27 May 2012

Notes - a nearly determined blank slate / proverbial powder / Mother's deception / Lesson Four

        An already warm mid-morning. Off to McD’s earlier to pick up an ice coffee and a Sunday paper for Carol. She has been watering plants and trees since seven. You read the paper and had breakfast but find your stomach is still a wee upset.

         I probably need a nap. Sugar was up to 136 whereas it has been in the lower 120’s – probably those sweet potato chips last night. I need to do my exercises today, but a nap needs to come first.

         You spent time playing laser tag with Jadah the Cat and she is looking for more play since Carol is still on the phone. Take your nap, boy. Later, dude. – Amorella
        
         You had your nap. Carol is washing clothes after her busy morning watering. You are feeling better and are going to get the blue car washed as you have a coupon from today’s paper. A few more errands/chores this afternoon since when you leave tomorrow you will be gone for two more weeks. Tim and Amy always take care of and check on the house which is easy as someone is almost always at home either them or one or more of their three in school kids.

         I am apprehensive about approaching today’s lesson (if there is one) because I know next to nothing to begin with and even less about ‘how the soul exists?’

         A nearly determined ‘blank slate’ is better for writing. Post. - Amorella



         Nearing mid-afternoon. You and Carol had lunch at Honey Baked Ham on Fields-Ertel Road after getting the blue car washed at Mike’s. Home, you read the newest Newsweek article, ”New Secrets of the Universe” by Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University.

         The article is easily read and thus well written; however, I was looking for a standout paragraph to sharpen my imagination on. In the process I was reminded of what science is: “. . . science is meant to give definitive, precise, and quantitative explanations, not ‘just so’ stories,” (p. 24). Finding scientific answers for cosmological theories is not an easy one, and I think finding and/or cataloging ‘metaphysical theories’ for heartansoulanmind leans inwardly for scientific investigation in the same way the study of cosmology leans outward. There are no definitive, precise, and quantitative explanations. Homo sapiens have an observable relative proof of higher consciousness right here on the planet with us at the top of the heap. Where is the relative proof of heart and soul? If you attribute ‘mind’ to a brain function it is of course measurable. It is impossible to show that a ‘mind-consciousness’ continues after physical death. Homo-sapiens are also ultimate chameleons when it comes to honestly displaying our most soul-wrenching and heartrending emotions – “all the world is a stage”.

         What you mean to say is that theoretically studying the hypothetical heartansoulanmind (to paraphrase your Grandma Schick) isn’t worth the little powder it would take to blow away the paper it is printed on. – Amorella

         You are so very good at humanely getting to the point, Amorella. I can almost hear Grandma saying those very words and then quickly pursing her lips at tongue’s conclusion – a very wonderful memory instantly brought to life with a few words. Amorella, you have at times, for lack of a better word, an angelic-like kindness and humor about you.



Grandma Schick in the early 1960's
(note the Howdy Doody cookie jar ;-) 

         Shortly you and Carol will be off for another errand or two. Post. - Amorella



        1708 hours. We are at Kroger’s on Tylersville on the way home from The Streets of Westchester Mall.

         Don’t write what you are presently thinking in terms of ‘thoughts from your heart’. Lack of understanding in such an area leads to self-doubt and confusion, that with you, generally leads to professed guilt on not being as good as you should be (instilled by the old parental directive in boyhood: “Be polite; Be honest”) – a maxim you continually attempt to live to your life by. - Amorella

         Be honest” is first. I place it before “Be polite”.     
    
         That is not the way you first remember it being said to you for a small infraction, probably having to do with taking too many mints or nuts from a bowl at Grandma Schick’s when she and Popo lived on East College Avenue in Westerville. The “Be honest” came later, probably reinforced by Cub Scouts. Your mother was never honest in her deception of her mother – hiding her cigarettes from Grandma (Popo S. died of a heart attack from smoking in the early fifties).

         I resented Mother’s deception. I resented her making me an accomplice to her deception of Grandma S. early on. Besides, Grandma knew the truth and let me know it. I tried lying myself, but while still in elementary school I found it did not work for me because of my very spotty memory as well as outright memory lapses. I still cannot remember most of 1965 or 66. I can’t remember which. A lot of Thunderbird wine in those days. No other drugs though; just alcohol. (because of fear someone would lace my drink with LSD which I had read may have been fatal for someone with my blood pressure condition). One has to have a great memory when sheorhe tells untruths particularly the variety I would come up with in telling stories about me and/or others – lots of exaggeration. I had to fake the stories were true to get a rise out of anyone – “it’s a true story, swear to God on a Bible it’s all true.” I gave it up sometime early in junior high school for very practical reasons. Plus, you can only swear on a Bible so many times before the story raises peoples’ doubts. I didn’t have the fortitude to continue making up stories and selling them as true. Being basically lazy at heart, I found it was usually far easier to tell the truth and hope the devil would be hanged for it.

         Dusk is on the rise and within the hour it will be dark. You have both begun repacking for the trip north tomorrow. Post. - Amorella



         Nearly dark. The trash is out at the street for pick up in the morning. You saw the last installment of “Grimm” so you are caught up for the season. Thursday has the last two hours of the Keith Southerland’s show that you have set to be copied. Otherwise, it is a light week TV-wise. – Amorella

         It is and the ‘summer’ season does not begin (mostly) on USA and TNT for a while yet. Time for a break anyway. I don’t mind. I enjoy the dialogue, characters, themes and plots on many of the shows and look forward to our favorites when they return in the fall.

         Carol has come down to watch a show or two herself; you have some time before bed. Why don’t we drop in on Lesson Four with a focus on the question: “How does the soul exist?” What do you think? -  Amorella

         Last night I came to the conclusion that the esoteric material on the “soul” in Wikipedia is like a discussion of what the telephone is. What the telephone is is not nearly so important as to how human beings use the telephone. This is a step or two below your question because I am assuming the soul is immortal or immortal-like so it was here before we were or was created when we arrived. This doesn’t do either. I have no idea how the soul exists? I am trying to place a definition for use. I need definitions first. Is the soul immortal? I assume the ‘soul’ is a part of each ‘higher conscious species’ no matter what world or universe the individual exists in.

         Keeping this simple, let’s use the following dictionary definition: the soul is  “the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.” (Oxford-American software) Expanding this definition to include alien species with souls, of course.

         The soul is immortal. The heart and mind are not immortal.

         Your reasoning is sound. – Amorella

         My mind darts back to Anaximander.

** **
For Anaximander, the principle of things, the constituent of all substances, is nothing determined and not an element such as water in Thales' view. Neither is it something halfway between air and water, or between air and fire, thicker than air and fire, or more subtle than water and earth. Anaximander argues that water cannot embrace all of the opposites found in nature — for example, water can only be wet, never dry — and therefore cannot be the one primary substance; nor could any of the other candidates. He postulated the apeiron as a substance that, although not directly perceptible to us, could explain the opposites he saw around him.
Anaximander explains how the four elements of ancient physics are formed, and how Earth and terrestrial beings are formed through their interactions. Unlike other Pre-Socratics, he never defines this principle precisely, and it has generally been understood (e.g., by Aristotle and by St. Augustine) as a sort of primal chaos. According to him, the Universe originates in the separation of opposites in the primordial matter. It embraces the opposites of hot and cold, wet and dry, and directs the movement of things; an entire host of shapes and differences then grow that are found in "all the worlds" (for he believed there were many).

Slightly edited from: Wikipedia - Anaximander
** **

         Can any material substance be immortal?

         No. It is a rule. – Amorella

         Does the soul exist in spite of its immortal nature?

         Yes. Beings may exist spiritually in spite of their physical nature and their free will; so it is reasonable for this to be turned about in the metaphysical world. – Amorella

         As souls are immortal, did they pre-existed before physical creatures of higher consciousness?

         This is reasonable. – Amorella

         We physical creatures with a spiritual existence are then quite small. The soul (in keeping with the concept that the metaphysical world is extremely efficient) has a primary purpose beyond keeping the heartanmind intact beyond physical death?

         Awkward question, boy, but this is also reasonable to think on. – Amorella

         I feel a need to summarize here. The soul is immortal and has a primary purpose (reason for being) beyond holding and keeping safe the heartanmind of a physically dead individual of higher consciousness.

         Yes. How then does the soul exist? – Amorella

         My first response here is “By the will of G---D?”

         The metaphysical system like a physical universe does not need G---D directly. It is set up to run its nature somewhat analogous, let’s say, to the physical universe and how it is set up, for clarification, and in this case, for human understanding. This concludes Lesson Four, boy. – Amorella

         I did not expect your directness.

         It is in my nature to be direct when the questions are sincere and appropriately in context. Post. - Amorella

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