Anchored In The Absolute

ANCHORED IN THE ABSOLUTE

THE RECONCILIATION OF THE CULTURAL AND THE UNIVERSAL DIMENSION

The sea of live is in perpetual change and movement. There never is a standstill. Man tries to find a quiet point, a harbour, on the vastness of the ocean. The more he tries the more waves he creates, which in turn increase the turbulences which he seeks to escape. This is so because it is the nature of the ocean to be in movement, in perpetual movement.

Culture is a means whereby man hopes to create a form of stability on the sea of life. Yet the more he affirms his culture in order to increase his psychological security the more cultural waves he creates, which unsettle the desired stability, because the cultural waves he creates through the affirmation of his own culture sets in motion cycles of waves of culture. They may become powerful waves which can threaten life in the entire field of the ocean as well as on land: the culture clashes and wars.

This means that the solution to cultural problems is unattainable by cultural means alone. It is their very nature to set in motion the waves of culture. They can only be stopped if he sees that that by which he tries to solve the cultural challenge actually tends to create the problem. If the problem cannot be solved sustainably at its own level, the solution must come from somewhere else, if there is any solution at all.

This is so, because culture is part of the mind and the very nature of the mind is to trigger waves, which in turn create cycles of waves. The waves sometimes become tidal waves and destructive.

Similarly the cultural identification sets in motion cycles of competitive identifications, self-perpetuating dualistic endless loops, which depending on their intensity, may escalate into major conflict unless the waves or the cultural identification and affirmation can subside. Once the cycles of waves are set in motion they assume a dynamic of their own beyond human control. That is how conflicts surge cyclically, which get out of hands once cycles have been set in motion through the over affirmation of one or more cultural players. They can set in motion the entire see of life. Ironically, the search for stability on the ocean of life, which has a natural dynamic of its own, leads to the very opposite, to major turbulences.

If that which one seeks turns into its opposite by virtue of its very search one has to look into another direction to find that which one seeks; seeking to achieve it in a non-counterproductive way. If the goal becomes elusive the more one tries to attain it one has to examine whether and why the search does not yield the expected result.
The answer is based on the dualistic nature of the mind which contains culture. Any movement creates pendulum-like a similarly strong reaction. The resulting instability is greater than the initial instability which one thought to further stabilize and consolidate. So, one might have been better off, if one had not started to set in motion the cultural game of action and reaction. This would have required the insight into the consequences of cultural self-affirmation, which in turn requires the understanding of the cycle of events an action such as cultural over-affirmation may trigger.

If whatever one undertakes at the cultural level, which is the mental level, because the latter contains the former, can only inadequately lead to the desired stability one hopes to find in cultural self-affirmation - beyond the maintenance of required personal integrity - if one sees that all action creates more problems one stops action and examines the situation:

First there was the intention of consolidation through cultural affirmation.

The action produced counterproductive results.

The observation of the cause and effect cycle explained the situation.

One drew the consequence of stopping all action of the kind due to counterproductive results of this kind of action.

Now one starts to seek in different directions to attain the goal on other routes.

All routes seem to tend to produce similarly counterproductive result.

One stops all action.

The situation improves.

One further examines why that is the way things are.

One concludes that all mental activities are dualistic and dialectical also all cultural measures which are part of the mental realm and therefore follow the dialectical logic of the mind.

The cultural path or the mental approaches are no longer considered as offering any perspective of the reaching a sustainable consolidation neither for oneself nor for others.

Therefore one distances oneself from the cultural and the mental logic. On the ocean of life, culture and the mind itself are the actual cause of instability.

Here one stops searching on the horizontal plane.

Now one enquires into the vertical plane by penetrating to the very depth of the matter.

If one penetrates however deeper into culture and the mind towards the ocean bed one can find a stability, which however is not necessarily permanent because nature knows no absolute stability in the long term. The tectonic, hydraulic and atmospheric activates do also impact the deeper layers of the ocean. So, wherever I turn within the known, there is no sustainable solution to my search of a definitive harbour of peace and stability. There seems to be neither a solution within cultural measures nor within the reach of the mind as a whole. All solutions display experiential evidence of incomplete solutions.

Now one also stops the inquiry into the deepest recesses of the mind because they cannot offer the complete solution to my question of how to achieve sustainable identity and stability.

On further investigation of the vertical plane I realize that the more I let go of the mental and cultural search, the freer I feel from the weight of culture and the mind. On letting go the cultural and mental mooring I approach a degree of serenity and freedom which eluded me in my cultural-mental inquiry.

Progressively a horizon of another shore dawns, I have never known before. As it takes shapeless shape, formless form, shadowless light I follow this beacon.

I resolve to dissolve my attachment to the shore of the known of the mind and set my compass on the beacon of the unknown shore. The relative, dualistic, changeable and insecure of this side vanish as I absolve myself and loosen the ties of this shore of the incompleteness of the mind to approach the complete of the absoluteness of the other shore. As position myself there the previous has no more impact on me. I feel free of it. Its relativity is at a distance. I perceive it as incomplete.

I have solved the dilemma by absolving myself from the limitation and incompleteness of the relative and by adopting the vantage point of the complete and absolute. The anchoring in this optic is fulfilling, complete: absolute. I try to anchor myself in this optic.

I am free from the constraints of culture and the waves it stirs. On this shore it has no sway on me. This freedom from culture is a state of freedom; a potential civilization of freedom. The waves of culture are no more. And this produces peace and serenity. With the waves of culture the waves of the mind have subsided. The ocean is still. The cultural and mental pursuits are still. In this stillness that which I hoped to find in vain through cultural means abounds.

To be systematic, the roadmap of rescue from the turbulences of the psycho-social, organisational and institutional environments of the ocean of life requires its complete understanding: The mental-cultural diversity clashes appear from horizon to horizon, horizontally. In order to understand it more completely one has to inquire vertically into its very depth and into the height. There the horizon widens so that two shores delineate themselves with their beacons. One is the beacon of the mind which on its own remains on the horizontal plane.

[...]