The "I" and the "not-I"

Simone Weil:

Creation: good broken up into pieces and scattered throughout evil.

The cleavage between the “I” and the “not-I”: the only way the All can experience surprise and relationship. It can do this only upon meeting the Other, which must first be separated from the self. But creation cleaved thusly carries the shadow of self-will and dismissal of the Other into a thing. So that no longer will “I” delight in relationship, but will, instead, lord over and consume creation in my greedy avarice to prove that “I” am the center of the universe.

Kasatka (an orca at Sea World) held her trainer under water twice (for less than a minute) instead of performing tricks as was expected. She held him by the foot in her massive jaws. She performs as many as eight times a day, 365 days a year. They called her protest abnormal.

A thought on conscious suffering

Simone Weil:

The false God changes suffering into violence. The true God changes violence into suffering.

The false: escape from terror or dread by means of a substitute sacrifice (i.e., if I sacrifice a sheep on the altar – or read about a Baghdadi child losing his arm to a mine in the newspaper, or even make a lot of busy-ness in my life – I can reassure myself that it is not I, not I who is suffering or dying. I am alive).

The true: making oneself a sacrifice (i.e., submit and bear the suffering consciously).