art John Picking
Quote of the Imaginary Moment by Jed McKenna
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(Jed talking to a seeker)
Jed: “So anyway, the difference isn’t something I have that you don’t, it’s something you believe that I don’t. You think it’s real and I don’t even see it. At this point, I can’t even remember it.”
“And what’s that?”
“Everything. Everything you believe. Everything you’re absolutely certain about. Everything you’d bet your life is true.”
Curtis knocks on the table. “I’d bet my life this table is true.”
“Perfect example,” I say. “It would never even occur to me that this table might have reality. I have no thought that even resembles that. I have no context in which such a thought could exist. Reality has no reality for me.”
“You’re saying there is no table?”
“I’m saying there is no question of a table.”
He looks at me speculatively for a minute, trying to figure out if I’m really saying that I don’t think the table we’re both leaning on is real.
“Not just the table. Me? The ocean? Everything?”
I let him think about it. He puts it together quickly. “…it sounds like there’s a deeper thing, like there’s more to it than you said.”
I’m impressed. “Absolutely. Very good. There’s the reality, the truth, but Jed McKenna can’t express it and no reader can grasp it. And that’s why I said in the book, come see for yourself. That’s the only possible response. I know it doesn’t make sense. No one who knew what they were talking about ever said it did. It’s the paradigm gap. Jed McKenna might do a good job talking about the part that can be talked about, but Jed isn’t any more real than this table and he can really only talk about what’s not, not what is.”
“But something is, right? I mean, like, not nothing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing is everything.”
“Like nothing is something?”
“You got something against nothing?”
“It sounds, kind of, I don’t know, unsatisfying.”
I laugh again.
---Jed McKenna, from his book, “Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment”
https://www.wisefoolpress.com/
Thanks to Miranda
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