Do We Want to Liberate Ourselves from the ‘Deception’ of ‘New Year’?

Ok, one can understand the Chinese ‘Spring Festival’ that celebrates cyclic renewal, but ‘cyclic renewal’ does NOT connote an ‘ending’ to something and the subsequent ‘new beginning’ to something else.  Of course, if we decide to name an ‘epoch’ and at some point decide that ‘that epoch’ has run its course and name a ‘new epoch’, we can make it ‘sound’ (in linguistic discourse) as if the continuing relational transformation is being ‘pre-empted’ by the ‘death’ of one period of time and the ‘birth’ of a new period of time.

Is an ‘epoch’ ‘real’?  Epoch: … An extended period of time usually characterized by a distinctive development or by a memorable series of events.

Western culture seems to embrace the notion that the various ‘epochs’ are ‘real’, but surely they can only be Invented Realities’ since what is ‘really real’ (as validated by our actual relational experience and by modern physics) is the transforming relational continuum we share inclusion in, which does not ‘break down into separate parts’.

Our ‘experiential reality’  is the ‘more comprehensive ‘relational reality’, and it is unlike our abstract language-based ‘Invented Reality’ . There is cause for concern here since Western culture employs ‘Invented Reality’ as its ‘operative reality’.

This ‘quibbling’ over the ‘reality’ of ‘the New Year’ may seem like much ado about nothing, but it is informing us of this major ‘split’ between the ‘reality’ of Western culture and the ‘reality’ of indigenous aboriginal and Taoist cultures which accord with the ‘reality’ of modern physics.

Do you believe in ‘sorcery’?   The belief in ‘sorcery’ is problematic (psychosis-cultivating) yet belief in sorcery is foundational to Western culture, and it comes from language and grammar.  Western culture language-and-grammar have us believe in the abstract concept of ‘being’ or ‘beings’ (notional ‘things-in-themselves’) with the notional powers of locally sourcing actions and developments.  There is no way to reconcile ‘Invented Reality’ aka ‘Western culture ‘normality’ based on belief in ‘sorcery‘, with the reality of our relational experience as supported by modern physics.

If we understand the world dynamic by way of our actual experience; i.e. of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum, then a ‘local-in-time-and-space’ development can only be an ‘Invented Reality’; i.e. our Western culture based ‘society’ has been accused (rightfully, in my view) of ‘Inventing Reality’.  This ‘Invented Reality’ that we (Western culture acculturated adherents) employ as our ‘operative reality’ is very different from the ‘relational reality’ of our actual relational experience as relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.

The celebration of continual renewal, as in the Chinese ‘Spring Festival’ (Chinese ‘New Year’) is all about relational cycles of renewal, …. renewal in terms of transformation wherein ‘death’ and ‘birth’ is language and grammar based metaphorical abstraction rather than ‘reality’.

Those of us raised (indoctrinated) within Western culture tend to ponder this in terms of whether we will retain some kind of ‘conscious-like awareness’ after our physical presence is recycled in the transforming relational continuum.  But such a question surfaces from the ‘ego’ which is like trying to change a light-bulb after putting one’s ladder up against the wrong wall.  The weakening and dissipating of the boil in the flow is NOT the manifestation of two different things; i.e. the loss of kinetic energy by the boil and the gain of potential energy by the flow; …  because the notion of ‘two separate things’ is only ‘appearance’; … there is only one thing; i.e. relational transformation within the energy field/flow.

Simply stated, since the ‘boil’ (e.g. the ‘content’ or ‘inhabitant’) and the ‘flow’ (i.e. the ‘container’ or ‘habitat’) are only one (the ‘boil’ is how flow (fluid transformation) ‘appears’), we err in speaking and thinking of them as if they were two separate ‘things-in-themselves’.  Psychological confusion arises here, from the ‘double error’ problem (Nietzsche) that arises wherein we may sometimes credit the ‘boil’ with sourcing the ‘flow’ (‘nature’ in the ‘nature-nurture’ dichotomy) and we sometimes credit the ‘flow’ with ‘sourcing’ the ‘boil’ (‘nurture’ in the ‘nature’-nurture’ dichotomy).

“Our judgement has us conclude that every change must have an author”;–but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become.”–To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’, 531

This double error is the source of basic ambiguities in logic; e.g. does the ‘boil’ source the ‘flow’ or does the ‘flow’ source the ‘boil’?  Is the youth’s violent/criminal behaviour deriving from his rotten core or is it induced by the corrupt social dynamic in which he is situationally included? [hint: why not understand the ‘boil’ as the way flow ‘appears’ rather than using ‘naming’ to impute ‘being’ and ‘grammar’ to endow action-sourcing powers to both ‘boil’ and ‘flow’ so that ‘the two are understood as one; i.e. so that the ‘nature-nurture’ antimony, which stems from language and grammar, never arises, as it never does in pre-lingual relational experience.

There would be no other resource but to corner one’s adversary with a contradiction. But the experiment has been attempted and it has not succeeded. Many antinomies have been pointed out, and the discord has remained; no one has been convinced. It is always possible to extricate oneself from a contradiction by a change of arguments ; I mean by a distinguo.” — Henri Poincaré

This psychological exposure to this ambiguous split in understanding DOES NOT ONLY ARISE ‘between people’ who adopt one or the other view (‘nature’ over ‘nurture’ or ‘nurture’ over ‘nature’), the problem may ‘DIVIDE THE SELF’ as in ‘schizophrenia’ /’bipolar disorder’.

This ‘divided self’ stems from this ambiguity which is ‘resolved’ in modern physics and in the indigenous aboriginal culture, by restoring relational inspiration to its natural precedence over ego-based rational asserting.  That is to say, the ambiguity problem is the artifact of Western language and grammar that promote the abstract concept of ‘ego’ that arises with the (language and grammar based) notions of ‘being’ and ‘powers of sourcing actions and developments’. Language and grammar allow us to impart the power of ‘sorcery’ to both the individual and the collective as in the ‘nature’ – ‘nurture’ dichotomy and this sets up the division into ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ and their unending squabble (antimony), ALL OF WHICH ARISES DEPENDENTLY ON FIRST ASSUMING THE REALITY OF ‘SORCERY’.

 

Healing of the ‘divided self’ is therefore NOT the healing of a ‘sick self’, as Western culture would have it, but the healing of the ego’s notion of the self as a ‘thing-in-itself’ hence ‘a divided self’.  ‘Healing’ is therefore to be found by way of ‘letting the divided self heal itself’, by ‘letting go’ of the impression of the ‘divided self’, by embracing ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (all my relations) and as in ‘The surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ and as in ‘the indigenous aboriginal learning circle’ where the participants can come to understand themselves as inclusions in something greater than themselves that they can come to know and embrace by way of inspiration that fills the heart, … suspending the dividing of the self by way of  … ego that swells the head.

The weakening and dissipating of the ‘boil’ in the flow is giving life (continuing transformation) to the flow;

“The name of the bow (bios) is life (bios), but its work is death.”  –Heraclitus

The work of the ‘boil’ is transformation as manifests in ‘flow’.  Language lends itself to our ‘personifying’ of the ‘boil’ and we can do this in two different senses;

(a) Sorcery: Language and grammar can be used to portray the ‘boil’ as the ‘source’ of flow (transformation)

(b) Appearance/Apparition: As Wittgenstein observes in his closing proposition in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, this understanding lies ‘beyond language-based articulation’.  “that which we are unable to capture in language, we must pass over in silence.”  (“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” )

This basic difference in understanding the nature of the world we live in separates Western culture and Newtonian physics (a), ….  from indigenous aboriginal/Taoist culture and modern physics, (b).

THIS IS A CULTURE-CHANGER, RIGHT HERE; I.E. IN (A), ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS ARE ATTRIBUTED TO PARTICULAR ‘SOURCING AGENCIES’ AS IN WESTERN CULTURE AND NEWTONIAN PHYSICS WHILE IN (B) THERE IS NO ATTRIBUTION OF SORCERY, THERE IS ONLY RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION AS IN MODERN PHYSICS.

IN THE PRESENCE OF A FOUL SMELL, ONE MIGHT SIGNAL THE ‘SOURCE’ BY POINTING THE FINGER AT THE MOUTH OF THE MAN WHO HAS BEEN EATING GARLIC SAUSAGE, AND THEN POINT TO THE GARLIC SAUSAGE ON THE TABLE AND THEN TO THE PIGS OUTSIDE IN THE PEN THAT PROVIDED THE PORK AND THE GARLIC IN THE GARDEN.  LOGIC SERVES ONLY TO AFFIRM  THE TRUTH OF LANGUAGE-LIMITED PROPOSITIONS [E.G. THE MAN IS THE SOURCE OF THE FOUL SMELL],… PROPOSITIONS WHICH ARE INNATELY INCOMPLETE.

New Year … New Year … New Year… BACK TO THE ISSUES WITH ‘NEW YEAR’.

I would not be surprised if the reader is getting lost in what seems like a rambling written discourse, but this discourse has to lay the groundwork for ‘what the problem is’ with the ‘celebration of New Years’.

The ‘groundwork’ that is being laid in this discourse, is aimed at bringing forth the role of language in imputing ‘sourcery’ (sorcery) to dynamics that are purely relational.   In our attempt to use language to capture and share our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum, we invent ‘things-in-themselves’ and then invent for them imaginary powers of ‘sourcing’ actions and developments.  The concept of ‘ego’ as ‘sorcerer’ gives us the basic model for this psychological RE-FRAMING of dynamics that are purely relational, and are understood as relational in modern physics and in ‘reality’ as understood in the indigenous aboriginal and Taoist cultures.

That is, Western usage of ‘language and grammar’ ‘injects’ the abstraction of ‘causal agency’ (sourcery) as the notional ‘animating source’ of dynamics that are, in nature, purely relational.  As Nietzsche observes, the pivotal archetype for this language-based reconstruction of ‘reality’ (which departs from our relational experience based reality) is ‘ego’;

“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a faculty. Today we know that it is only a word.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

New Year, … New Year, … New Year, …..   What is the significance of ‘New Year’? — ‘New Year’ is a concept that ‘linearizes’ the relational transformation we are situationally included in, … so that we can shift our understanding of our experience from ‘inclusional experience’ to visual perception by laying out a mock-up of it out in front of us as a left-to-right development as on a flat page or table, showing the beginnings and endings of each year configured as rectangular boxes, the contents of whose interiors are sequences of notable ‘events’ that mark the passing of the particular year from beginning to end.

In reality, there is no ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ to a ‘year’ or to any ‘interval of time’, such concepts being abstractions which rest dependently on the initial abstraction of ‘being’ that is imputed to an ‘interval of time’.  The ‘interval of time’ is given ‘thing-in-itself’ or ‘being’ status when it is; …  characterized by a distinctive development or by a memorable series of events.

The concept of ‘time’ can be (and is) used to remove us from our experiential sense of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum and psychologically ‘re-situate us’ OUTSIDE of the continuum so that we can be ‘voyeur observers’ of ongoing dynamics with a ‘GOD’S-EYE-VIEW’.  This view is of course, the innately limited ‘perspective view’ that, as Nietzsche points out, must be brought into connective relational confluence with many such ‘perspective views’ in order to co-constitute the ‘holographic’ or ‘inclusional’ view.

There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’; the more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘concept’ of the thing, our ‘objectivity’.– Nietzsche

Modern physics affirms Nietzsche’s observations with its ‘Surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ as does Wittgenstein’s concluding propositions in ‘Tractatus…’;

6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein’s final two propositions in ‘Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

While our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum has no time-line-based divisions representing, for example, ‘yesterday’, ‘today’, and ‘tomorrow’, language and grammar stimulate cognitive abstracting to give us the sense of ‘the passage of time’ .  Together with the abstractions of ‘beings’ notionally endowed with the powers of ‘sourcing’ actions and developments, we get the ‘Invented Reality’ that serves as the ‘operative reality’ of Western culture.  

Repeating, for the purpose of helping to distinguish in the mind between the ‘inclusion understanding’ and the ‘visual perspective’;

New Year, … New Year, … New Year, …..   What is the significance of ‘New Year’? — ‘New Year’ is a concept that ‘linearizes’ the relational transformation we are situationally included in, … so that we can shift our understanding of our experience from ‘inclusional experience’ to visual perception by laying out a mock-up of it out in front of us as a left-to-right development as on a flat page or table, showing the beginnings and endings of each year configured as rectangular boxes, the contents of whose interiors are sequences of notable ‘events’ that mark the passing of the particular year from beginning to end.

In other words, ‘New Year’ is an abstract concept that supports the ‘Invented Reality’ since the ‘Invented Reality’ is based on the abstractions of ‘beings’ (‘things-in-themselves’) notionally endowed with the powers of sourcing actions and developments that are like ‘parcels’ loaded into a boxcar like ‘new year’, a ‘show-and-tell’ aide that allows us to portray the relational world we are included in, as if it were ‘out there in front of us’ in a ‘visual perspective’.   The ‘visual perspective’ lends itself to language based articulation whereas, our inclusion in a transforming relational continuum is ‘beyond capture in language’ since; ‘everything is in flux’ (Heraclitus).  This puts us in the plight pointed out by Wittgenstein in his final proposition in Tractactus … “ Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Western culture ‘relies on this ‘Invented Reality’ to give a home to the abstract conceptualizing of a human, … NOT as a relational form in the transforming relational continuum, but rather as an ‘independently-existing-thing-in-itself-being’ (thanks to language and naming) with the notional powers of ‘sourcing’ actions and developments.

In other words, this ‘Invented Reality’ makes the ego sense of self as a sorcerer of its own actions and developments psychologically viable in the sense of its (linguistically constructed) ‘internal consistency’.  Of course, the consistency that is ‘sacrificed’ is the consistency with our ‘experiential reality’  wherein, … ‘tomorrow never happens’, …. as Janis Joplin ‘poetically’ puts it, … ‘it’s all the same fucking day’.

 

SYNOPSIS

The above note on the problematic nature of the notion of ‘New Year’ is not only ‘hard to read’, it is ‘hard to write’.   This is because;

(a) it has to straddle two very different ‘realities’; i.e. (i) Western culture reality, wherein the concept of a ‘New Year’ seems perfectly ‘normal’ and, (ii) ‘relational reality’ wherein there is no ‘passage of time’, there is only the transforming relational continuum.

(b) This written language we are using to share understandings like this, is fundamentally limited in its ability to convey relational understanding.   This is where Wittgenstein ‘is coming from’, in his final Tractatus’ proposition; Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

(c) ‘relational reality’ can only be inferred in the manner of the ‘Surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’.  This means that the reader must ‘read between the lines’ to get the intended meaning because the ‘reality’ of living in a transforming relational continuum cannot be captured in terms of explicit, rational propositions.

The key points are as follows;

-1- Because ‘everything is in flux’, ‘names’ or ‘nouns’ cannot be used at ‘face value’ (as ‘things-in-themselves’) as in grammatical structures which impute to them, notionally, the power to ‘source’ actions and developments, they can only be used to form relational complexes (webs of relations) that can serve to induce impressions of relational transformation.

-2- Multiple perspectives must be brought into connective confluence in order to ‘image’ the transforming relational dynamic.  The ‘coherency’ in the ‘connective relational confluence’ is the ‘relational reality’ that can thus be harvested as an intuitive understanding (Whereof one cannot [directly, explicitly] speak, …).  The ‘learning circle’ of the indigenous aboriginal cultural tradition is an example of an approach for harvesting an inarticulable understanding of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.

-3- The ‘Invented Reality’ that is employed as the Western culture ‘operative reality’ is the source of aberrant social dynamics and psychosis (including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder).  The ‘Invented Reality’ is sourced by belief in ‘ego’ wherein the Western culture adherent is coached in the cultural belief in one’s ‘thing-in-itself’ ‘being’, notionally endowed with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.

-4- Lock-in and associated ‘high switching costs hold Western culture adherents back from accepting the findings of modern physics; i.e. in the ‘Invented Reality’, individuals are credited with being the ‘source’ of productive actions and developments and are thus ‘compensated’ on this basis (in contrast with the indigenous aboriginal ‘relational’ understanding of provenance) and are vested with more than average influence as to changes in the social structures.  Thus, a new social ‘reality’ paradigm that does NOT attribute actions and developments to ‘beings’ and their notional ‘powers of sorcery’ may be left ‘waiting for approval from the ‘powers that be’ who have been appointed on the basis of their superior ‘sorcery’.  As Henri Laborit points out in ‘La Nouvelle Grille’ (the new framework);

We’ who explore such topics, cannot easily share them because (a) they do not fit into the typical dinner conversation format of our present culture, since to express them takes a lot of relational connections that can’t fit into a rapid-fire repartee, and (b) because the humanism  implicit in trying to share them is not seen as “a humanism of real worth” since it undermines, besmirches or topples the esteemed icons, pillars of society, founding fathers, and celebrities of the culture-in-place.

  – Henri Laborit, ‘La Nouvelle Grille’

-5- Western women’s movements and minority movements are tending to entrench Western culture dysfunction that is already problematic and psychosis-inducing. [The remedy is NOT to address the disparities in ‘rewards’ that society delivers on the basis of ‘respective’ contributions to the sourcing of positive actions and developments; the problem lies instead, in the Western culture assumption that humans are ‘beings’ with the powers of sourcing actions and developments].

By comparison, in indigenous aboriginal cultures (those which have retained their pre-colonization cultural values) there is no assumption that humans are ‘beings’ with their own ‘powers of sourcing actions and developments’, thus there is an ethic of respecting the contributions of all (and not only humans) within an interdependent relational matrix (e.g. ‘Who Shall Speak for Wolf?’).  Meanwhile, Western culture, rather than moving towards these same relational understandings as implied in modern physics, continues to go to war with itself to legislate a ‘sorcery’ based system of values and rewards.  As the poet Claribel Alegria observes; ‘my father was a famous engineer, my mother had no name’.   This could be interpreted in two ways as follows;

(a) In accordance with modern physics, the world is a transforming relational continuum wherein the organizing principle is the cultivating of relational balance and harmony (as captured in ‘mitakuye oyasin’, ‘we are all related’).  I.e. ‘men’ and ‘women’ are NOT things-in-themselves but strands in an interdependent web-of-life.

(b)  In accordance with classical physics, the world dynamic is by way of local material beings [humans, organisms, organizations (nations, corporations)] notionally endowed with powers of ‘sourcing’ actions and developments (‘sorcery’), and thus rewarded and respected (or punished and reviled) on this basis.

In Western politics and society in general, the (b) system of rewards and recognition prevails and its ‘equitability’ is being seriously questioned, however, the basic problem, which is Western cultural belief in ‘sorcery’, is NOT being questioned.  Revisions are being sought so as to revise rewards and punishments for ‘sorcery’ so as to improve the overall functioning of the culture seen as a ‘being’-based collection of sorcerers of actions and developments.  E.g. there is lobbying for an increase in rewards to women for their positive ‘sorcery’ contributions’ and an increase in punishments to males for their negative sorcery contributions.

The fact that there is no such thing as ‘sorcery’ is being missed.  That is, the’boil’ in the ‘flow’ is ‘appearance’, it is not the ‘source’ of the flow.  That is, the words ‘boil’ and ‘flow’ are separate names but there is no ‘inhabitant’ – ‘habitat’ separation going on here.  As in the yin/yang allusion, the separation of opposites is ‘appearance’.   Transformation is intrinsically ‘relational’ and without separation into ‘inhabitant’ and ‘habitat’.

The Chinese ‘Spring Festival’ celebrates cyclic renewal.  The Western ‘New Year’ celebrates the end of the outgoing year and the beginning of the incoming year.   These are not the same understandings.

If we let go of our beady crows-eye perspective in viewing the newly emerging and strengthening boil, we can see, instead, the relationally transforming flow.

And if we let go of our beady crows-eye perspective in viewing the established boil weaken and dissipate, we can see, instead, the relationally transforming flow.

It is one thing to let go of our focus on the ‘boil’ so that we can see, instead, nature’s flowing transformation in which the ‘boil’ is an ‘appearance’, but what if we ‘name’ the ‘boil’ as we name our children? Not with a relational name as in the indigenous aboriginal culture, but with an explicit name that we interpret as signifying an ‘independently-existing’ ‘thing-in-itself’ with its own powers of sourcing actions and developments?  How much harder is it, then, to see our child as ‘one with everything’?

If we were not dealing with ‘humans’ but were dealing with a ‘boil’ in the ‘flow’, we just might be able to ‘blur our beady crows-eye perspective’ and see the ‘flow’ as primary, as understood in modern physics; i.e. if we backed off our imposing of language and naming, we might be able to see the ‘boil’ as an ‘appearance’ manifesting in the flow and not as a ‘separate thing-in-itself’ with its own powers of sorcery of actions and developments.  If we tried, we would likely discover the difficulty in ‘holding on to that understanding while; …

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. –-Wittgenstein

Therein lies the problem for us Western culture adherents.  How diligently we have trained our children (as our parents trained us) to think in terms of their names giving explicit definition to who they are as if they are independently-existing ‘things-in-themselves’ with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments.

What if our child, …. what if we are, all of us, ‘appearances’ as we are understood to be in modern physics, indigenous aboriginal and Taoist ‘reality’?

We would then see Western culture’s abstract ‘normality’ that ‘splits apart’ the ‘boil’ and the ‘flow’ as politically correct ‘schizophrenia’

“What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.” – R. D. Laing, author of ‘The Divided Self’

The celebration of the ‘New Year’ is a reinforcing of the foundational values in the ‘Invented Reality’.  It encourages us to ‘gird our loins’ for another ‘successful year of ‘sorcery”, which is to say, another year of cultivating the ‘dividing of the self’.

 

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Exercise:  Experiencing ‘sensual recall’ of the realm beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Nurture’ [The ‘level 1 reality that lies beyond reality levels 2 and 3]

This is not difficult to ‘get to’, … just difficult to ‘hold on to’.

Imagine, in an alternating sequence, that (a) you ‘are’ the ‘boil’ that is ‘sourcing’ the ‘flow’ and then (b) that you ‘are’ the ‘flow’ that is ‘sourcing’ the ‘boil’ and after contemplating this several times in both ‘directions’, … so that you are comfortable with thinking of this ‘sourcing’ in either direction (boil-soures-flow or flow-sources-boil), think of how a ‘boil’ eventually disappears and ‘becomes one’ with the flow that is transformed in assimilating the ‘boil’, … suggesting that what you are looking at IS ‘ONE THING’ —  TRANSFORMATION ITSELF … and not ‘something’ that is transforming ‘something else’ (i.e. ‘boil transforming flow’ or ‘flow-transforming boil’).

While the word ‘assimilate’ is used (i.e. ‘flow assimilates the boil’), what is intended lies beyond language; i.e. the ‘boil’ is purely relational ‘appearance’ and is never ‘something other’ than the transforming flow’.

What is intended is that; ‘IN REALITY, THE WORLD AS A RELATIONAL UNUM IS UNDERGOING TRANSFORMATION (thus, the abstract concept of ‘suboptimization’ as in the notion that we can change some or other part of the world as if it were separate from the rest, is impossible.  In addition, the implied abstract notion of our extracting ourselves from the world so as to change the world apart from ourselves is also impossible.  ‘Impossible’ is used here to imply ‘unreal’ since it is ‘possible’, with the help of language and grammar, to PSCYCHO-LOGICALLY INVENT AN ABSTRACT REALITY that is not ‘realizable’ in terms of our experience as relational forms within a transforming relational continuum.  Such ‘Invented Reality’ can be a useful guide to behaviour WHERE WE DO NOT LET IT HIJACK THE NATURAL PRIMACY OF OUR RELATIONAL EXPERIENCE.

As all traces of the ‘boil’ are subsumed in the ‘flow’ so that nothing remains visible but the relatively smooth surface of the flow, the flow is NO LONGER the same flow but is transformed in its assimilating of the ‘boil. In fact, ‘flow’ and ‘boil-outwelling-and-inwelling’ are one and the same relational transformation.  By the same token, continents are continually outwelling and subducting and we impute thing-in-itself ‘being’ to the relational forms in the flow by ‘naming’ the continents, psychologically reducing this relational transformation to an INVENTED REALITY that we picture in terms of ‘CONTINENTAL DRIFT’, forcing us to ‘invent’ a notional ‘containing space’ in which this ‘drifting’ is taking place [‘Seafloor spreading’ is the alternative approach to describing what is, at base, ‘relational transformation’, but here we are back to the same abstract (innately ambiguous) ‘dichotomy’ as in the ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ dichotomy, and thus once again in implicit denial that relational transformation is only accessible as ‘appearance’.].

It is possible to understand how the ‘boil’ (which was never ‘something physically separate’ but only ‘visually distinguishable’), lives on in the relationally transformed flow.

Imagine that you are the boil-in-transition (that you are ‘all-my-relations’ in transition).  The understanding is NOT that you have simply ‘gone’ when the ‘boil’ is no longer visible since the energies in the ‘boil’ are now captured as the transformation in the flow.

When someone (the ‘boil’) ‘dies’, it is intuitive that this ‘death’ is something more relationally profound than the simple ‘subtraction’ of a ‘thing-in-itself’ as might be dealt with by crossing their name out of the phone book and other membership/activity lists, but constitutes instead, transformation of an unending matrix of relations. The intuitive appeal of understanding ‘reality’ in terms of relational transformation (rather than in the Western culture’s rational terms of ‘on/off being’) manifests, for example, in the huge popularity of the relational transformation invoking poem ‘Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep’. https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Do_Not_Stand_at_My_Grave_and_Weep#BBC_poll

Western culture ceremonies that highlight ‘beginnings’ and ‘endings’ such as ‘New Year’, ‘birth’ and ‘death’ feed ‘perspective-constrained’ understanding such as ‘Invented Reality’ that eclipses our natural relational understanding.   Is it true that ‘Columbus discovered the New World?  Or is this exemplary of how Western culture uses language and grammar to intellectually ‘Invent Reality’ and psychologically ‘wallpaper’ it over top of the reality of our sensual relational experience?

 

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Note:

The ‘boil’ is really ‘wave energy’ and ‘wave energy’ is the energy of relational transformation; thus, the ‘boil’ gives itself up in its transforming of the flow.  This ‘giving-itself-up’ in the service of (relational) transformation is characteristic of wave energy.

“The name of the bow (bios) is life (bios), but its work is death.”  –Heraclitus

That is, the relational forms in nature are resonance-based and they expend their resonances in transforming the flow they are included in.

We are the relations we are included in, as suggested by the ‘Surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ (Chew and Wheeler) and by ‘mitakuye oyasin’.

In other words, we are ‘relational transformation’.  If you want to know how relational transformation manifests or ‘appears’, simply experience relational dynamics in the transforming relational continuum’, … but hold back on imputing any ‘thing-in-itself being’ to relational forms [i.e. hold back from employing language and grammar to name forms and describe them as if they are ‘things-in-themselves’ with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments; i.e. instead, accept the relational forms and their dynamics as ‘how transformation appears’.

“that which we are unable to capture in language, we must pass over in silence.”  (“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” ) — Wittgenstein

Our ability to speak about the relational transformation we are included in, the reality of our actual relational experience, is as do-able as biting one’s own forehead; i.e. our language constrains us to express ourselves in terms of that which is picturable; Reality as a transforming relational continuum in which we are included is not ‘pirturable’.

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” (“Ein Bild hielt uns gefangen. Und heraus konnten wir nicht, denn es lag in unsrer Sprache, und sie scheint es uns nur unerbittlich zu wiederholen” — Philosophische Untersuchungen 115)

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