Buddhist version, this means that any moment is exactly like any other moment and a microcosm of eternity.


Ralph Waldo Emerson was one who brought this into the Western mainstream explicitly, with this idea of a moment as an epiphany of all; Life being (ideally) known to be a series of such epiphanic moments - each moment equivalent. Strictly, such a moment takes zero time, it 'out-of Time' - so there is an equivalence between eternity and the instant. The ultimate goal is a Nirvana in which all change ceases, bliss reigns, and the only awareness is of this fixed state of bliss.

Well, that is one way of looking at it - but the other, is that we continue living and the epiphanic total-moment gets swept into our past, and the best we can hope for is another such moment, and another... Life then has no direction or goal, it is merely a sequence of instants...

This has been combined with an atheistic utilitarianism (Life conceptualised as being hedonic; about maximising pleasure and minimising suffering) - and descended into the modern West as an implicit (unconscious, unexamined, unacknowledged) metaphysics of Life as a series of atomistic, disconnected moments.

Each Life moment 'ought to be' as gratifying as possible - and each moment is on the one hand infinitely important (like the international firestorm that follows the use of a politically-incorrect taboo word or hate-fact) - yet also each moment is utterly insignificant because it is superseded by other moments, and there is zero continuity between the moments.


This is the modern metaphysic: on the one hand; our life is going nowhere and has no meaning because it is merely a sequence of isolated moments; therefore nothing matters, things don't add up, death is merely a cessation to this arbitrary sequence. On the other hand; nothing can be or is more important than each moment, than This moment - and nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of alleviating momentary suffering or enabling and maximising momentary pleasure.

Most 'mainstream' Christians (in the main denominations) would acknowledge that the modern metaphysics is bad; but would not acknowledge that their own metaphysics shares exactly the same problems and is at-war-with Jesus's teaching and indeed cosmic effect on Man and Reality.

But I see this all the time, in contradictions, complexities and 'mysteries' that Christianity is obliged to introduce to distract from this deep problem. Of course the deep problem - the fundamental contradiction - is not solved; but people are typically sufficiently confused and distracted to assume that it has been solved.

When the problem is simple, yet the supposed answer is complex - people generally assume that the answer is true but they haven't really understood it. Or they may assume that their understanding of the problem was 'simplistic. However such a situation is basically-unsatisfactory and - over time - has been a weak point probed and exploited by those hostile to Christianity.

In sum, the Christian responses to the problems such Free Will the Problem of Pain/ existence of evil, the 'virtuous Pagan' problem - caused by the universality of Christ's message contrasted with the extreme geographical and temporal restriction of the scripture, the church and its personnel, or any specific denomination; the need for developmental-evolutionary change of Men (theosis) - the weakness of the answers strikes the outsider as evasive failures.


Mainstream Christianity has failed metaphysically to reconcile many key aspects of the implicit nature of Jesus's life and teaching with the explicit explanations of it. The resulting dissatisfaction has - overall - led to an incremental 'liberalism' that merely masks apostasy and has gradually subordinated Christianity to prevalent secular norms - which are themselves metaphysically even-less coherent than the flawed understanding of Christianity they presume to replace!

I see all this in terms of the working-out of error through time, in which early errors become every larger and more obvious in their incoherent and false consequences. Looking around the modern Western world at the mainstream secular hedonism and its religious including Christian alternative, I see nothing that gets-right what really needs to be got right at an explicit metaphysical level.

But knowing that there is something seriously wrong does not tell us what is wrong nor how to set it right...


My contention is that the surface wrongness lies very deep in the metaphysical assumptions, and that there is an alternative tradition of Christian metaphysics based in a developmental-evolutionary and dynamic state of assumptions - still lacking a lucid account - which, once habitual, either solves or dissolves these hitherto intractable problems.

This sounds awfully complex itself - but in fact the real Christian metaphysics can be expressed so simply that a child can comprehend it; because is the metaphysics of God's created Reality as composed entirely of living Beings.

(Including parts or components of beings - which is how many mineral entities can be understood; not whole Beings of themselves, but all parts of some living Being. e.g. A mountain may be a Being, a grain of soil probably is not.)

In brief, metaphysically we need to return to something very like the simple transforming animism of early childhood and early Man. Everything that is, is 'alive' and 'conscious' in the sense of being intrinsically dynamic, purposive, growing-destined - and related (by love-ing) to everything else created and to the creator.

On such a basis a Christian life may be led, and understood consciously, and pursued with agency.

Of course, even when metaphysics is coherent where it needs to be, the great challenges of mortal life remain - right metaphysics only gives us the correct starting-point and the understanding necessary to know that we have a purpose and it s nature. It is up to each of us to pursue that purpose, as it affects us each specifically and uniquely.

The difference is that infinity is defined abstractly, i.e. without any reference to consciousness; it is posited as a 'thing'. The open-endedness, un-boundedness of reality is, by contrast, an experience.

The following paradoxes might help - they are paradoxes because the explanations assume divisions that are in reality unity. So they are fingers pointing at the moon, ladders to be kicked away after use...

Consciousness is necessary for the concept of infinity, or for any other knowledge, but that fact is ignored in 'definitions' of infinity - this is the root of the falseness and error of infinity.

We know infinity only by consciousness; but infinity dispenses with consciousness. But really, knowing is a part of creating - it is the active/ process, in-Time interaction of Being with reality that is creation.

(Whenever we find ourselves discoursing without recognition of the fact that Being is Be-ing - 'ing' meaning something that is in-Time, includes Time - then we are in error. Since Infinity does not take account of Time, it is an error.)

Chaos is made-into creation by the be-ing of Beings, by the existence of Beings; knowledge arises from a Being perceiving - it is the insertion of Beings into chaos that makes creation.

By the very process of Being, is creation.

We cannot contemplate chaos; because our contemplation is creation. Thus - simply by Being, all 'things' create. (That is, there are no things, only Beings.)

Consciousness is a part of this, and consciousness is quantitative. All Being entails knowledge - albeit mostly non-conscious knowledge. All Being has consciousness - although mostly this is minimal - minimally conscious Beings are what we mischaracterise as 'things', minerals etc.

As consciousness increases it first looks outward; so we first become aware of external creation but not our our own role in creating it: we tend to set creation against our-selves. creation is, at first, realer than our-self; and the separation seems like an aberration to be solved by the self re-entering into, losing itself in, creation. (

(Our subjective world is apparently illusion/ maya - the external world of creation is the only objectivity.)

As consciousness increases further, it turns inward, we become aware of our-selves; and the suspicion arises that all creation is of our-selves, and outside is only chaos - the suspicion that we are deluded about external creation.

(This is solipsism, or 'relativism' - or subjectivism... apparently we are real and everything else a 'projection'.)

Later still - modernity - it is recognised that the absolute separation of the self and the world mean that neither is real; both are illusion. The world has no meaning without the self - it is chaos. The self has no meaning without the world - it is a delusion encapsulated.

(This is nihilism - mainstream modern discourse.) 

If consciousness can be increased yet further, to a divine level, then we can become aware (albeit temporarily) that all creation is a participation of the self in the totality of everything: both are real, both are needed.

The world and self never were separated - creation happened and continues because Beings live, develop, and are conscious. Indeed it is the process of separation and recombination, necessarily caused-by the insertion of Being into chaos - that is itself Creation.

That is, we can experience the fact that we are divine, and necessarily engaged in the creation of this world (and this is all possible because we are children of the creator).

The word Ingwaz seems a useful term, that I invented a few years ago, but haven't much used for emphasising that Romanticism is not a static-state of things; but a be-ing, a develop-ing, a perpetual becom-ing.

Ingwaz could be translated as 'process', or that word used instead - but I find that word to be too abstract and to have too many misleading connotations derived from physics. (Also there have been and are 'process theologies of Christianity that are Not what I mean.)

To be a Romantic is to engage in Ingway with respect to reality; that is, one rejects the objective and systematic account of external reality as primary; and begins the business of 're-imagining' it in personal experience.

But Ingwaz is not a means to an end but the end in itself; it does not aim at any final point because it is the participation in divine creation; and creation has no end. So, when applied to Christianity, Ingwaz is the grappling with given aspects - such as scripture, doctrine, creeds, institutions, morals; in order to appropriate them to the distinctive, here-and-now, living individual experience of the Christian.

To be Good, Ingwaz must - of course- be well-motivated; in brief it must be motivated by the desire for truth, beauty and virtue. It must Not, therefore, be motivated by (for example) the desire to adapt Christianity to one's own sexual or political desires, or to the desire for power or pleasure.

But this means that it is an error to look for any fixed and final statement from Ingwaz. It is to be judged on whether the practitioner is succeeding in vitalizing Christianity - firstly in himself, secondly in the reader or onlooker. 

This can be illustrated with poetry. For example William Blake in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell is engaged in Ingwaz. e.g.

In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

The cut worm forgives the plough.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight, and measure in a year of dearth.

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride’s cloak.

Blake is engaged in an argument with himself, is hammering out partial statements from inner insights. He is making Christianity live for himself as he composes, for us as we read (assuming we are able to appreciate his work).

So long as we are satisfied with Blake's intent; to then extract dogmatic statements from Blake, and to evaluate him in terms of Christian orthodoxy is both crazy and ultimately self-destructive of real Christianity.

By my understanding, such attitudes from Christians have been a partial but significant cause of the demise of Christianity in the West; since they drive-out net-well-motivated creative Christians, often and tempt them into apostasy. 


If we take Ingwaz as a correct description of Romanticism, we can find Romantic Christianity in some unlikely places; such as the early poetry of the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid - who is better known as a highly political and materialist writer, a Communist and Scottish Nationalist who advocated permanent revolution; and who said many hostile things against Christianity generally, and specifically the Scottish Free Kirk brand of his upbringing.

But in his first three volumes of Scots language lyrics of 1925-7 - Sangshaw, Penny Wheep and the epic A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle; which contain by-far his best work - MacD engages in Ingwaz applied to Christianity in most of the most powerful poems and sections.

In a little-known longer-poem from Sangshaw; MacDiarmid engages in an extraordinary, beautiful and inspiring 'cosmic' exploration of God, death and creation. I lack the patience to type in the whole poem, but here are a few stanzas (I've translated a few key words in [square brackets]:

I was as blithe to be alive [happy]
As ony man could be, 
And felt as gin the haill braid warl' [whole broad world]
Were made yince-yirn for me. [especially]

I wot I kept my senses keen, 
I wot I used them weel. 
As God felt when he made the warl'
I aye socht to feel. ...

O I wist it was a bonny warl'
That lies forenenst a' men, [over against all]
But it's naething but a shaddaw-show
To the warl' that I saw then. ...

Wae's me that thocht I kent the warl' [knew]
Wae's me that made a God, 
My senses five and their millions mair
Were like bones beneauth a sod. 

For the world is like a flourishing tree, 
And God is like the sun; 
But they or I to either lie, 
Like deid folk in the grun'. [dead, ground]

There are all kinds of ways that this poem could be criticised from an orthodox Christian position, not least for collapsing the distinction between God's creation and that of a man; the world especially made for the poet; the general pantheistic feel etc. It might be assumed that the 'shadow show' reference was a positive statement of Platonism. The idea that Heaven and Hell are (merely) perspectives on mortal life is also put forward...

Well, this is the crux of what confronts us, here and now and for the past two centuries plus.

Are we to take our deepest convictions from outside, from that dead materialist external world which is what modern Man experiences outside of his own subjectivity? Or are we to make a new synthesis of inner and outer, each for himself, from our own thinking and based on intuition (that is, God within each of us - present because we are his literal children)?

If we are to live by experience in the real world that is God's creation; I believe that we need to engage in Ingwaz, as applied to all aspects of Christianity that we personally find essential; in sequence, perpetually.


Sadly, MacDiarmid was corrupted away from this, by his radicalism and the usual modern combination of sexual and political revolution. The reason was probably that his motives had always been too mixed, and various temptations were too much to resist and were not repented.

McD discarded Christianity as conflicting with sex (and alcoholic intoxication and continual cultural conflict, advocated as sources of vitality) and Communism (advocated on the basis of Lenin and Stalin being more realistic saviours than Christ); and embraced earthly and mortal utopianism as a goal... while simultaneously (paradoxically) asserting that ultimately things would never become any better... while continuing to assert a kind of anti-rational mysticism, but one that was metaphysically without foundation. 

Well, such is life. But there are several artists, writers, philosophers and other culturally creative persons who went through a phase of Romantic Christianity en route to becoming (usually) mainstream materialist Leftists of one or another flavour. JK Rowling is perhaps the best current example.

Yet, their work is available for us to benefit from, if we wish.

 

This subject of the definition of Beings in terms of lineages is something (i.e. a metaphysical assumption) that turns-out to be of the greatest importance - as it gradually sinks-in. There is a half-way understanding of this point, which is an incoherent hybrid - but when taken seriously this changes 'everything'. 

 

I first came across this discussion in evolutionary biology, discussing the idea of homology. For example, the arm of a man is homologous with the wing of a bird. This means that both have the same evolutionary lineage - it is assumed that the bird's wing and human arm evolved from the limb of some more ancient animal ('common ancestor', some kind of reptile, presumably). 

Here lineage implies continuity - that there is a continuous and unbroken series of parents and offspring, that link the bird wing and the human arm. 

In contrast "convergent evolution" can lead to structurally or functionally similar structures but from a different lineage. The bat's wing is not derived from evolution of the reptile limb, but mostly from the mammalian hand. So the bat's wing can be called analogous with the bird's wing, but homologous with the human hand.

(And the extinct pterasaur's wing is mostly mostly with the ring finger of a reptilian ancestor!)

 

In the wing example, different lineages are reflected in the bone structure - but one can imagine identical structures that have arisen from different lineages. (This never actually happens in anatomy (I don't think) - presumably massively improbable due to the role of 'chance' in natural selection; but it can be imagined.)

However the reverse often happens - that an homologous structure is functionally very different. Example are among the hormone-secreting endocrine glands. The anterior pineal gland is evolutionarily homologous with an ancestral 'nose' (in some aquatic chordate)! Or (better known) the pineal gland is homologous with a reptilian 'third eye'. 

So, here we have a definition of commonality distinguished either on the basis of lineage, or similarity of structure or function; but where the two definitions are not necessarily present at the same time in the same place. There is similarity of structure/ function and there is relationship by lineage - and we can infer one, or the other, or both. 

 

This distinction of similarity can also be applied to identity. What gives Joe Bloggs his identity as JB? Is Joe aged 21 identical with Joe aged 2? First of all is he identical in structure/ function?...

Obviously not. 21 year old Joe doesn't look the same, doesn't do the same things as when 2 years old. Yet we say he is still Joe, and has been Joe (without interruption) throughout the intervening years.  So we can see that our real-life, spontaneous definition of human identity is more like 'lineage' than being related to structural or functional considerations. 

I think we could say that Joe now is the same as Joe then, because his existence was continuous. And Joe would still be Joe even if he changed his structure and behaviour - even if he underwent transformation. Even if that transformation was so complete as utterly to replace the structure and lead to wholly different behaviour. Identity is preserved by continuity of existence or 'lineage'.

(Just as we regard the caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly as the same individual - through their radically-transforming metamorphoses - because of their continuity of existence.)

Rather than the lineage of parents-offspring, Joe Bloggs remains the same person because he is A Being who has continuously existed as such, each transformation of Joe's structure/ function proceeding continuously from the previous.   

By contrast, as a thought-experiment; an imaginary android-replicant that (apparently) looked and behaved identically with Joe Bloggs, would Not be Joe Bloggs - that is would not be Joe according to spontaneous, human, common sense discernment. 

Clearly; our natural definition of identity is based on lineage, on continuity of existence - not based on structural and functional considerations*. And, as so often, the natural (the child-like) is true.

 

What I end-up with; is the idea of dividing-up reality, of defining the bounds-of and distinction-between 'things' in terms of their lineage/ continous existence - rather than cross-sectionally, in terms of attributes, appearances, definitions or descriptions.

I then realised that this was 'a matter of time'. We nearly always leave time out of our distinctions and definitions. We look at phenomena as-if reality was to be found in an infinitily-small cross-section of time! - So small that time can be left-out of the definition. 

But the identity of Joe Bloggs includes time, indeed the being of Joe is potentially endless - in both directions, with roots in the past and the potential for continued existence in the future. 

One could say that Joe Bloggs is a 'process' - but that is a physics word. Really Joe just is a person, which is a type of Being; and the idea of a Being is one that even small children understand. Spontaneously. Including that thchildren understand that a being always extends back in time, is 'in' time. 

Instead of the infinitely thin time-slice world of mainstream theology, philosophy, science etc.; we have instead a world of Beings, each of which is something-like an infinitely long thread traversing-through time. We can look at that thread at different time-points, but the Being is that thread, as it goes-through time: dynamic, in time... 

But more accurately, time and the Being cannot be separated; because Being is inseperable-from time. We could say that Be-ing is itself an 'ing' kind of thing; that is alive, happen-ing, and therefore across-time.

So that Being entails time, requires time; time is included-in/ part-of the definition of a Being. When we identity a Being we are therefore identifying an entity that is the merely current instant (here, then gone) of a lineage, going-back through time, transforming.  

 

And I end-up with a very different way of understanding, knowing, experiencing the world: the world in its ultimate essence, at the bottom-line (ie. metaphysics). 

Instead of the mainstream notion of a universe of Things, interacting by Laws of Science, and regarding Time as (just-another) 'dimension'; we instead have instead a living-world of (perhaps-transforming) Beings-in-Time... Beings which may have relationships with each other.

*Set aside the question of whether the discerning person may be mistaken. I am talking about what the discerning person knows truly. If we know truly that a replicant was not continuous with Joe, we would not regard it as Joe. And if we know truly that somebody that neither looked nor behaved like Joe was a result of continuous existence (and transformation); then it would still be Joe - just like the adult Joe is still Joe despite any perceptible resemblance to the baby Joe.)

It is a deep truth that we co-create The World: not just 'our' world, not just subjectivity, not just the world 'as we personally perceive it... But that we co-create the objective world*. God is the creator; Man lives as part of God's creation; and Man co-creates reality in the context of God's primary creation.

(We co-create The World including the world of 'science' - which is rooted in the false assumption that the whole truth of reality can be made the subject of a discourse between humans, which discourse ignores/ excludes human consciousness.)   

When our creativity is un-conscious - which it nearly always is - then it is un-free. 

Our un-conscious creativity is passively swept-along by external influences. Here-and-now this means that our un-conscious creative activity is being-manipulated. 

 

Because Modern Man chooses to be un-conscious of his co-creating; he can be and is manipulated in his activities by those Beings who are conscious of the reality of Man's co-creating, but who oppose God's work.

Our creat-ing is, in actuality, being-manipulated into destruction; into the destruction of divine creation. Human creation has been turned-against God's creation. 

That is the meaning of the prevalent and increasing value-inversion of these times. When Man's values are inverted - so sin is seen as virtue, ugliness beauty, and lies are truth - then Man's creative activities have-been turned-against God's primary reality. 

Man's un-conscious, manipulated creat-ing is then made destructive of divine creating.

 

In a nutshell: When Man is un-conscious of co-creating reality, he is un-free; and (thus self-blinded, thus self-made helpless), has-been manipulated into destruction --- Then, Man has joined-with Satan in the destruction of divine creation, of God's plan for our salvation and thesois, and of the Goodness this makes possible. 

 

And, since God is Love; therefore un-conscious Modern Man has joined Satan's mission against Love - his intent to dis-place and re-place Love with sin (e.g. pride, fear, resentment, despair, and their wages of death as chosen-annihilation of the spirit). 

 

But when Man's co-creating is conscious and freely-chosen; then we cooperate with God in the work of divine creation; we change the (objective, real) world: for the better. 

Therefore - unless we are objectively to aid in the Satanic work of destruction  - we must become aware of our work of co-creation; and we must choose (voluntarily, from our freedom) to work with God, to work on God's side. 

And doing this will, In Fact, make a better creation: a better world.

 

*This may best have been explained in Owen Barfield's book Saving the Appearances. The above post was stimulated by my reading (in a particularly intuitive mode of thinking) a strange and inspired lecture by Rudolf Steiner, from 1919.

I was thinking about the magical systems in fantasy fictions that I am currently reading by 'Mr Magical System' himself (ie. Brandon Sanderson) - when it struck me that the magic we know most about, that of Jesus's miracles, was very different indeed.

While magic in books is usually an 'impressive' matter of light, electricity, noises, super strength/ speed/ endurance/ healing etc - the common feature is that you can See It Being Done.

Whereas nobody reports seeing the miracles of Jesus being-done, actually happening - instead people seemed to notice that they had-already-happened.

People noticed that the water had turned to wine, that a few loaves and fishes had (somehow...) already fed a vast crowd; that soldiers or a mob were surrounding Jesus intending to arrest or kill him - but that Jesus was gone, that after having mud on their lids - the eyes of a blind man could see...

Jesus walked on the waters, which was spectacular - but it just happened, they realised that he was already doing it.

Jesus's miracles re-arranged reality to produce the desired result - and this process of rearrangement was invisible, imperceptible - apparently took place 'behind the sces' or as if in another dimension: to human perception all that was noticed was that things-had-changed.

How to understand this? One way is by the idea of levels of being, or consciousness - in which higher levels are imperceptible - by more real - than the lower levels. So in normal life we are like a simple visible-light-detecting machine - and when what is happening is not light (but is instead accomplished by ultraviolet frequencies, or sound, or smell...) then the dial does not register any change.

Another is to recognise that a higher being might be able to re-arrange things to produce the desired changes, but without those who are changed knowing about it.

This is like a dream - in at least two ways. In a dream the situation is that things change - landscapes change, things appear or disappear, personalities shift.. and usually we see that they have-changed, we don't see it happening.

And when we are dreaming a vast amount can happen in dream time - a hundred times faster than things can happen in waking time. An epic and detailed dream narrative takes only ten minutes by the clock.

In the dream there is a dream-er, of which we who are dream-ing are typically unaware, or only partially and intermittently aware - and of whose exact nature we are uncertain (and it may vary). But the time-scale and level of operations of the dream-er is such that he can accomplish a great deal which is imperceptible to the mind that is dream-ing. 

I presume something of this general-kind may partly explain how Jesus's miracles occurred - and how magical results were observed without any sign of magic being-done.


Note: Among fictional magical systems that I know - the nearest to what I mean is the metal Atium in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. 'Burning' of this metal by a mistborn in a fight, does not interfere with foes free agency, but predicts events slightly ahead of their reality by revealing consequences of actions already-initiated - at the same time the mind and body of the Atium-burner is as-if relatively accelerated so that he can calculate trajectories and take rapid compensatory or evasive actions with astonishing rapidity. So the mistborn can pass through a crowd of soldiers by knowing in advance where each sword blow will fall, and having time to dodge them all. 
     In the later Mistborn books, the Wayne character uses a 'bubble' to slow his own time, relative to the time outside the bubble. From within the bubble, the real world is seen as ultra-slo-mo - so the bubble can be erected to allow planning and evasion, even while (for example) a bullet is approaching. To those outside the bubble, Wayne repeatedly 'disappears' from imminent danger (only a brief blur is perceptible), to reappear somewhere safe.  
     If this sort of thing can be imagined greatly accelerated; and capable of reaching into the very innermost levels of matter - to adjust molecules, for example; then we may have a crude picture of the ways that divine powers could make magic seem already-to-have-happened without perceptible evidence - as with Jesus's miracles, perhaps.  

I have written a fair but about Primary Thinking in an attempt to clarify what Owen Barfield meant by Final Participation.

The difficulty with the 'thinking' aspect of the term, is that most of thinking is not primary - and I have felt a misleading temptation to strive to attain a new and different 'method' of thinking - perhaps a meditation technique. I know this is an error, and method/ technique is not a path to wisdom - but the call to change the mode of thinking seems to lead in that direction...

I am currently finding it more helpful to think of what I am aiming at in terms of Intuitive Knowing, with a metal emphasis on the 'ing' aspect of knowing - that intuitively know-ing something is not a thing static and categorical, but an active process; the attribute of a conscious Being.

And, for me, Intuitive Knowing is a proper goal however is may be achieved, by whatever method or technique or by none at all. I need to know intuitively - that is the goal; and how this best happens may vary widely or open-endedly according to the unique situation. 

My understanding is that - in life - there is a lot which we 'know' in a shallow, contingent, secondhand fashion; but that the aim is to base all knowledge, thought, action on only that which we know directly and intuitively - know for our-selves, from that of us which is divine.

In this mortal life, intuitive knowing only happens sometimes and temporarily - it cannot be attained as a permanent state. That is sad but not tragic; because this mortal life (for those of us who have it, the minority of Men who survive the womb and early childhood) is a time of experiencing and learning - a vital yet transitional phase.

This mortal life is a time of change - the one thing impossible is any fixed state of Being. Fixity is not an option. This situation intrinsically maximises our experience; we must keep learning, because we always keep experiencing change.

Since I am still alive, I have more that I ought-to learn; more situations in which I need to discern and rely-upon direct and intuitive knowing. Beyond death - if I actively wish it - I could live eternally in a state where intuitive knowing is the norm.

But clearly, for me, there is value in continuing to live here, now, in my situation; because there are things that I can learn best in mortality.

My conclusion is that I should seek intuitive knowing; but should not despair that it is an exceptional state that cannot be held-onto. Not holding-onto is one of the things I must learn.

It is a shame, but pretty much as prophesied, to see that in these End Times, when things have come to a point, and demonic evil rules The West in accordance with wild mandatory incoherence, stunning lies and repellant value-inversions -- a shame that Christians are - if anything - more divided, hostile and sectarian than they were even a decade ago. 

One stunner is that Roman Catholics, who used to present a united front - and often seemed to believe in their own unity; are schism-ing and schism-ing with spiraling rapidity - upping the rhetoric and scorn directed against their co-religionists... 

(All very like the Protestants whom they used to taunt for the same behaviour - and for much the same kind of reasons as applied to Protestants!) 

As I say, it's a shame; but something I understand and indeed fully expected as the gross corruption of mainstream traditional religion of all kinds. 

And a consequence of putting church (or other externalities) first, regarding "Christianity" as absolutely secondary to external authority; and basing one's faith on fundamental assumptions that are denied to be assumptions.

These assumptions are asserted to be either an objective necessity, despite that there can be no objectivity in such matters; or "logically" entailed, despite that logic only (at best!) tells us the consequences of assumptions - but cannot tell us which assumptions are valid.  

So Christians are not just declining in percentage, numbers, devoutness, and integrity; but are breaking-up into shrinking groups -- yet always staying primarily group-minded, and rejecting ultimate personal responsibility; always insisting that they are "just obeying orders" derived from their dwindling yet objectively necessary and essentially valid church...

How long can it continue? 

How long before people realize what they must do - on pain of sooner-or-later de facto apostasy - and identify their primary and fundamental assumptions: fully comprehend and "own" them. Personally, taking full and final responsibility, by whatever each experiences as the bottom-line intuition. 

How long before this? 

Maybe it will be a long time yet, maybe not until the end; when each individual is alone in his church, yet still church-led - maybe not even then... 

I can picture millions of Christians, each self-painted into his own corner, insisting - as night falls - that it must be so; that he cannot escape the constricting wall of unexamined, unacknowledged, un-owned assumptions - which is all that blocks him from the simplicity of a salvation he has long-since lost-sight-of. 

After all, free agency is absolute, and salvation is opt-in: so to receive it; "in" we, personally, must opt. 

I have been listening more to John Butler (JB) who seems a sincere, eloquent and expert Western (Christianised, but not Christian) exponent of Eastern meditation.

He seeks stillness and presence; he experiences what strikes him as infinity, complete inclusion, not time, no space, pure spirit.

He describes this as Love - but of course his is an extreme abstraction of love since there are no persons, nor beings and no relationship - and no change.

He describes it as God - but again this is an utterly impersonal and abstract God, pantheistically distributed throughout reality.


Over the fifty-plus years JB has been meditating, he has experienced a greater satisfaction, a larger experience, greater inclusivity - and in general a progression and expansion of experience.

He is trying to get rid of thinking - he regards thinking as perhaps the main problem of Man in the world. He is trying to get rid of the ego, the self - and equates this with spiritual progress.

My interpretation of what is happening, is that JB has approached closer and closer, without ever reaching, towards the cessation of self/ ego and consciousness/ thinking.

These can never be extinguished, or else JB would altogether lose awareness, and would not experience anything (much like deep sleep) - and would remember nothing.


As the self and thinking dwindle through techniques of disciplined and skilled meditation; there is a diminishment of the experience of time, space and all other experiences. All worries disappear, all attachments to the world - life is just here and now.

Since JB is prone to mental suffering and seems not to have loving personal relationships - he often experiences 'life' as a great trial without hope. He craves a permanence which mortal life cannot give. So for JB to dissolve-into less and less ego and consciousness is an end to all suffering, to all angst and loneliness, to all fears and the sorrow of change and loss.

JB regards this state of 'peace' as the highest goal of life - but it seems to reduce to less life, tending towards no life.

Myself - I see the highest and greatest happiness in terms of love between persons, in a marriage, family and among good friends - and it is that for which I crave permanence. Secondarily I seek to create - this has also been a deep satisfaction. Love-ing between persons and the act of create-ing are both phenomena that happen in Time, with Time, through Time; they both entail change, and depend upn the sustaining (and indeed increase) of the self/ ego/ thinking/ consciousness.

Which is why I am a Christian and hope for Heaven; and JB isn't and hopes for assimilation into an abstract aspect of God's love.

Motivation is primary because life is 'dynamic'; all is alive and conscious, ultimate (metaphysical) reality is of beings and their relationships.

This is The Spiritual - and materialism is wrong and evil because it denies this primacy.

Reality is thus dynamic - and also participative.


It is the fact of our participation in the creation of reality that makes motivation primary; because when we are participating in creating reality it is our motivation that shapes the nature of that reality.

(I mean this literally - it is not our subjective impression of reality that is shaped by motivation; but objective reality iself.)

A person of good motivation (aligned with God and divine creation) will make the world in harmony with good.


By contrast, a person of evil motivation (aligned with the personal powers of evil, and their intent to subvert, destroy, invert good, reducing creation to chaos) will pursue an anti-creative way of existence.

An evil-motivated person will - in his existence and overall in outcomes - be net-undoing creation, in effect working-against good. 


Motivation describes which way we are pointing in our living...

We each are pointing either towards contributing to the harmonious development of on-going creation... or Not.

In all our doings, we are each aligned-with God's creative purposes, or Not.


It is not each individual action or type-of-action (as if these could truly detached from the stream of time...) that is crucial, rather it is the dynamic 'process' of creat-ing (in time; time is intrinsic to the dynamic).

To use different words; the actuality of participation is a weaving-in of our personal creating (through time) with God's creating (through time) - this harmonious weaving depends on aiming in the same direction, at the same goal.


Motivation therefore describes the direction of our intent.

Only when our direction is shared with God's, is our motivation the correct direction. Only then will our living be joined-with creation.

In sum: morality is dependent on our motivation; and motivation is our direction-of-pointing; and direction is our choice of 'alignment' in the spiritual warfare of mortal life.


Note added: It is interesting to consider why (and this goes back some decades) people-in-general absolutely refuse to consider the question of motivation - despite that without knowing (i.e. inferring, because it can never be 'known') motivation, most actions cannot be evaluated. 

We know this from 'real life' - plus good fiction: it makes all the difference whether Gandalf says something, or if Saruman speaks the same words. 

This refusal to discern and judge motivation is so pervasive, and goes so strongly against self-interest, that I regard it as pathological. In other words, it is part of a widespread/ all-but-universal 'mental illness'. 

Which illness is the mainstream materialism/ secularism/ atheism... Once one has assumed that we life in a random-determined, purposeless and meaningless universe; then it seems peoples' motivations dwindle inexorably, and only the here-and-now behavioural-stimulus has any traction (and that not much). 

I have noticed that there is an anti-Christian dog-whistle sounding when people rail against Certainty - and advocate doubt and permanent seeking as a higher path.

As usual, there is a grain of truth and insight that enables the evil to thrive.


That grain is our innate and spontaneous desire for a life of 'ing' rather than stasis. Aside from a small minority of intellectual mystics (who crave one-ess, stasis beyond time, ego-annihilation etc); most people's idea of the Good Life and of paradise is dynamic and rooted in personal relationships.

Therefore a life of doubting and seeking sounds more alive, more real, than static certainty.


Another (different) partial truth in the criticism of certainty is that certainty leads to motivation, and when people are motivated they are capable of great courage and hard work - and courage and hard work may be used to accomplish great evil.

A group of people who are certain usually have strong cohesion, amplifying the possibilities of accomplishment - including the accomplishment of nasty things.


(Thus the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany - Nazis - were highly certain of their rightness - and they were motivated, coherent and very hard working in the evils they accomplished (as well as the good). and they are unique paradigms of evil to the modern 'mind': therefore (so it goes) Certainty must be evil... Or, at least, Certainty must be evil when it is anti-communist, because the zeal of communist fanatics is admired - whether covertly or often explicitly.)   


Therefore it is plausible to rail against certainty on moral grounds - and advocate in favour of perpetual doubt and open-ended exploring - so long at people do not think any further about the matter.

And of course, very few people nowadays are capable or willing of thinking more than one, or at most two step along an argument. So they don't notice that in vilifying Certainty they are advocating powerlessness, paralysis, demotivation, nihilism and despair...

Now, for the powers of evil this is a feature, not a bug: it is precisely why evil has been so insistent that Certainty is A Bad Thing. Because, as always with mainstream modern leftism - principles are unilaterally applied. In particular, certainty is regarded as A Bad Thing for Christians.


When mainstream modern people slam certainty, they are slamming their usual (usually covert) target of 'fundamentalist' Christians - i.e. they are vilifying real Christians, those whose faith dominates their lives and thought.

They are not attacking the certainties of The Left. The Left are absolutely 100% certain of the goodness and univeral applicability of Equality, Feminism, Abortion, Affirmative Action, the Sexual Revolution, Human Rights and many other topics.

(Just try opening a conversation on the comparative pros and cons of slavery in the United States - and you will see Certainty in Action.)

Leftist principles Must Be regarded with unexamined and unqualified approval. They must Not be doubted ever, nor even discussed in any analytic fashion. Anyone who does - who makes any remark (no matter how brief or contextual) other than unqualified and uncritical total acceptance - is vilified without restraint and (if possible) their lives will be destroyed.

The covert message is: Un-certainty is necessary for You; but as for me and mine, we know we are true...


The attack on certainty is a part of the spiritual war between God and the powers of evil; and in this war, servants and dupes of the powers of evil dominate the Global Establishment and the leadership of all large and powerful Institutions - including the mass media. 

So, while there is some partial truth in criticising Certainty (else such criticism would not be effective); its true status is as a dishonest rhetorical weapon, to be strategically deployed to undermine Christianity specifically - and flowing from that to undermine any commitment to things of which the left disapproves such as monogamous marriage and the family.

The Establishment are on 'relativists' when it comes to their enemies - and absolutists among themselves. When it comes to their own principles and policies; they are dogmatic, uncritical, blind, blinkered and one-sided. They are certain, and They insist upon certainty in others.


Thus about half of the activity of the mass media (especially its entertainment branch)  consists in seeding and encouraging 'doubts' about Christianity and the Family; in advocating that such people (and only such people) be Not certain ('dogmatic', 'blinkered'); but instead be 'open', and 'progressive'.   

Not to be open and progressive about leftism is to be blinded by ignorant zeal or consumed by evil intent...


Happy endings come to those who are certain of the virtues of Leftism; while those who are dogmatic about Christianity and Christian morality have bad outcomes...  

By such means They intend to disempower and demoralise the forces on the side of God and the Good.

Because they blimmin well are bad at it: all of 'em.

(Exempli gratia, Poetry Please on BBC radio. Or RSC actors doing Shakespeare. Or, for that matter, pretty much every single commercial or public recording of poetry that has not been spoken by the poet.) 

Poetry (real poetry) is rhythmical - the rhythm is not an option, but of the essence.

Deconstructing poetry into prose, speaking it according to units of meaning, pulling it apart like a 'torch singer' or crooner wringing every drop of 'emotion' from a song lyric - these are simply unacceptable ways of behaving in civilized society.

For goodness sake, it isn't difficult! After all, proper poetry is written to be easy to remember and to speak!


***

Actors even manage to de-emphasize the rhythm and rhyme of light verse - where perfect rhythmicity and exact rhyme are 95 percent of the effect.

In the recent Grinch movie Anthony Hopkins somehow recited Dr Seuss's as if it wasn't rhythmical or rhyming.

Dr Seuss! That takes some doing - but he did it.

For Christians 'personal God' - means (or ought to mean) both that God is a person, and that God regards each of us an individual persons. 

This means that salvation, resurrection, theosis, damnation - all the cosmically significant possibilities are essentially personal. 

God does Not deal-with-us, primarily, as 'a people', a nation, civilization, as Mankind or as a Planet; rather God deals with us primarily deals with us each as a person; and the larger and group units serve that personal primacy. 

So, although group-aspects are real, necessary, and (especially the family) vital; for Christians they are secondary. 

When we look at the general situation in 2021 - whether that be our family, the immediate environment, region, nation, civilization or Mankind - we should mainly regard it as the mass product of many personal discernments and choices. 

As a group-phenomenon - the world in 2021 can be seen as providing within-itself many instances of the kind of personal situations that provide the best (i.e. most spiritually-necessary) learning opportunities. 

Thus, the world as we experience it is individually-tailored (by God, through creation) to provide each person (not immediately, but sooner or later) with personal experiences that provide the opportunity for us to learn spiritually - with the aim of following Jesus to resurrected eternal Heavenly life. 

Repeat: This world is designed to induce people to know and choose to follow Jesus to resurrected life... Therefore this world is Not designed for those who do Not want to follow Jesus - and for Non-Christians the world is indeed ultimately meaningless and purposeless. 

For those with Christian assumptions (but only those) therefore; the world in 2021, our world in 2021, shouldn't be lazily (taking the lead from officialdom, statistics and mass media) regarded in mass terms, by group-ish analyses. God isn't create-ing this world in mass terms.  

Because the spiritual reality in 2021 is one of literally of billions of spiritual micro-environments!

We can (and should) assume that the mass world is one that is overall potentially beneficial to us (sooner or later), to those we love, and to everybody else as persons - but we cannot possibly know exactly how or in what way beneficial; nor when learning-situations will present themselves to each (because billions of individuals!).

This is why individual discernment of the spiritual nature of our actual reality (especially of the side of God versus Satan, Good versus Evil) is spiritually-essential. 

(And essential means essential - without personal discernment, individuals will almost certainly choose to be damned - that is the nature of the world of 2021, which is highly/ increasingly unified in its evil-aligned global agenda of value-inversion. Accepting value-inversion = rejecting Heaven and wanting damnation.) 

Christians can each (consciously, explicitly) know spiritual reality and its necessary discernments and learning for themselves; for sure, sooner or later; because God makes it thus. 

And we might also know for a few of our loved ones - and we might be able to help them towards salvation (by our love); but in the end they each and all must decide for themselves - from themselves. 

The big, bad fact of these times is that people actually do choose their reality; and they are (en masse) choosing the reality devised by the powers of evil. 

If we consider meaning and purpose in life; then it can be seen that purpose dictates meaning; meaning derives-from purpose. 

Meaning derives from purpose - and purpose is external. 

We necessarily choose our purpose, because our purpose is outside us. Having chosen our purpose, we consciously derive meaning from that purpose.

Thus purpose is chosen. Therefore we actually-do choose the meaning in our lives; or more accurately we already have-chosen the meaning of our lives - but, that meaning can be changed if we change purpose. 

There are only two purposes, into which all others may be classified: with God, or Against. 

This has a precise meaning in that God is the Creator, and we live in divine creation insofar as our life has meaning (since the alternative is un-formed chaos, without knowledge or purpose). 

And God's creation is on-going, moment-by-moment - a living 'process'. (i.e. God is create-ing.) 

The purpose of a Christian is called 'salvation' - which means the choice of resurrected life eternal, in Heaven (with those others who have chosen salvation); to come after the transformation of biological-death. 

This is the choice to become immortal mini-gods (Children of God), whose life is participation in the work of divine creation. 

Therefore, salvation is bound-up-in affiliation to God the Creator - a wish to be part-of and harmonious-with ongoing divine creation. 

What we - each as an individual - decide is whether harmoniously to affiliate-with creation (this is called Love of God); or else try to use creation for our own purposes (this is called pride). 

If we pursue some other purpose than harmony with creation; then we are essentially subordinating divine creation to our-own-purposes. (Or trying-to...)

This is termed 'pride' and all other sins can be reduced to it - hence, for Christians, pride (in this meaning) is the master sin. 

In other words, if we want to live in Heaven, then we will put-first the harmony of God's creation and the people in it - and this virtue is called Love. 

(This is not something theoretical - but what all members of a happy and good family are doing; for so long as that family is happy and good - which, on this world, is always temporary and usually partial.) 

Love is the motivation for those who wish to live in Heaven as it actually is; therefore is is part-of salvation. 

(Someone who cannot love or does not love would not wish to be a part of Heaven; since Heaven 'entails' putting divine creation first.) 

It is the fate of modern Man that the choice to join the side of God and creation is unconscious. A choice that is unconscious, passive, will be a choice to subordinate to the group-mind; and that group-mind is (here-and-now) corrupted to the side against-God.

The group-mind of Man was not always and everywhere corrupted to oppose God and creation - but It Is Now. Therefore, in 2021, the default is anti-creation, prop-evil. In 2021, if we are ruled by that which is spontaneous and appears 'natural' - then we will be opposed to the divine. 

But the seduction to the side of evil is by pride. An implicit 'deal' is offered by evil, which is that: "We will support your personal purposes, If you you join our side." 

Such a person (and this appears to be the majority of people) has come to understand his own life as a matter of manipulating creation to maximize his own personal purposes or gratification.

This 'deal' ("join us and get what you want") is fundamentally dishonest - because 'joining' the side of evil is actually a voluntary submission; after which evil has no reason to honour the deal. 

Nonetheless there are many deal-takers - who are choosing the path to join with the demons*. 

In sum; the most important decision relates to our purpose in life - since this dictates meaning. If there is no conscious choice of purpose - then that purpose will 'naturally be dictated by the group-mind, which is on the side of evil. 

(In a world where God and creation are denied - this is the normal, default choice.) 

Yet we may consciously choose Heavenly Salvation as our personal purpose. This amounts to 'creating our own reality' - which (in a materialist world that denies life beyond biological-death) sounds like mere wishful thinking... 

In truth; it is explicitly taking responsibility for your purpose in living. 

*Few people apparently want Heaven, or do not put it as the priority - or else they do not, in mortal life, understand what is on-offer. But if mere ignorance of Heaven is the problem, we can expect that such people will choose Heaven after this mortal life. On the other hand, if a person is (by that point) too deeply corrupted by evil motivations, too deeply committed to his sins (sin meaning other, personal, priorities) then Heaven will be rejected. The main barrier to salvation is not ignorance but 'having other priorities'.  

*

We are inculcated into modernity. Through childhood the unity of our experience is broken up and in teens we emerge into consciousness with already fragmented thinking.

We become adults already pre-alienated - and with no concept of how to heal this alienation - because using modern thought it cannot be healed (but only by retrieving ancient thought).

*

It has been the great illusion of the past couple of hundred years that there is some way, some *trick*, by which we can retain the advantages of fragmentation (i.e. retain the advantages of specialization in science, law, art, public administration etc) while glue-ing all these fragments back into unity.

There is thus a vast tradition, going back to The Romantics and up to New Age, of people who diagnose the problem brilliantly but utterly fail to solve it, because they seek a new solution (e.g a 'new' religion, or spirituality).

Working through these failures - learning, testing and discarding them - took me more than thirty years.

*

We are now in the situation where the baby will (indeed must) be thrown-out with the bathwater.

Because trying to preserve the baby will lead to drowning by the bathwater...


(The baby is the good things of modernity, the bathwater is the tide of total destruction of all things Western that is overwhelming modernity - from within and from without.)

*

We are in the situation where destroying the One Ring will also and inevitably destroy the power of the High Elves (because this depends on the Elven Rings hence comes, ultimately, from the same source of the One Ring). And where the High Elves have nobody to blame but themselves, since they tried to use evil to promote Good, with the inevitable result.

*

Thinking is potentially the way in which we overcome the alienation and division of modernity; it is the mode in which we are complete, integrated and in communication with the divine.

In other words, nothing is more important than Thinking - or than Thinking could be: Necessary Thinking (or what Coleridge called Imagination).

But Necessary Thinking is not the one we currently have in The West - neither is it how things used to be; it is something new.

However, although the necessary Thinking is new, it is not obscure, weird or unfamiliar in its form; it does not require a changed state of consciousness (like a trance); rather it is alert, purposive and simply a complete, inclusive form of the Thinking we already have.

*

What is wrong with current Thinking - as it is trained into us, made habit, and reinforced by public discourse - is that it is both horribly narrow and also fragmented.

Firstly, current Thinking excludes as invalid all thought that do not originate in sensory perceptions (including scientific and quantitative measurements).

What happens is that current Thinking labels each incoming thought as either valid or non-valid on the basis of its provenance (i.e. where it comes-from); and non-valid thoughts include 'the imaginary', memories, arts and literature, music, fantasies and anything of unknown (to the senses) origin.

I can illustrate how this works from my own experience. I was deeply influenced by the works of Tolkien from the age of 13; but my thoughts derived from Tolkien were pre-labelled as 'fiction' or 'fantasy' and kept apart from the Thinking concerned with public discourse - things I talked with others about, stuff for examination, aspects of my work etc.

The Tolkien-derived thoughts were relegated to a thread of 'fantasy' which I was allowed to visit for pleasurable distraction, but which was prevented from interacting with 'serious' matters.

As another example; when my Mother died I was intuitively convinced that she was not extinct but in some way remained; however, I still a few years from being a Christian; and therefore this knowledge was labelled something like 'wishful thinking' - best kept to myself; or at most 'symbolism' - meaning it was not literally true that my Mother remained alive, but this was an interpretation (maybe of genetics) that was useful in my leading a fulfilling life. However, there was no place for this knowledge in the serious and publicly-shared Thinking about my life, work, and the world.

*

This is what modern people do. They have all kinds of spontaneous thoughts on all kinds of subjects - but the great majority of these thoughts are pre-labelled non-valid (for one reason or another) and excluded from public discourse.

Public discourse is therefore made from the processing of a tiny 'assumed-valid' sub-sample of our spontaneous thoughts.

This is meagre basis for Thinking is bad enough - but matters are made worse by the way in which assumed-valid thoughts are treated as discrete.

Because each thought needs to be evaluated separately, our Thinking is broken-up into thoughts in order that we can pre-evaluate each thought; and most thoughts are rejected as non-valid.

We then find that we cannot recombine even that small proportio of our validated thoughts - cannot join them into a fluid and integrated stream of Thinking.

Our modern Thinking is therefore impaired - not just by expulsion of most thoughts, but also by the fact that each assumed-valid thought must retain its autonomy - such that we are trying (but failing) to build a fluid stream of Thinking from something like solid spheres...

Instead of an integrated stream of Think-ing; we simply have a sequence of thoughts; thoughts lined-up but each detached from each other; in an order which seems arbitrary, and having no meaning greater than each individual thought.

*

Modern Thinking is segmented and censored - and I think this is imposed and learned from early childhood (in my case, from about five years old onwards) until the point it becomes ingrained, habitual, taken-for-granted and invisible. We are it. 

From this maimed Thinking modern Man cannot derive any meaning, neither can we derive any purpose or direction. Tis is the modern condition of alienation.

(And Religion makes little difference; because our Thinking about religion is simply a part of this maimed Thinking. We have individual thoughts about religion; but the religious mode of Thinking is modern, hence alienated; and we do not feel meaning or purpose - we merely have belifs-about meaning and purpose.)

We are absolutely stuck; unless we can change our mode of Thinking.

*

Necessary Thinking (or true Imagination) is a mode in which everything which comes to mind is included a part of the stream of thinking.

So that Necessary Thinking includes all those thoughts which modern Man regards as imaginary, fantasy, memories; it includes 'random' thoughts, 'errors', 'misunderstandings'... it is open to all sources and kinds of thoughts; and these are allowed to flow, combine, coalesce, extend - or rather they are never broken-up into discrete 'thought' in the first place, but Thinking is allowed to be a truly fluid stream of consciousness.

But Necessary Thinking is not passive - it is always alert, conscious, purposive.

Nor does True Imagination simply accept everything which comes out of it; rather everything is evaluated - but it is not individual 'thoughts' which are evaluated, but instead we evaluate the product of fluid, open, spontaneous, inclusive Think-ing.

And this True Imagination (or Necessary Thinking) is, ultimately, what we mortal incarnate Men Live-In - it is where our Selves are located.

And this is how grown-up men and women are meant to Be. 

(Note: Imagination/ Necessary Thinking is also the state that Owen Barfield called Final Participation.)

Passing on a tip about a substance called Shoe Goo.

I always wear double-thick cushioned-sole running shoes (various styles) made by Hoka Hoka, due to suffering osteoarthritis of the knees. These trainers are designed for serious road runners, and uniquely provide a really remarkable degree of shock-absorption, that allows me to walk long distance on the city streets (and country trails) without provoking symptoms. For which I am very grateful!

Hoka Hoka have three main disadvantages: the first is that they very expensive (and only sold in about a dozen places in the UK - I get mine from George Fisher in Keswick); the second that they are large and garish and look absurd when worn by the likes of me rather than serious athletes (I imagine that the manufacturers would pay me not to wear them); the third is that they wear away rather quickly being made of very soft and gripping rubber (and because I wear them nearly all the time).

I happened to be chatting with a proper runner who had discovered that Shoe Goo...

which is a clear rubbery kind of glue - could be used to prolong the life of these and other running shoes - or indeed rubber-soled shoes of any type.

As the soles begin to wear, you clean the surface and apply a layer of the glue, and this then becomes the surface in contact with the ground. It usually lasts a few weeks before the glue itself wears away and another layer needs to be applied.

The Shoe Goo itself seems to be very grippy, so this is not a problem.

I have also used it to 'invisibly' repair a small hole in my son's shoes where the leather met the sole, and to prolong the life of my daughter's school shoes.

Now, I wouldn't be without this in the house. It isn't expensive, and two tubes have lasted me about a year and a half so far. The only problem is that it has a really terrible 'organic solvent' type of smell, which tends to give me a headache unless I do the goo-ing outdoors. 

The Classical concept of God is one of completion and perfection - an individual such as you or me cannot add anything to complete perfection.

Therefore any human creation is constrained within already-existing divine perfection; and human creation is never substantive, never necessary - our best efforts can never (even in theory) make a real difference to already-existing perfect completion.

 
However, my understanding is different from this; I understand God's creation to be growing, developing through time; and with endless scope for individuals (such as us) to contribute.

The difference between this mortal life on earth, and Heavenly life, is that our creating happens in the face of the dominance of change, of 'entropy' - a tendency for what-is-created (including our-selves) to relapse towatds primal chaos.

Whereas Heaven is a creat-ing world, open-ended, continually 'under construction' - a world in which there is both new creation and permanence: a world of 'negentropy'.

How? Due to Love. Heaven in a world in which creation is harmnised by Love; possible by the eternal committment to Love that is made in resurrection.


So - there was a primal chaos; then God made from it, and in it, a Heaven of his own creation. Since Jesus, there is the Heaven in which God's creation is joined with those of his resurrected children.

We live in the world between these worlds; but although ourselves in this transient form, may create in ways that are carried through to the permanence of Heaven