Dear Ones..
What a fun dunk into looking at absurdity together. I appreciated all the points of view shared that expanded our definitions of absurdity to include more possibilities. Let us continue to expand our lenses of perception to include more possibilities. As the Queen of Hearts said in Wonderland, “Dearest Alice, you just haven’t had enough practice in thinking of 6 impossible things before breakfast!” Let us take that up as a practice this moon!! Enjoy looking at the continuum of what we call meaningful and what we call absurd to help us stretch anywhere we have or still do hold limitation in our thinking!
Enjoy the Moment!! Love.. ariel
From the dictionary:
An absurdity is a thing that is extremely unreasonable, so as to be foolish or not taken seriously, or the state of being so. “Absurd” is an adjective used to describe an absurdity, e.g., “Tyler and the boys laughed at the absurdity of the situation.”[1] It derives from the Latin absurdum meaning “out of tune“, hence irrational.[2] The Latin surdus means “deaf“, implying stupidity.[1] Absurdity is contrasted with seriousness in reasoning.[3] In general usage, absurdity may be synonymous with ridiculousness and nonsense. In specialized usage, absurdity is related to extremes in bad reasoning or pointlessness in reasoning; ridiculousness is related to extremes of incongruous juxtaposition, laughter, and ridicule; and nonsense is related to a lack of meaningfulness. Absurdism is a concept in philosophy related to the notion of absurdity.
Does the fact that something seems to be or make “non-sense” mean that it is pointless or lacking in meaning?
So when did you create or witness something that you would define as absurd? As in the definition here of ridiculous nonsense?
What this investigation today comes down to is asking the question, “How does one define one’s experience as having meaning, or being meaningful? What makes meaning or its apparent contrary absurdity?”
In my lifetime of investigation, meaning derives from one thing: the mind. The mind, your mind defines something as being meaningful, or internally coherent with its inner meaning, but that meaning is completely subjective due to the unique experiences that defined it as meaningful specifically for you. In other words, there is no outside, ultimate “meaning”, only your mind gives your experience meaning. To make matters worse, we have been trained to define anything that doesn’t have meaning to us, as being absurd. We may have mutually agreed upon reality constructs that we ascribe a cultural meaning to but that doesn’t make those constructs actually meaningful! Is this sounding more like the reasoning in Wonderland? I hope so. At one point Alice realizes that if the Red King stops dreaming her, she will cease to exist. Is that awareness absurd, or meaningful? // That is, Wonderland demonstrated not only in this case, but many cases where acausal, non-linear, reasoning was seen as “meaningful” as in this case with her very existence being in question! Further, if we are lucidly dreaming/creating our experience on Earth, which I do perceive we are, then as in night time dreaming, to learn the skills of dreaming more lucidly, utilizing and honoring non-causal, non linear thought, symbol and metaphor as being valid ways to ascribe meaning, makes total “sense”. (Row Row Row your boat gently down the stream, Merrily Merrily Merrily Merrily, Life is but a Dream!) To a totally left brained, scientifically, rationally indoctrinated person such as Westerners like ourselves are entrained to be, to hold the point of view of this song to be real would be seen as totally absurd and meaningless.
Do you see what I am getting at? One person’s ridiculousness, or non-sense is another’s meaningful experience. Think back to a time when you were in an expanded state of consciousness, however you got there. Did reality make “sense” in totally different and more expanded ways than your ordinary perception generally defined it? Did you suddenly perceive the dream-like quality of existence and your power to affect and change it like in a dream?
Knowing that we are living in a mutually projected dream, how would you live your life differently than you would by perceiving that reality is happening TO you and thinking that you are just reacting to what is “happening”?
Kensho video: https://vimeo.com/133547455
All states of consciousness are available right now. Every possibility in the past and future exists in the quantum timelessness of NOW. Simply put, your level of consciousness and the outpictured reality created by that consciousness are activated by your own present vibration. Does this statement sound absurd or meaningful to you? The answer to that question will be determined by the level of consciousness through which you are viewing the question! (As the Alchemists put it succinctly: As viewed. So appears!”) In general, the more expanded and open your awareness, the more “meaningful” the connections and revelations that will appear. The more contracted and limited your awareness, the more absurd things which are expanded and may seem impossible will appear to be. Alice in Wonderland is a brilliant primer for this consciousness expanding curriculum.
Lewis Carroll created this tale which provides a constant “litmus test” for your awareness to see how much you can take in as possible and meaningful from a non-linear, non-causal and thus seemingly absurd reality. Alice was his characterization of our limited 3D ego/mind consciousness that laughs at or sees as absurd anything outside its ordinarily limited perceptions as to what is possible or meaningful. If you want to experience your perception and mind being stretched on the rack of non-linear, non-causal perception, get a copy of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Or for the more advanced curriculum try: Alice in Quantumland..( by Robert Gilmore) which points out that Lewis Carroll, a mathematician/logician, was tapping into the principles of Quantum Reality with his Wonderland story and characters long before Quantum Physics even existed!! Far from being absurd, it was meaningfully, precognitively predicting some of the principles of modern day quantum physics!
This quote from Alice In Wonderland points to rational logic as being seen as absurd: Tweedle Dee says, “Contrary-wise if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.” Or as the “Mad Hatter” says so logically; “ Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.” Or the Queen of Hearts flatly states; “ You Alice haven’t had much practice thinking of six impossible things before breakfast, have you?” And “ You, Alice are suffering from the effects of only living forwards. We also live backwards here, so we can remember things before they happen. So much simpler!” This perception of the fluidity of time is now an accepted tenet in quantum physics.
What are some examples of ideas that were at first rejected as being ridiculous nonsense or impossible but are now totally a part of our reality?
So the moral to this consciousness tale is to stay open to all possibilities, and flexible in your awareness rather than quickly judging something as being absurd nonsense or meaningless. Often it simply exists outside of ordinarily limited and accepted reality constructs. The culture at large found Lewis Carroll’s work to be absurd, but since Wonderland was “only a story” they simply shook their heads rather than cutting his head off, (as many advanced thinkers have historically experienced). Wonderland was vindicated by quantum physics and found to be in fact clairvoyantly meaningful. Let us learn from that and begin to look for the larger pattern that could hold the truth of something that at first may seem absurd or meaningless!
Recommended reading for deeper understanding of how to dance with our mutually projected dream: An Indian Life by Herman Hesse (a story at the back of his book The Glass Bead Game)
