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Personally, I examine it. Anger is most often the result of fear or insecurity, or other negative emotions such as grief that need to be dealt with. That is, anger rarely seems to be a primary emotion, but rather wrapped up in other feelings and thoughts. I find if I examine my anger and deal...

Humans do not have established brain circuitry for specific doctrine, but they do have (as a universal) an established circuitry for spiritual experience. Like all of human life, these basic drives and experiences that originate from universal human tendencies are shaped by cultural...

That was my point.

I meant it in a metaphoric way as a reference to the general cultural understanding of fear yielding faith. As should have been obvious from the rest of my post, which affirms that true courage means we can face insecurity and lack of knowledge as self-actualized individuals. I mean this in...

I doubt it. There must be one or two extraordinary individuals who can transcend their fear. It is one thing if one can maintain calm, compassion, and courage in the face of death, injustice, or another suffering in life through faith that all will be redeemed. It is a whole different...

Why? And who determines this? Just curious.

I voted direct experience/knowledge. However, there's a catch. In my religion (Pagan), there really isn't dogma. We just don't have it, at least not in the tradition and order I'm in. Yet, I wouldn't say that just because my religion is grounded in personal experience, there is no faith. I...

Where is "none of the above"? :D Your vision of God and religion seems bound to the Abrahamic traditions. As I am not Abrahamic, all the options are sort of irrelevant. Further, I do not think God(s) or religion have their highest calling in solace or fear.

Chris- I find the hope, or rather, the will to live as an ethical, loving, compassionate being for the sake of doing so much more compelling than ideas about the afterlife. Even though I do believe in reincarnation, the reason for acting, thinking, feeling, and motivating in a compassionate and...

Thanks. :) My take on life evolves as I do, but the underlying current seems to remain the same as I float along. :D How I came to realize my path... oh my. Long story, short version- raised a Christian mystic (close to Quakerism, really), tried out evangelical Christianity because I...

I found liberation when I found my own flame of desire. So perhaps it depends on how one defines desire, and whose desire it is. One of my spiritual teachers helped me to overcome bondage I had to the idea that I should not have any desires or passions. She explained that while clinging to...

My own perspective is that the question of what one experiences as reality depends on one's chosen point of view. Who knows if all that can be experienced is what reality is, or how "enlightenment" is measured sufficiently to know that one knows. What is more interesting to me is the question...

I ditto this. The baseline, to me, of coming into one's own power and self-hood is to know and change at will one's perspective, attitude, intention, motivation, emotion, and thought. It also makes life a heck of a lot more pleasant, in my experience.

But then, does it follow that once you (or I, or anyone) is enlightened and "out of the illusion," we then experience non-duality ontologically? Or are we ever stuck in our cognition, in which case enlightenment is only meaningful as a shift in perspective, but not in any actual knowledge of...

Well, yes, of course. I hope you weren't offended by my musings. I'm not trying to convert anyone... just rambling about my questions and confusions. :o I'm always quite interested in how people think about things and how they reconcile issues of doctrine or ideology with practical action...

[/FONT][/COLOR] But if reality is unknowable, then existence, illusory though it may be, is all we are left with anyway. And then I wonder what is the use of pondering the question about any of it? (Except for mental stimulation?) [COLOR=black][FONT=Verdana] I don't think we experience...

If I'm right, everyone will... one day. :) In all seriousness, I do find the experience of non-duality wonderful. BUT (and it's a big BUT)... it is also challenging. One confronts what some Pagans call the "shadow self." And the expansion of personal power that brings responsibility and...

I pretty much agree. Except I would put it that we exist because God loved Herself. Springing from Her love without measure, all existence came into being.

Please realize I write this from my own particular viewpoint. I am not saying I'm right... but this is what my experience has led to. In our usual conventional sense of individuality, yes. Individuality is a temporary function. Our ego is ephemeral and eventually ceases to exist- it is a...

I tend to think it's not so much that we have a collective reason for existing, as much as a collective potential to exist in a more holistic, sustainable, and peaceful way. We exist because that is part of existence. I tend to think there is no reason for existence- either in whole or in...