The following is
the advanced, furthered, and refined sequel to The
Worldview of Completeness. I wrote this on July 1 2019. I have withheld it with concern for two months and I see no use in doing so any longer.
~
The highest intention I am aware of is to self-realize according to Earthly perfection. Earthly perfection is an ideal by which one lives in acknowledgment of the unavoidable laws of Nature and thus becomes a being which wields total mastery over itself. Earthly perfection is a double-sided ideal and both of its sides must be fully and equally acknowledged for the highest and most complete realization to be achieved. This dual-Nature is portrayed through the concept's two words. “Earthly” refers to mastering life in the human form, being strong, healthy, following through on intentions, capable of worldly success, and able to handle and live alongside the natural environment which provides sustenance. This aspect of Earthly perfection refers to successfully surviving in and mastering the material world. The other aspect, “perfection,” refers to eternal formlessness, wherein all things are perfect no matter what. This is the promise of eternal peace which is always available, and more or less can also be referred to as Heaven or the non-physical realm. The defining characteristic of Heaven is peace, and in the ideal of Earthly perfection this translates to complete non-violence. Thus, the aim of Earthly perfection is to survive and thrive successfully upon the Earth in a state of complete non-violence.
The two different aspects of this ideal are contradictory to one another. In fact, “to survive and thrive successfully upon the Earth in a state of complete non-violence” may be impossible. Here you have the inevitable violence of the physical world and the imperturbable peace of the non-physical vying for some kind of co-existence. Because they are opposites it is not a stretch to assume their separateness. From this assumption it appears that while any being lives on Earth it is doomed-- doomed to be a biological machine, facing illness, injury, famine, and the general difficulties which Nature provides. It appears to be a being without agency, trying by any means to survive and is suffering meaninglessly most of the time, with only fleeting pleasures as temporary relief. Meaningless suffering is the doom of the material world. While death is the ultimate, inevitable doom of the material world, it is also the only escape from meaningless suffering. Death is the achievement of eternal formlessness, where no thing matters and therefore there is peace.
The physical and non-physical realms are of infinite distance from one another: imagine them as the two ends of an infinitely-growing lighting bolt. It seems all we can do is stand at one end and peer out at the infinite vastness of a medium so sharp and unforgiving- lightning- until death occurs and we are then forced to stare from the other end. Religion encourages us to do our best to peer across the lightning and try to see its other end, Heaven, while we are still on Earth. However, to some extent (different for different religions), religion has us only peering, seeing us as hopeless biological machines praying for some kind of salvation which may or may not be ultimately realized upon death.
Whereas attempting to properly gain eternal formlessness is the work of religion, staving off the doom of the material world is the work of politics, medicine, technology, and business. What I have sought is some kind of unity of the ideals of both the physical and the non-physical, and I have never believed in trying to attain some lukewarm “middle ground” but instead in striving for an ideal that both includes and is higher than both sides. As such I seek not to walk across the lightning bolt but to go to its midpoint and then rise above it. This point which lives above the dual nature of reality is the ideal of Earthly perfection.
In the past I have stopped here, deciding that overall reality has three realms: in this I have stayed true to the idea of a Holy Trinity. Pick your model-- Physical, Non-physical, Metaphysical; Father, Son, Holy Spirit; Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu; Constant change (and thus apparent chaos), Unending sameness, Consciously applied order. Whatever the case I regarded these three realms to be equally infinite and equally essential to the nature of reality, with the first realm being the physical world (and its doom), the second being the perfection of eternal formlessness (i.e. Heaven), and the third being the heavenly ideal of peace applied to life on Earth while also thriving in this life, as opposed to being either non-violent to the point of trampled on or some kind of tyrant willing to do anything to get what is “his.” The ultimate aim has been to fulfill the divine three-part ideal by aligning with each one simultaneously and thus achieving completion as an energetic, living, conscious, physical and spiritual being.
However, I have found a finer and more intricate way to depict what I believe in-- that is, a more complete way. It began with considering the dual-nature of reality (physical and non-physical) and considering each as the endpoint of a lightning bolt. This singular lightning bolt represents the more-or-less normal, default depiction of reality-- the depiction humanity is doomed to without consciousness. Consciousness and the ability to implement it both creates and is endowed by a third realm. It has occurred to me that this third realm, in addition to being based upon the basic dual-nature of reality, also has its own dual-nature. This means that the third realm is composed of both 1. what is dreamed of, and 2. what is made real, or physically realized. As such, the third realm is not merely Earthly perfection but the totality of the dream of Earthly perfection. This is represented by its own lightning bolt, the middle of which passes through the middle of the first, lower lightning bolt. At one end of this higher lightning bolt is the dream, at the other end is Earthly perfection. In the dream exists one's consciousness, thoughts, feelings, dreams, visions, and so on-- the subjective experience. These two points are opposite combinations of the physical and the non-physical. The dream is basically non-physical, and it requires existence as a physical being in a physical world to be considered as a dream. Earthly perfection is basically physical, and without the non-physical realm no conception of perfection would be possible. Standing at the endpoint of the dream, it often seems that Earthly perfection is just that-- a dream. Likewise, in the moments where one stands at the endpoint of Earthly perfection, lost dreams can be observed which were necessarily left behind.
So, how is completeness achieved? So far there is one lightning bolt (the dream of Earthly perfection) above the other (the dual Nature of reality). The higher bolt is composed of two inverse combinations of the components of the lower bolt (i.e. physical and non-physical), one combination at each end. The higher bolt passes over the lower bolt at the exact mid-point of both, so that on paper the mid-point of both lightning bolts appears to be the same. This picture is completed by enclosing it in a circle. This circle completes the singularity of all four endpoints happening simultaneously. Because it brings light to the picture, the circle represents the sun, in contrast to the lightning. This complete picture is reality in its wholeness, and what I seek is the explicit realization of this completeness. Every part of the picture counts equally, both those that can be observed in physical reality and those that cannot be. The state of being which is capable of achieving completeness I refer to as pure heart, pure because its primary concern is its self-realization according to the divine ideal of completion. This heart is determined and refuses to give up on completely realizing all of reality's aspects in its own, coherent way. In particular, if the heart has dreams of love which cannot be realized per se, whether at the present moment or ever, then these dreams and their associated feelings become the inspiration for the attainment of Earthly perfection. Thus the heart never closes and the dreams are realized in a non-apparent manner. It is for such that I say, Love is the force that shapes you for your destiny. I have considered that the complete picture presented here- the cross of lightning bolts enclosed in a circle- may be a depiction not only of the nature of reality but also of pure heart.
It is worth mentioning that the lightning bolts exist in a cross because drawing them in this way, especially when they are inside of a circle, makes them appear as a wheel, and this wheel represents the importance of cycles in the nature of reality. As the wheel turns a different lightning-endpoint becomes prominent in different moments, and through all the moments of time each endpoint- each realm of reality- is visited over and over again, ideally more consciously each time. If the wheel turns fast enough then the visiting of all endpoints is nearly simultaneous-- which, for reality to be experienced as it is, it does indeed turn this quickly. Additionally, the redundancy of two basic elements- which may be paired as physical and non-physical, lightning and sun, or order and chaos- demonstrates that, Everything in reality is made of the same stuff, it is just a matter of the combination thereof.
I must also mention that if this symbol is drawn on paper it will reveal itself as an ancient, well-known symbol. I believe what I have described in this document- the nature of reality and the subsequent divine ideal of completeness- is the original meaning of this symbol. The purpose of the symbol is for the mind to grasp its complete meaning quickly-- so that the meaning does not always have to be spelled out in words. This original meaning has been lost to time, and perhaps in time it will be reestablished.
-Kimberly Wrate