If we imagine being as a ladder, we might situate ourselves at the base.
But what if we imagine ourselves elsewhere, neither at the base, nor at the top of the ladder.
Something is gained if we situate ourself at a permanent middle — metaxy, media res, thrown — with superscendent rungs always beyond the reach of our fingertips and subscendent rungs extending interminably below the soles of our feet.
No more tidy, enclosing heaven or supporting earth with humankind between. Here it is rungs and more rungs.
Wherever we climb, upward or downward, we reach from the heart — ex cord — arms above outstretched, hands groping upward to grasp whatever is graspable here, our feet below, seeking footholds, security, a supporting under-standing.
In this imagined situation, there is a point where we might climb — and we are here! — where we confuse our ideas about nature and our capacities to command and control it. Many of us were born on this rung, carved from a solid plank of a probabilistic swarm of subatomic particles. Our feet, too, were carved from this substance, and our hearts, too! We stand here, fused to our rung, groping above for the right political aspirations, oblivious to our footing.
But matter is not subatomic particles, though she might allow herself to seem so, when she feels cooperative. Matter sometimes deigns to cooperate with our laboratory play. But she reserves her right to turn on us arbitrarily, when we least expect it.
And physical matter is only one of myriad materials.
Material is any reality — physical or otherwise — that can take form, without itself being form.
And no material is pure. Any thing is a chaotic convergence of materials. And with each additional witness, materials proliferate. Instauration (revelation-creation) ex cord is difficult. Instauration ex con-cord borders on impossible. A designer knows this truth. Who else knows…?
Transcendence is not only ascension to ecstatic heights, nor penetration to fathomless depths. It does not leave or aspire to leave mundane life. It completes a circuit of behind and beyond. It stands mid-ladder, ushering lower angels upward, and higher angels downward. It circulates divine light so the bright blood bathes the tissues of matter, saturating matter with soul and form, then returns the spent light to the source for replenishment.
Chaos is not absence of meaning. Chaos is too many meanings. Chaos is hypermeaning.
Extreme white noise vanishes into blind ether, nothing-present-nothing-missing.
To a finite soul, infinity is nothingness; hypermeaning is meaningless.
The midpoint of unity and infinity is zero.
Absolute infinitude versus the infinite infinitesimals.
In the Metaxic Middle — Malkhut
in whom we are suspended
Ein Sof — Absolute Infinitude — One
meets
Shekhinah — Infinite Infinitesimals — Sparks
one spark of which is oneself
within One’s Self.
I have quite a heresy brewing here!