Friday, January 24, 2014

№ 154. The Question Mark

What is the shape of a curious mind?

Does it follow the curves of riddles as they flow out of our thoughts? As we seek out the strings of answers, do we not enter labyrinths with minotaurs ready to engage us in mortal combats? True, ignorance dies a thousand deaths and we gain iotas of neural networks. We also arrive at gardens rife with serpents and seeds of doubts. Seeds that grow into blasphemy, unorthodoxy and many meta-institutional offsprings.

The apple from the tree which was forbidden may just really be a fig of infinite curiosity that doesn't end with a wealth of answers. Answers are just a foretaste of the wellsprings of creation that lay inexhaustible underneath. As the multiverses expand, the supply of energy and matter and the inter-relationships that enrich the whole soup deepen in plenitude.

Mortality which was the price of disobedience is really the death of innocent, blind obedience. To disobey means to take a bite, despite the fiat, and move on for other quests and grow in the process. To disobey is to wander off and wonder where the lay of the land is demarcated between the knowns and unknowns. Reason and faith are really aspects of single reality. To be religious is to be curious and to ask questions. To disobey means to search for meaning, to fall from grace---that flat landscape of medieval earth, and to realize unending horizons of a sphere. Augustine, that bishop who struggled with inner demons, celebrated our happy fault which gained for us redemption.

This article from Brain Pickings is a gem as we are on the cusp of the lunar new year. To know is to experience the burning bush and spark an epiphany:

"This wonder at existence is the condition for an authentic encounter with things and opens up the possibility of knowledge. . . . This is a wonder that does not stop at an aesthetic sentiment, is not reduced to a momentary curiosity, but is the beginning of a process, kindling the desire to enter into relationship with the world, to get to know it."


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