The Mother of Virtue
‘I would rather… that the whole world should be at odds with me, and oppose me, rather than that I myself should be at odds with myself, and contradict myself.’
‘I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.’
‘Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.’
If I told you openness was the birth of all virtue, and the first words that come to mind is tolerance, acceptance, submission, or humility, this would be a mistake.
I would like to tell you that liberty and freedom is only as valuable as what moves through it—it has no inherent value, no special virtue, and it would also be a mistake to think otherwise.
The entirety of the Western World revolves around the axiom that all human beings are especially endowed with an inherent dignity by virtue of their ability to reason. All of our laws, customs, and senses for morality tilts on that deadly preposition. We can trace this idea back to our consitution, back to certain political philosophers, and even further back into Christian deontological ethics, but if we keep going further back, we find the rope we have been pulling on comes to a frayed and severed end.
It is one thing to say that this idea which now scaffolds our society (until it totters and skitters in the wild wind above) was always true, and we just discovered it, and it is another thing entirely to say that we have crafted it. Discerning the difference between these two things in reference to that ideal, that sacred cow we’ve molded is the skeleton key to unlocking your own inner power.
It is a central position to needle into because it is what underpins those vicious doctrines of tolerance, mercy, and acceptance—it would lead you to believe that openness is the same as indifference, as relenting, as lowering your shield, which is the mechanism by which modernity stabs you.
But perhaps you could throw away your shield while learning to pivot on your axis and avoid the striking blade—what then? How quick, how light, how sleek you would be in such a battlefield! In remembering Achilles, how is he then described? Not as a Giant, but a swift footed lion. He tosses his shield and helmet down before Hector—and then pulls his corpse through the dirt! Could you be the same? Is such a style of movement possible in our polity?
What then is the pivoting dance you must do in a world scaffolded by sacred cows? What should we call it when we invite an enemy to strike at us only to move out of the way, so as to expose him better to our own strike? To stand here, and then move there—just as he lunges!
A snake that cannot shed its skin must die, but a snake that can shed its skin lives on; a phoenix is reborn through the fire; what does it mean to speak the truth while lying at the same time? It is to understand the allegory.
And so openness—what does it mean? Let’s talk about pride for a quick second. Catholicism teaches that pride is what all sin flows from, and we can intuitively know this to be correct. If sin is the absence or aberration of/from virtue, then the father of all sins, pride, is something that refuses to relent to the tide of the world—it is effectively a form of closure.
Let’s imagine a guy lifting weights. Picks up a 50lb dumbbell, tries to curl it. He’s too weak for this—he’s doing what we call ego lifting. His back arches, he pushes with his legs, he leans and utilizes other muscles in order to lift the weight up. This is pride, it is then sinful, it is closure—even though he gets the weight up! But why is this an instance of closure if he succeeds in the task? Because lifting weights is not about the task. It is about the gathering of strength in the muscle—that is its telos, the final end or aim of the task, which is the ruler over the task by itself. So then to go at a lower weight, to remain standing perfectly straight and ruled, to submit, to let down the ego, in order to better serve the final aim of the task is what will turn the man’s arm from weak to strong—even if he must go lower in the weights in order to achieve this!
What a paradox! What an allegory!
If we can intuit that something mundane or banal as lifting weights has an order or law to it, can we also say the same is true of the world at large? And if so, might it also be true that following the rule seems paradoxical, at odds with the world, or in some sense perverse in the act of fulfilling its aim? The dogmatist would be horrified at such a statement! No, of course not, following the divine law is nothing but pure and divine! To say anything else is heresy!
Would you martyr yourself for a greater cause? Perhaps you would. Perhaps you are a noble soul of a higher breed of man. An even greater question, an even greater challenge: would you survive for a greater cause? If we burrow into what it means to survive, we quickly come to the conclusion that survival of the fittest simply means those able and willing to adapt—and what is adaption? Is it not the donning of a mask? A shedding of the skin? To be reborn in the flames? To pivot as the horns of the bull comes near to goring you?
Immortality of the soul…
How do you define immortality? It is easy for the Christian to perhaps say that heaven and hell are real, and they in fact are physical or metaphysical places or locations that the soul is tied to after death—for eternity, or something near it. It would then make sense to die for your cause—what’s death now for everlasting life?
Ah, but what if by immortality it means something else? A utilitarian approach to the problem of immortality would be to simply define it as the consequences of your actions unfolding in an unbroken chain of effects—in other words, how you are remembered is for your impact, and the scale of your impact is in direct proportion to what actually lives on—in other words, what stays moving through the complex web of being.
Surely, if viewed in this way, of which a lengthier argument could be made for, but would involve digressing quite a bit in order to provide a proof for this definition of immortality, you will simply need to accept it for now in order to move forward—if viewed in this way, surely surviving allows you to fulfill more acts in service of the ultimate divine law, and would increase your odds of attaining immortality… surviving in a hostile region for decades, moving in the background, blowing wind on the secret fire that gathers in congregation, hunted and despised—yes surely, gather your hands around it and put the holy spirit onto it, and it will gather and grow until it suffocates the rotten forest…
The man who truly rules the world is one who has a steel hand, yet puts around it a glove of velvet—yes!
Of the rub between immortality and mortality I am the spark. I am the light which lunges downward into the lip of the black hole. I am one thing and another—simultaneously. I am a snake which has legs. I am the dog which has fangs. It is I who truly loves women by not believing in love. Alchemy is my craft, and life is the materials I work with. In public I wear a mask and in my private study I work naked. I am the esoteric and the exoteric. I am the means by which the weak live, and it is me that the predators fear. I am the shepherd that shears the flock. Without me the world does not live, and yet if I told you my name, you would despair over me. The French failed to kill me—the Americans only pretended to. I was born before Plato and yet I am not alive, for you cannot kill what does not live. I will burn the world down to preserve it; I will kill you with tears of blood falling down my face. I have one master, and I rule over many lords. Now, I ask you, what is my name?