The Experience of Clarity

112 An eye for nothingness: Let’s admit it.  We no longer believe in God, but we search on for something like Him , for something like eternity ... in vain .  And nature, as they say, hates a vacuum and threatens to fill this one with the superficial.  “Anything but this!” we shout and guard the vacuum with our lives. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

113 My reality is only as valuable as it is final.  What am I saying!?  ... it is only as real as it is final. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

114 It is impossible to think deeply without a relation to the surface. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

115 Even if the water  were  deep, we still could not see beyond our reflections. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

116 Each time a truth falls from my night sky, it streaks across my horizon in a flame of wonder.  This falling too is not Truth, but the heart beats faster at the sight.  Our night is full of stars, fixed and persistent, but somehow we find ourselves wishing upon those which fall. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

117 Perhaps our worst suspicions hereby prove themselves.  We have no contradictions because we have already collided with our own actuality.  We are stopped silent, realizing we had been standing in a doorway, mumbling to ourselves and waving our arms before our closest friends. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

118 Concluding with the Surface:  A thought is a fly in a jar.  As long as it respects its limits, remains in the center, it can see far and clear and feel its freedom, but as soon as it tries to fly “beyond” its reality ... tries this angle and that ... to get “behind” the fact ... beneath the surface ... “in the world but not of the world” ... as soon as it flies off in a buzzing fury toward the  “ultimate,”  we hear nothing but the frenzied pit-pat of its own scared ideas.  Do not misunderstand me here.  To be the fly in the jar is not the despair, but quite the contrary, to be the fly  and believe that there is no jar  is the madness.  We need not transcend reality —  reality is the goal —  we must transcend “ mind” ...  to see through the glass but never forget that it is there. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

119 Why I use aphorisms:  I have no chart or destination.  I can only  correct  my course.  I sail against the wind, tacking against each discovered error.  At most I have only a tendency to behave in a certain manner, and I have altered my course so many times that I would not dare calculate a destination based upon my present direction, so forgive my methods here.  If I could put together a treatise on the course and destination of my efforts, I would.  As it is, I can only record each correction as it occurs. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism