Confluence XI (Cardinal Points)

Confluence XI   (Cardinal Points)

L. Edgar Otto    23 February, 2013 

*01:32:25 PM

Some can play the music mechanically, and some only with feeling.  We inspire or encourage our young to pursue science or some other worthy discipline- it seems this is instinctual for a society to do in the long run.  Hope in the future that they become competent in the work-a-day applications in service to society in their fields.  But also for more than this- that a life has a certain chance for awakening to the spirit and higher noble purposes, what they then can see in the cold mechanical truths of fact a poetic sense of beauty.  Yet most in the living only stop occasionally to marvel or worry over this mood or frame of mind that comes from time to time in hints about the nature of their self and soul.  Let us not make a generation of robots or blaspheme in bait and switch what we say is of value in education that promises them something meaningful and reachable in leading them into expectations.

Nor in the scheme of things give to them only a vague sense of belief as contemplation for its own sake as compensation.  The joke is on those who deny this higher spirit in the purposes of science in service to society that can indeed in the gated communities of academia be an illusion of knowing what in the world itself seems as real and important as their pretensions of higher dreams not reached in the main within their walls of Ivy Towers.  For to deny the reality of spirit that is still of the best and brightest within us is to defeat the unity of learning wherein as with any such machines in time all such crumble into dust.  Knowing is alive and finite in a sense that we who drink endlessly of love can only savor the once and only experience of it in the moment, in our prime and widest span of view at day.  A good life has few regrets and is grateful for what happiness encountered- this the sense also of what seems everlasting and eternal in the living.

Knowing is a tightrope in the philosopher's walk by the backs of rivers of time, a fall too far into rote and intellect on one side or into chaos and irrationality to far into too little thinking and coherent understanding to the other side.  We should also teach the paths and bridges that cross these great rivers.  Such a narrow way, if we are to negotiate the labyrinth of inquiry or the set paths of a maze- more than some morality in our dreams or dreams stolen in stealth by others as if some chain of probability a necessary case in today's game of snakes and ladders, is the way as to any Heaven- even the mystery and chance that science promises on Earth.

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*Olney Speaks to the Gowns  written while posting from the library:

It came to pass that Olney on his countless return to Far Rock-a-bye from his endless journey that he went into the castle keep where the Learned priests kept a vigil on their dreams of wisdom.  All are welcome to their cathedral, only one has to ask to enter therein.  But Olney had tried many times only to fail to find entry - being near the earth he drew little from the power of work stored from the sun of a hundred years for vessels of oil that the growing mass of villagers craved- even the few token ones who could not work and were cared for lived like kings of old compared to Olney homeless but at home everywhere keeping the life then of philosophy, his only treasures those found in his heart.

Whether it was a new growth of his enlightenment or growing boredom with the prison and faith in promises of eternity he longed for more or thought there could be more- to which the world he found himself in was slowly loosing its value along with those of the denizens in it.  It was not that the people fit into classes of work or awakening as much as who had resources of such focused sunlight above the others in levels the village folk only began to understand.  But once in the halls of Learning he debated some things for awhile and they listened, maybe for entertainment, may for their own sensitivity in struggle for new things that may be there in the experience and views of others if safely contained as if a pearl that irritates their mollusk souls and mother or pearl ivy towers.

Olney spoke: "As you have said in your elixirs of dreams the crime of love devalued for its physical instincts and aid to evolving alone is not a betrayal of commitment and loyalty- but to do it sharing the elixir and dream state- as you so dream, proselytize for the equalizer of neutral love in your view of containing and sharing what you think the world outside your right to guide time beyond your enclave of history you ignore the singularities solved by the ancient letter and numbers that spell out some hidden code in the Bible you think described the world- so too think there is hope or cures for your beautiful minds."

"But I say to you the landscape goes further, beyond the top and more room at the bottom than you clearly dream... that in matters of who among you are clear of mind and understand the symmetries of empty space thru time, those that are not are not those who merely, elixirs or not, know right from wrong albeit sometimes sideways, but are they who cannot distinguish between truth and beauty or blind to useful distinctions where they can be interchanged find all theories of everything pointless and closed, the ultimate betrayal of our gift of life, what we can do, and our turn to create and inquire beyond betrayal of ourselves and each other..."

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