...
I keep poking this subconscious guilt complex. It feels unfriendly. It isn't.
I am reminded again of my vexation with Michael Tsarion on his vexatious definitions for dharma and karma. I've managed to see far enough into almost everything else he says or does that hits a sour note, but not that one. I really respect him so I keep trying to see into it to crack that nut, but it's a very hard one. I can only provisionally go along with this blather about karma merely being "ignorance". It doesn't do any good to tell people who think cramming in more facts is the hedge against ignorance. They are going to respond that it isn't possible not to be ignorant of many things, or they are going to feign being knowledgeable to elude the vicissitudes of karma as hard as they can, or they're going to go back to ignoring the whole concept altogether. How could that angle be more helpful than the classic "action"? I don't think it can, and that is only granting that the loss of ignorance part is the imperative. The imperative is losing the vile head trip that has etched that guilt into your subconscious, and it is the mechanism of your very existence in this world, the action, the cause and effect of every moment in it tap dancing on your forehead to drop the ruse and live truly, that is working full time to wake you up.
When you stop being a figment of your own imagination, you stop being ignorant. Is there another route to that than realizing that your life never gives up trying to teach you what you need to learn? I still have too much fuzziness in here when I try to clamp down on this stuff, but I think Michael is wrong about this... that even if that is how he came to understand it, he's ignoring how people are most apt to bridge the gap, grok the concept. I'm not even very good at figuring that part out. Humans are just a pain in the ass. But I think I've got this one wired. Maybe I've missed nuances. Maybe I'm wrong about what will snag the nose rings of modern humans, but... well... but I just am uncomfortable as hell with his dharma/karma thing. They only rhyme. They are not, I don't think, meant to be bounced off each other this way.
I can go with dharma being the reason you are here. That seems no more novice-unfriendly than "law" and has a pleasing kind of ultimateness about it, but the karma half, not so much. I'm going to keep plugging and maybe one day he will have liberated me by making me hassle through this, but in the meantime, you just need to know there's a hitch in this, but the part about your mother fucking immortal subconscious is just too pristine to pass up.
.
