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The
way the real world works, part 2
by marriah,
13th July 2001.
The acquisition of knowledge and its application is the
essence of all truth.
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Why was acquiring
knowledge from other people and sources so important? Two reasons.
First, I have always perceived how little I actually know about very
practical subjects. No matter how much information I acquired from
books, I always seemed out of sync with my environment. So, I wanted
most of all to have what I read or talked about be immediately
available for use. Since I had limited knowledge, I had to place
myself around people who had either much more knowledge, or limited
knowledge in different areas. That meant I either spent time around
people who were much older and more experienced than me, or around
peers who had more knowledge than me.
The other reason was
that I have never thought knowledge to be innate. Answers to
questions cannot merely be found within. But they also can’t be
found outside of one’s self either. Rather, knowledge is the
interface, or the confluence of information from you and your
environment so that it matches. Information is like Legos, and
knowledge is the ability to put them together in a way that suits
the immediate environment. The information comes from outside, but
the ability to put it together comes from inside. Consequently, it
is useless to look inside without enough information.
So, I
always sought the most information rich environments, and the
company of the people with the best ability to put the information
together for immediate use. The use of knowledge requires a very
simple procedure: the mind perceives the information and forms a
tool from it, the heart senses intuitively when to use it. Only by
joining the heart and the mind can one be capable of using the right
information at the right time. Without the mind, one cannot use the
right information. Without the heart, the timing is always off. It
requires the heart to understand the environment – people and places
– because only the heart can really know what’s going on in any
environment by knowing the people, the emotional impact of history,
and the relationships between the people. But it requires the mind
to know what is best suited to the environment, because without the
mind, the heart may apply the wrong remedy and make a benign
situation bad, or a terrible situation worse. Conversely, the heart
may attempt to make a bad situation better, but without the mind it
doesn’t know how. We realize this sometimes, which such sayings as
"The Road to hell is paved with good intentions", and by calling
some people "bleeding hearts" because they have all emotion and not
discipline direct the emotion properly to focused and productive
work.
I had my own battles between the heart and the mind,
thinking the mind is inherently superior the to the heart, and
trying to eliminate all emotions from my being. But that only caused
them to store up and explode like a flood in the most undisciplined
ways at times. So, I set out instead to merge the heart with the
mind, giving all of my emotions intellectual illumination so that I
could understand exactly what I was feeling and why.
My
desire had always been to go out into the world and find people who
were knowledgeable, disciplined, with superior abilities so that I
could learn from them and improve myself. I understood Socrates
words that "The wisest man knows that he knows nothing", and I took
them to mean that the only path to wisdom was to realize how little
one knows at the present moment, and how much more knowledge is out
there to acquire, especially from other people. My most exhilarating
experiences involved long conversations with other people who were
very knowledgeable in different areas, with me picking their brains
to illuminate the nature of our existence socially and otherwise. I
always felt elevated in every way – sharper thoughts, clearer
emotions, more powerful will – when I had conversations with people
whose knowledge I could directly apply to my own life.
Thus,
my highest ideal was a condition where I was constantly surrounded
by other knowledgeable people, constantly discussing our lives and
interlacing our knowledge with our experiences. I felt swept away by
an enormous amount of energy, as if I had been catapulted into the
stratosphere, where I could see the whole of my existence, the whole
of humanity, the future, the past, all represented in the present. I
felt my mind expanding to know, then contracting to implement, the
essence of the Yin and Yang.
I sought to reach this ideal as
frequently, and as long as possible. My concept of absolute truth
was a path to that stratosphere that was always open to me, whenever
I needed it. I had no intention of always being there since that
would make it impossible for me to implement any of the things I
learned there. I also had no intention of staying out of it, since I
wouldn’t be able to learn anything at all. Thus, I sought a
condition which I realized was transcendence. Transcendence has a
very precise meaning because it involves the transitioning, or
transferring of one’s mind and emotions, back and forth, between one
condition and another. The higher the rate or frequency of the
transfer, the more you feel like you are in two places
simultaneously, yet able to see a third – the whole from the two
separate parts. The perfect condition was when I going back and
forth so easily that I could have the knowledge from the
stratosphere and implement it immediately in my environment. By
understanding the whole, I could affect each part.
I did
this frequently in college, but never intentionally. It merely
happened. My concept of absolute truth was not merely to have access
to that stratosphere, but to go into it at will. All other, minor
and multiple truths merely showed what the path is and how to
cultivate the will to travel on it.
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| Member Ratings |
| Member |
Date |
Overall |
Agree? |
Writing? |
Enjoyment? |
| marriah |
13 Jul
2001 |
Contribution edited.
Around 0% of the body was changed. |
| tomsdattarmolly |
13 Jul
2001 |
Absolutely
sensational |
n/a |
Don't touch
it! |
Standing
Ovation |
| ...............
;0) |
| s-hollar |
14 Jul
2001 |
Absolutely
sensational |
Neutral |
Don't touch
it! |
Standing
Ovation | |
| My concept
of absolute truth was not merely to have access to that
stratosphere, but to go into it at will
| |
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