By quarantining some portion of the conceptual landscape, the individual and the culture (in turns) manage the complexity of experience by limiting the possibility of thought. While such action is advantageous in the immediate--in the context of "today" and "in this room"--its prejudices are chilling in the growth of the soul and negating of spiritual liberation. For example, let us consider the deepest meaning in the idea "open-minded." In the cultivation of this state, the vestment of ego is released into the ether. Expectations, assumptions--all manner of thought short-hand--allow efficiency in movement in the immediate, but they are screens and filters that, by impacting fundamental perception retard responsiveness and understanding. They deafen one to the cosmic, the ethereal and sully or, better yet, depreciate one's ability to synthesize with sincere and conscientious "openness." The contentions betwixt competing paradigms are moot in the grand picture; not because they are so "small" that they are "insignificant" but rather because, contextualized, they are obviously a sensible and essential part of "the whole." Every antithesis describes its thesis, just as your open mind contains and conforms to the possibility of what is considered.
"This journal is not a mere literary diversion. The further I progress, reducing to order what my past life suggests, and the more I persist in the rigor of composition--of the chapters, of the sentences, of the book itself--the more do I feel myself hardening in my will to utilize, for virtuous ends, my former hardships. I feel their power." --Jean Genet
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