If you look around, there are no special cases of anything. Everything is a part of the whole; our minds separate and classify because that's what they do, but the divisions are arbitrary. Books and elephants are collections of quarks and bosons, with a lot of empty space in between. In this view of the universe, God/Yahweh/Allah has no place. The separate Creator becomes an impossible construct. It exists somewhere in the Platonic worldview, where perfection is personified in some place. But where would this be? We've looked into the heavens and into the atom, and not seen God – unless God is what we are looking all along. As Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you.” I would take that one further and say the that kingdom of God is you, and everything around you, no less in a mouse than in a king.
The permanence of the formulations is an illusion. Everything is constantly in flux – growing, deteriorating, old cells dying off, new ones being formed, or not and the whole thing moving off into some other form. Identity is a fragile concept. What continues when memory fades, when reason lapses into dementia? Is that the same person we knew? If the touchstones of identity can slip away so quickly during life, what could exist after death? The soul? What is that? Where is it? Do we carry our Platonic ideal around with us, like a Chinese eunuch carrying his testicles in a little shrine?
What would eternity mean, when the universe itself is not permanent? It was born, it expands and someday will either contract back into a singularity to start all over again, or it will spread out into an entropic chaos and die. Where would our soul be in either of those cases? Eternity meant something to the ancients, when essentially nothing changed, but in our longer view, it becomes apparent that aion was an approximation at best. “To the end of the age” is a better translation, and that age is our age: you are blessed as long as you can hold that thought in your mind. When you lose that ability, the concept no longer has any meaning.
That doesn't make life pointless. On the contrary, it makes every moment sacred. Working is necessary because it sustains us. Gaining knowledge is necessary because all of us together contain all human knowledge. Love is necessary because it connects us. It exists because we love. So work, learn, love - today. It's all you've got.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Thursday, December 3, 2009
The Bible as Literal Truth
The Bible comes out of an oral tradition - so what happens when stories are told orally? The story changes every time it's told. The teller leaves out some parts and changes other parts to fit the audience's interests and ability to understand. What we have today is a written version of that ever-changing story, like a prehistoric insect caught in a drop of amber. It captures one aspect of a moving changing creature, but doesn't contain all of the many variations that were in the original tellings. Like a photograph captures the truth of something as it existed for a fraction of a second, the written record solidifies one retelling of the ancient stories. Reliability is gained, but color is lost. The ancient writers knew that, and so recorded without commentary the conflicting stories of the creation of the universe, the history of Israel, and the life of Jesus. They didn't need commentary, because they understood the source of the stories, and were content with the multiplicity of truth contained within. Our 21st century brains search for an absolute standard for truth that didn't exist back then. The ancient mind could contain multiple stories from different frames of reference, and discern the common truth held in all of them, but our modern minds are confounded by this. We have been taught by Plato, science, and the morning paper that there is a universal truth that exists outside of our frames of reference. This isn't necessarily so, but if it's not, all modern forms of inquiry are without foundation. We delve into the mysteries of the universe, and find Schrödinger's cat, alive or dead, depending on our observation. Even Einstein rejected this, famously saying that "God does not play dice with the universe," but maybe it's time for human understanding to come full circle, and contemplate that we are both the observer and the observed.
Here's another possibility: the Bible is revealed truth, but only revealed to the extent that we can comprehend it. The Big Bang, as shown in a vision to a Bronze Age prophet, might very well have come out looking like the creation stories in Genesis.
As Emily Dickinson said,
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind-
Here's another possibility: the Bible is revealed truth, but only revealed to the extent that we can comprehend it. The Big Bang, as shown in a vision to a Bronze Age prophet, might very well have come out looking like the creation stories in Genesis.
As Emily Dickinson said,
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind-
Monday, November 2, 2009
Peace
Peace in the world:
Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the resolution of conflicts without resorting to violence. That requires balancing multiple conflicting interests. It’s not a stable, happy state; it’s more like a walk on a tightrope.
Peace is fostered by interdependence: two countries who need each other economically are less likely to go to war. For instance, the US and China aren’t likely to bomb each other, even though both have the capability, because the U.S. needs China’s manufacturing ability and China needs the U.S. to buy their goods. The economy of either country would collapse without the other, causing massive poverty and chaos.
Isolation obstructs peace: countries who are isolated from each other have no leverage and no motivation to create peaceful ties. Leaders who are isolated from the people are oblivious to the misery their actions cause. Instead of drawing their power from the will of the people, they impose it through force. This is an unstable situation. The people will eventually rise up and new leaders will result, even if they too are despots. This cycle continues until a responsive government is formed. When the powerful understand that their comfort depends on the well-being of the weak, peace is the result.
Inner peace:
Inner peace is thought of as a nirvana-like state where you have no desires, and nothing disturbs you. If you can maintain this state in spite of the turmoil around you, then you are a useless turd.
Inner peace doesn’t come from glossing over problems, or using addictions to hide from them. Peace is only possible when you face your problems and integrate them into your life. Take your anger, pain, frustration and desire and put them to good use. Let them energize you to prevent others from going through the same thing. Plots for revenge and beating yourself up are barriers that you erect to separate yourself from the solution. Tear them down and you are free to get to work.
This isn’t a passive, meditative peacefulness. It’s active. It’s scary. It takes courage to walk this path. It’s not a job for gurus on mountaintops. It’s real work for real people.
Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the resolution of conflicts without resorting to violence. That requires balancing multiple conflicting interests. It’s not a stable, happy state; it’s more like a walk on a tightrope.
Peace is fostered by interdependence: two countries who need each other economically are less likely to go to war. For instance, the US and China aren’t likely to bomb each other, even though both have the capability, because the U.S. needs China’s manufacturing ability and China needs the U.S. to buy their goods. The economy of either country would collapse without the other, causing massive poverty and chaos.
Isolation obstructs peace: countries who are isolated from each other have no leverage and no motivation to create peaceful ties. Leaders who are isolated from the people are oblivious to the misery their actions cause. Instead of drawing their power from the will of the people, they impose it through force. This is an unstable situation. The people will eventually rise up and new leaders will result, even if they too are despots. This cycle continues until a responsive government is formed. When the powerful understand that their comfort depends on the well-being of the weak, peace is the result.
Inner peace:
Inner peace is thought of as a nirvana-like state where you have no desires, and nothing disturbs you. If you can maintain this state in spite of the turmoil around you, then you are a useless turd.
Inner peace doesn’t come from glossing over problems, or using addictions to hide from them. Peace is only possible when you face your problems and integrate them into your life. Take your anger, pain, frustration and desire and put them to good use. Let them energize you to prevent others from going through the same thing. Plots for revenge and beating yourself up are barriers that you erect to separate yourself from the solution. Tear them down and you are free to get to work.
This isn’t a passive, meditative peacefulness. It’s active. It’s scary. It takes courage to walk this path. It’s not a job for gurus on mountaintops. It’s real work for real people.
What is known?
The body of human knowledge exists not in books, but collectively in our minds. The data that's in books has been taken from what people know, translated into words and saved away for us to read, translate into other words, and add to the body of human knowledge. Like medieval scribes, we recopy the words from a book into our own minds, and like them, we change some things and leave others out, so that what we have is something different. Then we pass that on through the spoken or written word, and in that process we change and omit things, to another who does the same thing and so on until what people actually know is something different. What we know is a living, changing thing that exists in the totality of all human minds.
What we know is modified by what we know about it. When we learn about the source of our knowledge, we can judge its validity, see the effect of other contemporary knowledge on the development of that bit, and how it relates to what we know today. I would say what more we know today, but knowledge gets lost, so the amount of knowledge grows, but it's not an all-inclusive process.
The less you know, the more sure you are of it.
Pre-thought people know exactly how the world was formed and how they got to be there Baptists and Aborigines can recite their creation myths by rote. Darwin came along and put a crack in that picture. Now we know that Darwin only scratched the surface, the total picture is much more complex and wonderful.
Forgotten knowledge can be obsolete, like how to drive an ox cart or dial a telephone; it can be useless, like the name of the Beatles' first drummer, or it can be a different view of the world that could enlighten and inform our current view, like an ancient religion, or the world-view of a dinosaur. When the human race is gone from the earth, all of our knowledge will fall in one of these catagories.
What is known is a function of the knower. Our ability to take on new thoughts is governed in part by the relationship between the new thought and the body of knowledge that we posses already. New thoughts are best assimilated if they can be related to what is already known. The truthfulness of our knowledge isn't a factor here – oversimplifications, misapprehensions and outright lies are included in our knowledge if we consciously accept them as true.
Knowledge is an expression of the culture. Not just writing, but music, the arts and sports are an expression of what we know. In that sense it is not eternal, not translatable and not universal.
Is there any knowledge that is universal and eternal? An ideal of beauty? Morals? These change with the culture. Values? Perhaps a value like 'courage,' but not the expression of it. What is cowardice in one context is pragmatism in another.
What we know is modified by what we know about it. When we learn about the source of our knowledge, we can judge its validity, see the effect of other contemporary knowledge on the development of that bit, and how it relates to what we know today. I would say what more we know today, but knowledge gets lost, so the amount of knowledge grows, but it's not an all-inclusive process.
The less you know, the more sure you are of it.
Pre-thought people know exactly how the world was formed and how they got to be there Baptists and Aborigines can recite their creation myths by rote. Darwin came along and put a crack in that picture. Now we know that Darwin only scratched the surface, the total picture is much more complex and wonderful.
Forgotten knowledge can be obsolete, like how to drive an ox cart or dial a telephone; it can be useless, like the name of the Beatles' first drummer, or it can be a different view of the world that could enlighten and inform our current view, like an ancient religion, or the world-view of a dinosaur. When the human race is gone from the earth, all of our knowledge will fall in one of these catagories.
What is known is a function of the knower. Our ability to take on new thoughts is governed in part by the relationship between the new thought and the body of knowledge that we posses already. New thoughts are best assimilated if they can be related to what is already known. The truthfulness of our knowledge isn't a factor here – oversimplifications, misapprehensions and outright lies are included in our knowledge if we consciously accept them as true.
Knowledge is an expression of the culture. Not just writing, but music, the arts and sports are an expression of what we know. In that sense it is not eternal, not translatable and not universal.
Is there any knowledge that is universal and eternal? An ideal of beauty? Morals? These change with the culture. Values? Perhaps a value like 'courage,' but not the expression of it. What is cowardice in one context is pragmatism in another.
Being Male or Female
Being Male or Female
Genesis 1:26 says of the creation of Adam and Eve, “male and female he created them.” In reality, we were all created male and female. To claim that we are one or the other ignores a large part of us, making us half the person we would otherwise be.
Male thinking is logical, ego-driven, and linear. Female thinking is intuitive, emotional and holistic. Either one by itself is limited. Concentrating on the facts, one at a time is a slow process, leaving out the big picture and so results in solutions that solve only part of the problem. Intuition allows great leaps of thinking, but unless the facts are constructed to support the leaps, the resulting conclusions may bear no semblance to reality. A well-balanced mind uses both its male and female sides as required.
By holistic, I mean that women are more able to take in everything around them, all at once, where men tend to focus on one thing and ignore everything else. Both are useful abilities, but are counterproductive if used at the wrong time. When watching the news, it’s useful to be able to concentrate on the newscaster and ignore the “crawl” of unrelated stories that creep along the bottom of the screen. While driving a car however, it’s best to take in the entire street - sights, sounds and all - and not focus all of our attention on the girl in the short skirt walking on the sidewalk back there.
Intuition is commonly regarded as a woman’s ability, but men who ignore it cut off much of their thinking ability. As Carl Jung said, "Intuition as I conceive it is one of the basic functions of the psyche, namely perception of the possibilities inherent in a situation.”
Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize winner in medicine, wrote this about intuition, "All great men are endowed with intuition. They know, without analysis, without reasoning, what is important for them to know. A true leader of men does not need psychological tests, or reference cards, when choosing his subordinates. A good judge, without going into the details of legal arguments, and even, according to Cardozo, starting from erroneous premises, is capable of rendering a just sentence. A great scientist instinctively takes the path leading to a discovery." (Man, the Unknown) (Both quoted in Theosophy)
Jesus of Nazareth was one of the greatest advocates of compassion in history. He looked around at the hatred and prejudice of his day and told his followers, "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father in heaven. For he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous…I say to you, be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-48, NRSV) Jesus could look around our compassion-challenged world today and say the same thing. Were we ever in more need of blending a little of the feminine into the way we treat each other?
It’s necessary to go much deeper than thought to assess the effect of integrating the male and female parts of our psyche. For a man, the experience of the female is similar to the experience of the divine. It is to be suddenly aware of the world, washed in love, seeing clearly through a flash of intuition. It is the thing we want most, but it’s not under our control, so that we work for years without any guarantee of success, and then if we achieve it, the result is seldom what we thought it was going to be. These brief experiences make the rest of life worth living, and yet they are few and far between, and they come and go in their own time, in spite of our best efforts. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes or where it goes.” (John 3:8, NRSV)
Back to the top
Genesis 1:26 says of the creation of Adam and Eve, “male and female he created them.” In reality, we were all created male and female. To claim that we are one or the other ignores a large part of us, making us half the person we would otherwise be.
Male thinking is logical, ego-driven, and linear. Female thinking is intuitive, emotional and holistic. Either one by itself is limited. Concentrating on the facts, one at a time is a slow process, leaving out the big picture and so results in solutions that solve only part of the problem. Intuition allows great leaps of thinking, but unless the facts are constructed to support the leaps, the resulting conclusions may bear no semblance to reality. A well-balanced mind uses both its male and female sides as required.
By holistic, I mean that women are more able to take in everything around them, all at once, where men tend to focus on one thing and ignore everything else. Both are useful abilities, but are counterproductive if used at the wrong time. When watching the news, it’s useful to be able to concentrate on the newscaster and ignore the “crawl” of unrelated stories that creep along the bottom of the screen. While driving a car however, it’s best to take in the entire street - sights, sounds and all - and not focus all of our attention on the girl in the short skirt walking on the sidewalk back there.
Intuition is commonly regarded as a woman’s ability, but men who ignore it cut off much of their thinking ability. As Carl Jung said, "Intuition as I conceive it is one of the basic functions of the psyche, namely perception of the possibilities inherent in a situation.”
Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize winner in medicine, wrote this about intuition, "All great men are endowed with intuition. They know, without analysis, without reasoning, what is important for them to know. A true leader of men does not need psychological tests, or reference cards, when choosing his subordinates. A good judge, without going into the details of legal arguments, and even, according to Cardozo, starting from erroneous premises, is capable of rendering a just sentence. A great scientist instinctively takes the path leading to a discovery." (Man, the Unknown) (Both quoted in Theosophy)
Jesus of Nazareth was one of the greatest advocates of compassion in history. He looked around at the hatred and prejudice of his day and told his followers, "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father in heaven. For he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous…I say to you, be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-48, NRSV) Jesus could look around our compassion-challenged world today and say the same thing. Were we ever in more need of blending a little of the feminine into the way we treat each other?
It’s necessary to go much deeper than thought to assess the effect of integrating the male and female parts of our psyche. For a man, the experience of the female is similar to the experience of the divine. It is to be suddenly aware of the world, washed in love, seeing clearly through a flash of intuition. It is the thing we want most, but it’s not under our control, so that we work for years without any guarantee of success, and then if we achieve it, the result is seldom what we thought it was going to be. These brief experiences make the rest of life worth living, and yet they are few and far between, and they come and go in their own time, in spite of our best efforts. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes or where it goes.” (John 3:8, NRSV)
Back to the top
Saturday, October 24, 2009
God is love?
They say, “God is love,” but what does that mean? If God is all, then how can all be love when there's so much in the world that isn't love? Love, real love is feeling connected to something, totally absorbed by the presence of something or somebody.
When we're totally plugged in to the universe, we experience love. In that state, we are coming as close to experiencing God as we can, as human beings. In the darkness, peering out of the little crack that's all we have to see the universe, we see love and we see God.
When we're totally plugged in to the universe, we experience love. In that state, we are coming as close to experiencing God as we can, as human beings. In the darkness, peering out of the little crack that's all we have to see the universe, we see love and we see God.
The Light
The light has gone out -
It burned for a while
Whirling and dancing
For its joy and pain
Now it's gone
"Where?"
"Nowhere. They don't last forever,
Lights"
It was a gift that it was here at all.
Sufficient
Necessary
It's become the stuff
That other lights will be born from
To dance in their turn.
Together they are
Eternity.
It burned for a while
Whirling and dancing
For its joy and pain
Now it's gone
"Where?"
"Nowhere. They don't last forever,
Lights"
It was a gift that it was here at all.
Sufficient
Necessary
It's become the stuff
That other lights will be born from
To dance in their turn.
Together they are
Eternity.
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