[MD] "100% confident"

[Ham Priday]

Hi Marsha --


> Why don't you describe the experience if one was to adopt
> your Creator, and its purpose.  Define them.
> Help me experience it as you do.
>
> What system of rules are you using to support your reasoning?
> How have you arrived at your objective knowledge?

Marsha, I don't think my philosophy is as much "experience" as it is 
understanding, but experience is of course affected by one's concept of 
reality.  Also, I don't particularly like the word Creator because of its 
theistic associations.  I've used it as an attempt to jolt SA and others out 
of their existential position.  Some years ago, a British clergyman by the 
name of J. B. Phillips wrote a book called "Your God is Too Small". 
Personally, I believe any God conceived by the mind of man is too small to 
be metaphysically credible, and so I generally use Essence to define the 
primary source or creator.

Basically, a self-supporting universe which organizes its elements to 
produce conscious life makes no sense without a designer.  Neither man nor 
his world is self-creating,  The first principle of metaphysics is that 
nothing comes from nothing.  Therefore, to dismiss an uncreated source out 
of hand just because it has "religious overtones" is prejudicial and 
narrow-minded.  Also, to dismiss the conscious self as a by-product of 
biological evolution--or, even worse, an illusion--is to overlook the fact 
that, even if there were a physical world, it would be meaningless without 
cognizant awareness from which all knowledge and value (including morality) 
are derived.

Therefore, if God--or what I call Essence--is the logical first cause, 
Sensibility is its nature, and everything else represents what God is not. 
Cusanus theorized that the first principle is "the coincidence of all 
contrariety", which suggests that the relational universe is a negation 
(i.e., "reduction") of primary Sensibility.  The individual self is the 
locus of experience, but since it has been "negated" from the source, it 
stands apart from it to provide an external perspective of the absolute 
source.  The perspective that the individual perceives is "valuistic"; that 
is Value is what binds the self to its estranged Essence.  So that, in 
essence, selfness is differentiated value-sensibility in the same way that 
Essence is absolute sensibility.

Now that is my ontology.  I "arrived at it" by intuitive reasoning and by 
exploring the metaphysical works of logicians like Cusanus and gnostic 
thinkers such as Eckhart and Plotinus.  As for describing the "experience of 
adopting" this concept, when you realize that you are essentially what you 
value in life, and that this value constructs your being-in-the-world, you 
are free to perceive your life-experience in terms of what you desire, love, 
or find inspiring.  Although these desiderata are experienced as things and 
events in your life, they represent the value of the Essence from which you 
were separated at birth.  In other words, your life-experience completes a 
valuistic cycle that (when viewed as a process in time) begins as a 
negation, proceeds as an affirmation, and ultimately reclaims the value of 
your differentiated self in the Oneness of Essence.

Admittedly, that's an overly-simplified scenario, but perhaps it will give 
you a nutshell view of what Essentialism is all about.  I expect my book to 
be released in a month or two and, as promised, will see that you receive a 
copy.  Hopefully it will answer many of the questions that a digest like 
this is bound to bring up.  (I would have done the same for SA but, 
unfortunately, he has suddenly become antagonistic and no longer wishes to 
associate himself with my philosophy.)

Thanks for keeping an open mind, Marsha, and for affording me another 
opportunity to expound my views.

Best regards,
Ham