To our finite minds, the infinite appears as nothingness. It is out of this nothingness that creation proceeds ex nihilo. The shimmering halo of creation — its crown, its Keter — is sometimes called Ayin.
This is the living, pregnant nothingness from which epiphanies come, by which we know Ayin and the Absolute One. Creation itself was epiphany. Creation continues, for each of us, in the renewal of epiphany.
This nothingness must never be confused with the dead, hopeless nonexistence into which all past, present and future love, joy and light is sucked and annihilated — the nothingness of nihilism.
Ex nihilo, the from-nothing.
Ad nihilo, the to-nothing.
One places a shimmering halo around our heads, radiating beyond mind, into being and beyond it.
The other places a light-sucking antihalo inside our skulls, made of pure weight, which drops itself through the heart, through the gut, and falls interminably into a fathomless pit beneath belowness. If you have ever felt depression, you will recognize this.
For creatures like us, nothingness is inseparable from everythingness. And in some respects the everythingness is what hides nothingness from us.
We know everything — past, present and future — only by our way of knowing.
A depressed or nihilistic way of knowing produces a depressing, hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic understanding of everything. The past, even a past one experienced firsthand as happy, is now revealed as delusional bullshit happiness, or doomed happiness or groundless happiness. And similarly the future is drained of hope and meaning. Everything will come to nothing.
A depressed self takes a depressing reality as given.
A depressed self sees no meaning, joy, happiness or (if we are honest) love, and concludes that this absence of evidence of value is evidence of absence of value.
Nihilism is the bad faith of depression, that drowns everything in an omniscience of cynicism.
Nihilism sees bullshit wherever it looks. But nihilism sees with an evil eye. It is nihilism that is bullshit.
The everpresent possibility of epiphany annihilates nihilism and repairs awareness of infinity in nothingness. We relearn the vision of the invisible, the being within Ayin.
When an epiphany comes, we are overwhelmed. Everything changes. The epiphany overflows the present, and saturates our memories and anticipations with new meaning. What we now mean when we say “everything” is different from what we meant prior to the epiphany. It is by this epiphany that we understand even our old understanding, and this means to forget how things were, unless we carefully preserve before and after, in order to compare them, and catch sight of the oblivion into which the before slips and from which the after emerges. This comparison teaches something crucial that could be called the transformation of everythings.
We realize, suddenly, meaning can irrupt into everything at any moment. And this irruption of meaning is always and necessarily inconceivable until the moment of epiphany. We cannot conceive or perceive its arrival because its arrival is itself the capacity to conceive or perceive. And because this possibility is always inconceivable and imperceptible, the apparent nonexistence of hope in hopelessness, the apparent absence of all meaning in meaninglessness, the apparent nonexistence of divinity in atheism — these are illusions. They mistake absolutely, mistaking infinity for zero. They mistake Ayin for dead nonexistence.
If the epiphany of inexhaustible epiphany comes to you ex nihilo — and it might arrive at any moment, especially if you open your hands and invite it — nihilism is behind you. You are now and forever an exnihilist.
Atheists are right: God, in fact, does not exist.
But atheists are not right enough: God is existence itself, and the source of existence beyond being.
Relativists are right: There is no absolute objective truth.
But relativists are not right enough: There is truth of the Absolute, which is not objective, nor subjective, but both and neither.
Disbelieve in God if you have no God to believe in.
Disbelieve forcefully, thoroughly, clearly, profoundly, nobly.
But try to understand: the object of your noblest disbelief is not God.
You can suspend final disbelief. This is your birthright.
The hatred of those who harbor such ill feelings as, ‘He reviled me, assaulted me, vanquished me and robbed me,’ is never appeased.
The hatred of those who do not harbor such ill feelings as, ‘He reviled me, assaulted me, vanquished me and robbed me,’ is easily pacified.
Through hatred, hatreds are never appeased; through non-hatred are hatreds always appeased — and this is a law eternal.
“Most people never realize that all of us here shall one day perish. But those who do realize that truth settle their quarrels peacefully.”
— Dhammapada
Shun evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.
— Psalm 34:15
May God bless you and keep you.
May God look kindly upon you, and be gracious to you.
May God reach out to you in tenderness, and give you peace.
— the Priestly Blessing
Walk good.
— everyday Jamaican blessing