May 26 26
Finally getting around to posting excerpts from the pamphlet we found among the stacks of that great, aforementioned, Simi Valley bookstore. The issuer was XOTUR³³³, The Church of Secular Spirituality, Acton, CA, 1978. A kind of weird amalgam of post-structuralism and lay metaphysics. It’s quite good/relevant:
How can anyone love themselves knowing what they are?
How can anyone love others knowing what they are?
Yet, to hate yourself is to hate the world.
Yet, to love yourself is to love the world.
Since knowing is an illusion, it is a simple choice — vibrate in love or wobble in hate.
When you do eventually love, most won’t understand. But your love understands. It understands pain and blind causality.
Love isn’t the avoidance of pain.
Loving the-self/the-world isn’t loving to please or loving to be understood. Loving is the transcendental understanding that all of us are, permanently and involuntarily, completely incomplete and interdependent.
True communication is impossible.
Love is the theriac for cynical, unstable beings bit by the delusion of conflict.
Again, love is the transcendence of not knowing; not loving is at base hating (your self and the world).
No one isn’t of this world. All is nature (XOTUR³³³). There is no supernatural (as “known” and “unknown” are natural); though most is unknown (if not all). We have experience without anything like (even) moderate understanding. (But there are always practical concerns that can and should be heeded; more on that later.)
We come into and out of knowledge all of the time — like leaves or “trash” blown from an alley to a field and back to an alley.
We acknowledge the falseness of “the metaphysics of presence” and the falseness of “transcendental signifiers” (XOTUR³³³).
Ultimately, there is no right thing except trying; eternal alert striving (XOTUR³³³). For this The Church of Secular Spirituality suggests the contemplation of The Seven Layers:
Geist (spirit)
Sophrosyne (measure)
Askesis (discipline)
Paideia (formation)
Anekāntavāda (non-absolutism)
Bildung (self-cultivation)
Entelechy (realization)
We embrace practicality and ambiguity — we reject dogma.
(from the order of XOTUR³³³ C.S.S.)
How can anyone love themselves knowing what they are?
How can anyone love others knowing what they are?
Yet, to hate yourself is to hate the world.
Yet, to love yourself is to love the world.
Since knowing is an illusion, it is a simple choice — vibrate in love or wobble in hate.
When you do eventually love, most won’t understand. But your love understands. It understands pain and blind causality.
Love isn’t the avoidance of pain.
Loving the-self/the-world isn’t loving to please or loving to be understood. Loving is the transcendental understanding that all of us are, permanently and involuntarily, completely incomplete and interdependent.
True communication is impossible.
Love is the theriac for cynical, unstable beings bit by the delusion of conflict.
Again, love is the transcendence of not knowing; not loving is at base hating (your self and the world).
No one isn’t of this world. All is nature (XOTUR³³³). There is no supernatural (as “known” and “unknown” are natural); though most is unknown (if not all). We have experience without anything like (even) moderate understanding. (But there are always practical concerns that can and should be heeded; more on that later.)
We come into and out of knowledge all of the time — like leaves or “trash” blown from an alley to a field and back to an alley.
We acknowledge the falseness of “the metaphysics of presence” and the falseness of “transcendental signifiers” (XOTUR³³³).
Ultimately, there is no right thing except trying; eternal alert striving (XOTUR³³³). For this The Church of Secular Spirituality suggests the contemplation of The Seven Layers:
Geist (spirit)
Sophrosyne (measure)
Askesis (discipline)
Paideia (formation)
Anekāntavāda (non-absolutism)
Bildung (self-cultivation)
Entelechy (realization)
We embrace practicality and ambiguity — we reject dogma.
(from the order of XOTUR³³³ C.S.S.)