The Absolute Self

"...but more than that, because I have traveled, I can see other universes in the eyes of strangers. Because I have traveled, I know what parts of me I cannot deny and what parts of me are simply the choices I make. I know the blessings of my own table and the warmth of my own bed. I know how much of life is pure chance, and how great a gift I have been given simply to be who I am...

"If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting..."

Kent Nerburn, Letters to my Son, New World, 1994, pp. 114-115

I cannot really think of many (if any) absolute non-trivial (i.e. something deeper than notions forbidding killing, etc.) convictions that I have. I hate the transcendent. Nothing is holy for me. I'm not wholly a consequentialist, but most transcendent truths tend to be based on myth.

I do have to agree with the necessity of the unknown. The unknown and the random are crucial for the realization that there is no design in the universe. Humans add meaning to life. Not God. There is no originary meaning to human life. It has to be produced. Thus, there is a void at the center of existence.