The “Quality” of Life
In most people’s discussion of the “quality” of life, they immediately start in on the “quantitative” aspects -- showing no understanding about what quality is really all about. It is a critical difference that makes quantity irrelevant. One sees that transcendence briefly, unexpectedly, infrequently -- but it is there, for those who know how to see it, have trained themselves to recognize it. It is not simply more of the same.
Those are the moments in life of “peak experiences,” that to some extent can be conditioned into one’s life and being. During such moments, the body and being, becomes totally alive -- which is a biochemical reality also that then becomes embedded into the very structure of cells being formed at that moment.
That is a mostly unrecognized and undiscussed aspect of conventional conditioning strategies -- for the better life one can expect to live beyond the present one. The better life is not simply the same life but only different as one imagines it to be -- but is different in the many ways one doesn’t have to imagine it to be, as a wholly different reality, with a life and wisdom of its own -- at a higher level of capability, clarity and efficiency.
The conventional boilerplate conditioning strategies don’t have those provisions for total transformation in every aspect of one’s life because they really have no expectation that they can even change one. So their discussion is of such irrelevancies as calorie consumption or expenditure -- while more importantly, how it is consumed and expended is a universe of different possibilities that shapes the human psyche and form. It is like the person who sees an amateurish cartoon, and then a masterful work at a museum and says, “They are both art.” But one has a profound effect on the human being, while the other will not amuse or delight a second time -- but will simply be discarded worthlessly as “yesterday’s news.”
Then today and tomorrow, one can expect to be bombarded by more of such “news” and “information,” that will be compacted and provide the landfills of tomorrow -- as their hope-to-be-forgotten “legacy.” A lot of “sound and fury” signifying nothing. If one is convinced as they advise, that there are no worlds and universes beyond which they are telling us about, then of course one will be consumed in the despair and hopelessness of a better life beyond.
And one sees it in the bodies and body language of those writing such pieces -- as they file out each day at quitting time like a school of penguins scurrying home to their nests, repeating to themselves, “If man were meant to fly, God would have given him jets.”
posted by Mike Hu @ 12:07 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
That aspect of transcendence is entirely lacking in the conditioning by boredom approach -- of making the session into an endurance of tolerance, actually becoming more immune and insensitive to one’s own functioning -- and thereby becoming more reliant on available technologies (usually sold or exclusively maintained by those advocates), to provide them with that feedback. Mastery in the performance and achievement of anything, is more than just a measure of any one aspect -- but is the totality of experience transcending all the previous measures.
In the same way, intelligent quotients fail, when the measured intelligence vastly exceeds the measurer’s -- who of course presumes, that they are the measure of ultimate and supreme intelligence and intellect. All those who do not recognize that, are immediately proclaimed, “Stupid, moron, idiot” -- in no uncertain terms.
It never occurs to them that what they know is simply all that they know -- and not the total content of intelligence in the universe. So having an understanding of that possibility is intelligence too -- in allowing for the possibility that intelligence and wisdom is also beyond what one might comprehend. Not to have such humility, is of course, the mark of a fool.
The transcendence is the transformation: that’s why the practitioners of physical cultures do what they do -- and regard as “Masters,” those who can help them in achieving such heights of personal expression and attainment. In the reduction of these disciplines to mere calorie consumption and expenditure, it basically has taken this striving for human perfection (improvement) out of the equation and understanding, and reduced it to an affirmation of the totally meaningless and purposeless.
Such a mentality reduces everything to its lowest common denominator of understanding -- food as the consumption of calories, and exercise as the expenditure of calories -- while the real meaning and higher purpose is lost. At that point, everything is trivial nonsense, and the writers of such pieces are mystified, that they are regarded with such contempt -- by offering themselves as experts and authorities -- on anything.
All their words, turn to ashes in their mouths.
The mainstream press’s understanding of the value of conditioning activities, emphasize the least significant aspects of that participation and involvement. It is the focus one develops that has power in doing anything -- and not operating a treadmill, mindlessly and joylessly going through motions, wishing one were doing anything else -- that has value.
That is the same perspective they bring to everything they observe and report on -- the least significant aspect of it. The profundity, the wonder, the significance, is what they cannot see, have no training for. The joy and positives of life escape them completely. And there is this resentment against everything and everybody else that is all they hope to “share” anymore -- that life is a downer, a great disappointment.
It reminds me of how as one of my young experiences coming out of college and attending a party of public school teachers, how all they did was complain about how miserable their classroom experience was. After I left that field and worked in several others, I recognized that seemed to be the peculiar feature of unionized workers -- that these people had come to hate their jobs and all that they were doing, in convincing themselves and everybody else how much they were sacrificing for the sake of others to perform that work, and in doing so, of course had no joy and respect in anything they did in life.
To transcend that perspective is very important -- to feel that everything one does has tremendous significance, shapes one's life and outlook. That is the joy and meaning of life -- so absent in the mainstream press.
Is there any wonder why the public is not interested in "sharing" their insights anymore -- and are fleeing them in droves?
It is the perspective of the third-rater -- that seeks to deny that life can be a first-rate experience.
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