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Friday, October 28, 2016

Chance, Free Will, And Determinism


"One half of life is luck; the other half is discipline - and that's the important half, for without discipline you wouldn't know what to do with your luck" - Carl Zuckmayer.

Philosophers have argued for centuries over whether we really have free will, or everything is mechanical and determined. Many modern scientists believe they have resolved the conflict between these two theories by positing a world ruled by chance.

But free will and cause and effect are not theories at all. We experience our volition directly every time we agonize over a choice and then will a decision. And we experience determinism directly when no matter how many times we toss a ball in the air, it falls back in our palm. We know there are causes and effects and we know free will is one category of cause. What I just said is a summary of direct experience - a summary of facts. It is not a theory.

There may be some theory which puts all this together cleanly. As of now, chance isn't it.

But we do experience luck as well. Mathematicians can generate random numbers, and can prove conclusively those numbers are random. That's how slot machines work. We directly experience unpredictable outcomes in all areas of life. Luck is a fact.

Since we can only see with our own eyes, not God's, we cannot know whether there are blatant contradictions woven into the fabric of existence. So what if the world doesn't make sense to a puny human brain which is dogmatically clinging to its own limited notions of consistency and order? Facts don't care whether you understand them. They just are.

If we want absolute Truth, we should never deny that even if our perceptions don't accurately reflect ultimate reality, that reality is still definitely manifesting itself in the form we are sensing. Even hallucinations originate in some genuine phenomena.

Facts are facts. Facts are absolute truths. Our experiences are facts. So we can be sure that one aspect of whatever is happening is how it appears to us.

Therefore, in a sense there is no such thing as a hallucination.

Free will, cause and effect, and luck are all real. Attempts to pick one of the three and reduce everything down to it are doomed to fail.

Just as futile are attempts to discover a theory of everything.

Reality is not general like our ideas. Reality is a convoluted mess of ever-changing particular details.

So we should pay attention to what we see if we don't want to miss the bus. Or get hit by it.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

At Home With God.


"It is a secret, both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one." - Francis Bacon.

From whence comes motion?

Inaction, for example from depression, begets more inaction in a vicious circle. Unless, that is, the inaction provides respite from overexertion and thereby rest one to stir again.

Action, like that from mania, begets more action in a virtuous circle, until it wears out and produces rest.

But what about the initial shove?

Encouragement and criticism are self-fulfilling prophecies facilitating action or inaction ... Or else they react against each other.

But encouragement and criticism are not the origin of motions.

Everything in our minds and bodies, it seems, either reinforces itself or gives rise to its opposite. The complexities resulting from the interplay of these pushing or resisting forces become so convoluted that no human mind could ever decipher them.

But again: From whence comes the original push or pull.

Shawn Anderson has said that motivation is manufactured.

Yes, indeed, our free wills produce our motive power. Our volition gives the initial push ... to us.

We cannot accurately describe or explain this will as a theory. We experience it as a fact. We do know, however, from whence it comes: It comes from us.

But from whence comes the motion driving the world around us?

Scientists "explain" the source of the push as different forms of energy in action. But this just puts a label and a description on the source of motion.

From whence COMES motion?

Sparks don't grow on trees. They, like motivation, are manufactured. So far as anyone knows, motion originates in some Beyond. Some higher power or powers. A first mover of some kind.

So here we have God. Another empty label and description, apparently.

Or can the Source be experienced directly, like our own wills? Can a Higher Power, God, be known as a fact?

Yes. But we cannot experience God by arguing over theories about Him the way philosophers argue the visceral reality out of concepts like free will and determinism. If it is possible to feel God, it will only be by feeling Him with our souls, the same way we feel ourselves and our magic wills.

For we too are part of the external world. The universe made us of itself. In other words, God made us in His own image. We can sense Him through the Him that is in us.

But How?

What I call sensing God directly as a fact and submitting to His will is logically extrapolating beyond what scientists call discovering and obeying natural laws.

Science always begins with observation of the world. Divine science is no different.

Much can be learned of God's - nature's - will by active experimenting and reasoning with our minds. We also learn of nature's ways by following our feelings and intuitions. But these methods narrow our learning to our own interests.

Divine science cannot observe from within our conditioned preconceptions about logic and truth, no matter how reasonable they may seem. If we stick to investigating according to traditional scientific methods, we limit our God, our conception of the universe. We then only have our E.G.O.s: Edging God Out, as an addiction recovery saying I heard from Patty Sneed goes.

Whatever else nature is, it encompasses some kind of Big Picture. Perhaps not a Divine Plan. But at least a larger scale of operating principles than those of the individual human or other creature.

To access these large scale, basic truths, we still need active awareness. But it must be an entirely watching awareness. It is that part of us that notices we are thinking and feeling. It gets to the root of the observational basis of science.

A watching awareness is soft and accepting. It does not penetrate nature, it is penetrated by nature.

This watching soul is a listener which sees our thoughts and feelings and sensations and urges float by like clouds. This us is self aware.

A watcher is the real us. The us that just is. Not forcefully willing, just tenderly noticing.

What the watching us can notice - very quietly, in stillness - is not just our own machinations. We become not just self-aware, but also gradually sense a subtle backdrop to ourselves and to the noises and sights of the world. A spiritual realm. A sort of Kingdom of Heaven beyond words or other bounded identifiers.

We do not tune out the busy material world. We tune into it, but without attaching our minds to any little part of it. Ours becomes a mirroring mind. A lake aware of the ripples on its surface and the winds and dancing fish causing these agitations.

Yet as watchers, we are also bodies of refreshing water that see our own depths. And more importantly, we see the solid soil and intangible air and space surrounding our souls.

We have now, to paraphrase the old Zen joke, asked God the hot dog vendor to make us one with everything. And Jehovah has faithfully answered the unselfish prayer of His beloved children.

Yes, but I still don't know how!!!

We start by sitting or laying comfortably with eyes closed and keep our attention on our breath. We do not force our attention to stay on our breath; when it wanders, we very gently direct it back. This gives our chattering mind something to do so it doesn't carry us off into Disneyland.

If we experience discomfort somewhere in our bodies, we gently adjust ourselves to remove it. It is unwise for a beginner to use uncomfortable yoga postures. These distract. We want to be able to sit still and just watch and listen and feel. But if we have the urge to scratch our nose, it can sometimes be best just to scratch it for a second than to let the annoyance narrow our attention down and attach us to the nose.

As we make this a habit, we begin to notice more and more.

With practice, we can later revert to original us-noticers of both details and backdrop in a relaxed, but aware, standing position. We can open our eyes, but we must focus on nothing in particular. We see everything at once.

This kind of looking is a symbol of the whole process of meditating: Focus on nothing and everything.

Next, we can graduate to peacefully, but with intentional awareness, watching all and nothing as we do simple repetitive tasks like walking on a quiet road.

Then we progress to full awareness of ourselves and our physical and spiritual settings while doing something more complex, but still routine, like washing the dishes.

Eventually - this can take years - the larger and not just particular world informs all our actions and thoughts, even in the midst of involved, baffling struggles.

We maintain self-direction. We are not mere dust in the wind. Only we are directing ourselves very gently. And we are never contradicting experience. We remain in harmony with facts.

We are now officially going with the flow. Doing our own thing, but doing it together with the ever-changing present that is the only genuine reality.

Without losing our free wills and autonomy, we are blissfully submitting to God.

We are residents of the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are home, sweet home.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

A Divine Ocean of Trust



     We can trust a friend. We can trust God. We can trust ourselves or an automobile or logic.

     What is trust?

     Here's what it is not: Trust, or faith, is not confidently and fearlessly standing on firm ground and fighting off skepticism.

     No belief should be a battle against doubt. That would be the opposite of trust. A fight against doubt is grounded in fear of the unknown. It is an attempt to control.

     That is called taking a stand. Control is defensive and terrified of surprise attacks. Battling doubt keeps us where we are and protects what we have.

     Trust, on the other hand, is open and receptive. We must listen to that which we trust to have faith. Trust is submission to the trusted.

     When we trust, we swim in an infinitely deep ocean. We also let ourselves be pulled into the murky depths at times. We remain buoyed, however, by our free will; we cannot sink and drown unwillingly. We must consent if we are to submerge ourselves in trust.

      We are not anchored to the dark bottom. Rather, in faith we drift with the currents of the Other. We connect. There is no way to tell where the liquid stops and we begin.

     Our perspective is looking down at the unfathomable mystery. Questions always pop up. For example: What is in the soul of the man or woman we trust? Where is s/he leading us? Does the logic we rely on really tie us to ultimate reality? Is God faithful and good? Is the car we sit in running out of gas? Will the lottery ticket pay off?

     The murky depths hold many mysteries, yes. But we have light above us, at our backs. We can see what's coming up at us more and more clearly the closer it gets. More and more is revealed the longer we trust and listen and look and open up our hearts to the Beyond.

     It's as if the light above us gets brighter, the more we trust. Our path into the obscure new becomes clearer and clearer.

     Trust by its nature has no boundaries. So it is not an island we can own and defend against marauding uncertainty and ridicule. We must submerge ourselves in the sometimes cold, sometimes comfortingly warm waters of trust.

     We accept the occasional doubt or pang of fear and foreboding. Then we remind ourselves that trust is an unlimited body of water we willingly dive into. We surround ourselves with the same waters that, in another form, nourish crops.

      So we cannot protect faith from change. On the contrary, faith protects us from stagnation. And from mechanistic inhumanity.

     It is not enough to say "I will trust." When we trust, we affirm, "I trust."

     In short, faith is as Divine as the endless night sky. Taking the plunge and trusting opens our eyes to the deep, mysterious, beyond-our-control Something many call God.

     When we experience that Sacred Something in another, we can experience love. In ourselves, it often manifests as a conscience, or a belief in the ethical principles and trust in human goodness we cannot see when standing only on an atoll of evidence and inferences.

     Whatever its forms, trust is holy. To violate it is profane.

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Slowness Saves Sacred Seconds


You can save an endless amount of time by doing things slowly. And I do mean endless.


    Usually when people say, "Haste makes waste," they mean that doing a job quickly makes it more likely you will make a mistake and have to do it over again.


    But there are more important Truths buried in this saying.


    When we frantically rush through practical affairs, we miss out on noticing what we are doing. This wouldn't be such a big deal except that a busy mind gets less done. A preoccupied mind is an inefficient mind. By not paying attention, we can end up distracted and out of touch with the facts.


    But in the saying "Haste makes waste" lies an even more important insight. A profound spiritual Truth.


    When we are mindful of ourselves, our surroundings, and our actions, we not only save time, we get to keep it.


    Experiences we aren't conscious of are lost to us forever. This is more than cherished personal reflection time we sacrifice for the sake of making a living in a world that demands so much of us. When we mindlessly occupy ourselves with worries or tasks, we throw out minutes, days and even years unnecessarily.


    And I'm not just talking about how by being aware we can preserve our life experiences in our memory. This is not just about saving the good times so we can enjoy telling stories in a retirement home. I'm talking about conserving something Divine.


    When something takes place, it remains true forever that it happened. Truths may evolve. They may be relative to circumstances. But if you help a handicapped person cross the street, the fact that you did this will remain forever true.


    That means that even moments of time - even microscopic instants of whatever that fourth dimension of temporal stuff is - are eternal. Infinite. Boundless. Somehow transcendental. Beyond words.


    And if an inexpressible taste of infinity isn't Sacred and Divine, I don't know what is.


    So by going slowly enough to be present to life, we can, in a sense, talk to God. This is more than participating in a seemingly supernatural beauty. This is owning time - keeping it, hanging onto it as our personal property - in a joint partnership with the Lord. And knowing that our property rights will never be violated. We can possess a little piece of heaven forever.


    Or to put the whole matter in practical terms: There really aren't any worldly or otherworldly problems that can't be solved by taking a few deep abdominal breaths, exhaling them restfully, and then looking at the world with a fresh, open, childlike awareness that we then proceed to cultivate diligently and act in harmony with.


 

Courage, Cowardice, And Candor

     Because passionately charging a cannon in defense of an ideal we have not had the courage to examine honestly and critically is so out of touch with the Divinity that is reality, it is not brave or noble at all.

     The fear of questioning our beliefs with brutal candor, no matter how poor this search reveals our past choices to be, no matter what it says about our flaws, is a cowardly dishonor of our personal integrity.

     Determination in battle is not always a sign of valor. Fighting to the death can be not just unwise, but also a sign of craven terror of facing our responsibility to remain loyal to evidence of Truth about all that is within and around us.

     For this reason, during wartime the skeptic has the most reason for confidence.

     And as it turns out, true believers are usually full of very profound doubts about themselves.

     Still, we have all retreated from uncomfortable facts at different times. So we should have patience and understanding, at times even compassion, when we, or someone else, flees the field of battle in panic.

     And as I discuss on another website, compassion can actually arm us in life threatening situations. Love for an attacker, ironically, can empower us if we need to hurt him or her in self-defense.

     This ends up making perfect sense when you confidently trust in the goodness of the mysterious, ever-present Beyond-Our-Control-And-Understanding Something many label God. But to reach the point that you can place this trusting faith in the universe, you need to first ruthlessly discard most beliefs about God as ridiculous and incredible.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

The Best Possible Decision

"The basest of all things is to be afraid." - William Faulkner.

                                                                 ****

I'd like to share the best decision I've ever made. The best decision I will ever make. The best decision I could ever make.

I made the decision at about nine o'clock yesterday morning. It turned out to be much easier than I had anticipated.

Because I've always known how important it was, I had built it up to earth-shaking proportions in my mind. After I made the decision, I wanted to take out a front-page ad in the New York Times to announce it.

And it wouldn't have been bragging. I acknowledge that the decision was as natural as the choice to sit down to a home cooked meal. And I acknowledge that the heavy lifting was done by a power I don't understand or control.

In my defense, it was a decision no power on earth could have forced me to make before I was ready. I had sensed the need to make the decision for a long time. But I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

A lot led up to that decision. Over forty years of feeling that existence, which God supposedly created, had abandoned and betrayed me. Four fifths of my life spent unable to fully trust anyone or anything, including myself. Or else blindly giving my trust to the undeserving in desperation.

Before I made the best choice of my life, I recalled the worst choice I had ever made: the fully conscious, aware, free will and determined choice, almost forty years before, to turn against the God I felt had abandoned and betrayed me on the most intimate, visceral, subatomic level.

I turned against the God I believed was responsible for the sexual abuse I had suffered since the age of ten. The God I blamed for the perpetual confusion and shame permeating my being.

Before I made the best choice I could ever make, I thought of how I had no idea whether the coffee I had sipped moments before would poison me. There was no way to really be sure.

There was no way to be absolutely certain of much of anything.

Before I made the best choice I could ever make, I thought of the appearances of this almost all-encompassing and unavoidable uncertainty: It appeared that a God so many people claimed was loving had created a world in which I don't control even my next heartbeat. A world I ultimately don't control at all, but feel the need to control in order to just survive, let alone prosper.

A world in which it is not possible to function without implicitly trusting in something.

This Higher Power, the universe, this uncontrollable and incomprehensible Beyond, whatever you want to call it, did give me the choice to trust in anything I choose: a slot machine, a woman, a political ideology, a statue of the Buddha ... myself.

But the universe did not give me the choice not to trust.

I realized that God was not asking me to trust. God was commanding me to trust. My only choice has ever been: What is it I place my faith in?

The game is rigged.

After a lifetime of trusting everything and everyone for all the wrong reasons, alternating with being afraid of trusting anyone or anything - after a lifetime of trying to trust my own puny powers and disappointing myself again and again - after a lifetime of feeling nothing was trustworthy, I made the best choice I could ever make.

The best choice I could ever make was to say in my heart, then write on paper, then say to the Divine Beyond,

"I trust God completely. No ifs, ands or buts.
"And I act accordingly."

I'm not sure of everything that means, but I know I mean it.

I know this, my best possible choice, implies I keep taking the next right step as I understand it; that I keep listening to the mysterious Beyond for guidance; that I keep taking the risk to act on what I hear from the this unseen Something Divine so that I grow in unpredictable ways, moving myself into the exciting but terrifying unknown, the Beyond control and Beyond understanding ... the new.

The wisest thing I've ever heard said about God comes from Isaiah 55:8:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord."

Putting that wisdom together with my best possible choice gives me the mission of accepting, no matter how hard it may be, that while God is the Beyond my control or understanding, I still must listen carefully to the silence so that His thoughts become my thoughts. Implied in this mission is also that I have the courage to make my ways conform to His.

Not conform to what some preacher or holy book says are His ways. Conform to what my conscience - the God within - tells me directly.

The next day - today - I sent out a group text to some of my friends and family. It explained my new understanding of existence:

"Even the sky can't limit the spirit armed with faith in its source, the Almighty Beyond we call God. Fear and the resulting despair, loss of hope, and mistrust of the goodness within and all around are the true roots of all evil."

Thanks be to God.