Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 13

14 March 2024

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 13

1.  Sometimes the writing of Plotinus is so lush with insights and wisdom that I find it difficult to select a short passage upon which to make a post for this blog.  That is what happened to me with Ennead III.8, On Nature and Contemplation.  It started out a little slow for me; meaning I had some trouble following Plotinus’s line(s) of reasoning.  But as the Ennead progressed, I felt like a fog lifted in my mind and by the time I got to Section 6, and from there to the end, it was like listening to a perfectly crafted piece of music where every note feels like it is placed exactly where it is needed.

The Ennead is a sublime unfolding of the meaning of contemplation and how contemplation works at all levels of reality, and how contemplation interacts with these levels.  It is a kind of revelation of how existence unfolds and is sustained and how the ultimate source from which contemplation derives, the Good and the One, is also the source of our own contemplation. 

It is the most idealist of the Enneads; everything is originally mind and the mind in contemplation.  Well, not exactly, because of the ineffability of the One, it would be wrong to say that the One is mind.  But I think it is more helpful to refer to the One as Mind, in a transcendental sense, than to think of the One as great in a material sense.

In any case, this is why I continue to read and reread Plotinus.

2.  Life presents us with many problems, many ups and downs.  The journey of life is like being on a rudderless ship in a storm-tossed sea.  But the Dialogues of Plato, and the Enneads of Plotinus are like a small island that remains secure from the battering of waves, wind, and time.  It is possible to reach that island even though it is a long way away.  These works are like finding the rudder you need floating in the stormy ocean.  Once attached, the ship of life can be steered towards its true end which is found at the harbor of the Good, the One, and the Beautiful at the Island of Eternity.

3.  When reading a Platonist with whom I disagree about some analysis it is important for me to keep my balance and not be swept away by negative energy or fall into critique just for the sake of critique.  At times I do find myself headed in that direction.  What brings me back to a state of equanimity and balance is recalling that as Platonists we have more in common with each other than we do with other metaphysical positions such as materialism which dominate the culture at this time.  Disputes among Platonists are like family disagreements that do not last long.

4.  Platonism is about the changeless, the eternal.  But we live in a dimension of constant change and differentiation, what I like to call a world of becoming and begoning.  For this reason, our understanding of Platonism changes, and how we communicate the nature of that which is changeless changes. 

5.  It is night in mid-March now.  The moonless sky is thick with stars.  It is cool at this time of year in the desert.  Even though the sun and its light and its energy cannot be seen, it is pouring down upon all of us constantly; a limitless grace.  In a few hours the sun will rise at dawn.