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“Chaos is God's body. Order is the Devil's chains.” ~John Updike
The order within chaos eats the chaos within order. This is a necessary tug of war, a vital holding of the tension between opposites. Death is Rebirth’s mother. Pain is Mettle’s whetstone. Mastery is Humility’s puppet.
Paradox is merely the universe’s love language. The interconnected cosmos speaks a language older than words. It is your responsibility to translate it properly. This requires surrender, nonattachment, and a good sense of humor.
Unveiling the paradoxical mind is a peeling back of all the layers that are preventing you from actualizing your most authentic self. And your most authentic self is paradoxical. For you are masks all the way down perceiving delusions all the way up. Anyone who says otherwise is attempting to indoctrinate you under the banner of their delusions.
But when you pierce the veil, God (Paradox itself) is finally allowed to breathe. Thus, you are finally allowed to breathe. And from this sacred breath comes laughter, openness, and high humor. Let’s break it down.
Surrender:
“To win true freedom you must be a slave to philosophy.” ~Seneca
Unveiling the paradoxical mind first requires deep surrender. It requires a leap of courage out of your comfort zone and into the unknown. It requires shedding your cultural conditioning like a snake sheds its skin. This includes especially religious and political indoctrination.
True surrender is giving up all hope for a particular belief. In fact, true faith is the surrender of belief itself. As Ram Dass said, “Faith is not belief. Faith is what is left when your beliefs have all been blown to hell.”
Indeed. When your belief in your cultural conditioning is blown to hell, all you have left is faith. Faith in the unknown. Faith in your interconnectedness with all things. Faith in your imagination. Faith in your good sense of humor.
As Camus said, “The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.”
To build new knowledge, you must first be able to destroy untruth. Free yourself to doubt. Unlearn what you have been deceived into learning. Take a leap of courage out of belief and into faith. Be curious, not certain. Be creative, not convinced. Be unique, not conformist. Be humorous, not full of hubris.
Belief is attachment; faith is nonattachment. Practice nonattachment.
Nonattachment:
“Doing as others told me, I was blind. Coming when others called me, I was lost. Then I left everyone, myself as well. Then I found everyone, myself as well.” ~Rumi
Healthy nonattachment is not that you don’t own anything, it’s that nothing owns you. It’s owning the fact that you are a pivotal aspect of the interconnectedness of all things. But it’s also realizing that no aspect of that interconnectedness owns you. You have no ties, no fetters, no illusions. You are free to assess. And everything falls under the sharpness of your Question Mark Sword.
When you’re not attached to anything, you’re connected to everything. You are a sacred pivot, a cosmic crossroads, a perennial threshold guardian. You transcend pettiness, obsequiousness, and myopia. You’re elevated above the battlefield: A Phoenix up high taking in the bird’s eye view of the birth-death-rebirth process of life. You are a mighty sieve, a vital filter, a primal intuition pump, and nothing can get by you without being put to the test.
You realize, in the final analysis, that there is no final analysis. Everything is paradoxical. Everything is on the curve. Everything is anomalous and “up for grabs.” Nothing is certain except uncertainty. The only thing that doesn’t change is the fact that everything changes. The only Truth is the iteration of the Truth Quest. So be it.
Your healthy nonattachment is a self-inflicted Truth Quest. Your Question Mark Sword might as well be Occam’s Razor. It gives you power over paradox, power over the thousand-and-one petty beliefs clashing around in the zeitgeist, and power over power itself. You are finally able to embrace a Humor of the Most High.
A good sense of humor:
“Death meant little to me. It was the last joke in a series of bad jokes.” ~Bukowski
A good sense of humor (and in particular High Humor) is realizing that life is less about getting what you want and more about making the best of what you get. Making the best of what you get means using absurdity as an inkwell and paradox as a paint palette. It means taking ownership of your existential angst, death anxiety, and mortality and blending it all into a recipe for creating your most authentic self.
Everything becomes a piece on a chessboard. Everything is seen through the nonattached lens of the Infinite Game, and you are the gamemaster. The interconnected cosmos becomes your playground. The universe becomes your canvas. You manifest meaning despite meaninglessness. You create purpose despite pointlessness. You rise above the cosmic joke and have a mighty laugh.
You laugh at all the pettiness, all the self-seriousness, all the platitudes, all the “cherished” beliefs, all the political one-upmanship, all the absent-minded apathy and prideful empathy.
You become autonomous, contrarian, trailblazing. You’re able to create worlds despite words. You free yourself to create, destroy, and recreate God. You gain the power to pivot. To interrogate rather than gravitate. To meditate rather than deify. You choose risk-taking over script-making. You don’t settle, you meddle. You mix it up. You kick up the dust and knock off the dross. You choose improvisation over tradition.
You realize that your true value is in your paradoxical mind, your unique imagination. Everything else is moonshine. Your paradoxical mind is your most unique aspect. It’s your deepest longing to express your own humor in the world. This paradoxical uniqueness is your life’s purpose, your soul’s signature, your balanced equation, your unmatched contribution to the human condition. It illuminates the Truth Quest, and not even “God” can stop those who pursue it.
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About the Author:
Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.
This article (Unveiling the Paradoxical Mind) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.
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