From now and forever, the human being tries to understand his existence by concepts and values taken from life itself. But it is difficult to understand something from itself, to understand it from it’s parts and details. There is no way to understand a table by its screws and wood components. Only when seeing it from the outside, as a separate unit by itself, it is possible to start and understand it. And there is no way to grasp the existence of the table if we don’t see where in begins and where it ends, which means: the borders of the table. An existence in its entirety is only by its borders; only the limits of something characterizes it, grasp its existence.
There is no autonomic unite without borders. It is the borders that give the meaning to its autonomy. (And without autonomy nothing can be).
The borders define the being and only in them she is.
When there are no borders between a domain and domain – there is blurring, everything is the same, only separateness brings to a crystallization of identity.
The figurativeness of a wolf is different than that of a rabbit, the big angular outlines of the wolf and the small roundish outlines of the rabbit – describe a completely different being.
So essence and anthology from one side, and figurativeness from the other – are both connected in a hidden communicative connection. A connection that becomes seen only if the observer has the code that can associate the outlines to its essence and being. The being is ‘corresponding’ with the outside world by translation content into form.
You could understand a person according to his childhood and words, but the deepest (and current) understanding is by observing the outlines of his body: erect or bent, aggressive or submissive. In other words: posture. Posture is not a position, but a dynamic pattern of reflexes, habits, and adaptive responses to anything that resists you being more or less upright. There is nothing that leads more to the understanding of a person, then the study of his posture; the outlines of his body. The way the shape of the body is held can give us more than a clue about how he must feel in himself.
And from understanding an individual through his body’s contour, to the understanding of human life in its entreaty; well, the ultimate borders of human life are in his birth and death. This two are the ultimate borders of his existence.
This two are interconnected; all which dies must be born and what was born has to die. Only what wasn’t born will not die. Every point of beginning must have an end point only that which doesn’t have a beginning has no end.
The greater understanding of our life must take into account this two. And as well as this two borders – there is a third one, hidden. If the first two were external, the third border is internal. And it is what connects between the two, and it is the border of time.
If the first two are characterized by a dramatic and one time happening, the third is silent and very slow. This is a line which starches between the border of birth and the border of death; close to the border of birth there is a lot of time, close to the border of death, there is very little time.
Life which is not being understood through this three borders – create an understanding which superficial, limited and symptomatic.
Ignoring them is not innocent and not coming from ignorance or from lack of importance, it stems from an emotional dissonance that will be created when we put the three borders in the center of our attention.
Mostly, we are not aware of this borders. As for the border of birth – we don’t give much thought to it; that once we haven’t been, and what we were before birth, and how come that from nothing we became to be something, alive and conscious. We accept this as a fact, maybe glad about it, and devote ourselves to deal with the thing itself; life and living.
The same as for the border of death, mostly, we avoid giving it almost any thought, mainly out of fear.
And what about the border of time? Well, when we meet a person we haven’t seen for a long time, and time left it’s marks on him – we are amazed, it is not what we expected. As though time is not an actual inner border, that separates between a person which was, to the person he will be.
And the border of death gets the same attitude as a person living above a busy junction, and after a while, he doesn’t hear the noise anymore; we meet death the more time passes, until it is all over, but because it happens more and more, we feel that it loses its edge and ceases to be real for us. The most nonexistent thing is the one that became transparent for us.
And if for the birth border we don’t give much thought, then as for the other two – we simply ignore. And this ignoring of the borders of life makes them amorphic, an amorphic accumulation of happenings, feelings and deeds – without an interpretation, without meaning, without a core.
So are our life without relating to borders.
The knowing and ongoing consciousness about the temporary state of our life and about its end – must change our approach to its value. As for the thistly person, there is no comparison between his value of water which is there all the time and water which is about to finish. The price for decreasing our emotional dissonance about death and getting old – is the banalization and suchness of our life.
In the beginning, the awareness to the shortening and finality of life, can bring about nihilism and despair. But relating and accepting this, can acquire to life a kind of a desperate value, which is so missing in the taking for granted of our life, its length and finality.
And it is not enough to be aware, the initial awareness must go through a process of conscious effort to adjust and struggle with those borders, otherwise the mature ripe awareness that will acquire to life its real value – will be absent.
And so we get 3 approaches to the idea of borders (especially to those of time and death):
- The common approach: denial.
- The less common approach: some awareness and despair.
- The least common approach: awareness and coping.
The first approach is cowardly, the second is brave and infantile, and the third is brave and mature.
There is no possibility for consciousness to grasp its non being. It is an oxymoron about two poles that contradicts each other, and apparently cannot live together: on level A. the level of denial (avoidance) – there is an avoidance from the pole of disappearance and distinction and only relating to the other (the existence of life). In the level above, level B. (initial awareness) the two poles are being related to together, but here there is still no ability to contain both, the load of charge of both is greater than the capacity of consciousness to house the, and then a collapse is happening (of psychology or consciousness, or both).
And only at level C. the third level, exists the ability to house both; what there is and what is not –together.
The merging of the two opposite pole (level C.) – will create an incredible electrical charge, that will charge the system with life power. And this is the paradox; life which does not contain in them their opposite, are losing its power.
Only the thesis that contains in it the anti-thesis – becomes stronger than both poles together. Generally, thesis (life) rejects the ant-thesis (death), and only with the power of developed consciousness – it is possible to contain both, and the synergic combination of opposites creates life. And there is no combination more polarized, and therefore more powerful, then the integration of what is and what is not. Life and death, again, it is a combination that can only live in the awakened consciousness of a person.
The consciousness challenge of a life which is about to be ended (which is all of us) is to accept and grasp this fact. For the common for conventional consciousness it is not possible to grasp its nonexistence.
It is not possible to live life to the full without the inclusion of paradoxes. Canceling the pole that is responsible for the paradox, is indeed decreases the emotional dissonance, but it brings about a life which is: poor, contracted and lacking in vision.
There is no doubt that paradoxical conception of the personal life, is the greatest challenge which is facing an alive human being; to grasp the time limit and fragility of our existence and the solid eternity of our non-being.
The proportions between the time period that a man lives and the time in which he is not alive (before birth and after death) – is like the proportions between zero and eternity. The decreasing of time and the total finality of death – brings one to grasp and understand and to internalize, that every second of my existence brings me closer towards my certain non being. As a candle that its mere burning is finishing the vax, and when the vax it totally disapers, the candle will cease to be.
Regular consciousness falls apart from this sentences, but if the consciousness doesn’t go through a process that at a certain age becomes able to digest those sentences, than life does not become what it could be.
Only what passes the bipolar stage – can reach the next level, and the next level is going through their absence.
If a person will succeed to contain in his consciousness both poles at the very same time (his existence and his nonexistence) – 2 things would happen to him; in the emotional level he would live with great existential sadness. But what allows him to actually live with that, is the revolution that happens in his mind about his certain non-existence; every moment of his life will be powerful, electrifying and definite. No more cruise in a vague fog, in which the person is going up and down according to the heights of pleasure and the abysses of his life.
Every being is made from two opposites, plus and a minus, and only when they unite –the being exists. And the only place in which the opposite poles of at a level, or existence, can unite, is consciousness. But for that to happen, the consciousness must be open and wide, capable to contain both without falling apart. And there is no 2 poles more opposite then the poles of our existence and non-existence; the ‘is’ and the ‘is not’, the presence and the absence. And they are so contradictory until their containment in regular consciousness can cause it to snap, a kind of an electrical shortcut.
The more the two poles are opposite, thus the more electrifying the being that both are creating.
We live as though:
- We always have been (the first border, of birth).
- Our being here doesn’t deteriorate, don’t get grinded, going on the way to be gone (the second border, of time).
- Always we will be (the third border, of time).
Denying this three borders does not cancel them, of course, only blurs the limitations and the boundaries, and especially the antithesis to existence; our non-existence.
And we get the three levels of powerfulness:
- The greatest power is being created in the meeting point between what is and what is not (like between the empty space of a dear one that passed away and his presence in our soul).
- A lesser and poorer power – exists in the meeting point between two entities that wish to unite beyond a boundary, like in a loving hug, that expresses a longing to unite, but are stopped at the boundaries of the bodies, here the charge is with climaxes and anticlimaxes.
- The weakest power – will be in the meeting between two presences with no border between them, and then there is no power, only the relief of the melting of the one within the other.
Power is always a product of a paradox which the person is not giving up to it, and is trying to actualize it through it and despite it.
The opposition and the contradiction – create the charge.
To live only with being alive and to expel the awareness to death, creates in the end, superficial life, lacking depth and inner strength.
Death is indeed what will annihilate life, but it is what can charge them with intensity and powerful vitality (as long as it is being assimilated in the consciousness).
The ability to house the poles between being an non being, between existence and its getting lesser and lesser – can bring about that the person will live in a totality and desperateness of someone who has got nothing to lose, which makes him free, wild and dangerous.
***
“In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan
“Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, ‘I haven’t touched you yet.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan
“You have little time left, and none of it for crap. A fine state. I would say that the best of us always comes out when we are against the wall, when we feel the sword dangling overhead. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power
Gabriel