1.1. EIGHTH ARTICLE

1.1.1. Whether man’s happiness consists in the vision of the vision of the divine essence?

1.1.1.1.              Objection 1         -              final perfection of intellect, happiness, does not consist in God being seen in His Essence
[this here, between the time of 1:45a and 2:08a, is when I took a nap and had several dreams that intertwined together: 1)writing on a computer at work and struggling to stay awake; lights in the small office turn off while I nod off for who knows how long, and I’m unable to turn the lights back on as I desperately try the switch; 2) I come to a house, open the door, walk in to a small entrance continuing to walk leftward toward a backdoor to get to what I perceived was a small garage or room of some sort from which I could continue to write on a computer from, to type, never made it outside, said hello to the babysitter watching my siblings, my younger brother doesn’t want me to go write because he wants me to spend time with him, in my dream he hunches over in sadness toward the ground until he is lying on the ground, I tell him that I need to write but perhaps I can read while hanging out with him. 3) Suddenly I’m in my apartment awaking from what seems to be a long nap, it’s still late into the night or early in the morning, I can’t tell. I go to the kitchen to make some coffee, espresso, then I hear someone in the living room which is on the other side of the wall I’m facing in the kitchen, I move around the dividing wall to see who it is. All the while I’m struggling to regain an awake-consciousness, it’s difficult for me to see and adjust my focus in the dark and my movement is staggered and lazy, I notice that it’s my dad. Walking in from what was, in my dream, the patio door of which had a pool on the outside of the apartment living room, and drying his hair off with a towel. He addressed me just as a means of acknowledgement. I started to walk toward the bedroom since I believed Sarah to still be asleep and wanted to make sure she was undisturbed from her sleep, I however, while my eyes struggled to adjust to the dark light and even darker hallway to the bedroom, saw Sarah standing in the hallway. My dad addresses her as if he and she knew of something I was completely unaware of. At that point I felt as though there was something I was completely unaware of. My dad reaches for Sarah’s hand and they lift their hand holding to about shoulder height, I had no thought to think about what I observed. Then, as if there was a gap in time, I was embracing Sarah. She was mostly hugging me as I was not sure what to make of the entire situation until I started to hug her back. It was then that I knew, or at least hoped was the case, that I could test Sarah. I could hug her to see if what was occurring was a true event. When I was thinking while hugging her, my hand feeling the texture of her shirt and the soft skin behind it while squeezing a section of her ribs right blow her arm pit due to the manner of which my arms wrapped around her torso in our embrace, in my hugging her to the test, I sensed that it could not be her. At the same time I heard my dad’s voice saying something to me, I don’t know what he was talking about or what words he was saying but slowly, as I was thinking that this could not be Sarah, my dad’s voice started morphing into my own. I began to take the place of the narrator in the movie I was both watching for the first time and also starting in. As I focused on my own voice, everything started fading into darkness and the volume of my voice lowering to silence. In a movie this would have be the dissolve to black, a fade out.
Awake (for real), I had no sense of what real time it was. Had I napped longer than I should have? Did I turn off my alarm? I looked at the screen of my cell phone, since I had set the timer on it for twenty minutes, and noticed that I had eight seconds left before the alarm would trigger and sound. Still having a feeling of drowsiness I let the eight seconds go by as I thought to myself “what?” At least that’s the closest word I could think of to encapsulate what I was actually thinking. The alarm sounded. Back to writing, typing on a computer. …I think I’ll quickly write what I just dreamt about before I forget it partially or entirely. 12/16/2010 2:47am]

1.1.1.2.             

Objection 2 - higher perfection belongs to higher nature, therefore final perfection does not reach this, but consists in something less