Dedication and Affirmation
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Anil Mitra, Copyright © 2015—February 20, 2021

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Dedication

The dedication

I dedicate my life to The Way of Being,

To living in this world and the ultimate as one,

To being present to the world.

The way and the means

To shared discovery and realization of The Way to the ultimate—

Under ideal and pragmatic dimensions of being and emergent reason.

Realization, intrinsic and instrumental

To shedding bonds of limited self so that I can see the way so clearly that even in difficulty life is flow over force (to the intrinsic experience of the eternal—and so moving toward positive being).

To realizing the ultimate in this life and beyond (to seeing and realizing the identity of individual and universal being or self).

Living in the immediate and ultimate as one

And, so, coming full circle to always being at the beginning of a journey of discovery (living in the immediate present and the ultimate as one).

Affirmation

“That pure unlimited consciousness—transcending all principles of form… that is supreme reality. That is the ground for the establishment of all things—and that is the essence of the universe. By That the universe lives and breathes, and That alone am I. Thus, I embody and am the universe in its ordinary and most transcendent form.”

Meditation and attitude

Document data

Dedication

(With inspiration twelve step programs.)

The dedication

I dedicate my life to The Way of Being,

(The dedication is in thought and feeling.)

To living in this world and the ultimate as one,

Explanation. In a secular world, the resolution of the essential problem of feeling—suffering and joy—is (i) to seek joy indirectly in doing the right thing, (ii) to not seek to escape pain and suffering, which is impossible, but to contemplate it in such a way as to remove the fear of pain—not to accept all pain but to resolve fear of inevitable pain, (iii) to employ the therapies of the given society in balance with items i and ii, (iv) seeing that i, ii, and iii, already employ cognition, to recognize cognition and feeling as inseparable elements of negotiation of self and world. And since the world is not static, the resolution of the problem of feeling is best in balance with cognitive intelligence applied to the human and material problems of the world. The ideal state of being would be described as ‘enjoyment’—i.e., appreciation of moment to moment and year to year negotiation of the real.

Now, the real metaphysics reveals an ultimate—which is distinct from the secular in some paradigms but not in the real. The negotiation of problems and opportunities of the secular would extend to those of the ultimate.

To being present to the world.

I will be present to my joy and anxiety,

Feel

Breath with them, inhale them,

Neither pull nor push,

Breath and feel

Then, now seeing the larger thing

Use the feel to move and push toward it

(Always staying present)

To know and be (the larger thing),

The greatest

Ultimate

Object.

The way and the means

To shared discovery and realization of The Way to the ultimate—

On sharing. For sharing is an element of being! For limited beings it is (i) an expression of their being (ii) relational and therefore effective in enhancing individual being and populating the universe with being.

On the way and its means. Shared discovery and realization—the means for the way of being—correspond roughly to the division of intentional change into ideas and action. Ideas are both imaginative-constructive and critical.

Under ideal and pragmatic dimensions of being and emergent reason.

On being. Being is experiential form-in-process; since relation is immanent in form, the dynamic of emergence and change is form-relation-change with determinism that lies on a continuum of nil to full.

The ideal dimensions of being are ‘experience of’ and ‘the experienced’ or psyche (mind-world) and includes pure, attitudinal, and actionable experience.

Reason does not stand outside being, but manifest reason emerges together with manifest being.

The pragmatic dimensions are not and need not be definitive and may be chosen from the knowledge system of a culture. In absence of knowledge of the ideal, the pragmatic function as the best of a culture so far according to pragmatic criteria of the culture. Those pragmatic criteria are often seen as perfect—at least in principle—but that would be paradoxical, for the criteria are part of the knowledge system. In meshing the pragmatic and the ideal (i) where the ideal provides no detailed guide, the pragmatic is an instrument for negotiation toward the ultimate (ii) though imperfect by its own criteria, the ultimate is given and therefore, relative to the value of realization of the ultimate, the mesh of the pragmatic and the ideal are perfect (realization is guaranteed and there is at any time no better than the pragmatic of the time), (iii) of course, to improve the pragmatic content and criteria is functional in the world and relative to the ultimate, (iv) the mesh serves to improve the pragmatic and its paradigms, and (v) the refined paradigms are fundamental to negotiation of the universe (from era to era, being to being, world to world). Examples of refined paradigms are (i) from experientiality seen as peripheral to material evolution to the universe as fundamentally experiential in a sense of ‘experience’ that is broadened and deepened (ii) the evolutionary paradigm as a paradigm of emergence within and of manifest worlds—and particularly, as showing the preponderant significance of relatively stable and symmetric worlds with sentience.

Pure

Experiential being

Form – Formation

I.e.,

Form (with relation) – Formation (with change within form)

Psyche

Experience of and the experienced,

Change and form (field with relation),

Or

Mind and world

Or

Mind-world

Or, in detail

Pragmatic

In western culture a common system, incomplete relative to emergence, is

Mind

Experience of—pure (relative to the experiencer), attitudinal, and active

The experienced

World

Note—the distinctions among the natural, social, and universal have artificiality.

Nature – the world as we find it

Physical or elementary

Living or complex

Experiential (psyche, mind—again)

Society – the constructed world – social groups, culture, and artifact

Culture (knowledge of secular and transsecular realms—see system of human knowledge)

The secular—science, especially politics and economics, and technology

The universal or transsecular seen as including the secular

The universal and the unknown—beyond nature and society in kind, duration, and extension.

Realization, intrinsic and instrumental

To shedding bonds of limited self so that I can see the way so clearly that even in difficulty life is flow over force (to the intrinsic experience of the eternal—and so moving toward positive being).

On the bonds of self—The bonds may occur in all dimensions of the means, i.e., ‘shared discovery and realization of the way and the ultimate’ and are due to (i) the effect other persons in undesirable ways and (ii) false paradigms of the real and the universe—i.e., all aspects of shared discovery and realization. In the system of human knowledge, the overcoming bonds are part of and continuous with realization. A balance is needed between the ‘overcoming’ which is living well and achieving. We do not wait to be full and healed to act for action is fulfilling and healing.

To realizing the ultimate in this life and beyond (to seeing and realizing the identity of individual and universal being or self).

With this the dedication includes the essence of the affirmation.

On the means of realization—the means are intrinsic—of experiential being—and instrumental—of body and civilization—which are not ultimately distinct. Being becomes one as civilization populates the universe.

The intrinsic means concern the entire individual—body and mind, as in yoga with meditation and the extension of yoga as reason.

Intrinsic or experiential realization begins in this life, with this individual (mind-body) and may, if rarely, be complete in ‘this life’.

The instrumental are science and technology in the transformation of being, nature, and society, in populating the universe.

The intrinsic and instrumental mesh—the intrinsic is a source of the instrumental and the instrumental enhances the intrinsic.

Living in the immediate and ultimate as one

And, so, coming full circle to always being at the beginning of a journey of discovery (living in the immediate present and the ultimate as one).

Affirmation

The quote just below is a paraphrase of Abhinava Gupta (950 – 1016 CE, a philosopher-theologian of Kashmir) from Christopher Wallis, Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition, 2nd ed., Mattamayūra Press, 2013, p.370.

“That pure unlimited consciousness—transcending all principles of form… that is supreme reality. That is the ground for the establishment of all things—and that is the essence of the universe. By That the universe lives and breathes, and That alone am I. Thus, I embody and am the universe in its ordinary and most transcendent form.”

Meditation and attitude

Shamatha: center physical, self – relax, breath – one pointed focus | Visualize-feel the real: tat tvam asi

Review: life – essentials – solutions – freshness – nature trip

Vipasana: dedication-affirmation-attitude for life, the day, and The Way of Being
Attitude: from negative to positive self-world concept in balance with achieving

Document data

Documents pointing here—the brief outline and many others, especially in the narratives folder; priorities. In the personal folder.

Documents to which this document points—none.