01-27-2011, 12:00 AM
A portion of the experience with new and old is, for me, best described in words as Lex has done here and as has everyone who's responded to him. But, I know that words cannot grasp that difference at the core of it; they are a tool we use from a handful of tools that we've become comfortable in using--those tools being words, visuals, experience itself, and, largely, systems--of which the former tools are all comprised. In the past, I've been intrigued by the level of complexity that systems entail and eventually terrified by the trap the whole idea of a system becomes. Forget the flyers and the FI--we have enough to deal with in trying to extricate ourselves from explanation and intricacies and definition! (Said tongue in cheek---for those who might be appalled that I take those entities so lightly but maybe they also drive home my point!) The detail, the innuendo, the "splitting of hairs" that occurs when a system is used to explain awareness and perception becomes endemic to our understanding of it. Lex's grasp of Zen Buddhism and Bob May's grasp of the Biblical narrative are fine examples of the use of a system to grapple with the new and the old although having said that I ask at the same time, do you feel the need at times to extricate yourselves from even those systems or are they examples of the best we have in "making sense" of the mystery?