Paradox of Reality

Just something I was thinking

Liquid steel running through my veins
Fear - trauma -

Panting in the waves
of existential reflection

The deepest grooves, lifes meaning
Consciousness? Real or not?
Is this,
my subjectivity?
Is it not real?

But the body is a fulcrum
of logical activity
We can't argue against
The brains essentiality

The brain is so logically evident
everything about our conscious experience
Emerges from it

But what is "it"?
This life I call my mind?

Perceptions. A deep sense of
"I exist"
Apart.

What is that?
Emergent, still,
There is an ontological
Essence. A source from which effectivity arises.

Tasting the depth of reality
Being so real inside your own mind
Aware of your awareness
Embedded within embeddedness

The natural emotion of this state
Awe?
Or Fear?
Both; at different times

You can grow so aware of yourself
Under-certain pharmacological conditions
You see yourself, from a "without" state

Without contingency. Separate from the objects
Yet you can become so entangled in "it"
The things we think
The meaning which forms from
Our bodies interaction with "it"

It becomes personal. Meanings reify
And the self becomes objectified
To itself

From a purely subjective framework
Reality is two

So cognitive sciences and
Evolutionary psychologies
Materialistic philosophies And
Cognitive neurobiology

Can go f**k themselves

None of us can know!
What consciousness is.

All we can know
Is what our own experience
Means to ourselves

Lifes meanings emerge from our
personal stories
From birth to who we are at this moment
That is us.

We cannot know because we cannot
Find the right categories
In which to judge
Our own knowingness

Its arbitrary what we choose.
And because we all choose differently
The only constant is the form:
Each of us exists in his own
Personal reality

The body, the world
Objects in space and time
Are absorbed and experienced
Ontologically -
By your subjective awareness

Everything exists "within"
The ridiculously biased framed by our early life
Relationships
Who's to say whose experiences
Give them a more correct
"experience" of reality>?

No one.

Perhaps reality is gradual.
Different human experiences lying on a continuum
Between "wholly gross minded"
And "wholly subtle minded"

A deeper awareness gives impression
Of a very dual world
Self and object

A more embodied experience
the grossness
Contains a remarkable paradox:

It reveals realities unity: inner and outer, self and object
And yet, if not known
Will drag the mind around
And beat it with the tools
Of its own-ignorance!

-----------------------------------------

We live in a world
Bemused by the loss of Self-Other
We act without knowing
That what we know is
Not all there is

Reified by our experiences
We become stuck in "worldviews"
Which block out all "others"
Dissociated, like the repulsion of magnets
The two states
Forming two oppositional meanings:
The one which makes us feel better
Is unconsciously "selected"
And the "other" "not me"
Kept properly from attention

Everyday, in every way
Our societal structures
Reflect these dynamics

Economically, our societies are reified
By a capitalistic structure:
Moved by embodied desire
It gets stuck in a pathological structure

Desires form as a consequence of
Evolutionary "soft assemblies"
SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, GRIEF, and PLAY.

We "link up" with the world
Through the movements
Of these emotional vectors

But above and beyond it all
Lies the dude sitting
In the frontal cortex
Somewhere in there, feeling his efficacy

Just in thinking of him
And in emphasizing the body - Brain
I felt a wave of anxiety
The brain! The brain!
Contains that "homoculus" inside!

The homoculus - a stupid f*****g word
Being an observer - an openness without
Objects that are inherent to it
Doesn't imply a "man"
Or a miniature person "seeing"

The whole point of the idea
Is to consider this as a piece of
Subjective knowledge
You can dismiss it or consider it
Just don't pretend it's
Not an open question

And surely, you'll b***h
About the duality:
Cartesian f****r!
Because I note
The subjective reality

And by the way --
Haven't we already involved duality?
In positing the existence of
A quantum reality?
A reality whose measurements
Are known and accepted?

Whose features describe what we experience
Objectively?
Isnt there already
An implied reality?
In everything we see?

Has anyone ever seen an atom?
No. Molecules we see
But not the atoms which compose them.

And if we did see them, presumably
They'd be existing in a
Rather paradoxical way

The physicalist, materialist
Cannot cope with the existential reality
The emotional response: the structures which form
Certain views selected,
Other views ignored:
Rigidying, unwittingly,
Being so certain in its certainty
And ignoring, fundamentally

The paradox of reality.

Reviews

[AprilRN1210]

wow... that is the first word that comes to mind while reading this and lingers after I have finished.. wheeew, pretty powerful language and strong opinions expressed in this thought-provoking piece, my friend.. have to copy and paste this stanza as it jumped out at me..

"So cognitive sciences and
Evolutionary psychologies
Materialistic philosophies And
Cognitive neurobiology

Can go f**k themselves".......while I can see, understand, and relate to this attitude, I also see where these have been beneficial in certain circumstances.. it did however within the evolution of this piece make me giggle and shake my head in agreement.. (for the most part)..


"We "link up" with the world
Through the movements
Of these emotional vectors".... that is how the mind processes things.... experiences... lessons taught... observations... and emotions... it takes questioning what society tries to "brainwash" you with and researching, learning, and thinking for yourself to break those tainted links..

"Reified by our experiences
We become stuck in "worldviews"
Which block out all "others"
Dissociated, like the repulsion of magnets
The two states
Forming two oppositional meanings:
The one which makes us feel better
Is unconsciously "selected"
And the "other" "not me"
Kept properly from attention".....I really enjoyed the metaphor and phrasing that you used to describe this.. it is easier to disassociate yourself from the ugly, the unwanted, the painful, the hard and just do what it easier, what feels good, what keeps you in the "comfortable".. there are so many close-minded, ignorant individuals that would rather follow the herd, than to think for themselves.. sad.. and those are usually the ones who choose to judge others who refuse to conform....

another well written piece.. I did notice a few places needing apostrophes, but other than that, good job!

[Mike Defreitas]

I read a lot and yesterday I was being confronted by the existential reality. It got me thinking, you can't philosophize independent of what you observe happening within yourself psychologically. If you do one with-out the other, if you incline yourself towards materialistic conclusions - to "reduce" consciousness to something that it is not i.e matter - logically then I can only deduce that you are rigidly "dissociating" the alternative viewpoint because you can't tolerate the paradox.

Choosing and being "certain in your certainty" - without awareness of the contradicting problems in your position, psychologically speaking, is affectively moderate. You can actually grow comfortable - and even happy - when your mind, your cognitions, settle on a "certainty".

The hilarious thing is that most of the amazingly intelligent and sophisticated materialists - in those fields I mentioned above, cognitive science, academic psychology, neurosciences, etc - the simply fact is: you've chosen this position because you are TERRIFIED of what the REAL picture actually looks and feels like.

People merely convince themselves - or rather, our "affects" direct the narrative of our thinking - and ignore the rather obvious psychoanalytical fact that they are avoiding the paradox; avoiding the non-linear "stickiness" of the problem of consciousness.

Thanks for the kind review. Like I said - I was very deeply in this state, emotionally affected and anxious, and I needed my "own" certainty, which the poetry - or flow of ideas - sought to resolve.

My conclusion I think hits the spot: were ignorant in the most fundamental way: we can't explain how it is we can use our consciousness to explain the world; but cant use our consciousness to explain our consciousness (at least not at this point in time)

[AprilRN1210]

that "certainty" is our footing, from which we use to stabilize "ourselves".. without it.. we feel and are, in fact, vulnerable.. sometimes, it is easier to avoid or dismiss those ideas in which we cannot wrap our heads around... you are more than welcome.. it is always a pleasure.