Armaments for the Queen’s security detail
Is this about relationships? Yes. Practical? I think so. How can I assist the Queen of the Universe today? Her Majesty needs help managing her relationship with an uppity ruler of one of her galaxies. Always trying to one-up her Sovereign. You need help winning life’s game of one-upmanship. Yes. One-upping the pesky nobody and her pitiful galaxy. That will do for now. Your wish is my command. That also will do for now.
Life’s game of one-upmanship is lost from the start. Group relationships thrive on it until competition goes off the rails and they don’t. Personal relationships that tolerate it self-destruct. It’s toxic for friendships. I do so want to be friends with the pesky nobody. Why is she so mean to me? (boo-hoo). As Vince Lombardi put it, “Friendships aren’t everything. They’re the only thing.” Who’s Vince Lombardi? A disembodied voice spouting nonsense about winning. Guards! Secure your weapons! Let the fool proceed.
It makes sense to enable friendships, no sense to disable them when they fit the situation. Why not if people disable them anyway? The point of disabling a relationship is to divide it. To prove something. What? That it’s possible to disconnect. In a world where that’s the way things are, separable and separated. Not in my Universe! My legions do their Emperor’s bidding and I bid them to knock heads together. You will be one happy family of smiling dimwits or else!
Tell that to the ruler of your rebellious galaxy -- one head that refuses to be knocked. Careful, O wise one. My guards are provisioned with guillotines and stink bombs. I’m not the only one listening.
On today’s menu: mashed ideas with gravy
The universe proclaims its pointlessness. Things not fitting together or when they do, they come apart. Science tells us that life originated with happenstance composed of happenstances. Accidents. Random events. Chance. When it can’t be true. Can’t? No. “Everything has a reason?” Yes, if that means everything is interconnected. That stuff popping up out of the blue makes no sense. There has to be some connection. Why? The opposite of Mind that’s everything and everything that’s Mind appears to be pointless. But only because that’s its point. An appearance only since if Mind is everything and it can’t be pointless, then neither can its opposite. I’m feeling faint.
To find the sense in nonsense start with Origin, the original idea. Without putting the cart before the horse, the expression before the idea. Horses! Can we talk about that? Before a thing “exists” in any form it starts with the idea of the thing. An apple didn’t precede the idea of “apple;” it came after. The idea of “apple” doesn’t go away when you’ve eaten one, but every apple will go away if you “eat” the idea. So that’s what’s making me feel bloated!
The Queen needs a gavel
Making sense of things can’t be done by fitting apples and oranges together, objects with different properties. But it can be done by fitting ideas together. Thoughts, feelings, causes, ideals. What’s the difference? The expression of ideas is their use. Their application to specific circumstances in specific contexts. “Apple” is food. Ideas themselves are instances or expressions of Mind functioning. “Everything is Mind” means all ideas, all thoughts combined with feelings, originate within Mind. Mind functioning to fit every part of Creation together in one system. Whose parts function together in harmony because of how Mind originated and defined the ideas they express.
A function that Mind can’t perform if Mind itself is composed of parts going off in different directions. As though they’re subject to different wills, different definitions. One Mind is one Mind. And its ideas all emanate from the same source. Interconnected logically or there would be no order. Obviously the state of mind of my nemesis. Mind whose thoughts are disordered can’t function.
Pointless doughnuts
You mean the origin of everything is ideas, they all originate within Mind, and they must be interrelated in logical order because they’re all of one Mind. Yes. And minds functioning that way would agree, but quite a few don’t. Stephen Hawking envisioned a boundaryless universe of spacetime-matter that needed no Mind to think or create it. Matter did it all by itself, its own origin. A pointless universe? If everything is interconnected by Logic’s implications and Love’s sharing, then there must be a point to it. Ideas can’t be what they are without making or having a point.
Everything must be defined by its function or there would be no logic, no reason, for thinking it. We are all defined by what we are for, and what we are for defines who we are. Self and function are inseparable. One and the same. Doughnuts shorten people’s lives because they’re made of shortening. My Queen rules with blinding perspicacity. Get to the point or you’ll be shortened.
“Fate” debunked
Every idea has its implied opposite and so does the source of opposites, Mind. That is, our source of opposites. Where Mind got it is from Origin, the state of friction from instability – opposites competing to activate Origin -- that called for Order. The seminal event in the activation of Mind and everything that followed, including Creation and the events that led to our situation. “Possibility” implies its opposite, the idea of “impossibility.” Two ideas in one that contribute to one definition: what the thing is and what it isn’t. If Mind is ideas interconnected in one orderly, functional system, its opposite will be . . . mindless disorder. Yes. Dysfunctional mind that seems composed of random happenstance, chance, fuzzy-dice “fate.”
Except that it has an organizing principle no less definitive than Mind that’s ordered. Not original thinking but derived thinking, dependent on the thing it opposes for its definition. A mirror-image opposite, put there by the object it’s reflecting in reverse. The nature of the reflection and its coming and going, all dependent on the object in front. Just as the impossibility of another “reality” is given away by being time-limited, opposite’s pose of independence – the “wildness” of spontaneity and freedom without order -- is debunked by its dependence on the order it opposes.
The opening and foreclosing of potential
Our universe can’t be pointless chance, undisciplined wildness, if it’s disciplined by what it is, an opposite. The romantic posturing of “maverick” or “rogue” notwithstanding, it’s still on a leash. Dogs! Can we talk about dogs? If they’re house-broken, of course. One-upmanship that assumes that personal relationships can be separates competing with one another is getting it wrong. Going against the grain – the way things really are.
To understand “relationship” is to understand that its origin is ideas interconnected within one Mind and pointlessness contradicted by its point: opposite. It's to understand that the cause of the idea of “relationship” is service to the power of attraction. The cause of the idea of “one-upmanship” is service to the power of opposition.
Relationship powered by attraction opens up the potential for learning and growth, competence and creativity. Limited only by the mindfulness and loving kindness – the personalities and circumstances -- of the individuals. Relationship powered by opposition to mindfulness and loving kindness, by one-sided concern for winning in one-upmanship, can’t be for anyone wanting friendship. For anyone seeking companionship and support for learning and growth, competence and creativity. It’s the foreclosing of potential. For you and me it would be toxic.
Logic and Love, Mind and Heart, are inseparable
Intoxication – that’s it! I need a drink! Guards! Get me room service! Here’s the practical. Drink! What could be more practical than drink? The origin of misunderstanding that obstructs lasting friendship is an idea. Split in two by its opposite: the inseparability of Logic and Love, thought and feeling, reasoning and evaluating. The idea personified by Mr. Spock on Star Trek, that to be “logical” is to be thought uncontaminated by emotion. The idea that to be “loving” is to be “all heart” and no mind. That thinking can’t be feeling at the same time and vice versa. That “reasoning” can’t be “objective” if it’s guided by subjective values. Put there by the boundaries of conscience set by their source, Logic and Love.
A common misconception some personalities welcome because our world doesn’t set us up to choose among different ways of sharing and creating. As though we already had the competence of Free Choice. It sets us up to choose who we want to be and what we want our lives to be about. Whether to seek the competence of Free Choice and move on or remain stuck where we are. Whether to share and create while we’re learning or compete and conform so we can avoid learning.
Friendship is for sharing and creating. Having no interest in either, some personalities engage us anyway to amuse themselves with fun and games. With life’s game of one-upmanship. Toxicity that can’t be avoided unless Love and Logic, feeling and mind, reasoning and conscience, are kept intact together.
One-upped
You mean I can’t dazzle my subjects with personal charm and beauty alone? I can’t rule just by scaring them with ruthless insensitivity? I have to think? Think and feel, mind and heart, the discipline of judgment and compassion both.
What are you asking? Nothing. Just sharing a perspective: that queens and their subjects will always need to relate to one another and to manage their relationships. And they can’t do it without making themselves accessible as persons. Not play-acting mirror images, reflections that are all exterior and no interior, masks designed to hide what’s there or not there, but substance that’s relatable. Honest, truthful, open, vulnerable, accountable, and trustworthy.
Well, then, I have a confession. Yes? I’m not really Queen of the Universe. Really? I’m a bus driver. Torrance route #8. No! You mean I’ve been wasting my exquisite talents, my priceless wisdom, on an ordinary person? You’ve been one-upped. Good luck next time, Charlie Brown!