Hey! How fun to find a comment on the blog!
I appreciate the agreeable acknowledgement of the spiral model of understanding. That just enables us to figure out why we may not see eye to eye on some things. Of course gaining full circular perspective does help validate the idea that unknown quantities exist from each other on opposite sides of the circle...so far as we know to the lengths of our travels along the spiral....
But let me caution briefly on the quickly offered assumption that a personal God is absolutely out of the equation. The spiritual side of the circle may still evade such that this context is outside of reach. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Let me explain.
I've gone to great lengths to qualify the God myth and its place in humanity's attempts to understand the unknown. I think we're in agreement about all that. But that said, I still stand by the context of my earliest answer to your original question.
"Do you believe in God?"
"Not in the way that notion has been understood to date."
That statement reserves the acknowledgment that there is a spiritual intelligence that informs the phenomena that I'm personally beginning to understand at the quantum level. At the quantum level, everything, as I understand it, is distilled into two quantities, the frequency of its energy and the information in that energy. At this level, everything can be uniquely distinguished. But that just defines the quantities to the level of our current understanding. The unknown aspect is that of the information itself. What informs the energy? Why does it vibrate at its particular frequency and by what means is it informed to the quantity it obtains?
The possibility of an intelligence that informs these unknown quantities is not without question, nor is any refutation of it absolute either.
If I recall, there was a point in our discussions, along with wrestling over Dawkins' fevered defenses of atheism, in which evolution was suggested as proof against the notion of intelligent design. I think that's like fighting fire with a metal hammer.
It's one thing to use the theory of evolution as a pretext for disproving the creation myths - and I believe we may all agree on evolution's dominance in that argument. But to use evolution as a defense against the idea of greater intelligence, I don't think that will suffice, nor does the logic seem to support that argument.
There is intelligence in evolution itself which can be seen in each individual's singular lifetime, let alone the evolution of species. But the validity of evolution does not disqualify the possibility of intelligence within it, nor does it suggest the absence of intelligent design or other worldly non-known entities yet to discover.
So although I offered that all the intuitive "spiritual" discoveries on the right side of the circle, do not have to have a God context to them, I did not say that there is no God context. If you'll recall, I also offered that my atheism is placed against the powers that have propped up the God myth, but it's not nearly as Godless as your own might be, so far to date.
The scientific ability to quantify and explain things only validates those things from the analytical side of the circle. But analytical validation in no way disqualifies them from their existence on the intuitive side of the circle. Holistic views will enable both sides to be seen, and in this context, a personal God may still be in the offing. We just need to find a way to quantify such God's existence analytically...or get taken into some space ship and go pay a personal visit to the energy that informs all things.
How's that?
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The Circle (or Spiral) of Understanding
...so I keep thinking about this stuff...and just loving it!
But actually before launching into this, I feel the need to quantify why I'm even writing this stuff...this blog, which 'cause I'm the only one writing so far, and it's got my frickin' name on it...feels a little pretentious.
But actually the answer to that question is relievingly right in front of us. We've had some very meaningful discussions on these weighty subjects. And in some instances, as perspectives get caught wrestling each other for understanding, and even sometimes domination, I'm challenged to find some resolve in those conflicts.
The conflicts aren't malicious or offensive, they're just a matter of us being without mutual understanding on some things. So I think about what's missing toward that resolve, that understanding, and with that I bumped into the following idea.
With our respective perspectives on things, I am beginning to recognize a distinctive difference between perspectives, and I’ve bumped into an idea on how to categorize those perspectives.
First, consider the pathways to understanding to be circular. For simplicity's sake, a single circle will suffice, but actually Cecilia offered an even better model in conversation yesterday that I'll add to the bottom of this description.
Starting at the top of the circle...ground zero and moving in a counter-clockwise direction (for argument's sake), the first unique pathway toward understanding might be categorized as a rational perspective; an analytical perspective; one which uses math or science as the primary basis for understanding that for which understanding is being pursued.
The other, opposite pathway (moving clockwise in this example), pursuing understanding on the same subject, might be categorized as an intuitive perspective; perhaps emotional; even irrational as it’s juxtaposed against the former.
Both perspectives attempt to understand a subject, but each approaches that understanding on a unique pathway – each exclusive of the other - but eventually pursuing holistic understanding by broaching the bottom and progressing up the opposite side of the circle.
Let me offer an example of this juxtaposition, and then how that might relate to our mutual quests here concerning an understanding of our universe and the esoteric considerations.
As an example, musicians each approach their art and their craft differently in this way. Many approach music from their earliest exposure by a rational and analytical method. They learn to read the notations for tone and rhythm on a page. They learn that the notes connote tone and rhythms as they’re played on the instrument. They learn the notational relationships between the notes and rhythms to make up patterns, scales and chords. They learn the mathematical theory behind the melodic and harmonic qualities of music, and they memorize and play from this perspective by reading music from the page. These musicians read the music and play the music – fluidly at best, but nearly always from the page. You can ask musicians of this analytical method to play without music, and many will undoubtedly struggle – unless of course they’ve broached the bottom point of the circle, but I get ahead of myself....
Conversely other musicians approach music from their earliest exposure by a non-rational and intuitive method. They hear a tone in their head, or via some outside source (an instrument; a voice; a radio) and they discover they can play that tone on an instrument to match the tone in their head - by accident, almost. Soon the intuitive approach enables such a musician to play what they want to hear from their instrument very fluidly. But ask them to name the notes they’re playing or to attempt reading any musical notation, and of course, they will certainly struggle – unless of course they’ve broached the bottom point of the circle themselves and begun to approach their understanding of music by adding some rational analysis to it.
So if you take the two halves of perspective – the analytical from the left, and the intuitive from the right – and from pursuit in either direction you reach the bottom and begin your counter approach to the top, reaching full-circle you will have gained a whole-brain perspective to your pursuit, a holistic perspective, if you will.
With this example, and in context to our pursuit of these esoteric explanations of the universe, I offer that I tend to bring an intuitive perspective to all this stuff. As mentioned in the last post however, this isn’t necessarily a God-based perspective, because I think we all tend to agree upon the God-myth as we’ve qualified it.
But when asked originally, if I “believe in God” – which started this whole discussion those years ago – I didn’t say “no.” I said, “...not in the way God has been identified and understood to date.” Which has taken this long to attempt explanation. :) I mentioned then, and have maintained qualification of a “spiritual” approach to this understanding of mine. Unfortunately, “spirituality” has too often been co-opted by religion, and as such, it gets bastardized as religious and thus God-based. I maintain that a “spiritual” connection to the universe does not have to contain a “God-basis” but rather an intuitive basis perhaps.
In my last post, I suggested the confident existence of many of the esoteric quantities of life – the notions of thought; intention; prayer; the energies of love...and of hate for that matter; of giving and of greed; we might as well include the paranormal; the psychedelic; and even the essence of emotions – not where their physiological triggers can be found in the grey matter of the brain, but the feelings themselves – all of the so-far-to-date (as far as I can tell) unquantifiable quantities of this life experience, and how they exist, regardless of some of their traditional God-context.
Let me quickly explain that idea of God-context. Traditionally these quantities – these qualities – get wrapped up in a religious context - prayer belongs to God; Love – Agape – also belongs to God; Ghosts, spiritual manifestations, even Karma all have been saddled with a God-context. Of course my suggestion is that none of this belongs to the myths we’ve used to explain these unexplainable aspects of our existence. I suggest no God is necessary to understand them. Rather that we can experience all these phenomena in the intuitive and emotional realm of understanding and through recent discoveries (for me), namely quantum wave-form theory, I think we can quantify these phenomena rationally as well.
I discovered this difference in approach just this past week or so, in thinking more about the books that led me on my personal discovery, which currently includes a science-basis to explain such things - but orginally my path was emotional, spiritual and non-rational.
I offer this long-winded theory on the approach to understanding, simply to add perspective to the possibility, that if certain of my precepts aren’t quite resonating – especially as they may bring into conscience certain unknown quantities, such as the notion of Karma, or prayer, or intuition, or intention – it may be because those quantities may reside on the other side of the circle/spiral.
My take on this may be like asking a well-trained sight-reading musician to break from the page and start intuitively improvising over chord changes that come at them only by ear. It’s nearly impossible for such a musician to tackle, wonderfully fluid as they may be at sight-reading and performing from the page.
So it may be a little demanding to suggest that one can understand such irrational quantities as intuition and prayer and other such “spiritual” enigma from a purely rational approach. But for me, having experienced much of these enigmas in an intuitive capacity first – either from some “quasi-spiritual epiphany” or from having read some incredibly insightful stories and works which have expressed even more intuitive understanding of these enigma – works such as:
The Tao te Ching (of course);
The Teachings of Buddha (including Siddhartha by Hermann Hess and others);
The Wandering Taoist by Deng Ming-Dao (an incredible story);
...and having come from the right-brained approach, I believe I reached the first bottom of my circular journey about twelve years into it, at which point I began discovering Carl Jung and practical adepts of his philosophies, including:
James Allen;
Brian Tracy;
Deepak Chopra;
Dr. Wayne Dyer;
...and countless more in innumerable coincidental discoveries in libraries and bookstores on every occasion on which I happened upon a book shelf. It was an incredible period that took place over the next twelve years actually. Now, I feel I’ve come through the bottom and have been moving steadily up the left side of my circle of understanding, as these scientific theoretical applications on the quantum level are making more sense to me – hopefully approaching some holistic sense of it all.
This is not in any way to suggest I’m nearing the end of my journey. I think, the process of my rediscovering some of these early perspectives and their resonance, leads me to believe I may be broaching the top again, and rediscovering the intuition to which I was once familiar, but perhaps forgot in the analytical pursuits of late...and it proves that the basis of knowledge is many, many circles deep.
In fact, discussing this yesterday with Cecilia, she deftly pointed out the circle is actually a spiral that continues in its third dimension. So round and round we go ever forward toward greater and greater understanding (as long as we keep moving).
I love that Cecilia brought the spiral to this model. Recognizing that it's actually a spiral - fits in so well with so many other phenomena - and further to the core of this model, I can see it's actually a double helix, depending upon the direction of your pathway to understanding. If each pathway pursues its own circular progress, then the double helix is formed through progressive and mutual understanding as understanding is gained.
Do you follow? Any additions or contradictions?
I love this stuff, and haven't pursued it to this degree with others since college it seems.
So thanks.
But actually before launching into this, I feel the need to quantify why I'm even writing this stuff...this blog, which 'cause I'm the only one writing so far, and it's got my frickin' name on it...feels a little pretentious.
But actually the answer to that question is relievingly right in front of us. We've had some very meaningful discussions on these weighty subjects. And in some instances, as perspectives get caught wrestling each other for understanding, and even sometimes domination, I'm challenged to find some resolve in those conflicts.
The conflicts aren't malicious or offensive, they're just a matter of us being without mutual understanding on some things. So I think about what's missing toward that resolve, that understanding, and with that I bumped into the following idea.
With our respective perspectives on things, I am beginning to recognize a distinctive difference between perspectives, and I’ve bumped into an idea on how to categorize those perspectives.
First, consider the pathways to understanding to be circular. For simplicity's sake, a single circle will suffice, but actually Cecilia offered an even better model in conversation yesterday that I'll add to the bottom of this description.
Starting at the top of the circle...ground zero and moving in a counter-clockwise direction (for argument's sake), the first unique pathway toward understanding might be categorized as a rational perspective; an analytical perspective; one which uses math or science as the primary basis for understanding that for which understanding is being pursued.
The other, opposite pathway (moving clockwise in this example), pursuing understanding on the same subject, might be categorized as an intuitive perspective; perhaps emotional; even irrational as it’s juxtaposed against the former.
Both perspectives attempt to understand a subject, but each approaches that understanding on a unique pathway – each exclusive of the other - but eventually pursuing holistic understanding by broaching the bottom and progressing up the opposite side of the circle.
Let me offer an example of this juxtaposition, and then how that might relate to our mutual quests here concerning an understanding of our universe and the esoteric considerations.
As an example, musicians each approach their art and their craft differently in this way. Many approach music from their earliest exposure by a rational and analytical method. They learn to read the notations for tone and rhythm on a page. They learn that the notes connote tone and rhythms as they’re played on the instrument. They learn the notational relationships between the notes and rhythms to make up patterns, scales and chords. They learn the mathematical theory behind the melodic and harmonic qualities of music, and they memorize and play from this perspective by reading music from the page. These musicians read the music and play the music – fluidly at best, but nearly always from the page. You can ask musicians of this analytical method to play without music, and many will undoubtedly struggle – unless of course they’ve broached the bottom point of the circle, but I get ahead of myself....
Conversely other musicians approach music from their earliest exposure by a non-rational and intuitive method. They hear a tone in their head, or via some outside source (an instrument; a voice; a radio) and they discover they can play that tone on an instrument to match the tone in their head - by accident, almost. Soon the intuitive approach enables such a musician to play what they want to hear from their instrument very fluidly. But ask them to name the notes they’re playing or to attempt reading any musical notation, and of course, they will certainly struggle – unless of course they’ve broached the bottom point of the circle themselves and begun to approach their understanding of music by adding some rational analysis to it.
So if you take the two halves of perspective – the analytical from the left, and the intuitive from the right – and from pursuit in either direction you reach the bottom and begin your counter approach to the top, reaching full-circle you will have gained a whole-brain perspective to your pursuit, a holistic perspective, if you will.
With this example, and in context to our pursuit of these esoteric explanations of the universe, I offer that I tend to bring an intuitive perspective to all this stuff. As mentioned in the last post however, this isn’t necessarily a God-based perspective, because I think we all tend to agree upon the God-myth as we’ve qualified it.
But when asked originally, if I “believe in God” – which started this whole discussion those years ago – I didn’t say “no.” I said, “...not in the way God has been identified and understood to date.” Which has taken this long to attempt explanation. :) I mentioned then, and have maintained qualification of a “spiritual” approach to this understanding of mine. Unfortunately, “spirituality” has too often been co-opted by religion, and as such, it gets bastardized as religious and thus God-based. I maintain that a “spiritual” connection to the universe does not have to contain a “God-basis” but rather an intuitive basis perhaps.
In my last post, I suggested the confident existence of many of the esoteric quantities of life – the notions of thought; intention; prayer; the energies of love...and of hate for that matter; of giving and of greed; we might as well include the paranormal; the psychedelic; and even the essence of emotions – not where their physiological triggers can be found in the grey matter of the brain, but the feelings themselves – all of the so-far-to-date (as far as I can tell) unquantifiable quantities of this life experience, and how they exist, regardless of some of their traditional God-context.
Let me quickly explain that idea of God-context. Traditionally these quantities – these qualities – get wrapped up in a religious context - prayer belongs to God; Love – Agape – also belongs to God; Ghosts, spiritual manifestations, even Karma all have been saddled with a God-context. Of course my suggestion is that none of this belongs to the myths we’ve used to explain these unexplainable aspects of our existence. I suggest no God is necessary to understand them. Rather that we can experience all these phenomena in the intuitive and emotional realm of understanding and through recent discoveries (for me), namely quantum wave-form theory, I think we can quantify these phenomena rationally as well.
I discovered this difference in approach just this past week or so, in thinking more about the books that led me on my personal discovery, which currently includes a science-basis to explain such things - but orginally my path was emotional, spiritual and non-rational.
I offer this long-winded theory on the approach to understanding, simply to add perspective to the possibility, that if certain of my precepts aren’t quite resonating – especially as they may bring into conscience certain unknown quantities, such as the notion of Karma, or prayer, or intuition, or intention – it may be because those quantities may reside on the other side of the circle/spiral.
My take on this may be like asking a well-trained sight-reading musician to break from the page and start intuitively improvising over chord changes that come at them only by ear. It’s nearly impossible for such a musician to tackle, wonderfully fluid as they may be at sight-reading and performing from the page.
So it may be a little demanding to suggest that one can understand such irrational quantities as intuition and prayer and other such “spiritual” enigma from a purely rational approach. But for me, having experienced much of these enigmas in an intuitive capacity first – either from some “quasi-spiritual epiphany” or from having read some incredibly insightful stories and works which have expressed even more intuitive understanding of these enigma – works such as:
The Tao te Ching (of course);
The Teachings of Buddha (including Siddhartha by Hermann Hess and others);
The Wandering Taoist by Deng Ming-Dao (an incredible story);
...and having come from the right-brained approach, I believe I reached the first bottom of my circular journey about twelve years into it, at which point I began discovering Carl Jung and practical adepts of his philosophies, including:
James Allen;
Brian Tracy;
Deepak Chopra;
Dr. Wayne Dyer;
...and countless more in innumerable coincidental discoveries in libraries and bookstores on every occasion on which I happened upon a book shelf. It was an incredible period that took place over the next twelve years actually. Now, I feel I’ve come through the bottom and have been moving steadily up the left side of my circle of understanding, as these scientific theoretical applications on the quantum level are making more sense to me – hopefully approaching some holistic sense of it all.
This is not in any way to suggest I’m nearing the end of my journey. I think, the process of my rediscovering some of these early perspectives and their resonance, leads me to believe I may be broaching the top again, and rediscovering the intuition to which I was once familiar, but perhaps forgot in the analytical pursuits of late...and it proves that the basis of knowledge is many, many circles deep.
In fact, discussing this yesterday with Cecilia, she deftly pointed out the circle is actually a spiral that continues in its third dimension. So round and round we go ever forward toward greater and greater understanding (as long as we keep moving).
I love that Cecilia brought the spiral to this model. Recognizing that it's actually a spiral - fits in so well with so many other phenomena - and further to the core of this model, I can see it's actually a double helix, depending upon the direction of your pathway to understanding. If each pathway pursues its own circular progress, then the double helix is formed through progressive and mutual understanding as understanding is gained.
Do you follow? Any additions or contradictions?
I love this stuff, and haven't pursued it to this degree with others since college it seems.
So thanks.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Hi you guys (and gal),
At Cecilia's suggestion, I've gone ahead and created a blog for us to use in these pursuits of higher truth.
Just to get things started, I went ahead and pasted the most recent post I made by email into this space - one, for the record; and two because it's easier than beginning out the box with the new thoughts that await. Yep I have a new post in the wings. So here's the last one, as you'll recall. You can post comments, and we can use this space for our ongoing discussions. Cool?
As I’m sure we all have mutually, I sure have enjoyed our intellectual pursuits toward all things seemingly infinite or at least infinitely curious. Whether it’s our attempts to define God, or the antithesis of God, or the meaning of life :), or the extent of our scientific awareness of all things, it’s been a fun and somewhat spare-time-consuming pursuit. I love thinking about the challenges we present to each other, and in doing so today I remembered something pretty significant to my own understanding. Keeping our questions and potential answers constantly buzzing in the background, and constantly seeking a new way to express my thoughts and theories on all this, I bumped into and remembered the essence of the unifying thoughts that have carried me so comfortably for the past two-dozen-plus years.
For Christmas, Shannon had given me a beautiful calendar, with striking black and white photography punctuated by ancient Asian poetry. The Asian ancients, with their profound understanding of nature in all its infinitude is what helped me personally depart from the precepts and dogmas of religion so long ago. What I’m realizing now too, the more I play with our current scientific attempts at explanation via quantum mechanics and evolution and such, is that the ancients’ organic, pre-scientific-method, manner of undertaking the infinite in both its known and unknown quantities are so poetically expressed, that they capture all the awe and wonder – and it’s not Religious either, which works for me even more...and that’s what I remembered – these texts.
The Tao Te Ching has been the most vital work of art for me in my understanding of all things and their relatedness.
Just ponder the opening passage:
“ The Way that can be told
is not the universal Way.
The name that can be named
is not the universal name.”
That verse, for me, flew right in the face of every religious connotation of the infinite, each one exclaiming their explanation and their named deities as the one and only true story. I loved this text, because the source of life’s infinite wonder, whether the measured properties at the subatomic level or the cosmic vastness yet undiscovered, whether understood or not, can’t truly be defined or named, nor especially deified. That verse particularly set me free from Religion.
I also discovered long ago, that everyone from every culture throughout the entire time of mankind has attempted to understand and define the unknown. Whether by the numerous myths of mystery, or by the methods of Bacon and Descartes, it’s a common and constant pursuit – note our own here together. The mythological attempts, which have most often become the Religions of men, are wonderfully chronicled by Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. You can also find Bill Moyers interview sessions with Joseph Campbell in a 12-part series called The Power of Myth. Powerful works and incredible in their ability to tie mankind’s earnest attempts to understand the mysteries of life through mythology. That’s how I discovered my atheism, if you will. It helped take the solitary exposure most of us have to a single Judeo-Christian mythology, and place it in context against innumerable mythologies, all of which have common threads and stories – thus, the same Hero, with a thousand different faces. There are countless Religions on the planet and the human story and the characters and traits of our humanity are similar between every culture, as are the myths each culture uses to make sense of it all. This helped me lose the energy I had early on, against the Religions of my upbringing. As I discovered that the myths were common, it provided less credence to the claims of any of them - all claiming the same thing - and as it disqualifies their claims, it also lends understanding to their pursuits – naïve, perhaps, as they may be.
But more recently, and probably most notably through the works of Deepak Chopra, I’ve discovered a spiritual-scientific approach to understanding the vast mysteries of life, and the incredible intelligence – not other-worldly, nor Godly necessarily, but the inherent intelligence in the organisms of life. My choice to revere the intelligence of life (and I say this not advocating from some fundamental zealot’s defense of their God nor their political lobby for “intelligent design as proof of God” – believe me), is to simply recognize the consistencies of nature and the intricacies in everything from the patterns of a spider web, to the rhythms of the planets, to the complexities of amino acids and to the power of intentional thought. Waveform theory is at the core of that understanding for me, as we’ve discussed at times...and will again.
I’m just putting some context into my perspectives for you, because sometimes we get waylaid by semantics and minutiae in our attempts to clarify our personal understanding against one another’s, and we get caught in some circular arguments. But that’s ok. That’s our passion for all of this.
If you’re familiar with the works mentioned, you’ll know where I’m coming from. If not, these are highly recommended again – as they were four or five years ago when we first embarked on these discussions:
The Tao Te Ching – any translation from the Tao of Pooh to numerous coffee table versions – it’s my favorite work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_te_ching
The Hero with a Thousand Faces – by Joseph Campbell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces.
The Power of Myth Video Series – by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
The Seven Laws of Spiritual Success – by Deepak Chopra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra – probably my second favorite work.
The Power of Intention – by Dr. Wayne Dyer – a great supporting document to the waveform theory.
A Return To Love – by Marianne Williamson - this proved important to understanding the depths and power of Love energy
The Pleiadian Agenda – by Barbara Hand Clow - this is a fun wacky read that pulls some bizarre yet entertaining ideas into conscience
The Celestine Prophecy – by James Redfield - this is another fun read although dangerously adopted by legions as a new philosophy – but cool all the same
So these have informed my current perspective (plus many, many more). But one recent pursuit of ours, has been the perception of atheism and its place in this spectrum of our understanding our universe. So, although I recognize atheism as a necessary step in the rejection of certain force-fed absolutes I would challenge that it may not remain as conclusive in time, as it may seem to be now.
For as you may already know, my own atheism is no longer nearly as utterly Godless as you might understand your own atheism to be. My atheism is certainly directed toward Religions, which find their basis in myth. But my reverence to the infinite is probably still what’s greatest in me and its directed toward the incredible intelligence that I perceive in every living and inert thing in existence. Theoretically for me, that intelligence exists in the waveform which we are merely beginning to grasp intellectually at the quantum level, so far. But its theoretical extension informs everything, and gives credence, to me at least, for the perceptions of faith, prayer, intention, fear, emotion, spirit, love, imagination and so on...none of which need a God to exist, but all of which I suggest exist – I’m saying they exist in waveform and are thusly as much a part of our universe as rock and water and flesh and blood – even evolution and big bang aren’t disqualified by this notion. Nothing is disqualified, it all exists...but merely in context to itself and the energy upon it.
Once you ignore something, it doesn’t cease to exist, it just stops being relevant – note the Greek Gods or the pre-Copernican model of the stars. There’s no need to disqualify them angrily. They still are what they were – theories. What’s unfortunate is the energy put behind such theories by those in power to do so. So our rejection of God, may actually be more accurately a rejection of the power put behind the theory of God, namely Religion. That’s fair game, as is any argument that suggests absolute explanation of the unknown, whether it’s a God myth, or a scientific theory. They’re the same to me – all destined to become debris along the path to greater understanding. I simply avoid absolutes.
...and that’s what was comforting to rediscover today, in those ancient Asian texts - their poetic wonderment and organic understanding of even the greatest mysteries without suggesting any absolutes, just recognition.
Does that make any sense?
Thanks for indulging me in this,
SkooB
At Cecilia's suggestion, I've gone ahead and created a blog for us to use in these pursuits of higher truth.
Just to get things started, I went ahead and pasted the most recent post I made by email into this space - one, for the record; and two because it's easier than beginning out the box with the new thoughts that await. Yep I have a new post in the wings. So here's the last one, as you'll recall. You can post comments, and we can use this space for our ongoing discussions. Cool?
As I’m sure we all have mutually, I sure have enjoyed our intellectual pursuits toward all things seemingly infinite or at least infinitely curious. Whether it’s our attempts to define God, or the antithesis of God, or the meaning of life :), or the extent of our scientific awareness of all things, it’s been a fun and somewhat spare-time-consuming pursuit. I love thinking about the challenges we present to each other, and in doing so today I remembered something pretty significant to my own understanding. Keeping our questions and potential answers constantly buzzing in the background, and constantly seeking a new way to express my thoughts and theories on all this, I bumped into and remembered the essence of the unifying thoughts that have carried me so comfortably for the past two-dozen-plus years.
For Christmas, Shannon had given me a beautiful calendar, with striking black and white photography punctuated by ancient Asian poetry. The Asian ancients, with their profound understanding of nature in all its infinitude is what helped me personally depart from the precepts and dogmas of religion so long ago. What I’m realizing now too, the more I play with our current scientific attempts at explanation via quantum mechanics and evolution and such, is that the ancients’ organic, pre-scientific-method, manner of undertaking the infinite in both its known and unknown quantities are so poetically expressed, that they capture all the awe and wonder – and it’s not Religious either, which works for me even more...and that’s what I remembered – these texts.
The Tao Te Ching has been the most vital work of art for me in my understanding of all things and their relatedness.
Just ponder the opening passage:
“ The Way that can be told
is not the universal Way.
The name that can be named
is not the universal name.”
That verse, for me, flew right in the face of every religious connotation of the infinite, each one exclaiming their explanation and their named deities as the one and only true story. I loved this text, because the source of life’s infinite wonder, whether the measured properties at the subatomic level or the cosmic vastness yet undiscovered, whether understood or not, can’t truly be defined or named, nor especially deified. That verse particularly set me free from Religion.
I also discovered long ago, that everyone from every culture throughout the entire time of mankind has attempted to understand and define the unknown. Whether by the numerous myths of mystery, or by the methods of Bacon and Descartes, it’s a common and constant pursuit – note our own here together. The mythological attempts, which have most often become the Religions of men, are wonderfully chronicled by Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. You can also find Bill Moyers interview sessions with Joseph Campbell in a 12-part series called The Power of Myth. Powerful works and incredible in their ability to tie mankind’s earnest attempts to understand the mysteries of life through mythology. That’s how I discovered my atheism, if you will. It helped take the solitary exposure most of us have to a single Judeo-Christian mythology, and place it in context against innumerable mythologies, all of which have common threads and stories – thus, the same Hero, with a thousand different faces. There are countless Religions on the planet and the human story and the characters and traits of our humanity are similar between every culture, as are the myths each culture uses to make sense of it all. This helped me lose the energy I had early on, against the Religions of my upbringing. As I discovered that the myths were common, it provided less credence to the claims of any of them - all claiming the same thing - and as it disqualifies their claims, it also lends understanding to their pursuits – naïve, perhaps, as they may be.
But more recently, and probably most notably through the works of Deepak Chopra, I’ve discovered a spiritual-scientific approach to understanding the vast mysteries of life, and the incredible intelligence – not other-worldly, nor Godly necessarily, but the inherent intelligence in the organisms of life. My choice to revere the intelligence of life (and I say this not advocating from some fundamental zealot’s defense of their God nor their political lobby for “intelligent design as proof of God” – believe me), is to simply recognize the consistencies of nature and the intricacies in everything from the patterns of a spider web, to the rhythms of the planets, to the complexities of amino acids and to the power of intentional thought. Waveform theory is at the core of that understanding for me, as we’ve discussed at times...and will again.
I’m just putting some context into my perspectives for you, because sometimes we get waylaid by semantics and minutiae in our attempts to clarify our personal understanding against one another’s, and we get caught in some circular arguments. But that’s ok. That’s our passion for all of this.
If you’re familiar with the works mentioned, you’ll know where I’m coming from. If not, these are highly recommended again – as they were four or five years ago when we first embarked on these discussions:
The Tao Te Ching – any translation from the Tao of Pooh to numerous coffee table versions – it’s my favorite work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_te_ching
The Hero with a Thousand Faces – by Joseph Campbell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces.
The Power of Myth Video Series – by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
The Seven Laws of Spiritual Success – by Deepak Chopra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra – probably my second favorite work.
The Power of Intention – by Dr. Wayne Dyer – a great supporting document to the waveform theory.
A Return To Love – by Marianne Williamson - this proved important to understanding the depths and power of Love energy
The Pleiadian Agenda – by Barbara Hand Clow - this is a fun wacky read that pulls some bizarre yet entertaining ideas into conscience
The Celestine Prophecy – by James Redfield - this is another fun read although dangerously adopted by legions as a new philosophy – but cool all the same
So these have informed my current perspective (plus many, many more). But one recent pursuit of ours, has been the perception of atheism and its place in this spectrum of our understanding our universe. So, although I recognize atheism as a necessary step in the rejection of certain force-fed absolutes I would challenge that it may not remain as conclusive in time, as it may seem to be now.
For as you may already know, my own atheism is no longer nearly as utterly Godless as you might understand your own atheism to be. My atheism is certainly directed toward Religions, which find their basis in myth. But my reverence to the infinite is probably still what’s greatest in me and its directed toward the incredible intelligence that I perceive in every living and inert thing in existence. Theoretically for me, that intelligence exists in the waveform which we are merely beginning to grasp intellectually at the quantum level, so far. But its theoretical extension informs everything, and gives credence, to me at least, for the perceptions of faith, prayer, intention, fear, emotion, spirit, love, imagination and so on...none of which need a God to exist, but all of which I suggest exist – I’m saying they exist in waveform and are thusly as much a part of our universe as rock and water and flesh and blood – even evolution and big bang aren’t disqualified by this notion. Nothing is disqualified, it all exists...but merely in context to itself and the energy upon it.
Once you ignore something, it doesn’t cease to exist, it just stops being relevant – note the Greek Gods or the pre-Copernican model of the stars. There’s no need to disqualify them angrily. They still are what they were – theories. What’s unfortunate is the energy put behind such theories by those in power to do so. So our rejection of God, may actually be more accurately a rejection of the power put behind the theory of God, namely Religion. That’s fair game, as is any argument that suggests absolute explanation of the unknown, whether it’s a God myth, or a scientific theory. They’re the same to me – all destined to become debris along the path to greater understanding. I simply avoid absolutes.
...and that’s what was comforting to rediscover today, in those ancient Asian texts - their poetic wonderment and organic understanding of even the greatest mysteries without suggesting any absolutes, just recognition.
Does that make any sense?
Thanks for indulging me in this,
SkooB
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