Ken Wilber : The Secret of Metaphysics

[DocWatts]

While this quote won't come as a surprise to most of the people who've been part of this community for a long time, I really appreciate how succinctly Ken Wilber is able to state an important Truth about Reality in such a straitforward way:

"THE ULTIMATE METAPHYSICAL SECRET, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two."

While it's true that not every Truth can be communicated simply, it is absolutely worth the effort to make epistemological wisdom more accessible to non-specialists (and yes, if you're Construct aware and have seriously deconstructed subject-object dualism that means you're a specialist).

Which from a practical standpoint begins with helping people better contextualize thier existing maps of meaning (which is why I prefer to use the term 'abstractions' over 'illusions', since it is less likely to come across as a pejorative devaluing of what may be deeply meaningful to another person).

In my experience, part of making these insights more accessible includes the vitally important emphasis that transcending the exclusivity of a particular paradigm doesn't necessitate having to give up things that are important to that individual (be that Christianity, scientific empiricism, or postmodernism, just to name a few); rather it can be a way of appreciating something they already find valuable from a broader, more encompassing perspective. 

Edited October 9, 2022 by DocWatts

[Gesundheit2]

Cool!

[Vibroverse]

Well, having a map is not necessarily a bad thing, I guess, because maybe there is, in a sense, nothing but maps. Like, maybe it is maps all the way down, and it's all about finding your own map? Maybe it's truths all the way down? 

 

Edited October 9, 2022 by Vibroverse

[DocWatts]

On 10/9/2022 at 1:39 PM, Vibroverse said:

Well, having a map is not necessarily a bad thing, I guess, because maybe there is, in a sense, nothing but maps. Like, maybe it is maps all the way down, and it's all about finding your own map? Maybe it's truths all the way down? 

Any way that we map Reality is going to have to have an endpoint. That's not because Reality itself contains any endpoints as such, but because all models will reach a point of diminishing returns where trying to break things down even further serves no useful purpose.

Also some phenomenological knowledge can be helpful here. Reality itself may lack boundaries, but for human beings Reality is disclosed to us as consisting of discreet objects with fixed boundaries. And the reason this is so is that we need to be able to navigate and manipulate Reality in order to survive, and this pre-reflective 'carving up of Reality' accomplishes that remarkably well.

Rather than being dismissive towards our normal way of being-in-the-world, we ought to be seeking to understand it from a Construct aware perspective. And part of cultivating Construct awareness involves appreciating the useful role that constructs play, along with understanding thier limitations.

Edited October 14, 2022 by DocWatts

[Vibroverse]

Yeah, I agree. Thinking about reality from a phenomenological perspective can help, and, in my opinion, if we become, like, fundamentalist phenomenologists, then we need to say that all that exists is here and now. We just need to be in the here and now with no interpretation of it, just saying that that which exists is what is appearing to me in the here and now. 

We, however, also need to accept the existence of consciousness that is having this conscious experience, and we need to be genuine to ourselves about what we really are discovering in the moment about our emotional experience in the moment, also, because the experience of emotionality is like the elephant in the room. 

We are, in every moment, experience an emotional experience also, which we may, perhaps, call the state of being, and the state of being, in each moment, is changing in every moment, even if to a very very small extent. And our perception, our phenomenological experience, is also changing with that. 

I mean, in a more detailed analysis, it becomes pretty obvious that the state of consciousness has some interactivity with the perceived world. The state of being, the images in the mind, and the perceived world work like one interconnected system, and maybe we can even say one thing. 

I mean, in the direct phenomenological perspective, we cannot even talk about a difference between the inside and outside, because it comes with a cognitive difference that we create with our interpretation of being. That duality does not come with the experiencing itself. 

And if we become genuine enough, and truly be in a watchful state to see the nuances of experiencing, we will see that there is a "mystical" connection going on between the inner state and the outer "state", that it also, not simply in a sense of monism, but also in a sense of a monistic idealism, takes you into an experience of nonduality. 

That also is a very very big elephant in the room, that you discover, in your subjective experience, that reality shows itself to you as a representation of your consciousness, that it shows itself to you as, in a "mystical" sense, that which is not really different or distinct from you, and leads you into the idea that reality and dream, maybe, are not, substantially speaking, two different things, really. 

This experience of nonduality is a subjective experience though, and you cannot prove it to others around you, because it is not "objective" in a sense. Because it, in a sense, is like a meta state where the experience itself becomes self referential. And within that self referentiality of the experience, experience starts to become its own explanation, or the experience of "explainingness". 

And, in that modality of being, dasein can begin to experience its own being in the way that is truly authentic for him. In that modality of being, dasein can be aware of its being in the world, yet he also can experience being in the world as that which is being in the world itself. I mean, dasein can be in a state of being, in a sense, where he, himself, becomes the experience of "deconstructingness". 

And, yes, we can, for instance, deconstruct the idea of the self that Descartes was talking about, and take it also as a concept, or as a "that which is" that also makes itself appear in the direct experience, but we also, obviously, at least for me, should understand its importance, in the sense that there is an "I" that is experiencing being, even if it is the experiencing itself, whether it is for Descartes or, in that sense, Hume. 

I mean, Hume also was the experience of experiencing, even if he was not a "cogito" in the way Descartes might have meant it. So, it would really be meaningless to not refer to an experience of "I'ness". We can argue about what that "I" actually is, but in any case there is a "that which is it" that we are referring to. 

If we take it as Heidegger's dasein, and think of it in a process of "self deconstruction", to extend the process of deconstruction Derrida was talking about, borrowing, of course, from Heidegger, then, in each step, we can see how the self is a self constructing and deconstructing being, in every moment, for it is the very experience of being itself. 

However, becoming the process of that being and not being that is experiencing itself, to, perhaps, borrow it from Hegel, dasein becomes aware of the process of its own being, and the modality of being, and the how of it, in a sense, of how it is making itself what it is. 

Then it, in a sense, becomes the experience of deconstruction deconstructing itself, and there you can begin to see the "mystical" aspect that begins to reveal itself as that which is to you. And this unfolding of the self, also, of course, comes with its own questions. 

That is the level of being where it realizes that its process of being is being, and being, at that level, becomes the "authentication" of its own being. That is the process where the process also is that which is not process, and dear Hegel, again, shows himself to us ? Reality begins to reveal itself as that which does not reveal itself ?