A TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC

“1. ( in transcendental logic) the study of the fallacious attribution of objective reality to the perceptions by the mind of external objects.”
Random House, Inc. 2014

“There is always an inner game being played in your mind no matter what outer game you are playing. How you play this game usually makes the difference between success and failure.” W. Timothy Gallwey

What is real? How are we determining this answer? The knowledge base in our hard sciences is evolving and changing relative to research and our collective intelligence. The fact that theories that were expounded even 20 years ago, are now radically revised, is astonishing, e.g. nutrition, GMO’s, electric cars, the human microbiome, the commercialization of space, et al. We are so much past the thought of an end point of knowledge.

In the 19th century there was an unfounded rumor of the patent office closing due to “everything that could be invented has been invented.” Based on a report from the Patent Officer Commissioner Henry Ellsworth to Congress, was quoted as predicting a period when “improvement must end.”

The rumor was not real. The permutation of ideas and ingenuity of humans has no reason to logically stop. The fact that is that ideas evolve and we adapt to each moment. Each new day is completely different from all previous days. Nothing really stays the same. There is no permanence as reflected in measurable reality.

How sure were we just 20 years or 30 years ago about certain conditions and directions and our so-called concrete grasp of things? I recall getting a loan for our house in 1980 and having questions about the interest rate dropping, when talking to a mortgage broker. I questioned the assumption she had about interests rates going down from the current 13%. She was adamant that they would never go down, citing no history of rates doing anything but going up. And she was offended that I would think otherwise. She got very upset when the paperwork wasn’t signed. How many of us are so locked down on things that no one can put a piece of paper between us and our opinions?

Our ideas of things are just that, ideas. Ideas have a their own shelf-life. They are not Truths, no matter how much we buttress them. Bernie Glassman, notable Buddhist, likes to use the term “opinions”. Opinions are our interpretation of realities, often with associated reactions.

Which leads us to, what is real? The mind, which is in most of us, is ‘in a reaction’, and is not real when in the false reality of the past or future. The mind is a tool that is used to ‘doing’ our life. This ‘doing’ is a reaction either from the act of ‘Being’ or a reaction from the external phenomena. When the mind is ‘reacting’, it is creating ‘a’ reality. It is not “Being” “The Reality” nor can it be. It is re -acting and re -creating.

If we put our vectors of energy into ‘a reality’, then does it make it real or real-er? Or are we kidding ourselves?

When we look at who we ‘think’ we are, we are probably more comfortable with the idea, we are ‘this’ or ‘that’ idea. And not what we really are. But what is real?

What is real, is really what we can ‘see’. If we can only ‘see’ our part that is the ‘selective’ part that is reactive, then is that the only thing that is real? This then becomes the validity of not “Being”. Does this limited ‘seeing’ with the limited result of reaction and ‘not’ “Being”, valid? It certainly is convincing.

‘Seeing’ the validity of “Being”is difficult (to see) given our practice of embracing the false self and the corresponding reality we manufacture. Does that difficulty in ‘seeing’ “The Reality” make “The Reality” less valid?

We are truly convinced when we experience the shift of meaningfulness from the ‘outside’ the Self to ‘inside’ the Self, with a greater emphasis on ‘inside’ the ‘space’. Correspondingly, there is a shift from a constant state of ‘reaction’ to a constancy of “Beingness”. The connection, a most vital consideration, becomes the stream of consciousness versus the streamed connection of vacillating change. Our anchors are anchored to the stability of emptiness and “Being” versus the impermanence of mind, ideas, and reaction.

Some may dispose of this choice by classifying it as a running away from reality. But where are we being overpowered? We are overrun with the struggle and suffering of our current way of processing things. Our normality is full of illusion and quiet desperation, to put it mildly. To suggest that dumping the reactive paradigm is an escape from reality, is to give the insane the keys to the institution called ‘human suffering’.

To push away from the solution is to make a full sprint into the illusion that is created by mind. It too, is unstable. Divest by seeing the mind and its distinctions from the permanence of consciousness (Being).

Be “The Reality” first by ‘seeing’ the Silence and the Space where it all Is always. When we feel the ‘overrunness’ of it all, it is an alert that signals the vacuuousness of attachment to the “parade” of life that gives only appearances of reality. The ‘real’ stuff is not in the subject/object dualistic separate reality we give so much deference to in our lives. It just IS, effortlessly. As effortless as the entire universe, both seen and unseen. Be that, always.

This Iz Daddy’O.