"Everything must be re-thought." Elias Canetti
I made a major breakthrough with my work this past week, and actually, even though this cross-blog threatens to be serious, the whole thing is absolutely hilarious. I knew from pretty far back - I hope I mentioned it in the last article - that the affirmation was going to be the central focus of this part of my work that I'm setting out. This piece of my work that I'm setting out threatens to be serious for me, and so we'll sort of go through the rather hilarious process that it took to get to a reasonable affirmation practice for this work. The affirmations component of this piece of my work is pretty near perfect, although if I don't die too quickly I may make it more perfect yet!
First off, most people are too sophisticated for affirmations, but you would be incredibly surprised at both how incredibly difficult and also incredibly life-changing it can be to say some rather important things in the mirror to yourself. Let's be really pink-bunny: Dare yourself to say, "I love you," looking yourself in the eye in the mirror, or, "I deserve love." It may be that you are too big of a pink bunny to match the dare, rather than too sophisticated to practice a pink-bunny practice like affirmations. Match the dare, no one will ever know you were so pink - unless you tell them.
So I had started with these philosophical affirmations. The problem with philosophy very often, is that you need a great deal of "philosophical legalisms," in order to get philosophical specifications, and these legalisms have a way of multiplying themselves ad infinitum. Ask anyone who has even taken a 200 or 300-level philosophy class and applied themselves to a term thesis. If you were to qualify specifically enough, you would have a 20-page term thesis that included one majestically specifically-qualified sentence. Refer yourself to a work by Hegel, his "Logic," being a sterling example, or some of the more obscure passages of Kant. Kant is a worthwhile philosopher, but is best read on an overdose of ephedra. We'll skip any more of that for the moment - and I thank goodness for that too - and we'll move on to the first of the breakthroughs.
It occurs to me, sometimes minimalism works better, and it might be possible to reduce the abstraction of this mess in my scrap-books to something a bit less unweildy. One has scrap-books to do scrap-work in, and thank goodness there are both scrap-books and trashcans, and that not everything I write shall be presented before creation - engraven in stone tablets - behind a great cloud of majestic fires. So as I work on the scraps, I keep writing - this is unweildy it isn't working - and so I come up with something. The pronoun "I," and a single verb tense. Two words that make a complete sentence in the English language, though Hegel's "Logic," cannot even explicate even the identity function without nearly 23 pages of crenelations for posterity.
So, I sit down, and I start scrapping about these I-verb sentences. Nearly 36 hours of work - no joke - later - and I mean 36 hours of work and not of time where I rested - I had listed well over 400 possible affirmations without nearly stopping to move my pen unless I was forced to puff on a cigarette, swig coffee, or pass out for a nap. It then occurs to me - this is also rather unweildy and is not going to work. This is going to create a trashbag full of dumpster-trash. So I write down - "Where do I simplify?"
I tried to whittle down to 28 affirmations, got caught up into several hundred affirmations again - this was a weeks' worth of total charlatanry - and finally I realize something. From the Bible and Moses' burning bush, "I am a being who is." Pretty abstract translation of the concept, but that is pretty much what that text says. The next piece was from Plato - his separation between the world of being and the world of becoming - "I am a being who becomes. (or changes?)" So I scrap-book a bit more, and I think of the philosophical concept of ultimate value. What would be the ultimate value? Perfection. I think it through and come up with, "I am a being who becomes perfect."
Alright, so, now I go back to the original I-verb sentence concept, and we have now, three and only three of what I am calling:
The Three Primary Fundamental Affirmations of the Work
1. I am.
2. I become.
3. I perfect.
So now, believe it or not, the fundamental piece of this work is done. That is all she wrote. There are two longer lists, one of 23 affirmations - and one of 12 negations - that are secondary to the affirmation practice I am laying out, but that is all she wrote as to the essence of my work. I have been practicing saying these three affirmations when I pop into the restroom and freshen up. I'll tell you, I am not too pink-bunny to understand how difficult affirmation work can be, and I am starting to see the value of simplicity ever more, but these three simple statements have caused me some more-than-average pain over the course of perhaps the last 5 or 6 days.
This is powerful material. I am quite proud - and actually - I'm not too pink-bunny too admit I'm also very terrified. So the heart of the work is complete. A being who exists, a being who becomes, and a being who perfects. I'm going to poke fun at my foolish self more in the next article at this site, but I need a short break and just a bit of down time to center the crenelations just a tad. More to come, on one or the other of my cross-blogs.
