Re: Claridad
Haven, thank you for that thoughtful post. The last paragraph raises some interesting questions.
At what point does wanting to live your own regular life, in the real, material world, become a selfish, negative thing? Is it only if if it hurts others? What if you don't hurt others, but all you do is work, eat, sleep, watch TV, and not do much else.. in other words, be just a sleeping cog in the system? How much effort does a person need to put into awakening and becoming aware, to be in the clear morally/ethically/spiritually speaking? Does overdoing it actually consitute a form of "claridad" itself?
My own way of viewing things is that I want my main life purpose to be improvement of self and the world around me, but that doesn't mean I can't have fun when I feel like it and do what I please. At what point does fun becomes self-indulgence might be a valid question. I mean, anything short of selling off everything and living as a monk could be viewed as "in-between," but it seems obvious to me that that's not what everyone is supposed to do, and it surely wouldn't be a good thing if they did. So... where's the line to be drawn? I don't know.
It's odd. From what I can think of, it's very archetypal. On one hand, there is something inside of me that is very Tyler Durden-esque, in that it look around and sees how insane we all are and wants to wipe it all away. "Let the chips fall where they may. Let's evolve!" I remember looking around in Best Buy once and realizing, "How mad!" it all was, this big metal building with all this technology and civility. We're all animals inside, and this facade of civilization is making us bonkers.
Then there's a part of me that wants to accept everything, to be enlightened in another way. Let things evolve as they are, things will be just fine. It's the thing that held me together after the first part of me swept everything away in my agnosticism.
It reminds me of current Christian beliefs (they are insightful if you know how to look past the facade), typically the Mary beliefs. God, the Father, wants to come down and punish us all, but Mary comes and tells us to repent, to pray, and she says she's holding off God's judgment. The Father, the primordial, primal being within us all wants to destroy everything but itself (or maybe itself too!) The Queen, or mother/bride wants to be loving and bring everything to one. It's the same in the end, I suppose, but different methods. Solar, burning, vs. Lunar, binding, but bringing it all to one.
The archetype of the Son, I'm not sure. It's very matronly, as in that it accepts and loves. In the legends, it's the son that avenges, that breaks the tyrannical rule of the God or the usurper, that frees mankind. I can see that.
I don't know what the answer is. That's for further down the road, I suppose, but it seems to echo myths. Jung helped me to see that connection, and I think it will end the same way it has for centuries, and end the same way for centuries to come. When it's enlightenment time, it'll be enlightenment time. Until then, I'm mostly a passenger. I don't know if that makes me weak or lazy, but, like I said, to live a lifestyle of constant seeking is a large effort, and would require that I be in a state of fuzzy, conscious meditation most of the time (which I basically am already, always thinking, weighing, discerning). I don't know what the correct thing to do is, but, for now, I'm just living my life.
* Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
* People want platitudes, not progress.