Truth is sometimes very much like a barbed wire. There are those that can only handle it in a delicate manner. Those that don’t want anything to do with it. There are some that misjudge it’s strength and cannot appreciate it’s tendency towards eliciting pain. More so, truth, at least objective truth; is a very sinister force.
The truth is fickle and often elusive. In the same way, it is blinding and often ignored. The kind of truth I speak of is not the subjective species we’ve come to embrace. Entire religions have been built on the misapprehension of subjective truths as objective truths.
Buddhism is one such religion. To demonstrate such is as simple as “samsara”. Even if we accept the concept of cylindric life, we are still left with the subjective nature of that as truth. What I mean is, the statement of Life as a cycle of death and rebirth is not verifiable in an empirical sense. Though we can witness things being born and things dying, there is nothing empirical to create a connection between the two.
However there is a certainty in that statement. A very sinister certainty. Everything dies and if it has life it eventually meets its death. That can be verified empirically. To that understanding, I present you with the first of the Druwydry’s Sinister Certainties.
You see certainty is not held abstractly and requires that you draw from practical experience. Praxis if you will. Certainty comes from repeatedly experiencing the same result and being able to recognize that you will in fact continue to do so. It is not an abstract concept, instead it is a glaring practical recognization.
Another of Druwydry’s Sinister Certainties is that Everyone is slave to something. That is that everyone bends to serve something. It is by our attachments that we come to this place of servitude. Even the Buddhist monk holds attachment. Just the attachment to the idea of non-attachment should illustrate sufficiently. I know it probably looks like I’m picking on Buddhists, however that’s just not the case. One of my favorite thinkers is in fact one.
The Insidious Way brings an understanding that these attachments are better defined as influences. When correctly observed in this way, there is a recognization that you cannot be free from influence. All you can really do is choose what, how much, or simply how; you are influenced. Power is gained through learning to traffic in influence. Which brings me to another Sinister Certainty. Influence is the purest currency.
Just as you would mind your acquiring of, investing of, saving of, and spending of money; you must also mind influence in this manner. Here we come to a place where we understand that these Sinister Certainties that I have been talking about are primal influences. I choose the term primal over meta because they speak deeper than the rational mind. They speak to the very core of our being.
These statements of ominous foreshadowing are in fact terrifying to most. They boast of how easily something horrifying can unfold in front of you. You cannot hold influence over everything, but anything can hold influence over you. Which brings me to the last of the Sinister Certainties I wish to talk about tonight; Cosmically we are insignificant.
A comet does not care if you have accepted Jesus in your heart. A supernova is not concerned with your karma. For that matter, the planet Earth does not care if you can breathe.
These are not finite understandings. They are not some rigid system of supposed enlightenment. Quite the opposite, they represent the bleakness and the void. A literal Endarkenment. A disillusioning of falsities such as hope and Nirvana. I would ask my readers that have absorbed what I am putting forward to comment some other possible Sinister Certainties. This is to be done for the purpose of learning your own truths.
-BX