AJ Update:
None really, he's still chill'n in the tummy.
I'm guessing he's waiting for the rain to let up so please, stop rain dancing people!
Respect All Communication As Sacred:
Hands down, my favorite class at Cal was one of my first: Philosophy of Language with Professor John Searle. Especially in an era were the internet stands to obliterate all formal rules for it's use, it behoves us to take a moment and reflect on not just language, but communication in general. And so, the second tenant of practical philosophy is as follows:
2. Communication is communion between godheads.
While my first tenant about the relationship between choice and destinations is debatable on grounds of interpretation, this tenant springs from my spiritual beliefs. As such, I cannot prove it in the same sense as the first. Then again, my aim here is not to prove anything, but to only show the benefit of such thinking. However, if your beliefs prevent you from accepting what I have to say, please take this as an offering, a glimpse inside the mind of a gentile.
In Hinduism, there is a beautiful story about how we all came to be. (For the sake of brevity, I will omit much, though I encourage you to read the Vedas for yourself as they are wonderfully written) God, existence, the eternal spirit that is the universe - whatever you call It - chills alone for some time. However, God gets bored knowing everything there is to know and so once in a while she goes into hiding. Each time she goes into hiding, a universe like ours is born. Being God, she's really good at this game (especially having played it so many times). She hides herself as separate, individual consciousnesses. Each consciousness has some of her vast knowledge, but no one consciousness knows it all. Thus, she - we - actually believe ourselves to be separate, individual entities.
(One caveat I should point out about my version: I like the term consciousness, but I do not want to restrict God to only hiding as beings we know to be conscious. She is much more crafty than we are intelligent and she is capable of hiding in all things from people to rocks, from neutrinos to stars.)
Ok, so God's hiding from herself in each of us. How does she expect to find herself? Why, by means of communication! Pulling from the Hindu story, each of us is a godhead. We are a perspective on the universe from the viewpoint of ourselves. I see the universe as it is from over here, you see it as it is from over there. Communion, therefore, is an act of sharing perspectives. Here lies a key point: Perspectives are rarely wrong, though they are often mistaken.
A chemist and a window washer are sharing their perspectives on glass. The former believes it is a liquid, the latter a solid. Are either of these people wrong? It is doubtful. But if they believe that have the same concepts in mind about what constitutes a liquid or a solid, someone is mistaken. The chemist, in his knowledge of the minute, understands liquidity is defined by a certain arrangement of molecules. The window washer, in all of his experience, knows that solid objects have certain marco properties and that glass shares in these properties. Thus, after some time, they realize that they are not at all discussing glass, but are rather debating the proper usage of the terms liquid and solids. As the case may be, neither may be wrong as each has a definition that is relavent to people within their own field.
When we are of two minds about something, usually we do not become violent with ourselves. Part of us wants to take a nap while another part of us wants to go to the gym. If you think about it, you've likely had this conversation with yourself. You'll debate the pros and cons of each and decide on a course of action. Knowing from the beginning that neither desire alone was wrong, only that one was more appropriate for the situation. In fact, you may very well do both!
However, most moments of discord are rarely of such a benign nature. Let us look at communion between lovers. Here you have two godheads who have come to an understanding that, within the other, lies something divine. Even our sacrament of marriage often involves the combining of two beings as one. We should look then at differences in opinion between lovers, not as a difference between two people, but as an internal conflict within a single entity. When you disagree with your lover, and the communion has become sour, one or both of you have been fooled in the cosmic hide and seek game. Realization that you are conversing with a godhead can greatly change your tone. If you knew in your heart that your lover were God, would you use the language you use? Would your tone of voice change? If you expect your lover isn't respecting the God in you, do not look down on them - rather, are your behaving like a God should? If you understand that you are God and your lover is God, there will never be discord for you will treat you lover as he or she should be treated. If you are disrespected, you will never garner malice for you will have sympathy for your lover, for they have forgotten that they too are God. Can you imagine!?
And so, while the union between lovers is special, it need not be unique. We are all godheads and so any speech act between any of us should be viewed as communion between gods. Every word, every letter, e-mail or facebook post, every explicative, every complaint, every parcel of communication is for a God, about a God and from a God.
Let us then keep in mind that communication is the sacred act of sharing between two parts of God who have forgotten their unity and see where this leads us.
~ Namaste ~
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