NOEMAYA

According to Genesis, man and woman had immediate access to paradisiacal bliss. Upon their transgression, they were punished by being taken away from this bliss, and God put in between man and bliss “the sweat of his face,” so that man had to work for what nourished him whereas prior to that he was in a state of perpetual nourishment from the source. In short, the punishment for original sin, i.e. forgetfulness, is work and struggle.

A possible metaphysical reading of the genesis goes like this: in the principial state of consciousness which is beyond both Being and non-Being and is marked by the bliss of unity, there arises forgetfulness as one of the possibilities of manifestation. This plane of manifestation is the plane of undifferentiated being, namely Chaos, that’s naturally charged with the tension to reunite with its principle of Beyond-Being. This tension marks the work and struggle inherent in the apparent separation from the origin; it’s the elastic principle of desire to reunite with the opposite so that things can return to Beyond-Being.

But the relation between the dimensionless point of Beyond-Being prior to The Fall and after return is not the same, though the two points are one and the same, as the beginning and the end are the same points. In going through separation and reunion something is completed. A geometrical representation of this situation is the formation of the circle where one begins from a point and ends in the same point but in the journey a circle is completed. This completion corresponds to the full realization of the possibilities within the chaos of being. In other words, Beyond-Being must undergo The Fall, only apparently though, in order to realize itself in all its possible aspects. It must forget itself in its full, primordial anonymity in order to find and recognize itself with full knowledge.

Perhaps a fascinating metaphysical story! But what of it? How does it help my human predicament! In light of the correspondence between the macrocosm and microcosm, we can see that our human situation reflects the same metaphysical dynamics:

To be human is to bear the chaos of being within oneself, and it’s from within this chaos that all things are born, both good and evil. This chaos is not something bad; it’s beyond good and evil; it is the field of undifferentiated possibilities waiting to be realized. But along with the chaos, man is also charged with the impulse and will to always “do something more,” to be on the go, to do the next thing, chase after this or that, or else to succumb to the hard pull of the chaos and sink into laziness and anonymity which is the most miserable condition, for one way of conceptualizing man is to recognize in him the irresistible desire to be known and recognized, to be pulled out of anonymity. This pull struggles against the inertial pull of the chaos back into anonymity and undifferentiated-ness. That’s why we chase and we do, and that’s why there’s nothing more depressing than laziness in the face of fading ambitions.

We all have experienced the unease, depression, and misery in being idle. We can get used to such states, and that’s because of the inherent inertia in chaos to swallow us into self-forgetfulness and anonymity. But even then we always feel an inner gnawing and confusion the cause of which we can’t often spot.

Holding the chaos within us, we also hold within the impulse to articulate being out of undifferentiated-ness, to bring order to the chaos that’s within and in front of us, to become who we truly are and what we are conscious of as the horizon of our possibilities. That may sound like a big order and we can’t do it all at once; we are not even fully conscious of the extent of our possibilities, and all we can do is to illuminate the path as far as we can by bringing order to our most immediate environment, to actualize what’s in front of us. This always starts from simple tasks, for example by making your bed or cleaning your room or washing the piled up dishes.

When we wake up to a cluttered space, we’re waking up to chaos; and chaos speaks; it presses upon us the desire to be ordered and articulated into something that reflects an inner alignment. When one constantly ignores the call of the looming chaos, one becomes bitter and resentful; as a result, one’s inner desire to articulate will be directed toward articulating bitterness and resentment; that’s when we become mean and develop a sharp tongue. This is an infantile mindset where one projects the responsibility of one’s chaos unto the world and others. A deeply unsatisfied and un-articulated person is always negative and cynical and critical of others, and that’s because by refusing to face, embrace, and mold the chaos within them, they’ve become pretty good at spotting unorganized chaos in others since they themselves are living in one.

It may not be so clear how one realizes one’s full potential, how one must give birth out of one’s chaos. And it’s supposed to be like that because the full possibilities can never be given to consciousness at once. Chaos is a layered phenomenon. One must peel away the first layer, the task at hand and the one immediately in from of one, in order to access the next layer of possibilities that call for realization. To start, we should address those possibilities that are more pressing, perhaps cleaning up a cluttered space. And then one can ask “what’s one thing I can do that I’m not doing right now and it’s weighing me down?” It can be one bad habit to drop or completing a small task we have been putting off, or it can be as simple as making a plan. The more we clear up our immediate vision, the more possibilities of realization will show and the easier it is to actualize them because we’re less overwhelmed; and of course there are endless possibilities to realize and articulate, for chaos (=undifferentiated Being) is infinite.

All this would not even have arisen in the absence of the phenomenon of awareness; it’s the awareness of chaos and the possibility of order that bears the tension and the call for self-realization. This awareness is both a gift and a curse: it’s a gift because it manifests possibilities, and it’s a curse because one cannot fully pull oneself out of the awareness of what one can become; the call of self-realization will haunt us from the depths of our unconscious, and the deeper we let it sink into the chaos the harder it is to find and articulate it. In a way, the collective unconscious is nothing but the primordial chaos out of which individuality is manifested as one of its possibilities.

The voice of chaos, the call of undifferentiated being to be articulated, can be one explanation of neurosis. Neuroticism is higher in hyper-aware individuals where their awareness of inner chaos is so overwhelming that it’s forced to be processed into an unending stream of often conflicting commentary due to the multitude of unrealized potentialities, potentialities that speak to the individual in the form of incessant thoughts and narratives that are struggling to give order to chaos while at the same time failing to achieve this goal, for thought being the subtlest form of order is also the most unstable and transitory form of order.

So, how do we navigate through this consciousness of chaos? A more practical and less overwhelming strategy would be what I use in my math tutoring sessions: pay attention to what’s in front of you and block out what’s not. Students often get overwhelmed by the wealth of information and complexity of a math problem; and unfortunately they’re overcome by this notion that they should start the process only if they know all the right steps all the way through the end of the solution process. But that’s never the case; we can never know all the steps and turns and twists in a new adventure; all we know is what’s clearly in front of us, and all we needs is a bit of courage and willingness and also some trust that if we have the right attitude (=being focused on what’s on-hand) we might hit the next right step.

What often keeps us form taking positive action is a crippling captivation with the scope of our vision and the complexity of the path to it. It’s definitely helpful to have in mind a snapshot of the big picture and perhaps a general outline of the path, but what truly leads us out of chaos and toward our vision is walking the walk, and to do so we must look down or else we might trip. The other day I was helping my 6 year old niece to complete a reading and writing assignment. She couldn’t stay focused and was doing her best to distract both of us; it was such a struggle to read one short sentence and frustrating for both of us. What I did next and her response was very interesting: I covered the page and the rest of the sentence with my hand so she could see only one word, and then I asked her to read as I moved my hand to reveal the next word. The result was amazing! She was able to read through that sentence 10 times faster and smoother than before. As adults we struggle with the same peripheral consciousness, except that we might have better strategies in blocking out unnecessary information; and sometimes we don’t, but we can try and figure out what works best for us.

To move out of the looming chaos, we can pay attention to the loudest call that’s drawing our attention to itself; in most cases it’s very simple and is something in our most immediate environment and time-zone. Perhaps cleaning something up, writing the next blog post, renewing the car’s annual inspection, etc.. It’s only when our immediate environment (both mental and physical) is in a state of relative order that we can get a more stable long-term vision of our life and the next right step toward it. When we make our day a relatively clean day, not only do we allow the next layer of possibilities to shines forth, we also create more positive emotions through these meaningful actions, emotions that are conducive to more meaningful actions that can exponentially improve our situation. We might at times become afraid of the unknown we’re acting our way into, but if we examine our lives we should be even more afraid of sinking back into the chaos of idleness and inaction. We must contemplate and even love this darkness and let this greater fear to motivate us. One who ignores and suppresses the chaos within, is doomed to return to it for lack of a reference point for the direction of life. Chaos is like a loving mother who’s courageous enough, like Mary, to lead out and sacrifice its child, the human person, by pushing it away and out of itself into the world, world symbolized by the cross, so that this child might reflect back into chaos the love and nobility of the mother.