I was trying to convince Steven (who was a new acquaintance, who seemed determined and open, & to have a modernist passion for evidential reasoning) to believe this very weird story of what happened to me the day before, that had me flummoxed. I seemed to be doing this in order for him to help me make sense of it. He was asking questions that I could see might lead to a conclusion that the story I was telling him must have been part of a dream or halucination. I was claiming it to be, on the contrary, contiguous with my present experience as I discussed this with him (which was also, strangely, becoming more weird). Yet nothing else out of the ordinary led me to posit that I had not slept during the night in between - which would have made the experience discontiguous. I was feeling peeved that he asked these questions. Then I woke up in bed beside a woman, and realized I was in Brisbane 800km away from home, having bussed, railed, flown, & automobiled here yesterday for my wife's mother's 90th birthday. I hadn't considered that present self, who was flummoxed about the day before (and trying to solicit this man's help to make sense of it) might also be in a dream; since, as I was trying to convince him, yesterday's story didn't make clear sense to me, looked like a dream, and this time of talking with Steven was in my experience contiguous with it, and was beginning to make less sense too.
I felt like telling myself: "You have to look for evidence… (not just a commitment born from an experiencial bias), almost with a dispassionate decision, dedication, and determination."
(The only problem with that statement is that in a world where you do have passions, if you try and be passionless, you leave a vacuum, and as soon as your back is turned, other passions take over. It's sort of like holding my hand extended and flat about 1mm above the table, then in order to get a vacuum under my hand, trying to blow out the air from under it, as I lower the edges of my hand)
I think/perceive that the way forward is, in the words of an anonymous 14th Century Christian mystic, to accept that we live in a "cloud of unknowing". We feel like, or assume, that our present experience is reality. But with the insistence of an insecure self that lives an "assumed" and "unexamined" life, that feels peeved, or pestified, that gets a winge or whine in it's voice that strangely reminds you of mild exasperation, - by this added question, or request, or demand, or requirement. It seems to handle the weight of each piece of straw with ease, but it is the very multiplicity, the many-ness, the one-after-another-ness that is always present in the experience… Not just weirdness. But weirdness after weirdness, after weirdness… till it's nearly normal.
And in my life history so far there has been a journey to this point, there have been a set of weirdnesses, (analogous to, in Matrix terms, a set of deja vu's - which can in that story indicate a glitch in the Matrix)…
Having seen both movies: The Matrix, and Inception.
Having a love of puzzles that test the brain (more than simple jigsaw puzzles), yet still not very good at them. So a determination to get better.
Being a teacher - post secondary, secondary, primary, "homeschool"..
Having a hatred of two-facedness, but seeing it in me as well as others, even when determined not to be that way. Almost passionate about integrity.
Having an appreciation of the Judeo-Christian scriptures
Being married to a woman.
Being a parent to 6 children, and 4 grandchildren, with more on the way.
Noticing parables, at first in Jesus's teaching, then noticing that Jesus is teaching his disciples to think analogically, through these "dark sayings" (parables, stories, analogies, figures of speech) that require & grow the appreciations needed to handle both puzzle and story - at the same time!
Yesterday (Friday 28 Jan 2022, on the train to Sydney, thence to airport, and plane, train, automobile to Nanna Dell's 90th), I GOT a puzzle from Peter Tosh given as an early Christmas present. I'd seen Gil get it in 2 or 3 hours, by gamer's intuitions, flukey general fidling and trying to let two kinds of movement work indepenently while they had to be kept together. a week or two before. But Gil couldn't easily get it again. I was trying to do this. Then I got it.
Then during this day… with Rerné at Dells Birthday brunch...
Two other puzzles I had previously bought after being loaned Peter's), had been a real hit with Asperger/Autistic kids at school.
Awake to the analogy of this world being a womb for embryonic fetal gods.
Getting fish & chips that night
Talking with Neil & Ian over a cuppa the next morning...
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