Wednesday, April 15, 2009

10: Harmony

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Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
................Ephesians 5:21-33 (NIV)

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
................John 15: 9-13 (NIV)
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The long and short of it....

The nature of the relationship of self to other is to find some kind of accord, to resolve.

Like nature returns to a state of balance after natural disasters, a self-righting sailboat will eventually roll back to an upright position if it is overturned by a wave, but we can choose to remain in any condition we see fit, finding our own “balance”, no matter how unbalanced it is.


Consonance and Dissonance
In music there are various tones, each when played together result in harmonies that are either consonant or dissonant. Consonant tones are in a state of repose, or agreement. Dissonant tones are in a state of unrest or of needing completion or resolution. The tonality of a newborn baby is not consonance, as the Romantics suppose (e.g. that every human is born closer to the perfect state of nature and is corrupted by the world), but rather a state of dissonance, of needing completion or resolution. A newborn is in dire need of bonding, of learning, of growing. Whereas a newborn animal in the wild has a strongly ingrained sense of instinct, humans have an equally strong will to decide. But the will is influenced by the harmony of your life. We come into the world in a state of discord, of dissonance, and one of our main purposes is to find accord, consonance, resolution. This then is the nature of the relationship of self to other—to find accord, to find resolution.

Nature has a wonderful way of righting itself. The thing I love about some Eastern philosophies is their fascination with the balance of nature. All things work in harmony. Nature doesn't just do this or that of its own momentum—nature operates as designed. Inject chaos into nature and it will eventually right itself and move back towards a balanced state of equilibrium, even if it is a new equilibrium. People are different, we can choose harmony or chaos, and we can manipulate the environment around us to suit our choice. In other words, we subjectively define our own balance, irrespective of the balance of other, by the exercise of Free Will. Like nature returns to a state of balance after natural disasters, a self-righting sailboat will eventually roll back to an upright position if it is overturned by a wave, but we can choose to remain in any condition we see fit, finding our own “balance”, no matter how unbalanced it is.

This is the force that compels self, this force of desire. I want. This is a primal force—a newborn baby is all about shrieking “feed me!”, “hold me!”, “warm me!” Want me. There's nothing wrong with this, that's one of the ways babies survive. The problem comes when a baby never grows past this, when the man or woman grows into a consumer and desire becomes a bottomless pit of need. A person such as this can never find consonance, since there isn't enough food, love, safety, warmth or anything else in the universe to fill that hole.

Independent Codependence
Imagine any decision that needs be made, the more critical and life changing the better. This decision is influenced by current events (immediate surroundings), past history (previous experiences), ability to remember (the ability to learn from ones past), education (what's been taught), emotional disposition (not only the general character, but as it is impacted by current and past events), current physical condition (healthy, diseased, etc.), spiritual maturity (a babe in constant need and doubt, an adult with tested faith), and the completely variable and sometimes baffling influence of other itself. If a person is making a decision in a complete vacuum (not likely) then all these variables are dealt with in isolation, but when we exercise Free Will we are rarely ever isolated, and all these variables plus countless others are multiplied by the cross influences of other—what does my boyfriend want? Does my wife want to move for this new job? Are my kids happy with this decision? Who cares?

How on earth does this whole thing stay together? How does anything get done? Let's take a step back and look at our computer analogy again. An application cannot run in isolation. It exists within a context that gives it meaning and allows it to function. At the base level this is the platform, or Operating System. There are many different operating systems out there, and applications created for one platform cannot run on most others. The application (if it is a network application, like human beings) is most truly functional when it inter-operates with other applications across a network. It does this by using standardized, uniform protocols to pass information around regardless of where the information came from. To do this, it uses what is called the OSI seven-layer network protocol. I'm not going to go into a bunch of mind-numbing detail on this (here are two links that will give you a good idea of how this works: http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/OSI_Layers.asp, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model) but the basic concept is this—different layers of the network are made up of different rules to operate, and in order to pass data from one layer to another you need to make them palatable to the next layer so they can be used there.

Consider this as example: I need food to survive. A mango is food. How do I pass it through myself to stay alive? At the top most level I take the mango in my hand and bite it, chewing and swallowing it. It goes into my stomach and is dissolved into it's base nutrients. The base nutrients are absorbed into my body, which uses them as energy passed back up to my hand, which uses the energy to gather and eat more mangoes. So it looks like this:
As the food passes down through the processes of the body, each process does not care about the process above it, nor does it care about the process below. The stomach does not care what the food is, as long as it can be digested and it keeps coming; once it does it's job with the food, it passes the product along as nutrients down into the blood. The stomach's two rules for food coming in are 1. it can be digested, and 2. it keeps coming. The stomach's two rules for passing things on are 1. nutrients go into the blood, and 2. waste passes out of the body. All the layers have similar rules for what can go in and what goes out. Each system is independent in it's operations, but codependent related to byproducts.

So how does a model like this work in the self/other relationship? Think of it this way—you are simply one layer of a complex, multi-layered organism. In order to survive, you need nourishment passed to you in a form that you can work with. You are therefore dependent on that which passes you the food, but you have rules that must be followed in order for the food to be successfully passed down to you. Let's assume that the layer above you follows the rules and the food is passed down to you and you can take and use it. What you do with the food once it is in your control is up to you, as you alone are your layer within the organism. As a result of what you do with the food, you will generate a byproduct that you need to get rid of, so it must be in a form that can be passed on to the layer beneath you. If it cannot be passed on, then you will soon be buried in your own byproduct, unable to pass it on, to get rid of it. The layer below you then has certain rules also that you need to address in order to get rid of the byproduct. Also, the layer below you passes energy up to you, so you can function. It's not too complex a machine and follows a very simple rule—you are allowed to operate any way you want at your own layer, but you must cooperate with those above and below you if you want to survive. If don't follow the rules in dealing with either the layer above or below, the cycle stops with you. The layers are independent by themselves, but codependent as a community. If the layer above doesn't play by the rules, you starve. If you don't play by the rules, the layer below you starves, and you drown in your own waste.

Human relationships operate under this principle. You are free to choose whatever path you want to, able to use your free will in any way you choose, but you are dependent on others around you to be fed and to be fulfilled by feeding others. You are not a layer in isolation, no one is. This independent codependence is the principle that keeps one man, one married couple, one family, one neighborhood, one city, one state, one Nation, the whole world in balance. When a layer breaks down, the system stumbles. You are part of this ecosystem, and the exercise of your will is balanced by the results of your decisions. If you eat but cannot feed others, you are a parasite that eventually dies after killing its host.

It is all the same with love...

Love is the ultimate food, the ultimate nourishment, and in the same way, hatred is the ultimate toxin. In between these lies the Self. There are three ways you can exist within this ecosystem—full of love, full of hate, or full of Self. If your layer is filled with hatred, it will absorb everything passed to it, but pass on nothing of use to any layer above or below, or worse you will pass on poison. For a while you will become bloated, but the layers around you will starve and die, and then you will slowly waste away and die yourself. Being self absorbed is similar in that you will absorb what is passed to you and pass what is both useful and useless to the other layers. You may flourish, you may starve—it becomes a matter of chance. If you love, then you will care about what lies above and what lies below and you will seek harmony with them. Being fed and feeding others will become your joy and the source of strength.

Odds are you know people like all three of these types—the parasite, the selfish and the good neighbor. Which are the people surrounding you in your life? Which are you?

The Special Chemistry of Marriage
It is tempting to think that certain magnetic forces exist between people with different dominant elements. For instance, to say that a woman with an emotional dominance is more likely to be attracted to a Body-dominant male (driven by passion or whatever). But the bond is not a simple positive/negative thing as you find in chemistry. Certainly you can have stronger bonds in some relationships than in others, but the magic is in the choosing. Unlike magnets, we have the ability to pair with others with which we are not compatible, with whom we should be repelled. One thing is for certain, though—once bonded, the two change (for better or worse). You cannot un-mix paint.

When a man and a woman are joined, there is a certain attraction that holds them together, a bond. This bonding is not in the physical, but rather it's in the spiritual. The Spirit that surrounds the whole being is the thing that penetrates the other. It's boundaries are permeable. So a married couple should look something like this:
This is why marriage is such a special relationship—it is the binding of two bodies and the force of soul that surrounds the whole thing, and from that binding more people are created. Whereas the bodies are joined immediately (and therefore the force of soul), the influences of one person to another over time will impact and shape the other spheres. A healthy marriage is one in which the stronger partner in one sphere braces and holds up the weaker in that sphere. An unhealthy marriage is one in which the stronger dominates and diminishes the weaker in any given sphere. A marriage can be full of love, full of hate, or full of selfishness.

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