for - quote - how things appear - quote - Nic Higham - key insight - duality

• Because of our narrowed, distorted focus,
  • we’ve become apparently disconnected from our essential Aliveness, which is universal.
• We are so accustomed to perceiving a dualistic paradigm;
  • there’s “me” and
  • a world of “others”
  • existing in an infinite and vastly unknown universe of disparate objects.

comment - Nic summarizes the dualistic perspective succinctly

for - quote - imagined duality - unpack - imagined duality

quote - imagined duality - author - Nic Higham

• On a deeper level,
• it’s imagined duality which creates all manner of separateness
  • from the kind I call “dualistic isolation,”
    • the sense that you’re identified with and alone in your body and your mind,
  • to “existential loneliness,”
    • a persistent sense of incompleteness that no amount of social or material connection can resolve.

unpack - imagined duality and existential isolation - Alone in your body and mind - in my younger days, I had a metaphor for this - Life is a movie theatre for one, yourself - Only you have access to this movie theatre - Nobody else is there to experience the totality of your experiences, except you. - You are the sole inhabitan of your YOUniverse -

for - insight - existential isolation - quote - existential isolation

• Because we’re unable to
  • experience life genuinely, or
  • relate authentically to our own nature and to others,
• we often suffer from a “dread of nothingness.”
• Loneliness, Moustakas says,
  • is part and parcel of being, of existing, which,
  • if embraced, can lead us to “
    • deeper perception,
    • greater Awareness and sensitivity, and
    • insights into one’s own being”.

existential isolation - evocative description - See David Loy's description of the same thing as the fear of our own inherent emptiness

quote - existential isolation - Nic Higham

• .But this other kind of anxiety was more like
  • a quiet, unintelligible terror,
  • a distant alarm bell,
  • an uncaused danger.
• It seemed more real and fundamental than any passing concern.
• Apparently arising from my innermost core,
  • existential anxiety was a lurking, menacing mythical figure.
• It hid in the shadows of my very Being,
  • coming at me from
    • everywhere and
    • nowhere.
• It wasn’t an entity but an inescapable mood
  • that cunningly evaded -reason and
    • remedy.
• It was
  • a constant undercurrent,
  • an impending nothingness and hollowness,
  • a strange intimacy with an enticing void,
• the cost of having a thumping heart and a free spirit.

reference - Ernest Becker - Denial of Death - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=denial+of+death - The Birth and Death of Meaning - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=the+birth+and+death+of+meaning - David Loy - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=david%2Bloy