I'll be back very soon. I took some time to transition back to work(in a school)this September and spend extra time with my kids.

Some words about Vick

Before i continue on with my next 'deep-relations' entry, here's some thoughts about Vick (seeing that its almost football season):

Michael Vick’s re-entry into football may have its silver lining by keeping the horror that is dog fighting on the public radar.
Francione and Singer hold the perspective that people who chastise Vick and want to boycott the Philadelphia Eagles games should look in the mirror. If they enjoy using/eating animals, then they are “Vick” as well.

This view is not without controversy amongst many. There are those that feel that Vick is a particularly sadistic individual who both enjoyed and ‘felt nothing’ in the acts of torturing, killing, along with the fighting of the dogs. In some people’s minds, this puts Vick in a different category than those whose enjoyment is *limited* to the eating, wearing, and entertainment aspects of animals in human culture.


These arguments seem to assume that most people are ‘nice’, even if they consume/use animals in a world that largely accepts this practice as normative. They portray Vick as not nice, cold and heartless even, in the manner that he treated the dogs. How then can anyone say that ‘we are all Vick’ if good people’s *type* of enjoyment of animals (particularly the eating end) is *different* than his type of enjoyment in activities that maintained suffering throughout the dog –fighting process?

Vick derived pleasure from his dog fighting. Some people derive pleasure from bull fighting, rodeos, fishing, and hunting and would not like to be seen as anything less than nice people as well.

Let me tell a story. A certain someone (lets call him ‘J’) belonged to a race that had been exploited by another race for a long time. Now J got the chance to meet three of his exploiters. The first exploiter said that his job was to kill him, which he enjoyed doing and didn’t mind the suffering he caused in the process. The second exploiter stated that he preferred using a gas chamber as it was more efficient in his process of extracting the ‘valuables’ for the third exploiter. So J turned to the third exploiter and asked him what these valuables were, and how they were to be used. The third exploiter said that he wanted the gold fillings that were in J’s mouth. He would use them for his enjoyment in all manner of ways. J asked him if really needed these fillings so much that he had to die, and couldn’t something else be used to satisfy him. Exploiter three said that he could live with filling substitutes, but that it was just too inconvenient in so many ways, so he preferred to stay with ‘tradition’. He mentioned that he did not approve nor associate in any way with the first exploiter's methods or sentiments, if that were any consolation. J replied “the pleasure you derive from my fillings, a personal choice which deprives me of my life, is just as sadistic”.

Now, onto my ‘debate’ with another person over Vick:

Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, wrote : "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka."
There are those who comprehend that their actions are complicit with animal exploitation , especially for some form of *personal gain *(food, clothing, entertainment, research etc) . The animals don't care whether humans want to argue whether various forms of exploitation are legal/illegal, moral/immoral. The outcome for them will be the same if we do not intervene on their behalf. They have the right to be recognized as ends in themselves and not someone's property and for someone's use.
We are complicit with Michael Vick, Jeffery Dahmer, Hitler, (to name a few), if deliberate , self-serving actions add to or cause *avoidable* suffering and/or death to others. Exploitation is often based on the differences of those 'others' , seen as less deserving of or not requiring moral consideration.
As Francione points out- 'pet-ifying' some animals and giving them special status while dismissing other animals so we can stick a fork in them is indefensible. Vilifying a person for exploiting pet-ified animals for personal gain while normalizing a person for exploiting "food' animals for personal gain is equally indefensible.

There are a lot of crimes that can be considered negative in and of themselves. But I think that Michael Vick's case *is* relevant to Vegans Vs Non-vegans.

Dog fighting - Cock fighting.
Grilled dog - Grilled chicken.

All of it (not just 'single issue' dog-fighting)occurs in the continuum, the mindset that allows for animal exploitation.
Profit, enjoyment, no internal regret/empathy, no justice for animals and no accountability for the crimes against Nature.

Sure, animal exploiting industries pay fines when they are caught 'abusing' the animals. They are not sorry. They want to get on with the business of making millions, just like Vick. The animals continue to be tortured, screaming in anguish in slaughterhouses and research facilities.Parents/society indocrinate their own children with the belief that, with regards to animals, eating, wearing, experimenting, and subjugation for entertainment is acceptable. This is not good role modeling either.

When slavery in this country was legal and acceptable, slave owners could pretty much do anything to their 'property'. Some people might have been disgusted if owners killed slaves or made them fight for their entertainment, but they themselves continued to enslave. People obviously continue to enslave animals in all kinds of ways. Francione's and Singer's perspective stands : A culture./society that exploits animals need to look at themselves, their practices, their mindset *now magnified* by Vick's behavior.

Veganism is everything Michael Vick is not. It is also a ground for actively changing/eliminating the ideology and practice that allows for (avoidable) pain, death, use, exploitation, and dependence on animals for speciesist, humancentric ends and 'profit'.
Each abuser is a distinct, separate entity; each abuse case amongst the millions of cases is separate. Over 10 billion animals die each year for food production, each a distinct case.

Distinguishing Vick from other animal exploitation by saying he was *very* cruel and very *personalized* in his abuse situation doesn't really make what he did all that different to me from the very cruel practices that occur on "normal" animal exploitation. Doubtless you have seen cows disassembled on the factory line while still conscious, while their baby calves are ripped out struggling from the womb.

It is a given that each life that suffers is an individual, and that each abuser is an individual, but there are common roots/dynamics/ideologies that run through these cases- that animals are ours to do what we want with. Our 'use' alters the way we see them and our behavior towards them. The actual exploitation occurs when we do not see them as separate, distinct entities, as ends in themselves.

Each case of female abuse and elder abuse is separate, but sexism and ageism may be the common root behind the acts. Speciesism is no different in it's effect on animal lives.

Here's the 'arguer':

. “Ever hear of the term "baby steps"? This means, going forward haltingly. Slowly. As one becomes aware. Comprehension of Other Animals being essentially the same, in many ways, as The Human Animal--this is an arena not full of hypocrites so much as one full of people in a state of learning, and transition”.


When people’s moral beliefs are inconsistent with their actions, they need to hear about it. The Vick case is * one* catalyst/opportunity for getting some momentum going in terms of talking about animals whose experiences are every bit as terrible as what the animals (at the hands of Vick) went through, and (from an animal's perspective)for no better reasons than what Vick was using them for. As animal use *is* abuse that has been going on for thousands of years, and 200 years of animal welfare has not slowed down what is currently an unprecedented, increase in use of animals for all manner of exploitation. “baby steps” may be like trying to empty the ocean one cup at a time, especially when flesh production is increasing global warming and making the “ocean’ higher! People may take baby steps but we don’t have to be resigned to an exclusive baby soft message to get people *doing enough* to exclude animals from use. *The planet simply doesn’t have that kind of time*. Maybe small inroads for some people are all there will ever be, but it will not be enough. It is not really going forward.


“To put the name Michael Vick on everyone who consumes animal products is not correct: sadists are very specifically different from other people”.

Roasting and enjoying the flesh of animals that people paid other ‘sadists’ to torture, mutilate and murder does need to be put in front of those who’s food ‘choices’ contribute to such avoidable, indefensible pain and death. Just because they are ‘nice’ people, doesn’t mean that they aren’t complicit, practicing exploiters. Again, to the animals, anyone who is complicit in their suffering is a ‘Vick’ to them. Vick enjoyed the killing/entertainment end, animal flesh providers enjoy the profit made in turning animals into products. Flesh eaters enjoy the other ‘spoils’, the flesh, skin, fur, and breast milk. All view these animals as commodities for self-serving ends.



“If you swat and kill a mosquito on your arm--are you an animal abuser? Does that make you just like Michael Vick?That mosquito has a life. You are taking that life--hands on. My point? There are no perfect humans. Who, then, dares judge?”

The ‘mosquito argument’ is the same defense/rationalization that animal users use on animal rights advocates. Veganism isn’t about assuming perfection or purity or sanctimonious judging. It is about using judgment, and acknowledging sentient animal suffering and wrongful death. It’s about making choices that don’t contribute to that suffering. People go out of their way to violate the rights, imprison and exploit animals as resources. Hardly comparable to the intentions behind killing a mosquito (that btw, intends to drink your blood). No one is claiming we can live perfectly, sidestepping every ant or bacteria. But pet-ified animals are abused and food animals are abused due the common belief that animals do not need to be respected as ends in themselves with their own life. Animal users call vegans ‘judgmental’ and hypocrites, but we know that they are using rationalizations to justify their continued use of animals.



“Don't condemn those condemning the abuser, because they are less than your perception of perfect--rather, educating them”.

No one is ‘condemning’ anyone, whatever that means. And no one used the word perfection (is this assuming/judging?)

“Educate those who don't understand they are abusers by extension, and be relentless to those who understand, but are refusing to confront, for instance, the horrors of factory farming… Many are refusing to look at any of these things for the pitiful reason of: convenience. True. But don't simply shake your head in judgment, and compare them to a monster that, by choice, took the lives of animals with his own hands, apparently enjoying the screams. They are not the same.

The Vick situation is *one* good educational tool, which isn’t saying people *are* Vick in every way. It is saying that the way society sees and uses animals leads to their suffering and death *just the same*, and there are usable connections for people to see and stop actions tied to animal abuse and death.. And like Vick, people don’t see that they are doing anything wrong. It is depersonalized and normalized behavior. Vick was ‘dead’ to the dog’s feelings, but people are often ‘dead’ or at least highly disconnected in their feelings and moral responsibilities to the animal whose flesh sits on their plate. They paid someone else to do the killing, but we need to remind them of this connection so that they can think about it, let alone acknowledge their accountability, their part, their role in the cruelty.

A Road Less Travelled

A great deal of what we go through in life is interplay between change and constants. It is also about the structures that hold contexts and situations together while we ascertain what factors appear to change and be constant.

I’m sure you have been driving in a car and suddenly wake up from a daydream. Your body/mind has been on autopilot, keeping your driving reactions in line each step of the way. Suddenly you do not really know where you are in the journey, even if you have made it hundreds of times before. The road and land do not look immediately recognizable. As you get re-orientated the familiarity returns and you are grounded once more in time and place.
When this happened to me I decided to not rush to orient myself. I decided to ‘just be’ and let my surroundings just be as well. I suspended my destination-intentionality and my *personal control* to allow the moment - the land, the road, to fill the experience.
This sort of depersonalization of the experience allowed me to just be on some road, in some area, somewhere in the state, somewhere in the world. This is my version of a phenomenological reduction. You remove/reduce the imposed habitual way of knowing/using an orientation. The temporal, personally-built up familiarity of one’s individual life relationship with this road/land is removed, and one is able to experience “what is left over” what remains present. This dis/re-orientation has an effect not only on the perception of the surroundings, but on the person’s sense of self as well. I can put my sense of (social/life history-self) ‘on hold’ as well as the socially situated locale I am driving in. One could almost ‘exchange seats’ with any self driving anywhere.
Another version of this de/re-orientation can be achieved by approaching the destination from a different road or direction. The goal is to remove the habituated orientation, the sedimentation of repetition in how we know something.
As I approached the town I lived in(for a short while), the unfamiliar pathway I took ‘freed’ the village to present itself as something apart from me and more standing (once again) as ‘in itself’. In this new orientation situation my own sense of self was more centered/seated. I decided to try and carry this re-orientation perspective further into my familiar associations. It worked for awhile. My apartment interior stood alone and apart. My saw my fiancé as a person in the world with her own life. I knew all of this beforehand but this is the lived experience of that knowledge. After a sort time she was asking me questions or making requests that required me to return/relate in the established, familiar way. What is important however is to not lose what sight was gained and work to bring it back into the fold of experience.

Many times when we are in new surroundings we look for the familiarity in them. If we move to a new city we slowly wear a path of recognition into our surroundings. It is difficult to experience a room (the same way we did when we first entered it) after a hundred entries. In this case we begin with the familiar and induce the breaking of habitual knowing. We then re-orientate to a new, grounded familiarity (based on a universal, anywhere-in-the-world centering) that is sometimes accompanied by an ‘out of regular time’ sensation.

The out of time orientation can also be used in the following way: Hopefully one has some childhood memories of lying in their bed, of being in their bedroom. Where the bed was in the room and such.

There should be no distractions and no noises unless they are of the same kind that you experienced from your room as a child. You should try and recreate the experience of yourself as a child, lying in your bed in the same location/position in the room. Now you should lie down in your own bed at night and close your eyes. Next you should try and experience the moment as if you are a child again, that your history is not part of the moment. You just want to be. You should feel the same location in the room as your childhood bed. You should experience that the activities outside of your room are your ones from back then. With all of this it should become easier to conjure up a sense of your finitude, mixed with an almost timeless feel.

If you still have the opportunity to revisit your childhood home and sleep in your old bedroom, one can try for the same experience.

No matter where you have to perform this experience, what it is for you is your own approximation and closing in on your own historical Big Bang. Your mind is firmly seated in the experience of your self as being, but not *exclusively* located particularly anywhere, in any particular time or history. You can *see* your life experiences suspended before you, but ‘you’ are not seated in any ‘container’ of them. The finitude of your life places this experience of the world (and your ‘self” in it )as simply being. It is then that the nothing (because your origin of self does not spring from any context anchored in the past or present or future in this experience) becomes the ‘black hole’ that pushes out the ‘all that is’ of the experience, of world, of you. The realness and depth of the nothing is experienced in the vividness of the simple being-in-the-world. It is here that the full comprehension of your being alive against the eternity of nothingness becomes known, as strong as the first origin/moment a human being was created in form. What also stands out against this backdrop of nothing/finitude are other beings living life (related and unrelated to you). It is everything lit up in the strongest light of ‘being alive’ that is possible, and equally important are the relationships and bonds of love between people and between other beings.

This is being in touch with the big bang of your life,understood now through finitude-the knowing that your self will not be . Finitude belongs to the individual’s life, for the ‘nothing’ must have temporal and individualized embodied context in which to bring forth Being’s ‘all that can be’ in that existing moment. The fully realized being of that moment is also ‘for the individual’ to utilize , who is inspired and thankful for the opportunity to be so alive and to make sure that other living beings can continue to exist as close to their contact boundary with Being as possible.

While continuing to draw on finitude, the next entry will begin to focus on the Being/becoming of self in the world through an ‘other’- the object anchor of the self. This will also begin to tie in the ‘other’ in animal form and where/how things go astray for us, them, nature, and the future.

I will not be, therefore you are.

For human beings, the comprehension of death involves understanding that the self and the container which embodies it will cease to function in the world. The comprehension of finitude involves understanding that all elements and processes are bound up in limits. Both of these concepts involve a graspable content or object. The comprehension of nothingness does not involve an object (of nothingness) before one’s consciousness. One cannot *see* nothingness, yet we know that it’s nonexistence ‘exists’ by virtue of ‘Being’, originating in the Big Bang. Human beings carry within them the grasp of nothingness by virtue of its expression through finitude. Finitude is an ‘open-ended’ way of knowing. It is beyond being confined to understanding/seeing material death of embodied life.
The grasp of our finitude acts as an apriori (pre-experience) synthesizer between Nothing and Being and as such acts as the conduit or catalyst of ‘becoming’. What follows is then grounded, anchored, revealed, and contributory to an experienced ‘field’ (previously described in my entries about rooms, containers, and pre-existing foundational ground initiated by the Big Bang).

To further illustrate the ‘presence’ and bringing forth of Nothing into the foundational and co-created Being of the present moment, consider this: We may ascertain that a light exists, not because we can see it’s source, but because we can see the objects it lights up.
So it is with the illuminating quality of the Nothing, as it brings forth all that is its opposite: Being. Being is *only limited* in its presence, it’s depth, and it’s expression in the world by the depth of the grasp of human beings who bring the contact boundary of finitude to each encounter.

* The problem, stated in its early form here, is that human beings equate finitude with death, the end/negation of life and development. They mirror(and attempt to ground) themselves, their ‘existential condition, their will to live ,their control of life/death against this ‘knowledge’.

* They attempt to separate themselves (life) from the other (death) by distinguishing themselves (human) from other(animal).

• The animal /other dies ( a misappropriation of the finitude/nothingness)so that we may experience the ‘opposite’ : life.

• It is actually the negative/backwards/mirror opposite of life/existence. Our seeking Being from incorporating Nothing via death of the other is actually negating. It is heading in the direction of Nothing coming (the unbecoming) from Being. This 'Being' is understood only in relation to death, rather than finitude.

•
Human beings should equate finitude with life, the beginning, becoming, and affirmation of each dimension of existing.

Human beings have taken Freud’s misguided grasp of finitude, known as the death drive (Thanatos), and brought that into the world (resulting in the material unbecoming of the world). Instead they should be bringing the finitude/nothingness drive into the world of living, resulting in maximum existence.

If one can frame an experience (the immediate perception of the situation at hand) through one’s finitude, it will bring into play the remnants (left behind) of the Big Bang. What will then occur is that the ‘objects’ within that purview (internal and external) will be illuminated/defined by the original ground. The object will be experienced as existing in its original moment of coming into being. Not only this, but it will be experienced in relation with its universal (meta-temporal) ‘form’. When studying Plato I wondered why there would be a ‘form’ for a desk, if a desk was a construct of human beings, themselves considered imperfect. For me it is because Being is in everything, including the human mind, and contains parts/structures of the original Big Bang. Thus a relationship, a recognition, can occur between mind and the universal aspect of an object. Thus, the grasp of the foundational ground will also include the observing person within it, as if being understood from a location outside of both. (like the observing self that used a 3-way mirror to see the ‘outside’ body placed in the ‘outside’ world.).

Language descriptions will not convey the intensity or characteristics of this foundational experience of the object. Describing the ‘blueness’ of the blue, the ‘dog essence’ of the dog before me will not make another’s sense/thought experience any different. What it can do for me is to perhaps change the way I relate to the dog, appreciate the being before me, and inspire me to make decisions that ‘really matter’.

This last sentiment is something often reserved for people who have had a brush with death or are near their own end.. Somehow it is believed that these specific circumstances can give rise to a ‘deep’ consciousness of life and meaning, as well as decisions about love, honesty , openness, and being non-judgmental. I think that while it is true that this often happens, death does not have to the exclusive domain of this level of consciousness. Why should one have to wait until a death encounter to harness the power of finitude and use it as a way to the world? One thing is for sure, no matter how you get 'there', what people come to see as important are the relationships that they have and the presence of love. This in the end is what we are striving to infuse in the world with enough influence to change the course of events.

As it were, it is time to get back to the ‘world’ and perform some more mental activities that will further the becoming (re) union of the present, the important, and the timeless.

I was not, therefore I am (now)

Start with the Big Bang of the universe, which holds that space, time, energy and matter appeared from nothing. The universe was born from nothingness. All ‘being’ came from a starting point that was ‘nothing’. The universe continues to expand outward. The concentric rings that emanate outward from the epicenter each contain elements of the initial beginning of creation. So, every ‘present’ contains an element of the first beginning in it. The first beginning marked the end of total nothingness, but a bit of nothingness is in every ‘thing’. The philosopher Hegel once said that the synthesis of being and nothing is- becoming. The process of (anything) contains the resolvement of being and nothing. For example, the developing (becoming) butterfly contains the nullity of the caterpillar.

If all being came from nothing, and all being of the universe is expanding, it stands that all instances of becoming must involve a nothingness/being factor. Each bit of reality is embedded with this factor; each bit of reality contains some Big Bang original ingredient.



If this ingredient or remnant can be unconcealed in a given experience, perhaps it can be used to illuminate that experience and the ‘field of being’ in which it is found. Such an illumination could possibly provide ‘becoming-guidance’ for humans in relation to the becoming of the earth. Perhaps it could also show us what would lead us to the negation (unbecoming) of the planet.

We start with humans, but this does not mean that the beginning and becoming of the universe has a ’special’ relationship with humankind or places it within the epicenter of all significance. We have learned that the earth is not at the center of the universe, nor is humankind, which will prove more valuable to uncovering how to foster the balance needed between being and nothing.

Becoming is also a creative force, and contains infinite potentiality in every moment.
Thus there is no pre-determined, structured path that is already decided. There are however structures and foundations at the ‘base’, that draw from the ‘nothing precedes being’ make-up of the Big Bang. This foundation can be accessed in a present moment, illuminating and perhaps inspiring decisions within us that support and utilize care, love, compassion, and respect (elements of creation). The encounter with the ‘field’ and the relations within should mirror and uphold the spirit of becoming. This becoming is not necessarily equated with higher evolution or development. It may be in the service of developing/maximizing the complete being of the moment as an end in itself.

Now, here comes the intriguing part. All Being, includes the living things that have become conscious. Humankind, in some respects is Being that has become aware of itself, although each of us thinks through singular terms, not one whole cosmic ‘I’ or collective consciousness.
Human beings can also grasp their own finitude; something that we are not sure is shared with any other animal. This realization has been a powerful force in our history. We tend to equate finitude with death, but I think that this is a fundamental error. Certainly death is the embodiment of finitude, but it is a physical phase in our presence in the universe. The mental grasp of finitude is something different. It is a grasp of ‘something’, like our grasp of love, which finds embodied expression in the temporal world. Both Freud and Martin Heidegger believed that humankind was ‘driven’ by death in their dealings with the world and each other. However I think they neglected the comprehension
of finitude as a primary driving force in existential and phenomenological life.

In my opinion, finitude has more to do with the grasp of nothingness. It is our opportunity to connect with the Nothing that preceded Being in the Big Bang. It is an opportunity to recognize, unconceal and harness the ‘nothing’ embedded in the ground of experience, as each experience carries in it bits of the original nothing-into-being. By ‘harness’ I mean that we grasp and use nothingness (as experienced finitude) as a way of ‘big banging’ the current moment.

This means that we can do two things : we can uncover the remnants of the original Bang in each experiental encounter with the world. This uncovering ignites a process that *changes* what we see before us: By ‘uncovering’ there follows a ‘connecting’ in the present, followed by an opportunity for us to both see what is in front of us, and to co-create the moment in the ‘spirit’ and fidelity of the B.Bang's “becoming” . Each experienced ‘field’ is embedded with infinite potential dimensions of uncovering and creating, each informing and influencing the other in direction, illustration, and groundedness. As stated earlier, these moments can simply ‘be’ and be complete, or they can be recognized in relation to something else.
When I come upon a “experience A’ and introduce/cast my grasp of finitude to it, experience A then ‘becomes’. What stands before me is the result of the nothing (finitude) I brought to it.Within me(physical and mental) i carry some of the original B. Bang. It is hard wired within us. It is a marriage, a union, and calling out between the nothing/being inside me to the nothing/being that is encoded in the field that I dwell upon. Within the union co-creation occurs. My finitude is mixed with Being of the moment, resulting in a ‘becoming’ that I believe is life-affirming. It represents the will to live, to exist in the universe, even if its existence depends upon being in a container of the human or animal mind/action. Love for instance wants to exist in the universe, but can only do so through ‘embodiment’- within the mind and body of living things and between living things.

Finitude then represents the original nothing that preceded and gave birth to being. It is the gateway to seeing the foundational being of any experience, and the creative potential that we can harness, in the spirit of becoming, to make those moments and the lives within it, be all that it can be. With enough individuals harnessing this, changes in how the world is structured for living can be made. For now I need to elaborate more about how to focus in on what grasping finitude looks like.

The relationship to animals (past, current and future) as well as the earth will ‘unfold’ as I expand outward, so please be patient with me….

Phenomenology Part 4

As our ‘outer body suit’ hardens and separates from our self (like toes wiggling inside a shoe), we can look to the mirror image (of our self)in much the same way that we peer at the outside world from a door frame(without projecting our attention/vision too far out there). We are not quite so involved in the ‘living movie’ playing before us. We are seated *more* within and observant of the screen edges.

The hardening 'casing' that houses our developing, separate self may resemble a ‘chrysalis’, however there is no dormancy. In fact if there was‘dormancy’, it was more a part of how we were living prior to this new development. As the emerging self within did ‘feed’ on new information, the change, the ‘becoming’ that results remains anchored to the meta-foundation in which it will emulate and dwell in.

The inner self can now see that the outer casing( ie. the societal shellof the former self) was ‘spun’ by years of layered, confined habitual thinking, indoctrinated upbringing and experiences, societal messages, and a socialized consciousness. The latter is, in many instances, a permeable, in motion container which serves as a reinforcing ‘collective unconscious’. The collective unconscious can make it difficult to reach a vantage point to see what is occurring and what we are doing to the world outside of our 'vision'.

Inside, the vantage point is seeing one’s own ‘naked self’ without being defined/limited by the socially fabricated containers and contact boundaries. The naked self of other beings can be recognized *inside and aside* from the variable forms of their physical casings.Some of the variable casings are ones that we have placed *over* animals, just as our shells can be fabricated constructs. When the outer container of the person is no longer attached and transmitting the former collective unconscious into our self, it can be shed, revealing the new ‘skin’ of the person, a skin whose contact boundary is in intimate touch with an ‘outside’ world that is co-emergent with it. It is a world that no longer mirrors the collective/constructed unconscious. One’s self is (once again) pressed up against this boundary, like a face pressed up to a permeable, albeit clearer door.

It is important to recognize that the clear door boundary allows certain kinds of permutations to occur, and we can be in the world beyond our ‘seat’. However there are important relations that cannot be breeched without breaking contact with the whole, and losing our tether to the ground that holds ‘care’ in its most centered and balanced form.

Just like slaves were recognized as people and brought into safe houses as people, so to can animals only be brought through our door frames, and mind-frames as refugees. There exists no passageway for them to enter ‘in pieces’ or as service providers to human needs. We come to see our parents as people when we grow up and no longer need to see them in certain ways. So too do we come to see animals as seperate beings.
If they are not to be brought through, they are to stay where they ‘belong’, outside the realm of human containership. Murray Bookchin once said that without humankind, the world/Nature would be less interesting. Less interesting to whom? If one sits in the forest long enough, its activity should cause a stillness within us, and should become as boring as too many days lying on a beach. We need to return to our human activities, concerns, and projects and leave nature’s beings out of our circle (of use).

This is an important juncture in that two directions of description/explanation need to be pursued. For one, the problems in the relations between humans and other beings is a problem that is seated in the relational problems between humans, and between humans and the primary ‘ground’. The object relations pathology must be identified and resolved so that the foundation that we must reconnect with becomes more available. This requires more talk about human relations and may be misinterpreted as making ‘the human’ seem more important or central to the significance of the primordial ground. However we need to have humans achieve a perspective that the world is there to support every living things right ‘to be’.

The other area to be covered is to give further explanation of the ground of which I have spoken of numerous times. To establish a foundation behind the ‘foundation’ will give more context, meaning, and hopefully a rationale for pursuing this line of thinking and action to save ourselves, the animals, and the planet.

Since I could perish at any given moment (as we all could), I feel it more pressing to outline my (cosmological) theory of foundation and then get back to the very important issue of object relations pathology that hurts our own lives as well as the other beings that have become the victims of our illness (reframe illness to misguided form of a will to live ).

Phenomenology Part 3

Our encounter with a mirror is in the form of use. When we are busy doing something, our consciousness is focused/ located within the action. In the mirror we are observing ourselves but not usually in an inner-reflective way. We remain on a surface level, closing in on ourselves, a particular part of our body or clothing. Sometimes we stop and take stock of how we are changing in appearance via aging and weight change. It remains, however, a habitual way of looking at ‘ourselves’. There is another way of using the mirror that frames both the self and the experience in a different context.

The self is markedly grounded by object relations mirroring (since infancy) and goes on to relate/manipulate the world through such mirroring. This foundation of self-organization and projection/transference onto the world we experience (in my opinion) also imposes many limits on our transactions with the inner/outer world.

The experience/ability to break with habituated ‘seeing/doing’ is in many ways just as important as the gains to be made based on such transformations. A new way of mirror use is one mode of re-attachment that engages our senses differently: Tool, tool use, and toolmaker influence and change one another in this engagement. Hopefully more compassionate, responsible actions will also result.

First off, one needs to get a three-way mirror. This enables one to stare at the mirror image without making eye contact. The only focus is the looking. There can be no other inner thoughts, external demands, or micro-focusing (on some aspect of the image), or bodily movement to distract the viewer. You must gaze silently for at least several minutes.

One should then create a slight focus to view the mirror body’s eyes. Notice that they are fixed and staring. Those eyes correlate with the self, ‘you’ who is looking. Continue to nurture the image of ‘a body’ that ‘you’ are witnessing. You can look at other body parts with the same perspective, but then return to looking at the body as a whole. Given enough time and practice, you should begin to feel an experience of a widening separation between a bodiless self-observer and the body captured in the mirror. In traditional mirror use, the nature of the focus places ones self into the mirror image. In this use, one is strengthening the sense and separate location of “I” while simultaneously looking at the body before it. This is the ‘I’ that is also contained/confined when one closes the eyes and clears the mind.

With passing time and stillness, the body looks more like a robot or puppet designed to have a physical response( in the physical world) per the intentions of the ‘I’ controller within. This is sometimes referred to the ‘ghost in the shell or machine’.
There is a steadily increasing, more alive sensation of the ‘I’ over the body which is now contained within the mirror. This breaking of our habituated use/look/engagement can now branch out in at least two directions:

We continue to look at ‘the body’ before us in suspended animation, separately but intuitively knowing it is ‘our’ body. We can then begin to visually widen the periphery of our view. This viewing widens to include the surroundings, yet sustains the *nature* of the look. Other objects, normally engaged in a regular way of knowing them (attached memories, uses etc.) are only seen, like the body, as still objects in and of themselves.

Move further outward, beyond actual vision, but with the same experience of presence. Within this singular presence of experience, one can *note* the surrounding house, yard, noises, countryside, and location of significant others in relation to you. It is the self which knows of the world occurring outside of the typical engagement. It is like a near death experience, where people recount being above themselves and having the wider view of others around their body. We can also experience another layer which includes generating a perspective from within the self, but seems to connect with the expansiveness occurring. One doesn’t *have* to do this within the first encounter, but it will become an essential componnent:

Imagine that what you are witnessing/participating in is a revisit to general time your life which happened long ago, as if you are inside an old photograph in your personal album. The sights and noises have a slight echo. Perhaps you have been long gone from this world, and you have the opportunity to relive the experience, as participant and observer. This borrowing of a ‘time bend’ intensifies the current presence that is being experienced.
This moving outward and above is in keeping with moving beyond the more superficial or surface mirrored reflection of the self and its’ relation to the world. If one gazes into a pond, one usually looks for fish, or perhaps sees their own image. With a different approach to looking, one may focus on the clouds that are reflected. With some concentration and patience, you can then *see* as if from above the world, looking down at the clouds.


Altering the way that we see can change what we see and how we can relate to it. To me what ‘stands out’ in this mode are the relations with others and emotions that are important. What also stands out is a universal recognition of other lives and their anchor to being in the world apart from my traditional, habitual, self-focused way of ‘looking’.

The other direction that we can pursue from the mirror image is further increasing our sense of ‘I’. As we strengthen the experience and separateness of ‘I’, the view of a contract boundary between mind and body comes more into focus. Our skin covers and gives shape as a human form. We experience our selves within this skin, which forms a pretty immediate contact boundary between us and the outside world (yes, we are ‘in’ the outside world). The body encloses us but doesn’t really normally feel separate (unless we have some medical issue that compartmentalizes a section of our body). Thus in normal mode we experience our externality almost like ‘skin paint’. We don’t notice it. If I had my face painted without my knowing/seeing it in a mirror It would be undetectable to me, but perhaps apparent to others. As our sense of ‘I’ forms/grows/organizes around different, internalized experiences, the outmost boundary of our contact (where our self and the world permeates each other) ‘hardens’- the paint becomes and feels more like a mask. Our self now peers out of this mask and the body suit that is more readily perceived in the 3- way mirror.



More to come…….