The Gap

Been thinking about the gap (a Lacanian term).  So we
are born into a potential that has anything at all
possible.  But as soon as we are born, we are
populated /saturated with language (edits, symbols,
signifiers, things) that mold our world (of language)
as others construe reality.  We are socialized.  We
can talk to others without the dis-illusion of not
understanding.  Yet somewhere there is a part of us
that knows that language doesn't quite do the
trick--reality escapes/overflows the words--we split
definitional hairs.  We pretend with one another that
we understand one another (we commune-icate)--yet
deeply buried in us is the solipcistic fear of
profound aloneness.  (Do we  "Really" know the other?
Most of the time we take our solace in the comfort of
the language.  Some march goose-step to the tune of
cultural edicts (conventional marriage, and television
and newscast formulas), and pay no attention or have
no awareness of what is missing; or that anything at
all is missing.  Truth is handed to us on a platter.

Enter Zizec:  What is possible?--It is the Real which
defies/overflows encapsulation by words.  It is the
"beyond words."  For Freud it was the emotional
overflow that came with trauma that was unable to be
interpreted by the conventional, the word. 

Judaism:  issued edicts of all sorts, and most salient
were the 10 commandments:  Thou shall not...  murder,
adultery, covet, etc.

So when as a kid, we had a hell fire and brimstone
preacher that would come to tears and wring his hands
over our fate as sinners.  At not having salvation.
At burning in the fires of hell.  Even then, I asked
myself, What is this all about?  I don't feel that
BAD.  For as a young lad, I marched to the tune of
convergence, lock-stepped, doing the right thing,
saying my prayers, etc.  As a youth, when I was
wrongly accused of wrongdoing, I thought:  If I'm
going to pay the price of wrongdoing without having
done it, then I'm not getting my money's worth...I
might as well do it.

That preacher seemed to say that we were all going to
pay the price...and I thought:  what is so awful that
I did??? 

With the Thou shall not's, come the objects of
prohibition.  The objects become/remind one of what is
possible.  Of behaviors/phenomena that are not
contained in the conventional.  With the Thou shall
not's come awareness of possibility.  (Could I have it
in me to kill another human being?  Of course, it gets
more complex because in the social order, we all say
"no", yet socially participate in supporting war and
the death penalty; a conventionalized tacit assent and
nod to the existence of the Real.)  With the Thou
shall nots come the possible outside that which has
been oversocialized and feigning as only, actual, and
exclusive.

Sexuality:  Can we enter the dangerous realm of the
Real without danger?  Can we have coffee without the
problems with coffee?  Yes, we have de-caff.  Can we
have sugar without the problems with sugar?  Yes, we
can have artificial sweeteners.  Can we have sex
without the difficulties around sex?  Yes, we can have
cybersex.  So we are lured into the realm of the
dangerous without incurring Real danger.  But have we
really encountered the Real in all these instances?  I
think not.  Skirting with danger (in that it is not
condoned by the conventional)is part of the
lure--Drinking coffee without caffeine makes no sense
to me--I want the jolt (but in moderation--I don't
want to get "wired.")

With Christianity comes the abolition of the Thou
shall nots, and a new order created:  Thou
shall...love God, and love neighbor.  Instead of
prohibition, there is possibility.  There is the edict
of connection which defies solipcistic disconnection:
Love.

Love; implies connection; union/adherence with.

So back to the gap; the gap of separation of our
largely unconscious solipcistic aloneness in our
oversocialized taken-for-granted language-ladened
world.  And of that aloneness, the human condition is
one of yearning and longing for over-coming and
connection in our situations of dis-connection.  Thus
we forever strive to find God, to find a lover, to
find someone who understands us.  We strive to enter
the other by proximity, literally by sex.  We call sex
the greatest intimacy.  And during orgasm, we for a
few moments are able to completely let go of the
illusionary plane of categorization, and give
ourselves, like death, over, involuntarily to the
Real.

So what are we doing?  Trying to overcome the gap?
Yes, Skype sure does help.  What is possible beyond
these words and our words over the phone or over
skype?  In what can we share a "reality" together?
Share what is possible together?

Yes, we are both living on the edge of
things--skirting the boundaries of what our social
world says is possible.  Yet, what is possible is that
which is not yet, and yet is, realized.

I'm sure private meditation takes one into the Real.
The invitation beyond that I believe, is entering the
Real with another.