VS Beast mode
As I close the work week, I come to reflect that creative endeavors are peculiar in the sense that they require sources of inspiration. Our sources of inspiration are often intellectual, and aligned with our area of interest. We have been trained as specialists, to seek answers to particularly narrow problems of limited value.
It is necessary to seek inspiration outside our field of knowledge. Why? It is in the bigger picture that we understand what are the transcendent values that underlie creation. If one believes in honesty of materials, that something that looks like marble must be marble, and wood must look like wood, one cannot deny that the image you project to the world must be the naked material of your own creation.
Some time ago I read a theory of the meaning of existence, which in vague terms I remember it being that the universe is heading towards entropy, and that the universe produces pockets of order, which we call life, because this accelerates entropy in the long run. Life causes more entropy than unanimated matter. Us humans are apex entropy creators in the sense that everything we touch seems to turn into rubble.
Perhaps, in this vision, the end game of human civilization would be a world of rubble and sludge instead of oceans. A devastated planet because of we are entropy makers. We would have fulfilled our destiny when this happens.
But this seems to be an old story. The old story is not fake, it is just a layer of a cake over which a new layer is being built upon. Yes, we cannot deny that the universe is heading towards entropy, yes, we are great chaos merchants, and yes, we will also come to disappear from the planet when it becomes devastated from the passage of time or of our own folly.
But this will happen in the material world only.
Humankind seems to be awakening into a new kind of existence. We are at the space between two stories, as Charles Eisenstein would say. We cannot deny that the material world is heading towards entropy, but what can be said of our collective spiritual world?
We indeed seem to be in a state of entropy, each day seems to bring more despair: everything seems meaningless, the news are full of tragedy, we are emotionally bankrupt and so we have very little tolerance of others, we soothe ourselves in order to deal with this painful existence. Traumas emerge triggered by our friction with the world.
In spiritual emergency you are thrown into an abyss in the ocean, from which you must find the way upward. In this process it is understood that much of what one knows is very slender, and science will be of little help. Yes, being exposed to the sun is scientifically known to reduce symptoms of depression, having a spiritual connection to the sun goes beyond this prescription.
The new story is of your own making. It requires surrendering many beliefs, and only what is true remains standing. Each one builds it to their own understanding. Again, I will lean on Eisenstein to point towards elements of this new story, but to allow him to inspire me into what I consider the transcending principles behind my own new story.
As we circle back to the opening paragraph of this impromptu essay, in the new story_ the weekend is for the renewal of inspiration in nature, love, friendship and all things beautiful. To be present in all these situations, and to trust that deepening into experience is the correct direction. Allow yourself to disconnect from the world of the ten thousand things to come into the simplicity of being. On work days we strive, on weekends (sabbatical days) we accept. It has a natural weekly rhythm.
Until next week.