Eternal Return

[Nietzsche] accepts the inevitability and suffering of reality (eternal return) but insists that the person, the self, must change perception. This change of perception must address only oneself, for no other expectation or altered circumstance but only sheer will, insight, and perception, can give us a new ability to understand, tolerate, and transcend suffering. The present moment of existence must become the tablet on which to etch one’s aspirations, intentions, conclusions, directions, not change any external circumstances but to see through everything, to live in its contradictions. [Emphasis mine.]

Eternal return is purgation of past weaknesses, failure, error, desire. The self must embrace not only the will to pursue a new self but what would be associated with Nietzsche as the will to power, meaning no more than the taking control of one’s self in life and destiny. Because this self-made destiny is the fruit of a personal struggle, the self must overcome much that is irrevocably external affecting the inner person. The will must transform the self not through attack but through transvaluation, the will overcoming obstacles, subjectivities, falsehoods, not reliant on society, culture, others, but forging one’s own path and system of thought and values.

From: Eternal Return via Hermit’s Thatch

Once again I’ve been thinking about eternal return (heh).

Once again I find myself circling, hovering around the periphery of action.

Once again I find myself going through all of the motions and preparations leading up to an actual change. I make the run up closer than I ever have.

Yet still the gulf remains. The gap. The canyon between me and It.

I have been at this point so many times before.

I just need a better approach, I say. So I retreat back. I plan the route. I clear the path. I wait for favorable weather. The wheel turns again; I set off running. It’s easier this time, I am gaining speed. I see the Other Side. I see where I can land. I just need to jump, and…

And I skid to a stop, right at the edge. Again.

It is easy to get lost in that. Here I am making the same old mistakes. Here I am again, not doing the thing I claim I want to do.

The gravity of my goal, my task, has no doubt captured me. But I can’t come into land. I simply spiral tighter and tighter around it. And sometimes I drift away and maybe that’s what I need - to let it go and float off somewhere else - but no, at the farthest reaches, the arch of orbit tugs at my back, my retreat slows, and my path bends and I am on the approach again.

How many times will I do this?

But to think that this isn’t yet another repeat of every other failed attempt… to realize that I am not being cursed with another frustrating iteration, but blessed with another chance to get it right…

…that despite how many times I have found myself here, the only thing that exists is this present moment…

“…the person, the self, must change perception.”