Totally closed minds run blind to the light of being

 

I did comment this into yet another article 'revealing' the totalitarian state. But it was not really to the contents of the article but a framing of our vision that normalises 'ways of seeing' that effectively feed or reinforce our predicament.

Illich wrote that the early Christians (pre institution) held a culture of keeping a bed & a loaf for an unexpected 'guest'. After 100 years or so this shifted to a collectively funded hostel. A living relational encounter in the Spirit is organised to a utility of convenience or efficiency. The Christian Church-originally fluidly adapting and adopting to local 'colours' or cultures of ritual liturgy became the prototype Corporation that centralised & developed organisational abilities to become the Corporate-State of required 'worship' along with penalties of exclusion as the idea of a divine mission to enforce a 'loving and just society'.

Illich regards this 'structural' usurping of a relational extension of a living - I might say holy encounter - as the scientifically rebranded 'state' extending a corporate structure of identity as compliance - as an Overton Window of social access, inclusion or survival.

And in interviews near the end of his life saw it as the anti-Christ - the perversion of the Christian Revelation (Love of God & Brother as one).

He also recognised it as an inevitable result of our deep but active ignorance - as a grievous error that would reveal us to ourselves in the sense of a bottoming out - or Prodigal turnabout.

I felt to sketch my sense of that view to illustrate the role and nature of structure in our consciousness and thus our world, as a potential usurper of identity by which we are phished - in a direct correlation to the archetype of the Fallen Angel - which is also Narcissus, in terms of exchanging or discarding a living relational participation for a self-imaged conceit or concept of self, world and 'relationships' which become something to get from, or get rid of, onto. Taking thought for our 'self' is to set the Law of being in reverse because my true or original self is the gift of a reflected love - not in terms of emotional manipulations but energy of attention and intention freely given and freely received - without coercion.

Running contra to our Nature - in concept if never in truth - generates oppositional conflict as an innate alarm or dissonance arising from such a condition, and thus a call to release & realign. The ability to mask pain is the capacity to put a call on hold while attending other priorities. Outsourcing the masking defence of such priorities (if it be thy will) develops an 'ego' or self-image in masking defences against exposure to pain that became associated with guilt for engaging persistent self-will at cost of awareness and participance in a felt connection to life - such now as to operate as a terror of block and boundary against realignment and connected perspective. The human 'self-conditioning' becomes an accepted 'reality' in which to compete for position within its archetype of a closed finite and disconnected 'system'. It is but our mirror, yet to which we are for the most part compelled to look upon, while seeing only a meaningless world upon which to seek to act out fantasy fulfilments that -for all the hit or thrill of a moment - dont. But will set up patterns of dependency and addictive 'getting' as a masked priority that keeps us too busy to look within.

Within the moment at hand!

A mind fitted to structure cannot see or hear - for it must see and hear something Else!

In all respects we are creative beings, but the nature of creation is not ingenuity set to the solving of 'problems' though it can be harnessed to mask them in ever new 'solutions'; the creative act is the decision or act of the acceptance of a gift, that by expressing or embodying through us reveals us to ourself and to each other & our world (field of relations).

Mis-creative mind cannot know itself truly in the a tempt to make reality in its own image. But nor can it correct its own error while be-living that it can and has done this.

A light must enter a mind that had effectively made it unwelcome - an interference, a violator, a source of pain & shame to be denied, cast out and attacked - even asymptomatically! - that is as a predictive control mechanism of existential survival, running in our name, but not of our true nature.

That the self-conflict turns upon itself is hardly surprising, for that is its starting place.

Nothing truly leaves the mind of its thinker, but we can believe we can, have and do operate autonomous from the Field of All relation. But it never is or can be, however much priority we give to cutting our strings and becoming a 'real boy'.

Reality is always already the case but our awareness of reality is through our own. The Gift of Existence may seem to be cast in a Big Bang or Separation trauma, in the Theatre of our current focus of attention and intention.

Who has eyes to see - free awareness and attention?

Where is the gift of sight?

Not in a double bind!