
- I wonder if bad eyesight is caused by a disinclination to see the look on other people’s faces. We blur sight and retreat to senses which are less susceptible to duplicitous signals. So, the eyes atrophy or wear out with misuse.
- When I take off my glasses, I end up listening more closely. Then the Other listens more closely too. And all they can see in my own blissfully blurred face is a good-natured ignoramus, which tends to awaken a spirit of charity, if not downright pity. Thus, we both become transfigured so long as at least one of us remains blurry.
- The centrality of myself remains stubbornly pre-Galilean. *
- What I “know” of another person is only my story of the story they tell about themselves.
- Our personalities are merely characters in imaginary dramas. When the drama shifts, the personality shifts. If the drama ends, “we” end. Hence, we cling to dramas.
- The imaginary voice is speaking to an imaginary person. The “I” and the “self” that are being addressed are both part of the imaginary performance.
- Yes, it’s an inquiry into myself, but it’s not about “me”, as in my personal history or problems. It’s about the common momentum of thought that runs “me.”
- If we make this conscious distinction between thought and being, then we are able to move in and out of the shapes imposed on perception by thought and language. This allows us to remain somewhat aloof from who we think we are.
- Whatever we are, we’re not found in passing thoughts. They are merely the traces of our passing.
- I learn from everything that goes wrong, and everything is always going wrong. *
- I don’t write because I know something. I write because I don’t. *
- But it’s not like I’m trying to do something. It’s more like something else is trying to do something and “I” keep getting in the way. And all this tripping over myself to avoid what it wants looks like “effort.” It’s a seductive pretense.
- Writing happens when effort fails.
- The only light the “I” produces is the light of its own combustive friction. This friction is produced by trying to avoid the revealing light of awareness. This friction is the cause of Hellfire. Hellfire is the light of heaven burning away.
- Self-discovery is the discovery of nothing.
- Self-discovery is the exploration of the cosmos, because the discovery of my absence is the discovery of everything else. But we turn our backs on this larger Being merely because it disturbs the small image of who we thought we were.
- Writing is neither a means to an end, nor an end in itself. There is a third possibility. Writing is merely what happens when I’m learning. It’s a necessary corollary of the process, but neither a means nor an end.
- If a necessary corollary to something larger is repressed, then the larger thing also can’t form. But we still can’t focus on the corollary as a means towards the larger thing.
- I say things after I already know them. I know things silently prior to speaking. I speak in order to hold the surface image steady against a barrage of anomalous information.