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Developing the
means of pilgrimage
From the
moment a child is born (or adds or eliminates a datum of input) it actively
solves problems. Its problems are its immediate needs. The child is born with
the ability (i.e. its Inner Guide &
Control System) to solve those problems perfectly (whereby the term
‘perfect’ is taken to mean: create a ‘fact’, i.e. slice (hence end) a
process), and, by extension, all problems. The need
(increase) represents itself to the child as an unpleasant feeling. Need
satisfaction (increase, i.e. the surge) represents itself as a pleasant feeling.
The child is ‘driven’ (all of its life) to swap the unpleasant feeling for
that of pleasure. It’s feelings function as a surface (i.e. in consciousness)
Guide and Control System. That Guide & Control mode does not change
throughout life. Later on the child creates a secondary Guide & Control
system, namely peripheral systems state consciousness. The world outside
(i.e. the available nutrient soup) acts as a further, relatively random Guide
& Control System). In short, the whole of life (as a pilgrimage) consists
of continuously returning (by means of separate or sub pilgrimages) one’s
unhappy (initial) state to a happy (end) state. Since the primary Guide &
Control System is internal (viz. the Inner
Pilgrimage), that makes all external pilgrimages fundamentally ‘blind’
survival operations. Hence,
pilgrimage begins as (in fact is) the process of need satisfaction (in
‘religious speak’ read: achieving salvation, wholeness or holiness (read:
goodness, i.e. full functionality), and so on); more precisely stated,
pilgrimage is the basic function of closing an open process to achieve (the
sense or feeling) - the pay-off or reward of - of closure (hence of fact making), namely satisfaction (happiness,
joy and so on). As the
child’s (or any human’s or any quantum of identifiable bio-mass’) needs,
inner, internal and external, grow, so does the child’s ability - as
particular schedule of actual means - to satisfy those needs. In short,
during its life the child, later adolescent, later still as adult, merely
learns to elaborate and adapt its basic problem solving skill/algorithm, …..
or is eliminated. If initially
the child’s (or primitive’s, i.e. the not yet fully developed person’s) goal
is the elimination of (hence drive from) unhappiness (or hurt or hunger, felt
as unpleasant), it’s next basic goal, learnt or acquired from resolving the
first one, is the achievement of (hence draw towards) happiness (or pleasure,
resulting from satiation). Thereafter
the smart child quickly understands (this is tertiary knowledge, Buddhist: bodhi) that happiness (i.e.
the emotional (hence iconic) representation of an energy surge (read: enlightenment) is the (self
or other) reward for performance, that is to say, the reward for achieving
and outputting a particular @ best solution (for solution read: fact, i.e. an
identifiable unit or quantum). Later on, the fully matured pilgrim (i.e.
problem solver) realizes that ultimate happiness (that is to say, rapturous
joy combined with the feeling of whole meaning and purpose) is derived from
self-presenting (@ random or specifically directed) as a unique and original
solution (i.e. as a perfect output or series of outputs, i.e. as differential
performance (series) @ perfection, hence as quantum or unit of fact). In
short, the child is initially rewarded for closure (i.e. ending, arriving,
and which is the basic purpose of pilgrimage),
not for what it closes. In order to
develop to the final and wholly spiritual (read: life giving, to wit, real
identity creating and transmitting) stage, the child advances, or is advanced
from the outside (i.e. initially by parents and teachers, then by the
nutrient soup in which it swims), from merely resolving its immediate inner
needs (i.e. its inner and internal pilgrimages) to resolving its current and
later external (i.e. its outside world, personal or communal - for instance,
religious) needs. To this end, it is trained (or ‘groomed’, read: brain
‘washed and tinged’) during infancy and adolescence to solve a long series of
ever more demanding artificial problems (such as education or play). Solving
those artificial problems upgrades the child’s problem solving ability and
prepares for actual (in fact life and death) problem solving in the real,
everyday world. Each time a
problem, real or artificial, is solved, that is to say, each time an open
(hence unhappiness producing) process is ended (hence resolved as a slice or
fact), the pay-off is happiness, the latter, also experienced as a ‘high’,
being the personal interpretation of the energy surge or rush resulting from
process (or pilgrimage) ending, irrespective of the effectiveness of the
ending. To wit, orgasm is the reward from trying, not for succeeding (at
fertilization). Since an
individual needs to resolve innumerable actual problems, the actual means of
resolution emerge only if and when the actual solution (i.e. the goal)
appears, that is to say, is given or invented. Hence the most important
‘means’ of pilgrimage is the establishment of a clearly defined and
unchanging ‘as if’ goal (or outcome, in religious speak, the holy (i.e. whole
making) state, sometimes a place or object (i.e. a relic)), after which the
actual means of its attainment emerge and can be applied or practiced to
perfection. |