I ask that you use your own personal discrimination when reading this article, and set aside any words, aspects or concepts that do not resonate with you. For I recognise your freedom to choose what is right for you, and would not wish to violate your freewill, but rather, I would act only as a resource for your seeking.
As for myself, I guess that I'm a generalist, a non-specific disciplinarian, with no particular objective belief, one way or another. I suppose you could call me an agnostic, but that does not seem to fit the bill either. It probably stems from the observation that the more that I live my life, the less relevant that the necessity for absolute truth becomes - In fact, it may even be a hindrance. I call myself a continual experimentalist, a process orientated empiricist, a detractor from substantiation, an eternal wanderer, reaching for experiences of meaning which dissolve any resistance to being in the physical world. My perspective, arises from flitting from one subject to another, looking for something, which never seems to arise, which is only hinted at or inferred. Information, especially the objective type, abstracted to quantify the external world, relying upon complex arrangements of signs, seems to me at its core to be empty of meaning that nurtures, sustains and brings fulfilment, peace and happiness.
It feels like there is a mystery at work in the world, which is, and should remain, an enigma. Where I was once looking for understanding, I feel more and more comfortable with surrendering into the journey, accepting that to travel is better than to arrive. To seek for something, suggests that there is a thing, activity or person (Objects) to be found, that will fulfil one's dreams, and satisfy our need to search any further. I have learnt that seeking for Objects, which exist in the outside world, is ultimately hollow, having no sustaining, redemptive or reconciling capacity. Looking for absolute answers to the big questions as provided by science, even if we obtained them, would not render life more meaningful, especially if it those answers were banal, like most, if not all, abstract knowledge, which does not make us happier, healthier or more creative?
Perhaps the very thing that I was seeking is not a thing at all. Maybe it is not actually in the outside world. Perchance, what I am pursing is the meaning to not just life, as an objective abstraction of all lives, but the meaning of my own life! By the action of objective rationality, science has lifted Man out (abstracted) of a collective environment, sustained and regulated by a common framework of religion, brimming with personal and collective meaning. This has effectively recapitulated the exodus of Adam and Eve from Eden, leaving us stranded in an abstracted, objective, externalised land, devoid of personal and supra personal meaning.
The word meaning has two definitions, one is abstract, sterile, quantitative and devoid of quality and refers to the external world. This definition relates to objective knowledge, regarding what is known, conveyed by what are called signs. Examples of this category are what do green traffic signals mean or what does the sign for a cigarette with a line across it mean? We abstract from the sign a known meaning or fact, which conveys direct information about the external world. In the case of the examples above, "Go" and "No Smoking", respectively.
The other type of meaning is alive, organic and full of some quality which invigorates, generates and is laced with potency and efficacious intent and refers to our internal world (the domain of the psyche). The second category is a subjective, living meaning, denoted by symbols, which do not primarily refer to abstract knowledge, but rather to a psychological state that affirms life, like a deeply moving experience that relates to life as a whole, which nurtures and sustains, proliferating contentedness. Meaning in this sense, relates more to experiences than to Objects. It refers to a string of adventures, journeys, and encounters, that when strung together create an unspecific, moving narrative which promotes wellbeing. If the source of that process were determined, formalised and known, then perhaps its power would in time become diminished, passing from the unknown to the known, form the unconscious to the conscious, from Symbols to signs, from the subjective to objective.
Symbols are not created by the rational Ego (artefacts), but are in a supra category of their own, arising unbidden from the unconscious. These symbols are emblematic of a deeper meaning, beyond our rational understanding, which are imbued with a quality that cannot be fully captured, but nonetheless predicate a state of affairs which nourish and encourage wellbeing. Paradoxically, symbols are simultaneously unbound, and strangely contained, unconsciously promoting a sense of wholeness, which irrationally satisfies some deeper unspecified hunger.
Wholeness, when seen as a word, is a sign that signifies or delineates (to sketch-out) a situation that is beyond its capability to fully express. Any number of words, strung together in a sentence, paragraph, article or book, will never begin to approximate its deeper meaning. This is because language uses signs and not symbols, which appeal to our rational, abstract, objective minds. This is sometimes called the left-brain, which is linear, logical and local. Whereas the right-brain is trans-rational, non-linear and non-local, processing in a way that the left brain has few models for, with the exception of resonance, entanglement and super positioning. If the Ego constructs a sign, it will only refer to the limitations of objective abstraction. Abstraction, in this sense means 'drawn away' - but what is it drawn away from? Wholeness is not a concept, nor an idea or theory; it is a subjective experience. Subjective in this sense denotes 'Lying under.'
There is a remarkably interesting symbol which has been partially appropriated as a sign, which is the Ouroboros, or its sign equivalent the Lemniscate. The latter refers to an infinite or unbound series of uncountable Objects. It is a mathematical sign expressly focused on innumerable objectification. Most definitions of the Ouroboros relate to balance, harmony, immortality and infinite reoccurring cycles. However, the deepest psychological meaning is wholeness. When we view this symbol, it is not to be understood, broken down, applied or subjugated to examination - It is to be experienced, allowed to suffuse into one without diminishment into analysis, like a setting sunset, and incredible landscape, the beauty of a bonny bouncing baby, the brilliance of a full moon, an exquisite melody, the taste of fine wine, the smell of a rose. The concept of Infinity misses the (ZERO) point, by focusing upon Objects and not the affirmation of perfection or its counterpart, completeness, which together form the whole.
Could it be that we are seeking experiences that reaffirm wholeness? is the real journey to be remade whole, to reunite, to find our way home, to a place that we feel is inside us, but have forgotten what it is, or how to get there? Have we been lost in the wilderness of alienation from a sacred centre of mystery we unconsciously yearn for, which we have inadvertently transferred and projected into secular objectification, by a collective global culture which denies the sacred sustenance of symbols of wholeness?
Becoming aware of this distinction is what I call leading the symbolic life.
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