POO-OP, (giggles... the tao that can be named is not the real tao),
Hee!
Perhaps you do have a personal mission to reconcile your values with value systems, or religions. Perhaps also none are fully adopted in their entirety for you because you are only interested in what they confirm about your own senses as perceived by you. Now that seems an obvious statement but its ramifications run so deep into the psyche and areas of behaviour that are rarely applied consciously, let alone logically, that it is easy to turn a blind eye to them. But they matter, if the individual is to be fully self-honest.
I agree. I am interested in religion for many reasons, and not only what they confirm for me, but I certainly "bounce" ideas off my own experience. To be honest, any other way I try to think makes no sense to me (emotionally and spiritually, as well as intellectually) and feels like I'm trying on another person's clothing. That is, I could *say* for years and diligently try to believe that the earth was made 7000 years ago, but I was unable to do this even when I was 11 or 12. I just felt like it was a lie compared to my experience and the obvious data that is there. (Sorry, conservative folks- I am what I am).
I am interested in religions for many reasons... Intellectually, as a social scientist, they are some of the most complex and interesting things people do. They are also the baseline for order without law or government, sustainability and medicine without science. There is way more encapsulated in the old religious traditions, all the way back to shamanic religions, than most modern people realize. For this, they deserve my attention and respect.
In my spiritual and personal life, they are a doorway. I don't think it's all about me and my senses, because I have seen how I can manipulate "me" and my body and attain different consciousness, focus, and so forth-- with the assistance of religion. Thing is, many different religious practices seem to work equally well or poorly, from my experience.
I accept my ideas about the universe in general as transitory and imperfect (or should I say, grossly inaccurate). But what I am after is the sense of unity with all life, with all that is in the universe, and a melting away of my egoic "self". I have experienced this before and it changes my life. What I want is to increasingly focus my consciousness in this direction until my entire life and being is consumed with unity and compassion for other beings. I call that unity "God", or "The Divine One" (which I feel is more apt, fewer connotations). Perhaps it's a bad term for something like that. But whatever you call It, I've experienced it multiple times and I've been on this journey since I was a wee P-O-O.
I think what I am finding is that while it is
possible to follow this path in a solitary fashion, it would be
beneficial to find a community. Communal energy/power toward the highest potentials in humanity has a way of propelling everyone forward toward that "farthest shore" in a way that a singular existence does not. Just as communal anger, hatred, or fear has the capacity to suck people in as well and takes much struggling against that current to stay in peace and love.
It teaches the mind to not view doubt as a valid tool of human cognition but as an enemy to be overcome. Islam is a good example in this case as it does not even attempt to disguise what it is doing.
That is very interesting. I see doubt as my friend. Doubt keeps me honest with myself and forces me to look seriously at my assumptions.
In your case I see someone whom has embraced the Christian doctrine from such a young age that it would take you enormous effort to untangle it from your core self.
I wouldn't say that- I wasn't raised with the doctrine and it has always felt foreign. That's what I mean by feeling dishonest with other Christians- most of my ideas I could never wrestle into agreement with standard doctrines about what God is, who Christ is, etc. etc. It is more that I experience this being I call Christ, that brings to me the essence of our highest potential as humans and helps me to unify with the Divine. I experience this being personally, and as such can say I feel delivered or saved from my egoic self by this being. But then the work is mine to choose the work to stay true to a course of transcendence. I feel that Jesus' teachings are a way to "light my path." I feel that God is undefinable, and while I can experience It, I cannot know God. I guess you could say I'm honest about the distinction between what I feel/experience/think and what I know. I don't know much of anything about anything.
Perhaps it would be an interesting exercise for you to begin to relate, in some way, your education in anthropology to a study of biology and the intricate evolutionary stories that enabled and make life possible for humanity today. Not just a superficial "documentary" toe dip, but a full thesis level immersion.
Biological anthropology and human evolution was one of my sub-specialty areas for my BA. I've actually taught human evolution for years. I find it fascinating. But I don't feel like I am a human being. I feel like I am something inhabiting the vehicle of a human being.
My sense of self has always been disjointed in this way. I find my own body, brain, and so forth, fascinating in all its strangeness. It took me until I was about 10 to even really grasp that my body had limits. Didn't seem right.
Find the 10s of 1000s of organisms living in their vast cities beneath your feet. And find out how they all inter-relate in a far from stable and highly precarious equilibrium. I think from what little I know about you that you would declare 'god' many times on such a journey. It is I think currently beyond you to truly cast aside what is after all a self embraced reliance on the metaphors of religion.
I think its the terminology... To me, I experience a profound sense of union with the Divine when I choose consciousness of the vastness of being-ness, of life (which to me, goes beyond the scientific way of thinking about it- I'm closer to an animistic view). I don't think God upholds or creates being-ness. I think God
is creativity and equilibrium and evolution. The processes are the Divine to me, and are experienced as such when I choose awareness of it. God is not a Being who does stuff, God
is the doing of stuff. I think I'm reluctant to give up the term, because then aren't you just denying the diversity of how humans
could think about the Divine?
I think many people are afraid to be without religion. Usually they are good people who use it ostensibly as a mechanism to believe in hope.
I'm not afraid to be without religion. I don't believe in a heaven or hell, outside of states of mind/being. What is there to fear? That's my outlook. And it isn't that I think religion is the hope of everything. Religion has been the cause of some of the best and worst in humanity- it is a hope as much as it is a cause of suffering. It's that I think a sense of communal spiritual practice toward the goal of transcendence or enlightenment has an increased power that propels those involved on their paths. Solitary practice is missing this, both in our capacity to receive and our capacity to give.
But beyond that, as an atheist who's atheism could not exist without extensive personal enquiry into self and nature, nature as and of itself is still profoundly wondrous and beautiful. Just not fluffy pink, (very often).
Atheism doesn't work for me because it generally depends on the Christian notion of God to begin with, in order to deny it. Most of my colleagues are atheists, and I've recognized that they are generally still very tied to Western concepts of God, self, divine, etc. I don't want to be tied to any of these concepts; I want to transcend them. I don't want to say "God is this or that" but rather "The Divine Is" and leave it as an experience. And I entirely agree about nature... I think that nature "as and of itself"
is the Divine made manifest (not as a creation, but as a ephemeral beauty that reveals Its eternal beauty). This stuff is hard to explain.
I think what I'm looking for is a community that practices meditation and ceremony together with the purpose of bringing forth this type of transcendent consciousness in everyday life. I don't care much about the ideas, if the community is accepting of every person where they are at in their ideas. It's the importance of a sense of moving toward transcendence together that resonates with me, and the capacity to talk to individuals and be accepted for who I am and what I experience, without pressure to think a particular way.
I find that pressure exists in all the Christian groups I've tried, once you get down to a level where everyone talks to each other... and it also exists in atheism. In fact, it exists as much in atheism (from my experience) as it does in Christianity.
Growing up seeing religion all around as something valued by many yet used by others to indiscriminately bomb civilians is a good stimulus into an appraisal of religion as too personalised to have universal cause. But by the application of biology it is does have human universality. Religious thought is of itself a product of the human animal, a social animal, with all the implications that brings.
Yes, but having studied cultural anthropology, I can also see that religion is what kept small-scale societies sustainable for thousands of years, that allowed society without governmental power. I think the problem is not religion, per se, but rather that humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 and we are in groups of millions and billions. We didn't evolve for this, and I think it is that our spirituality is behind our social and technological progress that causes religion to be used in such ways. Religion is just another social institution- one that can be helpful or harmful, useful or not. The Spirit and connection to the Divine is something else entirely. Religion can hinder or help this connection, just as one's family, government, economy and so forth can. That's my current view, at any rate.
So try being atheist for a while! When you find yourself explaining things in terms of god try to stop yourself, and explain it without the 'prop'. Its still beautiful.
PS. with all integrity, some times swear words are deemed as linguistic 'props' or 'gap-fillers'. Religion too can be a bit like that where it is used to fill a fundamental gap or as a 'prop' to support an idea, concept, belief or whatever. Usually such a religious prop does not stand up to real scrutiny.
I believe life is beautiful no matter which way you slice your thought process- but then, it's all a part of the Divine, for me. It isn't a "prop" so much as a struggle to express something that goes beyond the expressible. The label of "atheism" I find misleading as much as anything... it wouldn't be a label that "fits" any more than the labels I am apparently using.
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There seems to be the same diversity within atheism you find within religion... as 20% of US atheists recently said they believed in some form of God or were unsure that God didn't exist (PEW foundation) and 25% of Christians were unsure God existed. We all want a label, a category, I suppose and the labels are inaccurate and too fuzzy to be useful.
I don't care about the label; people can call me what they like. But I do care about a sense of community dedicated to assisting one another toward transcendence- kicking the egoic self to the curb and working toward a consciousness of compassion. So far, the atheists just haven't offered that...
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