Very well expressed. The 'slack' reminds me of what Trungpa calls the 'setting sun' world. I associate it with aversion, depression, overwhelm and laziness (and what is laziness but aversion and overwhelm?). The 'pull' is what forces us to transcend ourselves and try to leave the world better than we found it, one tiny decision at a time.
Once again I'm impressed by your honesty - you're saying what you really think here rather than parroting the typical wisdom in spiritual circles. Some people teach that you should only ever seek out the pull, and others say life's about a balance between pull and slack, but you're right: for most of us the first is inauthentic and monomaniacal (even Jesus wasn't above feasting, drinking and having a good time!), while the second is off-base too: a world with just as much slack as pull is one of enormous waste and suffering.
We seem to be caught in the middle of some process we don't understand, in both physical and spiritual terms.
Physically, we're here because of natural selection, which advances via genetic competition and fitness (i.e. immense bloodshed and suffering) - but as cooperative groups outcompete purely selfish, individualistic ones, also encourages cooperation and bonding (i.e. what makes life meaningful and sweet). So darkness-reaching-towards-light is baked into the nature of things - and now that our species is capable of making conscious decisions, we can choose to maximise the sweet and fight against the sour.
And spiritually, we're supposed to advance towards the light, while acknowledging our darkness and accepting the existence of evil and suffering in the world. So many things are terrible, and yet everything is in its right place. A very delicate balancing act.
It's sort of like a TV show that has a ton of bad things happening to the characters, then ends on a dramatically satisfying finale where everything comes right in the end. In a sense the final episode is the best one because it's what the rest were building towards, but it's equally true that it would have no impact without their lead-up - they need it, and it needs them. The whole show is "good", even the bits where what's happening isn't good at all.
It seems that the universe requires drama in the same way TV shows do, the destination giving meaning to the journey, the journey giving meaning to the destination. Zoom out far enough, and it's all happening at the same moment, a single moment in which all of us are being remorselessly pulled upwards.
That vision of all of us being remorselessly pulled upwards is something Guenon was talking about in the The Symbolism of the Cross, in which the journey of the soul is a neverending ascending spiral, with one's existence as a human being a particular loop in it. You're onto something with that TV show, but I think the show never has a final episode, which puts what the Buddha was teaching about escaping samsara into perspective. Ultimately, does one want the TV show to end? Jesus offers eternal life, Buddha offers something ostensibly better than life. Meanwhile, the Taoists have attempted to invent elixirs of immortality, and in Advaita Vedanta, you are advised to not trouble yourself with all this crap and just sit back and enjoy the show, which is the attitude nearest and dearest to my heart.
It really might be all the same in the end though, just surrender and let God have His way with you, this might be what they are all really saying.
Yeah, I think heaven/nirvana/immortality/nothingness/the never-ending 'show' all boil down to the same thing: there's who we think we are (self/ego/fear), and there's who we really are (everything/God/love), and our journey doesn't so much consist of going anywhere in particular as internally transitioning from one to the other. If you're the 'other' then it doesn't really matter where you are, because everywhere is heaven. All the visions of immortality we're capable of mustering up in our present state are basically egoic fever dreams - as Ram Dass says, you'll never get to the other side of the door, because if you're on the other side you won't be you any more. Where you're going, you can't come.
You have a knack for getting replies out of me that are basically essays in themselves...
Very well expressed. The 'slack' reminds me of what Trungpa calls the 'setting sun' world. I associate it with aversion, depression, overwhelm and laziness (and what is laziness but aversion and overwhelm?). The 'pull' is what forces us to transcend ourselves and try to leave the world better than we found it, one tiny decision at a time.
Once again I'm impressed by your honesty - you're saying what you really think here rather than parroting the typical wisdom in spiritual circles. Some people teach that you should only ever seek out the pull, and others say life's about a balance between pull and slack, but you're right: for most of us the first is inauthentic and monomaniacal (even Jesus wasn't above feasting, drinking and having a good time!), while the second is off-base too: a world with just as much slack as pull is one of enormous waste and suffering.
We seem to be caught in the middle of some process we don't understand, in both physical and spiritual terms.
Physically, we're here because of natural selection, which advances via genetic competition and fitness (i.e. immense bloodshed and suffering) - but as cooperative groups outcompete purely selfish, individualistic ones, also encourages cooperation and bonding (i.e. what makes life meaningful and sweet). So darkness-reaching-towards-light is baked into the nature of things - and now that our species is capable of making conscious decisions, we can choose to maximise the sweet and fight against the sour.
And spiritually, we're supposed to advance towards the light, while acknowledging our darkness and accepting the existence of evil and suffering in the world. So many things are terrible, and yet everything is in its right place. A very delicate balancing act.
It's sort of like a TV show that has a ton of bad things happening to the characters, then ends on a dramatically satisfying finale where everything comes right in the end. In a sense the final episode is the best one because it's what the rest were building towards, but it's equally true that it would have no impact without their lead-up - they need it, and it needs them. The whole show is "good", even the bits where what's happening isn't good at all.
It seems that the universe requires drama in the same way TV shows do, the destination giving meaning to the journey, the journey giving meaning to the destination. Zoom out far enough, and it's all happening at the same moment, a single moment in which all of us are being remorselessly pulled upwards.
That vision of all of us being remorselessly pulled upwards is something Guenon was talking about in the The Symbolism of the Cross, in which the journey of the soul is a neverending ascending spiral, with one's existence as a human being a particular loop in it. You're onto something with that TV show, but I think the show never has a final episode, which puts what the Buddha was teaching about escaping samsara into perspective. Ultimately, does one want the TV show to end? Jesus offers eternal life, Buddha offers something ostensibly better than life. Meanwhile, the Taoists have attempted to invent elixirs of immortality, and in Advaita Vedanta, you are advised to not trouble yourself with all this crap and just sit back and enjoy the show, which is the attitude nearest and dearest to my heart.
It really might be all the same in the end though, just surrender and let God have His way with you, this might be what they are all really saying.
Yeah, I think heaven/nirvana/immortality/nothingness/the never-ending 'show' all boil down to the same thing: there's who we think we are (self/ego/fear), and there's who we really are (everything/God/love), and our journey doesn't so much consist of going anywhere in particular as internally transitioning from one to the other. If you're the 'other' then it doesn't really matter where you are, because everywhere is heaven. All the visions of immortality we're capable of mustering up in our present state are basically egoic fever dreams - as Ram Dass says, you'll never get to the other side of the door, because if you're on the other side you won't be you any more. Where you're going, you can't come.