acim lesson 138 - heaven is the decision i must make

I’m very late to getting to this lesson and haven’t been able to get to any lessons today. It was my daughter’s 13th birthday and my godson was confirmed in the Catholic Church.

ACIM: You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you, when there is really only one to make. And even this but seems to be a choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. You make but one. And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all. For truth is true, and nothing else is true. There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to the truth.

I’m feeling conflicted about this right now. My husband’s family is extremely conservative Catholic. His father was a German Jew who escaped the Holocaust but married a Latin American Catholic female and converted to Catholicism rather than standing up for German Judaism. That is something I don’t get but he must have had his reasons (even though when talking to his brother’s daughter it was clearly a major issue within his immediate family.) If you are driven from your home because of your religious beliefs and racial orientation, how do you so easily give in to that which would save you?

At the same time, he married a Latin American Catholic who didn’t demand that he convert but he did. And his family is far more connected than most and that connection can very likely be linked to it’s religion. Of course, we are on the outside of that religion and we are a major frustration for them - but we also function as a sort of necessary consciousness. We are free to disagree even if they heavily chastise us for it and especially because we are able to take the chastisement in jest even if they are serious about it.

ACIM: Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help. And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.

Solomon & Higgins Lecture on Nietzsche (Lectures 19-24)

And some more sketchy notes from the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company. (See also Lectures 1-11 , Lecture 12 , Lectures 13-18) . If anyone does happen to read these notes, please forgive the typos. I highly doubt I’ll go back through and proofread for a while. I primarily write these notes for my own understanding and future reference.

Morality

Nietzsche distinguishes between Morality with a capital M and morality with a lowercase m. Different societies have different moralities which is morality with a lowercase m and in the plural. To have an individual morality is to have a rank order of values.

Morality with a capital M, on the other hand, is Morality in the singular. This understanding of Morality is objective and writ large.

Nietzsche attacks singular Morality. He doesn’t attack individual plural morality.

There are no moral facts There are only moral interpretations of facts. Values are not facts in the world and if one appeals to a morality in which these are supposed to be objective, one is always going to be subverting oneself because this is not the nature of values. (The Commandments/facts about human nature are examples of objectified values.)

Values aren’t “in the world”. But they aren’t subjective or personal, either. The truth is more complicated and Nietzsche saw through this very clearly. He was probably one of the first philosophers to do so. To ask if values are in the world or in us doesn’t make sense.

Hume said the values were in us, not in the world. But Hume admitted that when we are worried about values, morality, human behavior, etc. - the question about whether values are in the world is of no interest whatsoever. This is where Nietzsche picks him up. What matters is is what is valuable for life. We experience the world in value laden terms and there is no way to get beyond that. That’s what makes us who we are. It doesn’t matter if it is subjective or objective. What are the values and how do we negotiate them given that different cultures have different values?

Values are culture specific. Different groups have different senses of morality. One of the big issues in the U.S. is always which of these singular moralities with a lowercase “m” are we going to make binding on everyone as a Morality with a capital M? This is what Nietzsche says we have to reject. We have to reject that values were given to us with a capital M from God.

“Thou shalt not” are prohibitions. Morality is seen in terms of what we should not do. Morality with a capital “M” is negative and prohibitive. God given morality is rejected by Nietzsche because the idea of an externally imposed morality is unnatural. We have to understand morality as coming from us.

The modern and most philosophical notion of Morality with a capital “M” is from Kant. Kant said there was a Moral Law and called it “The Categorical Imperative”. It is a command and it is absolutely unexceptional. “Thou Shalt” - no exceptions. Kant has in mind the singular sense of Morality (capital M).

Kant says that we should “Act always that others should act likewise.” We should ask: “What if everyone were to do what it is I am doing?” When you universalize in this way, you take morality out of experience and now understand it as a product of pure, practical reason. It is a rational phenomenon, not an experiential phenomenon. As you universalize as a test of morality, it becomes a rule for everyone. But this doesn’t work. Applying the rule to everyone almost always benefits some and disadvantages others. Universalization isn’t as fair as Kant wants it to be.

Nietzsche says applying the same rule to everyone destroys the exceptions. Nietzsche is always interested in the exceptions. We each have our own individual moralities. Morality (lower case “m”) must come from within - and those are the values worth defending. This is a defense of life in all it’s various forms. It’s the inclinations which give us morality. It is not a rational enterprise.

But even so, to say inclination is good and rationalism is bad is stupid. Some inclinations are healthy and enhance life. Others are stupid and drag life down. It is life itself that is the value. Life by it’s nature is confusing. It is diverse. The defense of life is a defense of diversity. The defense of the individual is a defense of vitality.

Are our values healthy or sick? Do they support life or drag it down? Nietzsche says externally imposed values are unhealthy. Asceticism is life denying. Rational principals are also life denying because they are externally imposed. Reason is opposed to nature in the way Kant uses reason.

Nietzsche likewise attacks modernity. He saw democracy and socialism as a leveling devices. American consumerism makes us all equal in that we have spending power. But it removes any sense of value but the market value.

Immoralism (Virtue, Self & Selfishness)

Nietzsche was a kind and gentle person. His last sane act was to hug a horse to save it from a beating. Nietzsche rejects morality as something universal. Nietzsche did not kill, steal, or commit adultery. He honored his mother and father. He obeyed the commandments but he objected to the idea that these commandments were externally imposed.

He doesn’t reject the content of the commandments. What he rejects is the idea that breaking the commandments relegates people to the realm of evil. That doesn’t explain anything. that they break the commandments consistently is a psychological, sociological problem.

Nietzsche doesn’t reject rational principals. What he rejects is the rationalization of rationality and morality. Kant separates inclinations from reason and says reason is the realm of morality. But once you do that, once you ascertain a person’s moral worth is based upon the moral law itself, you are pushing out of view the inclinations and saying they don’t matter - that we shouldn’t bother looking at them. This pushes aside the actual motives of our behavior in favor of doing the rational thing. But human beings are rarely motivated by what is reasonable, rational, or moral.

Kant says we are not in a position to know what the motives of our behavior actually are. Freud says philosophers before him introduced the unconsciousness. He just made it scientific. Kant was one of the philosophers he was referring to. In Germany, the idea of unconscious has a long picture of motivation as mysterious. Kant uses the unconscious as a way of remaining oblivious to the motivations Nietzsche wants to expose.

For Nietzsche, a kindly act that is understood as acting on principal may very well be motivated by an urge for superiority, a kind of contempt or self-defense. Kant doesn’t let us see this motivation. Instead he gives us a system of rationalizations.

A principal of morality may be perceived as absolute but it often involves all kinds of fiddling. If you have an abstract moral principal, the application of that principal is going to require some gerrymandering and fiddling to apply to the particular case and then it becomes a rationalization. It operates in such a way that doesn’t require we look at the actual motivations behind our behavior. It is possible to be a good person by not doing anything wrong. The focus is never on what you did wonderful - it’s on what you did or didn’t do wrong. For Nietzsche, this is a definition of the sickly. Being a good person and living a good life on those terms doesn’t amount to living a life at all. Existence requires commitment, passion, vibrancy, adventure.

Modern philosophy thinks of ethics in terms of Kant and John Stuart Mill. Kant represents rational principal; Mill emphasizes the general good. These are essentially the same because they are involved with rational principals.

Jesus present Kant with a moral problem. the temptation of Christ shows a person so perfect where the individual is not at war with universal morality. To say Jesus is a good person does not fit.

What ethics consists of are excellences (this comes from Aristotle). To think in terms of virtues is not about being good or obeying rules. It is about being excellent. To be excellent is to be exceptional - not to be like everyone else, The test of having a virtue is that you enjoy doing it. It’s not about being like everyone else.

Nietzsche the Immoralist; Genealogy of Morals

Even now what is sick may have once served healthy moral values. Morality is not just about doing what you want to do. It must also be noble. Mozart doing what he wants to do is noble because his creation of music benefits everyone.

Master morality is doing what you want to do. Slave morality is not doing what you want to do: asceticism, slavery, etc. It’s also following gurus rather than finding your own way.

Morality with a capital M comes about through slavery and persecution. It is a reaction to Master morality.

The term “good” comes from an ancient root which means warrior. It has to do with confidence and price - self-esteem. “I am my own ideal.” It is about pursuing a sense of excellence which is one’s own and that is what the word good means.

The term “bad”, on the otherhand,’ refers to what is pathetic, failure, weakness, pathos, vulgar, what is unsatisfying. Masters speak in terms of doing what they want to do and following this in a straightforward way. Slaves speak in terms of prohibition. “Thous Shalt Not”…. (Not doing what you want to do.)

Nietzsche considered the original development of slave morality a step in the right direction: “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives births to values.” The way the masters behave, doing anything they want, is not something to admire. It is something despise . If the slaves were in the role of the master, they would not want to behave in that way. If you make masters evil, you can consider yourself good. This is the opposite of the Master view. Masters view themselves as good without question. People who are different from them are bad (unsatisfied, vulgar, etc.)

Master morality is about good and bad. Slave morality is about good and evil. Slaves have to conclude they are good by seeing someone as worse than them (the Masters). What good amounts to in the slave morality point of view is not directly asserting yourself. It involves having more self-control and they veiw the masters as people who haven’t learned these traits. They haven’t learned to internally disrespect what externally they might go along with. this internal move on the part of the slaves Nietzsche thinks is a brilliant bit of psychology. But the problem is that it later ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps the slave in a secondary position. there is no immediate view of self-worth without the view that someone else is evil.

Nietzsche calls it a transvaluation of values. Evil is doing what those guys do that they think is good. Good is not doing all that. Wealthy is viewed as evil. Strength, power, warrior virtues are flipped and meekness instead is what is seen as virtuous. In modern times, this is like saying ignorance is bliss when knowledge is the virtue of master morality.

How did slave morality become Morality with a capital M? When Constantine converted to Christianity and made Rome a Christian nation around 330 A.D.

Bad consciousness is the twist between master morality and slave morality in all of us. Where both exist, slave morality is likely to take over. Solomon offers an example. Consider a Baboon who exhibits Master Morality. He does whatever it is he wants to do. But he is placed in a zoo and is told stories about the Zoo Keeper who will do horrible things to him if he makes an exception of himself. The Baboon is master of the Baboon world, but the Zoo Keeper will become his Master. This presents a conflict. The Baboon will very likely give in and try and make himself seem like every other Baboon so as not to anger the Zoo Keeper.

Master morality lends itself to a Virtue Ethics. Slave morality lends itself to a Kantian/Judeo-Christian analysis where ethics is understood as universal and the rules are externally imposed and they apply in just the same way to everyone.

Slave morality was originally a good move. But it no longer serves us. Nietzsche doesn’t think we can go back to Master Morality. that’s not possible. But we can move beyond good and evil.

Resentment, Revenge and Justice

The French Ressentiment differs from the English Resentment. Resentment is a much stronger term. Ressentiment means irritation. Resentment seeks revenge. It is a viscous attack. Resentment is a strategy. It turns failure into virtue. It requires putting other people down and getting even with them for their superiority. Resentment is brilliant. The idea is kill someone without them even knowing you killed them.

Revenge is the original meaning of the world justice. Self-revenge is getting even with oneself for doing so well.

As we get used to judging on the basis of negating what is outside of us in order to feel good about ourselves (the blame game), we are constantly at war with ourselves about our excellence. the initially healthy move made by early Christians and Ancient Hebrews of turning the tables on Master Morality has become so internalized that there is almost no way we can get enough support to gain a good opinion of ourselves through our negative views of what is outside of ourselves. We are forced to drag our view down of everyone else in order to make ourselves feel relatively good. But this doesn’t work. It doesn’t provide us with self-esteem.

Nietzsche wages war and guilt and sin. The type of guilt he’s referring to is inward guilt - the belief that we are inherently deficient. Nietzsche says this is an unhealthy way of viewing the self and that it creates resentment.

Sin is judgment from another plane. It is not against oneself or against others but against God. It is impossible to live a sinless life based on the conventional definition of sin. Psychologically what this creates is a need to blame others for our faults.

We are so habituated to the Christian story and we are so obsessed with the need for a God that we will accept anyone who we think adjudicates across the board. This is how Nazism came to power.

Nietzsche calls slaves, not masters, brilliant and strategic. Hegel likewise has Master and Slave switch roles as a battle for recognition. The loser becomes the master slave. The slave becomes creative. The master falls into the slavish dependent position of having to be like others. Nietzsche wants those who are creative and talented but suppressed to turn that around.

Is there a difference between justice and vengeance? Another form of justice is the idea that goods are equally and fairly distributed. Nietzsche has mixed views about justice. He talks about herd morality and uses this term because Herd is considered to be the Christian flock of sheep that are difficult to distinguish but the good shepherd can recognize each individual one. What has happened to this notion of individual differences? Different individuals have different things to contribute to society. But people want to think of justice as an absolute, Nietzsche says it is better to think of justice as personal virtue. Forgiveness is important in this sense, but not as a strategem for getting even. If we have enough going on in our lives, then it becomes easy not to worry about what someone else has done to us.

Will to Power

Solomon and Higgins don’t think Will to Power is central to Nietzsche’s philosophy like other philosophers do. The Will to Power is systematically misleading. Nietzsche doesn’t mean will or power and he probably doesn’t mean “the” or “to”, either.

For Schopenhauer, the will is not individual, it is inside all of us. For Kant, it is individual, but it is external and lies behind our actions. We choose them - we will them. Nietzsche rejects both notions. He maintains Kant’s idea that the will is individualistic, but he rejects the idea of “the will”. He says it is a fiction. Will, in the Kantian sense, is nonsense. There is no agency or force behind “the will”. With Schopenhauer’s understanding, Nietzsche says the idea of a universal will is a metaphysical fiction. Will, for Nietzsche, is really more like motive.

Power is likewise problematic. It is often understood is political or military power. But the term for this in German is “reich”. Nietzsche uses the term “macht” which translates into English as the will to be alive, to feel vital and creative. In this sense, saying “the will” makes no sense. And “to” indicates a goal orientation that Nietzsche rejects. For Nietzsche, “The Will to Power” represents the present - not the future. It is never extinguished. No individual goal can satisfy it. It’s always a drive to enhance vitality and express oneself. The Will to Power cannot be predicted in advance. Any particular goal is a manifestation of The Will to Power. when one goal is fulfilled, another one takes it’s place.

Life consists of doing what you love. this isn’t imposed on you from the outside. It is discovered by trial and error. If you want to succeed, do what you love. The problem with goal setting is that if you set power as a goal, you make success far less likely. Likewise, to say “I want to be happy” is self-defeating.

Life is a process. It is ongoing. Life is exciting. It is dangerous. It involves taking risks. This thinking is in conflict with Darwin who talks about survival of the fittest. Goals should not be about survival. They should be about being a great “this” or a great “that”. It is the exercise of excellence.

Life is cruel. That’s the way ti is. To say we strive for pleasure and an avoidance of pain is likewise a faulty understanding. Creativity doesn’t offer a point of satisfaction. We are desiring creatures. To think in terms of complacency or contentment is to deny the kind of creatures we are.

The Ubermensch is an ideal. It is a full manifestation of “The Will to Power”.

Eternal Recurrence

The idea that time repeats itself over and over again is an ancient idea. Time as a wheel was an understanding in Zarathustra’s Persia; the Vedic Philosophy of India, Ancient Greece (through Heraclitus, the Stoics, and the Pythagoreans). But Christian Orthodoxy rejected it. The church insisted that history is linear. The atonement would be a linear event in time. The Church said that there is only one time and it is linear.

In his notes, Nietzsche plays with a proof for Eternal Recurrence. It goes something like this: Time is infinite. there is a finite number of energy packets (energy states) and consequently a finite number of sequences of energy packets. In the infinity of time, the number of sequences is going to have to repeat itself an infinite number of times.

This proof is obviously flawed and Nietzsche never intended to publish it. But that doesn’t mean Nietzsche doesn’t believe in Eternal recurrence.

If you were to take this thought seriously - that your life is going to be repeated an infinite number of times, then the weight it gives to this life and the moments of this life is incalculable compared to the Christian image that this life is but a blink and it is the next life, the eternal life, that gets all the weight.

Milan Kundera in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, played with Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence. If events repeat themselves an infinite number of time and consequently have a certain amount of weight because of this repetition, would we be able to tolerate the idea of that much weight on the way we live our lives instead of rationalizing our lives? The rationalization goes like this:

This will be over soon, then I’ll get what I want. If I just put up with the job now, I’ll get the promotion in the future. There is yet another world waiting for me that is more perfect than this one.

What if, instead, we took the moments of our lives seriously?

The Nietzschean alternative to Christian consciousness where we are always looking forward to the next life is this idea of eternal recurrence. We are so used to thinking of life as linear that it is difficult to understand the idea of time as circular in many cultures, current and ancient. The problem is that we can’t know the difference between on occurrence and a recurrence.

There is a deep prejudice against eternal recurrence in the Judeo-Christian world because of the belief in “free will” even though there is some evidence for it in physics. Nietzsche says that the idea of “free will” is often used as and excuse for blame. It leads to a general reinforcement of uglifying the world around you in order to feel good.

Nietzsche thinks our primary freedom is how we deal with internal drives. Freedom is to feel free to actively engage in your life. To deal with life in the present and fully be yourself. This is the only freedom we have and thankfully is the only one we really want because it is readily available to us all the time.

Nietzsche was clear that there is a sense of immortality for those who excel. Not as in an after life, but in the same sense Homer is immortal through his works.

Nietzsche gave meaning to his life by doing something that went beyond his life. Becoming who you are doesn’t end in death. Events after death deeply affect one’s flourishing. [Which makes me think of Solomon who is dead, but here I am watching a lecture by him as though he is alive.]

Nietzsche says “become who you are”. So who does Nietzsche want us to be? He won’t ofer concrete advice. Instead he says in The Gay Science: Give style to your character. Love who you are and what you have to work with and make something beautiful out of it.

The slave takes his flaws and turns them into weapons by re-describing them as good. Nietzsche is a sick lonely man. What do you do when you find yourself alienated from other people? Nietzsche gave shape to himself. The man with the mustache becomes irrelevant to the creation Nietzsche has become.

It’s an art of transfiguration. This is about taking your own traits and giving them a setting. Taking the resources you have and creating a masterpiece. Our endowments are not virtues until we figure out a creative way to use them.

The individual plays off other people and vice versa. If we becomes ourselves, we positively affect others.

Solomon and Higgins conclude the lecture with a quote from Nietzsche:

Whoever has really gazed down with an Asiatic and Super-Asiatic eye into the most world denying of all possible modes of thought (beyond good and evil) and no longer, like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the spell of morality. Perhaps by this very act without really desiring it may have opened himself to this opposite ideal. The ideal of the most high spirited, energetic, world affirming man who has not only come to terms with and assimilated with what it is but wants to have it again as it was and is for all eternity - insatiably calling out, “Once more”.

acim lesson 137 - when i am healed i am not healed alone

Really what we are talking about here is the healing of relationships. I’m finally getting that. It’s the healing of our relationship to our body, our relationship to one another, our relationship to the world, etc. We’ve based these relationships on an egoic understanding that created separation and now we heal that understanding by recognizing the illusory nature of that separation. Our belief in the body is one of these egoic beliefs. We have separate bodies therefore we believe ourselves to be separate and distinct beings. But what does this say about our relationship to one another and our obvious interconnectedness?  Why do we place the importance of our being separated because we have separate bodies over the importance of relationship and interconnectedness?   When our bodies get sick, we tend to place even more importance on our physical individual reality than on our understanding of the whole.

It is fear and belief that has created our sickness. But the focus isn’t on a sickness in the physical body (although the physical body is certainly not separate from this sickness). It’s about a sickness that makes us place more faith in our egoic understanding of being separate than a loving acceptance of our interconnectedness.

Williamson’s blurb: “All healing comes from joining, just as sickness comes from separation. As we let go of the barriers that hold healing at bay, we by definition rejoin the Sonship. Everyone is thereby in some way healed.”

ACIM: Yet think not healing is unworthy of your function here. For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind. And love becomes a dream, while fear remains the one reality that can be seen and justified and fully understood.

It’s that good old need for certainty. We are afraid so we latch on to something that seems certain - something physical like the written word of a sacred text or the material physicality of the world or a belief system that promises us something certain. We need to justify our beliefs because we think that by not justifying them, they aren’t real. But could you imagine having to justify love? Love is made known to us in a completely different way than is belief.

ACIM: Let healing be through you this very day. And as you rest in quiet, be prepared to give as you receive, to hold but what you give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined. Now we come together to make well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was attack. Nor will we let this function be forgot as every hour of the day slips by, remembering our purpose with this thought:

Solomon & Higgins Lecture on Nietzsche (Lectures 13 -18)

More sketchy notes from the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company. (See also Lectures 1-11 and Lecture 12 ) I may or may not proofread this tomorrow. Forgive any typos.

Love Pity and Resentment

• There is a dichotomy that occurs between doing the right thing and doing what you want to do (self-interest). Nietzsche questions this dichotomy and says that very often that self-interest may be the right thing to do and the right thing to do may be self-interest. People do what it is they are motivated to do. When you practice benevolence you are often practicing a form of subtle revenge. Also, if someone is suffering and I feel pity for them, I’m not making them feel any better. By suffering with them, I’m not making them feel any better. I don’t reduce the suffering, I increase it. Pity for someone casts them into an inferior role. When you pity them, you no longer fear them. You are superior.
• How much can we actually empathize with another person? When we pity someone with insight and empathy we can understand that we share the world and are subject to the same plight. This is Schopenhauer’s stance. We realize we are all inferior and subject to the same plight. We are victims. Nietzsche says this is pathetic. To think we are all victims together is not a noble notion. He says the idea of compassion is a hypocrisy.
• Ressintement (Resentment) seems to be a justified and reasonable response to injustice but really it is nothing more than a sense of hopelessness.
• Guilt goes along with resentment. The major thrust of Christianity is to cure the problem of guilt. But Christianity created the problem of guilt; Christianity makes people feel guilty and then offers them a way out of the guilt. That’s hypocritical.

Love & Friendship

• Love is a longing for something far beyond oneself.
• Christian love doesn’t emphasize friendship and it de-sexualizes love. Nietzsche rejects this. Love always has a sexual element.
• Marriage is a long conversation.
• A friendship based on mutual enjoyment is much different than a friendship based on mutual advantage. Enjoying someone is much better than using someone for advantage. But even more important is friendship based on mutual admiration - one that makes us want to be a better person because of the relationship. Aristotle said this was the key to friendship.
• Friendship is also about mutual inspiration.

Women

• Nietzsche is often thought of as sexist. Some of his comments do seem very sexist but when understood in context, they aren’t as sexist as they first appear.
• Nietzsche says “Supposing truth is a woman, what then?” Truth in German is a feminine noun. People think this is a sexist comment but it isn’t. Nietzsche assumes women are psychologically complex and suggests by this aphorism that truth, like a woman is reticent to be known. It has to be wooed. (Women are resistant to male demands.) Like a woman for a desiring man, truth cannot ultimately be had.)
• In Beyond Good & Evil (pp. 231-239), he prefaces his comments about women as the comments being “only my truths”. He recognizes that women may not agree with his ideas about them. (That the female perspective is very likely different than his perspective.) He says that women want to debunk fantasies men have had about themselves and that this is not a persuasive approach. It’s giving control to consciousness what is better left to instinct. They are buying into a game men have been harmed by. Nietzsche tries to understand an alternative consciousness - that of women. In doing so, he upholds perspectivism. He doesn’t think women should be more like men. They have will of their own. They have a different perspective than men and this perspective is beneficial.

Top 10

This lecture provided a list of Nietzsche’s top 10 favorite philosophers and top 10 least favorite philosophers. I didn’t write them all down, but a few definitely caught my interest.

• Spinoza is on the list of favorites. Nietzsche recognized himself in Spinoza. They had much in common: Love of fate; the rejection of pity; naturalism; the attempt to understand the individual in the context of the whole
• Emerson is also on the list of favorites. (He’s the only American on either list.) Some of Nietzsche’s ideas have names that come from Emerson. Emerson talked about the Oversoul, Nietzsche’s Ubermensch (Overman) is a very similar idea. Emerson talked about the joyous science. Nietzsche uses the term “gay science”. Emerson talked about the “death of God and, like Nietzsche, he rejected orthodox theology for religious reasons.
• Kant is one of Nietzsche’s favorite and least favorite philosophers. He greatly admires Kant but he also criticizes him because he doesn’t propose something naturalistic. He proposes something dictated to us - even if it is reason doing the dictating.
• Martin Luther is one of Nietzsche’s least favorite philosophers. Much of Nietzsche’s thought shows clear Lutheran underpinnings. But Nietzsche sees depravity in Luther that he rejects.
• St. Paul is one of Nietzsche’s least favorite philosophers. He is an opportunist. A propogandist. Paul had no use for the life of the redeemer. He needed the crucifixion. Paul was resentful and had no use for life.
• Absurd rationality leads to the idea that life is worthless.

History

• Hegel said that spirit is this worldly. It’s a sort of cosmic consciousness. It’s isn’t otherworldly. Nietzsche agrees with this understanding of spirit.
• Hegel invented history. The question of whether truth changes through time were not questions actively raised until Hegel. He makes this question a central focus and this thesis is very close to Nietzsche’s. The truth of history is the truth of change. There are many truths and these truths can contradict each other. It isn’t a matter of which ones are right and which ones are wrong. It’s a matter of which are more developed, which are more naive, which are one sided, which take account of others.
• Hegel said Bacchanalian revel was the truth of philosophy in general. this is very similar to Nietzsche’s Dionysian metaphor. Philosophy is not a neat linear progression. It is not a matter of rational thinking. It is a passionate mess. It is complicated and unresolved.
• Philosophers conflict and they build on one another in a patterned way. (Not that there is a purpose behind it all - a teleology). Something emerging in a patterned way is what Nietzsche’s genealogy is all about.
• Darwin said that man is not the ultimate stage but a stepping stone to something else. Nietzsche was against the idea of “the survival of the fittest” because he said it had not been fully established. He says it is about a struggle for power. Nietzsche interprets Darwin as an English theologian - that we are at the end of evolution and man is the result. Social Darwinism says only the fittest societies survive. It is a moral philosophy. Those that perish were meant to perish. those that survive were meant to survive. It’s harsh doctrine and Nietzsche rejects it. Nietzsche’s had a far more artistic sense. For Nietzsche, it’s not just a matter of simple survival, it is a matter of creativity and imagination. Those who survive are the most creative. What comes out of natural selection in terms of society isn’t the best, it is the weakest; the most common; the most repulsive. The cockroach is most likely the most fit. But is this the best?
• Nietzsche’s Last Man is most likely the fittest in terms of natural selection. But if it is up to us to choose through our ability to create, is this what we want to choose? Do we want to be the ultimate couch potato living safely and comfortably. Or do we want to live a more risky, creative existence?
• What we call truth are those things that best lead to human survival. Evolution tells us why we believe what it is we believe not by justifying belief but by showing the place beliefs play in a flourishing life.
• History can be a form of the “other-worldly” because it is based on the past. But you can’t just go back to the past. You have to live in the here and now.
• History is essential for many things, but it is not an ends in itself.
• How do we find a perspective where history affirms life? Antiquarian History is a way of appreciating our past that doesn’t involve white washing. Greece was a culture steeped in cruelty. It’s not enough to just look at the nice parts but as it really was. Our history, ugly or beautiful, is part of what makes us what we are.
• The underlying value must always be life itself.

Nihilism

• Nihilism was originally understood as something akin to teenage rebellion. It was a rejection of tradition. Nietzsche rejected German Society so in this sense he could be called a nihilist. But he didn’t reject society altogether.
• Nietzsche defined nihilism as the highest values devaluing themselves. He’s talking about two values in particular: moral values and the values of the Judeo/Christian tradition. Religion and morality are his focus.
• Skepticism is healthy. Cynicism is an unhealthy denial of life. Trial and error is skepticism. Cynicism is being tired and weary - being so skeptical that you aren’t open to anything. It doesn’t allow for possibilities. It is closed rather than open.
• Nietzsche is against Nihilism. But he refuses to take “the truth” as something fixed, absolute and easily accessible. We create the truth through our experience and our living. He is a nihilist in terms of knowledge.
• If Christians are honest, it doesn’t take much to realize that God is not central to their conception of the real world. Realistically, the Christian God no longer played a major role. Our culture is no longer centered on this God - whether we uphold the idea or not.
• Are the values we once held valuable? Values change. Perhaps they were reasonable moves at one time but they are no longer valuable.
• Schopenhauer said asceticism was a way to make life good - renounce the will and maintain peace. Nietzsche rejects this. To fast for the sake of fasting or to sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice makes no sense to him. Is there a deeper motive for asceticism? Someone able to control impulses often feels superior and self-righteous.
• Nietzsche sees science as having been pursued as a sort of Goethean selling the soul to the devil. The desire for truth is a desire to align finite powers with the infinite. With this thinking, one becomes a representative of humanity rather than an individual. Nietzsche says the scientific world view is a shadow of God that still lingers with us. It’s important not to transpose habits of the past to a scientific world view. We need to resuscitate our powers and not transfer them to the Christian God or some dream of nature we know nothing about.

acim lesson 136 - sickness is a defense against truth

ACIM:  Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret, magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.

Wow!!  I never thought of it in that way, but it makes sense to me.    On the surface, I can easily see sickness as a defense against truth.   It’s a matter of the mind/body connection.  What we deny is going to come out in some way and very often comes out as sickness.

But then what is it we mean by sickness?  I immediately think of Ken Wilber’s book about his wife who had cancer.  Her preferred form of spirituality was ACIM.  He said she practiced it every day.   But rather than take the new age belief that her cancer was caused because her thinking was off and that she had created it as a defense against truth, she fully accepted her cancer.  That’s how she finally found peace in her situation and how she helped others find peace in similar situations.   The frantic search to “perform the right procedure”; eat the right things; or think the right thoughts she said were based on fear, not love.  Which isn’t to say she gave up on life.  What she did was regain her life even though her body was failing.  What she gave up was the idea that she was sick.  As long as she thought of herself as sick, she was frantically searching for a cure.  But when she came to terms with the truth of her situation, she was able to calm down and enjoy life again.   She started living in the present rather than in the future frantically trying to control or ward off what was to come.  She faithfully followed a very strict diet, exercise plan, and medical advice.  She didn’t give up trying to do what would give her body strength.  What she gave up was an attachment to the end result and that allowed her to focus on living rather than on sickness and death.

ACIM:  Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more.

Our bodies are not meant to last forever.  Dr. Weil says that we need to come to terms with the fact that we will from time to time have to deal with diseases and other bodily issues.  He says the best way to overcome illness is to surrender to it.    That the body suffers does not mean that the whole of our reality is sick.  To say, “I’m sick” is perhaps a form of blame because we don’t think it is how things are supposed to be.  I don’t think ACIM is trying to say that if we have the right thoughts, our bodies will never undergo disease.  That sort of thinking creates fear, pain and suffering.  Sickness is a psychological response - it’s a value judgment.  It doesn’t exist so it doesn’t “happen” to us.   It is a meaning we have created as a form of defense against the truth.

ACIM:  Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal, and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey…If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more.

I have forgotten what I really am, for I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defense against the truth. But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick.

acim lesson 135 - if i defend myself i am attacked

This is a very interesting lesson.

ACIM: Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself? And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish.

That’s a really good point.

ACIM: The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the way.

Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. For it is your reality that is the “threat” which your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.

I think that is what Nietzsche understood. The “truth” is so far removed from the beliefs we have about it. If we hold to any belief dogmatically, however scientifically valid, we are doing nothing more than defending what is meaningless. We forget that we have given everything all the meaning it has for us and hold to that meaning as though it is some sort of God given truth. But we have created the meaning and it is that meaning that must be slain in the lion stage to make room for the openness available to us in the Child stage.

ACIM: Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.

I like Williamson’s quote today: “We can’t fake authenticity. We think we need to create ourselves, always doing a paste-up job on our personalities. That is because we’re trying to be special rather than real. We’re pathetically trying to conform with all the other people trying to do the same.”

For the Bible Tells Me So

For the Bible Tells Me So is another film that I wish I remembered specifically why it got added to my Netflix. How difficult would it be for Netflix to add a notes section to what it is we add to our queues??? It was an excellent documentary!!

My daughter recently had a friend “come out” to her. She said she had tried to tell her mother but that her mother freaked out so she immediately said she was joking.

Did you know that every five hours an LGBT teen takes their own life? And for every teen that actually does take their own life, there are 20 more that try? The suicide hotline says that one of the top five reasons people claim they want to commit suicide is for religious reasons. These people claim there is no place for them and God.

Historically, it has been extremely easy to get people to internalize judgment and condemnation. Also, when people are afraid, they have to find scape goats. If you can scape goat people who have internalized judgment and condemnation, you’ve got it made and it becomes very easy to use the Bible as an effective weapon. It becomes an excuse to hate.

It does make me wonder - maybe the Romans were right to say that only the few should interpret the Bible - that the Bible, in the hands of the wrong people, would become dangerous.

acim lesson 134 - let me perceive forgiveness as it is

I think it is definitely true that current culture has an extremely warped idea of forgiveness. ACIM says that forgiveness is nothing more than eccentric folly if it is understood as “a sacrifice of righteous wrath”. I love that! That’s exactly what Nietzsche says the typical Christian view is. He says it is hypocritical because the act of forgiveness if understood in that way is really just about making the so-called forgiver feel superior to who or what he thinks he is forgiving. That’s not forgiveness; that’s a denial of truth.

ACIM: The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth, and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth, in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind, as you regard yourself.

What would be the point of forgiving the truth? That makes so much sense now!  What we forgive isn’t the truth.  What we forgive are our perceptions of it!  I mean, I’ve known that for many, many years.  But I understand it totally differently now.  Or maybe I just feel more firmly grounded in the understanding.  Whatever the case may be, another onion layer of delusion has definitely been peeled away!!

ACIM:  Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks straight through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.”

What we forgive is not the other person or what it is we think the other person did to us.  What we forgive are our own misperceptions.  We forgive thoughts.  I’ve known that for a while, too, but I understand that more deeply now as well!!

This sounds like Nietzsche’s lion stage when Zarathustra realizes there is no need to slay the dragon so dances and sings instead.  (It’s no wonder the most spiritually enlightened among us are often thought to be crazy!):

ACIM:  He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead a star is left behind, to point the way to those who follow him.

Forgiveness must be practiced.  It’s a spiritual discipline.

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Would I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself.

Nietzsche - Solomon & Higgins Lecture (1-11)

I posted my notes on Lecture 12 yesterday from the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company.  The notes were fresh on my mind so I took the most notes on that lecture because it was primarily new to me. The earlier lectures were primarily review, but I did jot down some notes from lectures 1-11 for future reference…

• Nietzsche very often makes references to images Luther used.
• I thought this was very cool! Nietzsche thought Christianity had served an important historical function for people. In the passage about the madman, it’s not people who believe in God who the madman assaults. The madman assaults those who think they can eliminate the need God once filled in society. By simply focusing on science they can ignore the needs of humanity for something like myth. Nietzsche thinks this is ungrateful. The way to show gratitude is to think beyond the historical function.
• Nietzsche says we shouldn’t throw out our desires. What we should throw out is the idea that we can reach perfect contentment and that the attainment of perfect satisfaction is even desirable.
• Nietzsche is far more optimistic that Schopenhauer. Life involves the negative components, but we can become something that takes joy in.
• The meaning of life is not in reason, rationalism, or theology. It’s to be found in the passions.
• Camel stage - treats tradition with reverence. Says “yes” to it. Lion stage - evaluates tradition and asserts individuality by challenging what has been handed down. Say “no” to tradition. We have to fully make our way through the camel stage before the lion stage makes sense. The Child stage is a new affirmation of life. It is boundless energy for what is new. Experimentation. Creative energy - full creative response and full vitality.
• The Ubermensch is an idea. It is a way of being that involves risk taking. This is contrasted with the Last Man which seeks nothing but comfort - the ultimate couch potato.

Rationality, Romanticism, Consciousness

• Rationality has several meanings: 1) thinking ability, to reflect; 2) mathematics; 3) instrumental reasoning, to think; 4) having the right goals (Aristotle); 5) reason is the royal road to truth (modern understanding/Enlightenment)
• Nietzsche, like Aristotle, thinks reason involves having the right goals. He says that reason becomes a tyrant when it is thought of as the royal road to truth (contra-Kant).
• Kant preached a faith in reason and even brought religion into the realm of reason. Nietzsche felt this idea that reason is universal was a pretension. While France and Britain were moving toward the age of reason, Germany was involved in Romanaticism which puts its faith in the passions and not in reason. Nietzsche saw much wrong with Romanticism, too. He said it was a pretense of passions.
• Nietzsche says we are animals motivated by drives and instincts. We are natural, biological beings. The meaning of life is to be found in life itself. Not in the upper realms of reason. Like Freud, Nietzsche understood that what drives us are very often things we are not conscious of.
• Nietzsche asked where does consciousness come from? And he comes up with a theory: It developed because of the need for communication. Consciousness was created in our interactions with others (rather than the traditional view that consciousness was somehow already in the mind). If you live alone, consciousness becomes superfluous. We have cultured, sophisticated, individual instincts.
• Thinking, for Nietzsche, can be a sort of disease. It can be dangerous because it blinds us to our creativity and uniqueness. Therefore consciousness is dangerous. BUT!! It’s an important stage in our evolution. When a faculty is new (like the advent of language/consciousness), it is always dangerous at first. But as it matures, we learn to make better use of it.
• Nietzsche was very interested in how language (the new faculty which gave rise to consciousness) expresses the truth.
• Nietzsche was very critical of the romantics of his time. He said they pretended passion. He said that romanticism is a mask; an act.  The reality is that passion contains a quantum of reason and reason contains quantum passion. Both reason and passion contain an amount of both the Apollonian (reason) and the Dionysian (passion).
• Nietzsche uses aphorisms because he doesn’t want followers.  He knows the reader won’t understand the whole picture by reading a single aphorism so it will take some work to understand.  An active readership achieved through a sort of companionship with Nietzsche.
• Most of philosophy is centered on formal deductive reasoning.  Not Nietzsche.  Some would say he doesn’t do philosophy at all.  He uses a sequence of fallacies; aphorisms, rhetoric, literature and ad hominem arguments.  He wants to stimulate our emotional experience.
• Sophistry is an appeal to emotions and understands argument as an art form because the use of strict rational argument convinces no one.  Philosophy is a sort of rhetoric.  Socrates was a great rhetoritician.  This is what made him so powerful even though his arguments would be readily dismissed in institutions today.  So it is no dis-service to say that Nietzsche is doing rhetoric rather than logic.

Truth

• Nietzsche says there is no truth, there is only interpretations.  But he praises truthfulness.  This idea is not antagonistic toward science.  Science is experimental and Nietzsche is willing to allow any hypothesis which says “let’s try it”.  Experimenting with ideas and philosophical view points is kindred with science.   Nietzsche says it isn’t good enough to say God created it this way.
• Science is non-dogmatic.    Most beliefs people have held turn out to be false eventually.  So why think current theories are the truth?  Theories are always tentative.  Philosophy should be undogmatic like science.  But Niezsche also sometimes opposes science.  This opposition is based on the aesthetic perspective.  The aesthetic view has ways of seeing that are non-scientific.  If science and aesthetics are opposed, Nietzsche says that aesthetics always get the upper hand.   If it doesn’t, science easily becomes dogmatic.  And when it does, it loses it’s virtue.
• Nietzsche asks “Why is truth important?  Why must we have truth at any cost?”  Individual lives are ruined.  People have been excommunicated for the truth.  The truth has upset entire civilizations (Freud).  Why are we willing to pay the cost?
• Nietzsche comes up with several reasons.  Truth isn’t necessarily pursued for itself.  It is very often pursued for other goals.  The main motivation for searching for truth is sometimes status.  Status is the primary objective, not truth.  Truth is a means to an end, not the end in itself.  “The truth shall set you free.”  Truth as a means to an end is based on the idea that truth is rock hard and immovable.  If you get the truth, you gain power because claiming to have the truth puts you in a privileged position.
• But Nietzsche says there is no way of getting to the bottom of things.  All we have is our experience which is an interpretation based on other interpretations.  It’s all experience and experience is always an interpretation of something else.
• Appearances depend on being some thing of which there are appearances.  There is a gap between the experience and appearances on the one hand and what they are experiences and appearances of on the other hand.  There is no way of getting around or behind the appearances and experiences to see reality itself.   This is something Nietzsche struggles with.  Traditional philosophy, science ancient times, makes a distinction between reality on the one hand and appearances on the other.  Nietzsche thinks this is a bogus distinction.  There is only the world of our experience and it doesn’t make sense to talk about anything else.
• But what do we say about our experience?  Kant talked about “world in itself” which is the world as God might see it.   Kant admitted that we can’t have a conception of “the world in itself”.  But Nietzsche says there is no such thing as “a world in itself”.  There is no God’s eye view.  Even if there were a God, this God would have to see it from a god’s perspective which remains a perspective.
• What is truth from once perspective is not the truth from another perspective.  But this doesn’t mean that one truth need exclude the other.
• Nietzsche holds what is now called “perspectivism”.  There are lots of different viewpoints we can take on things.  This does not rule out argument, debate or pursuit itself - just the understanding that it must always be perceptualized.   Science, for instance, is a difinitive perspective.
• Perspectivism is not the same as relativism why says that every view is as good as any other.  But it is always a matter of not taking one position and digging in.  Philosophy is about shifting perspectives.
• Where is the truth?  It doesn’t lie behind appearances.  Philosophical truth is getting a sense of how all the perspectives tie together.  You have to be able to entertain different truths at the same time.
• Nietzsche was a quasi follower of Darwin.  The Darwinian notion of fitness as a pragmatic theory of truth fits with Nietzsche’s theories.  Imagine a species of creatures who have built into their brains that the future will be unlike the past.  If you see lightening strike a tall tree, you rush under the tree during the next storm expecting that lightening won’t strike in the same place twice twice (or having struck this tree it will strike elsewhere next time).  It’s easy to see how such a species would be short lived.  A species that developed and inductive mind and learns by experience is much more likely to survive and flourish.
• What are our truths?  They are the indispensible errors of mankind.  They are the truths without which we as a species would not survive.  To ask if these truths exist apart from reality is nonsensical.

acim lesson 133 - i will not value what is valueless

I really like this lesson! 

ACIM:  You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world.

I love this!!  ACIM is not trying to create another sort of utopian idealism.  That is not what it is about.  But that is how a lot of students approach it.  “There is only love.  You don’t have to worry about all the evils in the world because they don’t exist.”  Blah, blah, blah…  That’s utopian idealism and it’s bullshit because it’s really nothing more than form of anger and fear.   We don’t like what we see so we want to say it doesn’t exist.  This is just another way to ask for sorrow.   If we truly realized it was an illusion, we wouldn’t fear it and there would be no reason to discuss the nature of it’s existence.  Realizing that suffering is an illusion is what helps us go through it so that we can transcend it.  Denying that suffering exists keeps us in fear of suffering.

The criteria by which we test the things we think we want:

1. If you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. What about valuing relationships?   In a sense, relationship lasts forever, doesn’t it?  I mean, I know that our specific desires within a relationship don’t last forever so those aren’t worth valuing.  But the relationship itself is there, even after death.  We’re all interconnected.
2. If you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. … Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss, and nothing more. That makes sense to me!  Especially in terms of relationship.   There is a horrible country song I used to hear all the time a few years ago about a woman she wants to take someone’s love who chooses to give it to someone else by cheating.  So she retaliates by destroying his car - writing her name in the leather seats, busting the headlights, and keying the side of the car.  He didn’t get what she wanted to take so she attempts to take away the “beauty” of something he loves, claiming she is giving to the girl what it was she couldn’t get.   But how can you give what you don’t have?   Very scary, psychotic song that was extremely popular.
3. Why is the choice you make of value to you? What attracts your mind to it? What purpose does it serve? This is the question upon which all other considerations rest.  Here it is easiest of all to be deceived. For what the ego wants it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that you may see how “innocent” it is.
4. If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego’s goals to come between the real alternatives. I really believe this is true.   I tend to make choices based on a sort of gut intuition.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have to overcome fear.  But if I am able to get quiet enough to notice the decision has within it a place of calm (which I typically immediately recognize), I go with it.   It’s a lot harder to notice this “inner wisdom” when my life gets busy and crazy or when I over-think it (which I do a lot!).

ACIM:  All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is easy just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke, which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain.

It’s not difficult.  We make it difficult.  I had a friend who wrote me with a dilemma that would be excruciatingly difficult to decide for most people.  In talking through it, what we both realized is that whatever it is she decides will be OK.  It’s almost like we get so scared about making the “right” decision that we can’t decide at all.  If we could just free ourselves from that sense of perfection that so drastically clutters our lives, we’d be able to listen better.