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Finding a Way Back

Posted by Joseph Riggio on Thursday, July 27, 2006

Howdy again,

We all depend on certain “realities” to remain constant. We expect for instance that we’ll recognize ourselves when we wake up in the morning and look in the mirror. (A great film which plays with this idea and the idea of identity and social response is “Watermelon Man” with Godfrey Cambridge). We expect the world to be constant in some ways as well, that the home we live in and the street that it’s on remain the same day to day. These are evident things, and yet as we have heard - “The most constant thing is change.”

The taoist poet Lao Tzu wrote the “Tao Te Ching” over 2500 years ago a book about change, and a book often associated with taoist principles the “I Ching” is the “book of change.” So we’ve been wrestling with the concepts of change and how to address living in an inconsistent world for literally thousands of years. What’s interesting is that some folks believe that some of the best advice we have for dealing with change may be in the very pages of the books I’ve mentioned above.

Where the relevenat information about technology is almost always at best a few months old, never years the best information on the perennial and persistent topic of change in the cosmos, and how it impacts us directly and intimately hasn’t itself changed enough in 2500 years to bring into question the basic principals regarding it yet. If we consider the topic of “neurocognition” or the technology of how we think, how our brains and nervous systems work to allow us to make sense of the world - as I’ve said the current relevant information is often less than a few month old. This is also true about the technology we currently use to run the world around us a we know it. This disparity is astounding ... 2500 years of relative consistency vs. a few months of currency.

So what’s that all got to do with where I’m going ... well first we have to establish a basis direction to even ask the question. I’m coming home, literally I find myself endlessly seeking the path back to myself. As with all people who live their life (as opposed to having it lived for them - but that’s another topic for another time) ... I am faced with the question, “Who am I?” at a deep and existential level every day. ... “Who is this that knows who I am?” ... “Who is this that does what I do?” ... “Who is this that experiences the things I experience?” ... These kinds of questions remain present in each moment. When I hold the sense that I know “Who I am?” there is profound peace ... the system comes to rest. When I am seeking ... the system is chaotic - both internally and externally. So maybe, just maybe we have the beginnings of a direction to take ... maybe this “I” that “I am” is the “I who seeks itself.” And, by the corollary evidence, the “I” that I am is the “I who comes to rest when it has found itself.”

This analysis brings up another very sticky, challenging question, “Where is the “I” that seeks itself?” And, again using the corollary form, “Where does the “I” that finds itself come to rest?” The most basic answer as we ordinarily use time and space to consider “where” is either “here” or “somewhere else ... there.” Then in terms of the “I that seeks itself.” - we could say the basic form of the answer to the question “Where?” would be either internal or external. Yet these forms “here and/or there” ... “internal and/or external” create dicotomies and dualities. In a consideration of the question “Where?” from a position of singularity there is no “here” or “there,” no “internal” or “external,” there is no “now” or “then” - only this which “IS.”

The thing that throws me so deeply when considering this position of the singular is that it too is changing, there “is” no “IS” - there “is” only that which is becoming. The Universe unfolds before us, within us, around us ... and seemingly we are “IT.” We close our eyes and the “Universe” disappears ... or goes inside. We open our eyes and there “IT” is again ... expanding endlessly before us. The scientists will tell us - “The Universe is constantly expanding ... and it is all there is.” ... so of course every schoolchild asks ... “So where is it expanding into?” ... the simplest answer must be “ITSELF.” Using the test of Occam this resolves the questioning ... at least for now.

Best regards,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ

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