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The abyss is what terrifies, what is at the end of the earth, what we gaze upon when contemplating our mortality and fragility, and what devours hope.
The Word—the tool God uses to transform the depths of potential—is truthful speech. It appears necessarily allied, however, with the courage to confront unrealized possibility in all its awful potential, so that reality itself may be brought forth.
It is that combination of Truth, Courage, and Love comprising the Ideal, whose active incarnation in each individual does in fact take the potential of the future and make the best of it.
You know that when something does not go well, you should analyze the problem, resolve it, apologize, repent, and transform. An unsolved problem seldom sits there, in stasis. It grows new heads, like a hydra. One lie—one act of avoidance—breeds the necessity for more. One act of self-deception generates the requirement to buttress that self-deceptive belief with new delusions.
Thus, your refusal or even inability to come to terms with the errors of the past expands the source of such error—expands the unknown that surrounds you, transforms that unknown into something increasingly predatory.
It is our destiny to transform chaos into order.
It is necessary to understand the negative well enough so that it can be circumvented as we move into the future if we do not wish to remain tormented by the past.
How much of my old map do I have to let crumble and burn—with all the pain dying tissue produces—before I can change enough to take my full range of experience into account?
If old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely.
To trust is to invite the best in your partner to manifest itself, with yourself and your freely given trust as the enticement. This is a risky business, but the alternative is the impossibility of true intimacy, and the sacrifice of what could have been two minds in dialogue working in tandem to address the difficult problems of life for a single mind striving in solitude.
Such trees therefore symbolize the Tree of Life, which serves as the very foundation of the cosmos.3 So, we illuminate the Tree of Life, at or near December 21, the darkest time of year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.4 That is why Christmas is located where it is on the calendar; the reappearance of the light is associated with the birth of the Universal Savior—signifying the eternal reemergence of light in the Stygian blackness.
Instead, the couple can decide that each and both are subordinate to a principle, a higher-order principle, which constitutes their union in the spirit of illumination and truth.
Instead, both bow to the principle of illumination.
Instead, it is that both should be oriented toward the most positive future possible, and agree that speaking the truth is the best pathway forward. That orientation and truthfulness will engender a transformative dialogue, verbal and nonverbal, if the partners in the arrangement commit to abiding by the consequence of that dialogue. Voluntary subordination to this higher-order principle of illumination both unifies and revitalizes.
The entire biological course of our destiny, since reproduction progressed past the mere division of cells, appears driven by the fact that it was better for two dissimilar creatures to come together to produce a comparatively novel version of themselves than to merely clone their current embodiment.
There is unrealized utility in the marital institution about which we have become cynical—a consequence of our immaturity and naivete.
There is also the fact that even people of good will and character locked together in matrimony will face the mundane, quotidian, dull, tragic, and terrible together, because life can be—and certainly will be at some point—difficult to the point of impossibility.
For all you know, you are fighting with the spirit of your wife’s grandmother, who was treated terribly by her alcoholic husband, and the consequences of that unresolved abuse and distrust between the sexes are echoing down the generations.
You could have a marriage that works. You could make it work. That is an achievement—a tangible, challenging, exceptional, and unlikely achievement. There are not many genuine achievements of that magnitude in life; a number as small as four is a reasonable estimate.
It is an axiom of human wisdom that clearer formulation and deeper comprehension of a problem is salutary.
“What shall I make of the possibilities that I see in play in front of me, complex, worrisome, exciting, dull, restricted, unlimited, fortunate, or catastrophic as they may be?”
Could that mean that the world of experience is, in truth, indistinguishable from a story—that it cannot be represented in a manner more accurate than that of the story?
“careful and unbiased pursuit of the truth will make the world a better place for all people, reducing suffering, extending life, and producing wealth.”
That provides the entire pursuit with a narrative element, the motive that accompanies any good plot, and the transformation of character that makes up the best of stories.
She is the classic devouring Oedipal mother, preventing her son from manifesting his destiny by refusing to allow him to leave home.
There is the beauty and immortality and immensity of the ocean.
Modern people have a hard time understanding what sacrifice means, because they think, for example, of a burnt offering on an altar, which is an archaic way of acting out the idea. But we have no problem at all when we conceptualize sacrifice psychologically, because we all know you must forgo gratification in the present to keep the wolf from the door in the future.
Nature is chaos, too, because it is always wreaking havoc with culture, its existential opposite—and the next subject of our investigation.
There is nothing but sterility without unpredictability, even though a bit less unpredictability often seems eminently desirable.
They desire to shield their new and precious daughter from the negative element of the world, instead of determining how to provide her with the strength and wisdom to prevail, despite the reality of the negative.
Excess sentimentality is an illness, a developmental failure, and a curse to children and others who need our care (but not too much of it).
Now, as far as I am concerned, dreams are statements from nature. It is not so much that we create them. They manifest themselves to us. I have never seen a dream present something I believed to be untrue.
If the Dragon of Chaos and the paired Benevolent and Evil Queen are representatives of potential and of the unknown, the Wise King and the Authoritarian Tyrant are representatives of the structures, social and psychological, that enable us to overlay structure on that potential.
It is not yet tamed, however; not brought into the domain of order. And it is beautiful in its mystery. The moon reflects on its surface; the waves crash eternally and lull you to sleep; you can swim in its welcoming waters.
It is difficult for any of us to see what we are blinded to by the nature of our personalities. It is for this reason that we must continually listen to people who differ from us, and who, because of that difference, have the ability to see and to react appropriately to what we cannot detect.
If you do not know that the treasure is guarded by a dragon, or that nature, beautiful nature, can turn its teeth on you in an instant, or that the peaceful society you take for granted is threatened constantly by authoritarianism and tyranny, or that you contain within yourself the adversary who might wish that all those negative transformations occur, then you are, first, a needy acolyte for an ideology that will provide you with a partial and insufficient representation of reality; and, second, someone blind in a manner dangerous to themselves and others alike.
There is a terrible reptilian predator, metaphorically speaking, pursuing you all the time, just like the crocodile with the ticktock of time emanating from the clock he swallowed chasing the tyrannical coward Captain Hook. And there is nature herself. She is hell-bent on doing you in, in a million horrible ways.
The issue is: can you organize the structure of reality so that you find the treasure, the positive aspect of nature smiles upon you, you are ruled by the wise king, and you play the role of hero?
If you confront the suffering and malevolence, and if you do that truthfully and courageously, you are stronger, your family is stronger, and the world is a better place.
There appear to be two broad forms of deceit: sins of commission, the things you do knowing full well they are wrong; and sins of omission, which are things you merely let slide—you know you should look at, do, or say something, but you do not.
In the early chapters of Genesis, God creates habitable chaos out of order with the Word, with the Logos: courage, love, and truth.
Love is the ultimate aim—the desire to create the very best that can be created.
But we also know that we can do good, if not great, things. We have the best chance of doing the latter if we act properly, as a consequence of being truthful, responsible, grateful, and humble.
Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.
BE GRATEFUL IN SPITE OF YOUR SUFFERING
If you confront the limitations of life courageously, that provides you with a certain psychological purpose that serves as an antidote to the suffering.
The fact of your voluntary focus on the abyss, so to speak, indicates to yourself at the deepest of levels that you are capable of taking on without avoidance the difficulties of existence and the responsibility attendant upon that.
The human race has been dealing with loss and death forever. We are the descendants of those who could manage it. That capability is within us, grim as the task might seem.
Everyone is rendered speechless when they encounter the infinite expanse of emptiness surrounding our too-brief existence. But uprightness and courage in such a situation is truly heartening and sustaining.
To be grateful for your family is to remember to treat them better. They could cease to exist at any moment. To be grateful for your friends is to awaken yourself to the necessity of treating them properly, given the comparative unlikelihood of friendship itself. To be grateful to your society is to remind yourself that you are the beneficiary of tremendous effort on the part of those who predeceased us, and left this amazing framework of social structure, ritual, culture, art, technology, power, water, and sanitation so that our lives could be better than theirs.
