The Heresies



The Book of Heresies:

I The Principles
II The Apocrypha
III The Recordings
IV The Convictions


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Name: Gretchen Shannon

Email: gretchen_911@yahoo.com




The Book of Heresies


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IV
The Convictions


It is an odd truth that the more knowledge, the greater wisdom you attain, the more constrained you are in the path you walk. It is also a truth that the more you learn, the more you understand, the greater your certainty is that there is no certainty anywhere in this universe.





4-1 Language
We do not use our language so much as we are used by it.


4-2 Reality
Our conceptions and our perceptions of reality inevitably come to be seen as being reality.


4-3 Mythos
Mythos need not be brazenly identified as religion; religion is merely its most common label and its most common structure.


4-4 Frameworks
Ritual is a framework for experiencing myth. Ritual reinforces mythos by creating for the bearer a personal history with that mythos.


4-5 Culture
Culture is a question of vision.


4-6 Absolutes
Uncertainty breeds desire for stability. Absolutes become more attractive than relatives, and fear makes revenge fantasies of even an apocalyptic scale viscerally appealing.


4-7 Democracy
Democracy, toleration, universal human rights are values dictated by the requirements of states enraptured by the idea of an eternal, upward progression of culture, thought and, especially, technology. They are values that reflect their environment, and they are values that are worth fighting for, but that does not make them absolutes in the eyes of the universe.


4-8 Reason and Faith
The opposite of reason is not faith, but experience. Faith in the absence of either reason or experience is either blind conformity or willing forfeiture of individuality, and an abrogation of responsibility for its subsequent consequences.


4-9 Gifts
When someone offers you a gift, there is the choice to decline or accept it. You do not throw deprecations upon it, you do not say, "Why do you not give more?" If they owe you, it is not a gift, but instead an obligation, and oneself can never be an obligation.

Cherish what you accept, what is chosen to be offered. Accept the choice of what is accepted of you, and accept the choice of what is not accepted.


4-10 Destruction
One cannot destroy something - one can only change it.


4-11 Expectations
The need is not to deliver from oneself of desire, but instead to purge oneself of expectations.


4-12 Memory
Memory is not the thing itself, but a mental reconstruction of the thing.


4-13 Insecurity
Insecurity is the source of dependence. A habit and practice of reflection as a substitute for action is one source of many of insecurity.


4-14 Clarity
There are moments of clarity that can eclipse all the sorrows of the world.


4-15 Responsibility
A lack of consciousness does not translate into a lack of responsibility.


4-16 Preconditions and Assumptions
What we think of as objective reality is in fact almost entirely subjective. Our realities are bounded by our preconditions and by our assumptions, though we clothe them in garments fit for an emperor.


4-17 Choices
Your choices will determine what you are aware of what future choices may be available to you. You are as much responsible for the choices unborn as you are for the choices of the instant.


4-18 Experience
An experience can never be communicated whole to another. What we communicate to another is the story of the experience. What we write about, perform about, sing about is not the experience itself, but the story of that experience.


4-19 Objectivity
The modern obsession for the pursuit of the objective is a neurotic fantasy. The only things that are truly objective are the basic principles of matter and energy - all else is simply interpretation, conception and perspective.