Chapter Three

3

From this chapter I got that everything is so complex that it would and should be impossible to explain any and all of it. We separate ourselves from parts of ourselves to attempt to classify ourselves but in doing so, in simplifying things, we loose what it is to be ourselves. To be truly who we are and not what some people decide to write down on paper; yes we are material (but what is material), yes we are soul (but what is soul), yes we are energy (but what is energy). In the classification of who we are we have also lost what it is to be individual. We are our universe and our universe is us.

Once again we are shown that by simplification and other methods we have taken ourselves out of our very existence. If we are the universe then why are we not deity, if we are not deity then it would be impossible for us to ‘be’ the universe. Perhaps this is why we have removed ourselves from what we truly are. When things get difficult we must take a step back and remove things, take things apart and figure out why pieces are not fitting into place.

In truth we are bred into what it means to be human to modern man and not spiritual man. By reading this chapter I understand now that there are a variety of different definitions of what it is to be human, or be man. Unfortunately the former definition, modern man, is that we are separate from the each other, the world, and the universe; and that these things must be controlled in order for order to be maintained, almost playing ‘god’ as it were. But for the spiritual man or philosophical man, each of us, the world and the universe are one and the same. There is no difference from one thing to the next except perhaps appearance, but as it has been said in the past many times, appearances can (and are) deceiving.

\"Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.\"

For me, that means the big picture. The big picture is sometimes hard to get (to not see the forest because of all the trees), and sometimes it might even be scary and we squint our eyes to avoid it, as in 'we are a unique manifestation of the whole'.

BUT to ignore it means to be playing the game over and over and we can't win. Neither black nor white should win, it's a game where the game is the goal and NOT the success at the end. We should be present in the game/life not always planning for the future.

That does not mean eating chocolate all day and getting sick of it, it simply means that we are alive now, or in the words of Goethe: Nothing is worth more than this day. Of course I plan for tomorrow, go to school, get an education, etc. but we should not forget today. Today the sun is shining, the birds are singing and we should enjoy that. Don't run through your life harried for some future goal. Carpe Diem.

Again, as for getting the big picture, intuitiveley I think I have known this, but to really think about it, to see it in print, that's ... astounding:

\"The individual may be seen, instead, as one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself...\"

And:

\"For every individual is a unique manifestatioon of the Whole...\"

I am still digesting that.

A genuine Fake, an interesting term no doubt. But are we all really all faking who we really are? or are we what we understand ourselves to be? If you understand yourself to be from this world rather than just in it than you must feel that everyone is wearing a mask when in fact they just have their eyes closed and don't understand what they really are.

So would it be better to call this chapter \"How to be Genuinely Blind\"?

Perhaps we are not hiding in walls of skin trying to hide but rather most people are blind and their skin is simply a tall brick wall. You can walk around that wall your whole life and not find a door or opening and conclude that \"this\" is the whole world when in truth if you simply opened your eyes you would see that the sky stretches far past the brick walls and that the wall ends just a few feet above your highest reach and that all you have to do is jump and climb on top. From this point you can clearly see endless fields and blind people living between their 4 brick walls.

The part about school \"preparing you\" is without a doubt in my mind absolutely, unquestionably, TRUE. In all the years I went through the public school system I was told they were preparing me for the next grade, and the same with the next and the next and then the next until I was prepared for college. I was never told that I was in a class to experience things and to better my self through my own free will in this time and place, rather, I was forcibly being prepared for the forever intangible future.

So in conclusion, rather than trying to fake who we are, why don't we all just open our eyes and gaze at the sky above.

This rather confused me and gives me the conclusion that we fake our selves we change constantly we do not have our own ideals or ideas as the mind picls up ideals and ideas from somewere else and then uses them thus becomeing something its not. thats about all other then confusion.