Wu Wei Wu and the Art of Writing

 I firmly believe that individuals are attracted to philosophies. We seek out information that helps us and adapt information that improves our lives. These become beliefs. While some of us may be naturally resistant to believing, we still employ belief by necessity. In fact, it would be very hard to get anything done if you didn't believe it was worth the effort. We can resist common modes of believing all we like, reject the paradigm beliefs of our inherited culture, and yet we're never "beyond" belief. Ultimately, even a belief that belief itself is limiting is itself a belief.

Logic isn't necessarily going to want to play fair with the space we're in. We come to rely on it, believe in it, but there is a point of failure. 

Wu Wei Wu is a concept from Taoism that traditionally translated to "non-doing" but today is more explicitly translated as "doing non-doing". Without getting into the details, we'll be assuming the following: "doing non-doing" equals doing without thinking about doing. In other words, it means doing by muscle memory. Let's also posit that "doing non-doing" is better than "doing without consideration" or "doing without training". Indeed, training is mandatory to "do non-doing".

Usually.

In some cases, a beginner may perfectly execute something they're trying. The Zen tradition calls this "beginner's luck" and there has been careful thought paid to "a beginner's mind". A beginner enters the matter with no preconceptions. The beginner does whatever instinctive thing they're going to do, and it looks like they've been doing it all their life. This phenomenon is understood in the Eastern Tradition. It's actually foundational.

Taoism spoke to me in a way that other philosophies did not. I would say that a lot of my early work came from a Taoist perspective. But I did not want to be a writer who could only produce work from one perspective. I wanted to be a writer who was supple enough to actively write from multiple perspectives. Thankfully, Taoism provided a great foundation to "make myself small enough" and "void my preconceptions" well enough to enter into those spaces.

Along my journey, I found writers like Borges and Blake who seemed to thrive in these spaces. They were Western writers, like me, who could help me see more than I saw before. In the case of Blake, it was more. In the case of Borges, it was more clearly. In the case of Taoism, Blake, Zen, and Borges, it was better. 

The Thunder, Perfect Mind

The Thunder, Perfect Mind is a Gnostic text written from the perspective of the Aeon Sophia (Wisdom). The text is a litany of "I am" statements followed by apparent contradictions. As an example, "I am the virgin and the whore." This would be similar to Jesus saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega." Why is this happening?

To follow the logic of Lecercle, the subject is emerging from a lesser psychological state into a more mature one. Paradoxical language is a flag of this kind of emergence. If it doesn't prove the emergence has happened, it proves the emergence is beginning to happen. Jung also spoke of uniting opposites and Fish speaks of a place beyond opposition that is the domain of the Good Physician. The Good Physician withholds judgment and renders care. The Good Physician is, of course, a Christlike figure.

Christ, of course, is not a name, but a title meaning annointed. There were those who believed Christ was fulfilment of the Jewish Bible, others who believed Christ was a sage who had attained a certain degree of spiritual maturity, and still others who believed Christ and Jesus were two separate entities and Jesus "had" this Christ spirit or daemon within him until he was crucified. There were a lot of different ways of thinking about Christ, but Christ's use of paradoxical language that employs a type of reflexive logic is notable and consistent. We will see it elsewhere in the Eastern Tradition, especially Zen and Taoism, where negative and positive are considered equally and simultaneously. The last point is where the leveling up occurs. The brain rejects efforts to think using both opposites simultaneously, but permits dialectical efforts quite well. Ultimately, Western philosophers like Heraclitus also seem to permit this sort of paradoxical and contradictory thinking.