Then all of these layers upon layers of transparency melt away and the myth of the self is challenged at the very heart and core. Although a small provocation, the entire focus and energy of the individual ‘ego’ is madly engaged in self-defence strategies. Truth has very little to do with any of this since the world is spun like a spider’s web that this grand illusion---the world---be complete and made total. The very self we hold is revealed in this predicament taken to messianic proportion. As with a totalitarian leader, rarely do we see the naked ego at work in defensive strategy, weaving the web of coherency which is its ‘truth’. For better or worse it seems to be the fate and vocation of the philosophical writer to attempt to awaken these energies in readers.

It is as though, all at once, one is able to “leap the scaffolds” and to get a glimpse of the mother spider weaving its webs of lies---lies, and truths, insofar as this web is the nest, the environment in which the ego is nursed and cuddled.

The ego in this sense can be defined as a commitment to a worldview and a certain way of seeing all things as a world. The ego is if the gate or window through which this world must pass for better or worse. It can be likened to an ideology as well as a potential state of ‘openness’ to the way things are. It first evaluates and determines what may count as ‘real’.

The circularity of the relationship of language to framing this worldview and legislating and revealing its contents is rendered acute in the discussion concerning the nature of the ‘ego’ and the correct manner we must seek to describe its ‘true being’. Herein lies the advantage of the hermeneutic approach, which does not take language as self-evidently true no matter how purified its presentation. Language too, is not spoken of as objective reality, but represents the totality of the ego’s delusion, and the web it weaves.

Realist Psychology:The 'Depth' of Experience

The Deep

A consideration of the 'deep' in all of its significations is in order. On the literal level we see a chasm. How deep does it go? Depth as a dimension. And deep as 'profunditas', 'profound' connotes thought or mind. In any case this experience of the 'deep' is connected to the manner in which we see God. God is infinitely deep... But what can this mean? It is mystifying, like 'misting' with myth mystifying people.

The Starting Point: April 29 2007

The Beginning point is the most crucial realization in almost every undertaking. In this blog I set out an attempt to describe Realist Psychology in a step by step manner, attempting to write for a non-technical, non-specialized audience, that is the citizen who can read and reason autonomously.

The pychology itself is not original to this writer, and in fact, a great number of psychologies have set out on the same path: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas. Scholars associated with the critical Realism of the Neo-Thomist stamp. Evenso, the beginning has its own appeal.

The beginning is present in this moment for any who would reflect upon it---the writing medium is as magic since the words gather meaning even in far off times. It is addressed to this reader: you are wanting to know what is "really real" what is in fact the case, not only in some partial sense, but in a complete and total way a grasping for a knowing and a true knowing.

Can somebody be preposterous enough to say that they could teach the 'truth'? Could they be as bold, vain or messianic?

Is it possible for one, individual being to in fact know?To know a falling leaf? To know in such a way that they really grasped, and had in fact seen the actual state of affairs which contained this phenomenon, or happening.

Things that Happen

'Happen' does not seem like a very important word, in fact its sounds dilute, a helper verb at best. Somehow little words and helper verbs reveal best the challenge of attempting to think through to the essence the nature of things that 'happen'

What is it 'to happen'? To happen means to come into being, to come forward in the nature of things, so as to 'stand out' and announce its being to our gaze which holds this falling leaf.

The photo captured the 'happening' of this event or 'being'---the phenomenon which the expression 'falling leaf' names.

Along the path of the production of this message let us consider the crucial and real steps by which this was brought forward.

Implicit in this the question as to whether the author can be relied upon? Can the narrator be trusted?

I for my part address you my reader with a great deal of respect because I believe that you have honestly and with authentic sense of wonder stumbled into this line of thinking that I am recording.

Back to the point! 'To happen' names what comes forward as 'world' or 'experience of world'. All that comes into being, stands there and passes away must, first of all, happen! What a fruitful term. It is the source of the flow of being. What an odd sounding expression! "Source of flow of being." It is redundant! Still, it seems reasonable that that words cannot hold a torch to real things. And it is a 'real thing' investigating the very question, hence, the common denominator is based on reality, and not on verbal language.