Destroying your myth; Finding your path?

[Typist]

This is an interesting discussion I would enjoy having with you. I personally am of the mind to evolve the understanding of words by using them in larger contexts, such as the use of the word God, or spiritual. Call it 'reclaiming the language', but it's more than that I feel. I simply do not wish to give the power of the meaning of words to a lesser understanding.

Ok, I hear you. Upon reflection perhaps the solution to the writing challenge is simply already what we are doing right here, a diversity of voices. I might try to say something and it falls completely flat with the reader. And then you come along and say the same thing using different words, and bingo, the reader connects. A diversity of writers is required, because there is a great diversity of readers.

Personally, only one writing voice, I am wary of sophistication and complication, and hope to express things in the simplest most accessible language possible, with a focus on every day life practicality. This is my own personal quest which due to an excess of passion for writing, I sometimes confuse with a "one true way". It is a one true way, for me.

Truth be told, I am at war within myself over words and concepts. I love them dearly and was born to think and type, but increasingly see words and concepts as the obstacle to be overcome instead of the way forward. As usual, a sense of humor about such ironic human predicaments is likely the real "one true way".

Prepare to fail miserably in your quibble with me!

Oh crap, I'm in trouble now!

Seriously though, I think it would help if you explain what you consider enlightenment is.

One more thing to chase.

I became allergic to the word and concept after hosting a meditation type forum (Eckhardt Tolle, Jiddu Krishnamurti etc) for a few years. No big deal, just one of those little afflictions one accumulates as one travels through life, my problem.

I do see that enlightenment is the cure for suffering, which in turn makes one more effective in everything we do.

That's it, everyone wants a cure for suffering. The goal is so appealing it can suck one in to a huge future trip. To me, the search for "the cure" too often becomes a glamorous foggy dream which replaces the far less sexy everyday practical business of managing thought, the source of suffering.

There is no meal one can prepare which cures hunger for long. There is no air one can inhale which ends the need for breathing. There is no nap one can take which removes the need to sleep. We make peace with such limitations without complaint, not so hard. See my sig for further details.

In other words, if you are not free, how can you know to help others to be free?

Except that nobody is free, that's the human condition. A possible exception being rare individuals so far out at the end of the bell curve that they don't really matter beyond being interesting exceptions.

Life is growth. If we are not growing, we are dead. I very much disagree that people should not seek to continue to grow. If not, we are not living but simply consuming until we're dead. To be static, is the beginning of decay.

This is admittedly a quite tricky question. To me, growth is accepting oneself as one already is here and now, before any growth. In other words, growing to end growth, or some other perplexing zen koan thing which will confuse the heck out of everybody and **** them off.

I dunno man, like I said, I'll be dead soon, not my problem, let the kids worry about it. Seriously, as the brevity of life becomes more evident, I am ever more reminded of the wise family dog who sticks his head out the window in to the wind so as to enjoy the ride fully, right now. The wise family dog has no plans, no goals, no tomorrow, only the wind in his face right now. ARF!! ARF!!!

Enlightenment to me is what allows us to truly become alive in an ever-unfolding reality. I hope to be continuing the exploration of that unfolding to my last breath, and beyond.

If we're going beyond, it would seem there is no deadline, no big urgency to grow or change or evolve and so on. Here I am now. I'm a human being. I'm half nuts by design. Ok. Maybe later something else will happen, who knows, we'll see.

Again, not a one true way, just one pile of words and ideas that may hopefully prove useful to some reader someday.

Yes, I'm familiar with it and have seen this documentary. It's good. I have not taken the drug myself, but I have had experiences that this drug can induce. Meditation produces this naturally.

I'm not selling drugs here, and generally agree that naturally is usually the best plan. But naturally requires work, which most people won't do.

And so I am intrigued by the potential for bringing the project to scale, so to speak, by means that are more immediate, more accessible. Whether DMT is that, I know not.

Thanks again, fun chatting with you! And please pardon my illusions of wannabe zen master grandeur and so on. Hey, I deserve a fantasy life too, just like everybody else in this game.

 

[Windwalker]

Ok, I hear you. Upon reflection perhaps the solution to the writing challenge is simply already what we are doing right here, a diversity of voices. I might try to say something and it falls completely flat with the reader. And then you come along and say the same thing using different words, and bingo, the reader connects. A diversity of writers is required, because there is a great diversity of readers.

This is one thought that somewhat nags at me as I find excuses to procrastinate writing that long-promised book people keep chasing after me to write on these topics. I did make a resolution this year to write and have made gestures towards it, but alas.... here I type on the forum instead. Although, I am collecting from my own posts various good thoughts which I flesh out for myself through the process of communication with others. That process seems to refine in myself the way I communicate the ideas in ways that words don't become a stumbling block, while at the same time not abandoning words which are meaningful to how I speak to my own self.

Personally, only one writing voice, I am wary of sophistication and complication, and hope to express things in the simplest most accessible language possible, with a focus on every day life practicality. This is my own personal quest which due to an excess of passion for writing, I sometimes confuse with a "one true way". It is a one true way, for me.

Words are so rich with connotation they are like single notes with layers of harmonic structures, and when those single notes are played against each other, the overtones create a sea of ebb and flow that move across the soul. But how you strike those notes, with what force or slight of glance will determine which layer is heard and how it relates to others in the whole of that sound. I prefer that, over not playing the note that others have repeatedly struck ignorantly like a tree limb against fine china. I seek to play the notes well and hopefully facilitate their voices with my own.

Truth be told, I am at war within myself over words and concepts. I love them dearly and was born to think and type, but increasingly see words and concepts as the obstacle to be overcome instead of the way forward. As usual, a sense of humor about such ironic human predicaments is likely the real "one true way".

If I may suggest, use words to speak beyond concepts. Start with a basic concept, but not as a means to get the reader to understand the idea and hopefully then "get it", but rather as a launching off pad. There is structure to music, but what is conveyed is not the structure, but the world of the imagination is set free, and with it, the soul of the listener. To touch the face of God, is not something one does through looking at the structures. It's through climbing up the structure like a ladder to touch the face of the sky.

I became allergic to the word and concept after hosting a meditation type forum (Eckhardt Tolle, Jiddu Krishnamurti etc) for a few years. No big deal, just one of those little afflictions one accumulates as one travels through life, my problem.

I'll share a brief story you may enjoy. A number of years back a friend of mine who is of the mind of the French Existentialists (atheistic), and I were enjoying some cocktails sitting outdoors along the river at a restaurant in early Fall. We were discussing art and the pursuit of human spirituality, speaking of this sculptor and that artist, this philosopher and that poet. Suddenly a woman sitting nearby who apparently was eavesdropping injected herself into our discussion. "It's so rare to hear two men discussing spirituality with each other. I'm into spirituality too!", she beamed, then proceeded to share with us the story of her trip to Egypt and going inside the pyramids and feeling the power inside of it, and how that she now has several pyramids to go along with her other collection of crystals in her home.

I think that experience has shown me that I am not going to take a perfectly good word like spirituality and abandoned it because the only context she understood lead her to assume we were into New Age paraphernalia like her. I prefer to take those same words and help others expand their contexts with which they hear things. Spirituality is a far, far deeper ocean than 'Bonnie' and her New Age crystals.

That's it, everyone wants a cure for suffering. The goal is so appealing it can suck one in to a huge future trip. To me, the search for "the cure" too often becomes a glamorous foggy dream which replaces the far less sexy everyday practical business of managing thought, the source of suffering.

They key is this, if they are looking narcissistically, to escape the world, then they are trapped in the very pursuit of escape itself, increasing their own suffering. The final panel in the Ten Oxherding panels of Zen show the seeker returning to the village as an ordinary man.

There is no meal one can prepare which cures hunger for long. There is no air one can inhale which ends the need for breathing. There is no nap one can take which removes the need to sleep. We make peace with such limitations without complaint, not so hard. See my sig for further details.

And this comes to what I said before is that people have this misconception that enlightenment is the magic "fix" to everything, the end of the road. Nope. It's the beginning of the road. Enlightenment is not an escape from pain, from hunger, from disappointment, from loss, or from death. But it is the elimination of the fear of all of those. That's the Freedom, to live and die without fear, without suffering.

Except that nobody is free, that's the human condition. A possible exception being rare individuals so far out at the end of the bell curve that they don't really matter beyond being interesting exceptions.

Oh, I disagree. Everyone is already free. That Freedom is our eternal condition. The key is to understand and know that condition, that Ground, if you will in ourselves, and live our lives with that knowledge, as opposed to living solely embedded within the eyes of our separate self, our 'fallen' self. If that is the only reality we know, we cling to it, and fear its loss. And that, is what creates suffering, the clinging. "Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin," and yet their glory is an expression of God. "Take no thought for tomorrow," as that is living life solely as that fallen self as the only reality there is, the one we think is the truth of our self. To know yourself, is to know God. To know God, is liberation.

This is admittedly a quite tricky question. To me, growth is accepting oneself as one already is here and now, before any growth. In other words, growing to end growth, or some other perplexing zen koan thing which will confuse the heck out of everybody and **** them off.

Yes, that is part of growth. But growth itself is movement. There is no end to Freedom. It is not an end destination point. It keeps moving.

I dunno man, like I said, I'll be dead soon, not my problem, let the kids worry about it. Seriously, as the brevity of life becomes more evident, I am ever more reminded of the wise family dog who sticks his head out the window in to the wind so as to enjoy the ride fully, right now. The wise family dog has no plans, no goals, no tomorrow, only the wind in his face right now. ARF!! ARF!!!

Often people nearing the end of their lives give up all the seeking, and that's when they find some degree of freedom from the chase. It's what we're supposed to do from the beginning. Again though, there is a difference between liberation and resignation however. If we give up the chase, and let go, then we are in a place to finally allow what was there the whole time to finally be seen and known, and realized in our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our souls.

Again, not a one true way, just one pile of words and ideas that may hopefully prove useful to some reader someday.

Yeah, gosh. The "one true way" people are seeking. There are lots of ways to find how we need to let go. If it works, it's the way. If it doesn't, it's not, despite the claims it is.

I'm not selling drugs here, and generally agree that naturally is usually the best plan. But naturally requires work, which most people won't do.

And so I am intrigued by the potential for bringing the project to scale, so to speak, by means that are more immediate, more accessible. Whether DMT is that, I know not.

I don't think there's anything wrong with drug-assists in finding that higher state. In a sense, it shows someone a glimpse of what it is, and creates a certain 'goal' to find the way back to ourselves.

Thanks again, fun chatting with you! And please pardon my illusions of wannabe zen master grandeur and so on. Hey, I deserve a fantasy life too, just like everybody else in this game.

I'm enjoying this with you. Can't wait to see where it all goes.

 

[Typist]

This is one thought that somewhat nags at me as I find excuses to procrastinate writing that long-promised book people keep chasing after me to write on these topics. I did make a resolution this year to write and have made gestures towards it, but alas.... here I type on the forum instead.

Now hang on a second. Let me ask you this. Are you actually me?

Seriously, you think you have problems, I'm addicted to typing on these topics, but I no longer really believe in words, at least in regards to these topics. What a mess....

All I can say is it's teaching me a sense of humor, like the guy who walks in to a crowded room filled with cute girls, and then realizes he's got dog poop on his shoes. You have to laugh at your predicament, because the alternatives are unacceptable.

Words are so rich with connotation they are like single notes with layers of harmonic structures, and when those single notes are played against each other, the overtones create a sea of ebb and flow that move across the soul.

Oooooooh! I love that, wow, nice job. The music analogy is great. I still believe in the music, just not the lyrics. Tell the singer to shut up, he typed at 3 billion words a minute.

But how you strike those notes, with what force or slight of glance will determine which layer is heard and how it relates to others in the whole of that sound. I prefer that, over not playing the note that others have repeatedly struck ignorantly like a tree limb against fine china. I seek to play the notes well and hopefully facilitate their voices with my own.

If you don't mind, I'll take a little harmonica solo here. Yada, yada, yada, waaa, waah, WAAHH! Back over to you!

If I may suggest, use words to speak beyond concepts. Start with a basic concept, but not as a means to get the reader to understand the idea and hopefully then "get it", but rather as a launching off pad. There is structure to music, but what is conveyed is not the structure, but the world of the imagination is set free, and with it, the soul of the listener. To touch the face of God, is not something one does through looking at the structures. It's through climbing up the structure like a ladder to touch the face of the sky.

Ok, following your instructions, I didn't get any of this, but who cares, cause it's beautiful. Beautiful indeed. Seriously. I can vote for beauty. Can't really do it, but I can vote for it.

I'll share a brief story you may enjoy. A number of years back a friend of mine who is of the mind of the French Existentialists (atheistic), and I were enjoying some cocktails sitting outdoors along the river at a restaurant in early Fall.

I knew it, more drunken monks. You can't get rid of them, they're everywhere!

We were discussing art and the pursuit of human spirituality, speaking of this sculptor and that artist, this philosopher and that poet. Suddenly a woman sitting nearby who apparently was eavesdropping injected herself into our discussion. "It's so rare to hear two men discussing spirituality with each other. I'm into spirituality too!", she beamed, then proceeded to share with us the story of her trip to Egypt and going inside the pyramids and feeling the power inside of it, and how that she now has several pyramids to go along with her other collection of crystals in her home.

Well, those are her music, eh?

Spirituality is a far, far deeper ocean than 'Bonnie' and her New Age crystals.

What's exasperating to me is that any set of words we may choose drops us right back in to the realm of dualistic illusion. It's built in to the very fabric of thought and thus language, so no matter what we think or type, here we go again, straight back in to deeper, higher, lower, bigger, smaller, righter, wronger ad nauseum ad infinitum etc etc.

So I'm considering reworking my whole rhetorical circus act to focus on fart jokes. Whaddya think?

Sorry, sorry, don't mind me, I'm just expressing my own internal arguments with my own internal arguments.

They key is this, if they are looking narcissistically, to escape the world, then they are trapped in the very pursuit of escape itself, increasing their own suffering.

Yes, what I was trying to say as well, but better said here.

And this comes to what I said before is that people have this misconception that enlightenment is the magic "fix" to everything, the end of the road. Nope. It's the beginning of the road. Enlightenment is not an escape from pain, from hunger, from disappointment, from loss, or from death. But it is the elimination of the fear of all of those. That's the Freedom, to live and die without fear, without suffering.

And at the moment you utter the words "without suffering" the chase is back on for the vast majority of readers. It's like a parading a busload of naked starlets through a horny husband's living room, and then expecting him to be faithful to his wife. Concepts like "without suffering" are so magnetic, so compelling, how can we not chase them, how can we not create yet another greedy grabby future trip?

That Freedom is our eternal condition. The key is to understand and know that condition, that Ground, if you will in ourselves, and live our lives with that knowledge, as opposed to living solely embedded within the eyes of our separate self, our 'fallen' self.

It can be proposed that the vast majority of human beings are never going to have the understandings you speak to, no matter what anybody says or does. These things have been discussed for literally thousands of years, and still, here we are, a mess.

Thus, there exists a counter argument against idealism, and for realism. Ok, I'm sort of a mess. Fact of life. Like everybody else. It's the human condition. I can manage it a bit, but I can't fix it. And I can best manage it by making peace with it. And, let us not forget....

There is a total solution which is 100% absolute guaranteed for every living thing ever created over billions of years. A promise that's never been broken, not even once.

Whatever the mess may be for you or me or anybody else, death will fix it. It may seem a long way off today, but really, it will be here in what will soon feel like about two weeks. Patience, just a bit of patience, that's all death asks.

If that is the only reality we know, we cling to it, and fear its loss. And that, is what creates suffering, the clinging. "Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin," and yet their glory is an expression of God. "Take no thought for tomorrow," as that is living life solely as that fallen self as the only reality there is, the one we think is the truth of our self. To know yourself, is to know God. To know God, is liberation.

Or....

Suffering arises from the inherently divisive nature of thought. So if we're planning on thinking, we'd best make peace with suffering. But, the good news is, there is no requirement that we must think every minute of every day, that's optional.

Apologies, truly, but it appears I am TOTALLY OBSESSED with the following, to the point where even I wish I would, for crying out loud, shut up about it.

It's not the content of thought that is the issue, but the nature of thought.

If one should come to this conclusion, the importance of philosophy begins to melt away. Philosophy remains, but the importance begins leaking out of the bottom of the bucket. Philosophy becomes a kind of card game, fun, a nice social outlet, but nothing of much consequence beyond entertainment.

I don't think there's anything wrong with drug-assists in finding that higher state. In a sense, it shows someone a glimpse of what it is, and creates a certain 'goal' to find the way back to ourselves.

I have mixed feelings. I even hesitate to raise the issue at all on forums. Still, I seem to be addicted to the issue of accessibility. I see what you're saying as being very wise, but not very accessible. But I'm unclear how wise such drugs may be too. Accessible nonsense is not very helpful, should that be the case.

I'm enjoying this with you. Can't wait to see where it all goes.

Likewise!

A suggestion perhaps? Maybe this is your book? I'll keep poking you with a stick, you keep doing what you do, and someday we'll have created a huge pile of words together.

You go through the pile, keep what you like, dump the rest, slap your name on it, become rich and famous, get interviewed on Oprah, buy me a beach house to shut me up, and become the founder of the next great world religion!

Or something along those lines.... ;-)

 

[Windwalker]

Wonderful! Next round coming up when I'm not being paid the big buck for the job I'm supposed to be focusing on.

 

[jonathan180iq]

I think the convicted contradictory stance to any religion by those who used to be devout followers is to expected because those people have been into, and out of, the delusion and feel they have the clarity needed to instruct others of how to avoid further delusion. I mean, who is better equipped to address the flaws within a system than people who intimately know the system?

And I don't believe that this tearing down process is required in order for new faith systems to take root. It's just a natural progression and evolution of people's development as they age, gain experiences in life, and learn new things. Our perspectives should always be adapting to new knowledge that we gain. Moving from one faith to another is not uncommon for this very reason.

Now, Psychologically, I think you may be on to something, if you want to accept that people rebel against a previous set of dogma as part of their grieving process. I mean, anger is certainly in there.
Kübler-Ross model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But I think the motivators for each individual are going to vary greatly and need to be addressed on an individual basis.

 

[Typist]

Wonderful! Next round coming up when I'm not being paid the big buck for the job I'm supposed to be focusing on.

Don't you just HATE how interesting this crap is? @@#%%^!!! I can't get any real work done either....

 

[Vishvavajra]

1) Is it necessary to go through a phase of hostility and rejection, to tear down old systems of thinking and belief, myth and habit, in order to clear the ground to pursue a new path?

I don't know. Maybe. I had to go through that with Christianity before I got to a place where I could reassess it from a new perspective. Sometimes you really do have to clean out your assumptions, lest they stick to whatever new thing you happen upon. But it's unfortunate if so. I spent a very long time feeling alienated from and being excessively dismissive of a tradition that I could have been learning from. But I didn't have the wherewithal to properly analyze it from the inside. Sadly, now I don't think most Christians would take me seriously as an insider, even if I go to church and sing the songs. The tribal divisions have fallen away for me, but not for most of them.

2) For those who are drawn towards more "mystical" understandings of religion and spirituality, is it possible to do so while remaining within the "mythic" bounds of a traditional religion?

Yes, as long as you know the myths for what they are: a sort of language for conceptualizing things. Those on the path need something to use as a tool along the way. The key is to not be so attached to one set of tools that you reify it or overlook the usefulness in a different set. My Buddhist practice has improved dramatically since I made peace with Christianity. Similarly, our teacher once said that becoming a Buddhist would make you a better Christian. At the time I scoffed at the idea, but now I see differently. The deeper levels of both paths require that one be willing to let go of concepts and familiar assumptions. Not many Christians make it that far, but those that do are notable for their deep wisdom. As for Buddhism, we are reminded that everything is a tool, a raft for crossing the stream. The raft is not the destination, but how good it is to have one!

 

[Vishvavajra]

I believe both faith and reason can lead to the same place if taken far enough, and that an apparent conflict between the two arises when we travel either path only part of the way.

That said, pursuing either faith or reason all the way to the end can be a challenging business, and so the existence of a middle way would seem to be a very helpful option for many.

Faith and reason aren't separate things; faith is reason. Specifically, it's a kind of inference based on what is understood to already be known, which is perhaps the most fundamental application of logic. No sane definition of faith has it as believing in something for no reason. When Christian scriptures use the word it's always in reference to trust based on prior evidence or experience. The reduction of faith strictly to blind faith is a very recent and disturbing semantic development.

 

[lovemuffin]

Faith and reason aren't separate things; faith is reason. Specifically, it's a kind of inference based on what is understood to already be known, which is perhaps the most fundamental application of logic. No sane definition of faith has it as believing in something for no reason. When Christian scriptures use the word it's always in reference to trust based on prior evidence or experience. The reduction of faith strictly to blind faith is a very recent and disturbing semantic development.

it's recent in one sense (scholastic and post-enlightenment Christianity's emphasis on belief over theosis), but in another not at all, at least from what I've read. For example in the introduction to Martin Laird's Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith, which grew out of his doctoral thesis:

"Faith as a doorway to God is foundational for Christianity from the beginning, but as Christianity began to move out and engage the Hellenistic culture in which it was immersed, this emphasis on faith as somehow providing access to God seemed to generate more heat than light. It was not that pistis meant nothing to a philosophical culture permeated by the spirit of Plato. It did indeed mean something, and Plato's Allegory of the Line is often taken as the locus classicus in this regard: caught up in sense impression, faith was associated with a very low and unreliable form of knowledge. As E.R. Dodds observed long ago in his Wiles lectures: 'Had any cultivated pagan of the second century been asked to put in a few words the difference between his own view of life and the Christian one, he might reply that it was the difference between logismos and pistis, between reasoned conviction and blind faith...'"
​

Which struck me, just in terms of how modern of an assessment it seemed. And he goes on to remark on efforts on the part of Origen and Clement of Alexandria to defend the "faith" of Christianity as a serious epistemological category against slightly earlier platonic philosophy. Then the main thrust of the book is to explore Gregory's development of faith:

"While Gregory of Nyssa spoke of faith in a variety of senses, this study will focus on a particular, indeed technical use of therm pistis. We shall see that Gregory of Nyssa ascribes to faith qualities which Neoplatonism would reserve to the crest of the wave of nous (mind, reason). Indeed, for Gregory faith becomes a faculty of union with God, who is beyond all comprehension, beyond the reach of concept, image, word..."​

 

[Typist]

Wow, post #47, most excellent!

 

[Typist]

Faith and reason aren't separate things; faith is reason.

Good point, as there are no separate things anyway. I fell in to the usual dualistic mud hole.

Specifically, it's a kind of inference based on what is understood to already be known, which is perhaps the most fundamental application of logic. No sane definition of faith has it as believing in something for no reason.

I dunno. I hear what you're saying, not really debating, but have experience that may contradict. As example...

I have this sense that my dead relatives are quietly hanging around just out view nudging me in the right direction from time to time. This sense is based on nothing at all factual or logical, it's not a function of intellectual analysis. It's just there, welcomed, but uninvited. It doesn't even interest me whether it's true or not.

Same with death. Not dying, death. I have this sense it's a good place to go, but I couldn't begin to tell you why, and wouldn't try.

Of course both of these experiences can simply be wishful thinking emotions, a premise I wouldn't contest at all, as I have no idea what they are or where they come from. I just don't know, and don't care that I don't know.

These may be as close to faith experiences as I can report, and I experience them not as a function of any kind of analysis, but as a gift.

And because these experiences don't arise (in me at least) from any chain of reasoning, it's impossible to transfer them to anybody else.

If things got really weird I could pull the plug and bail out, a blessing, a safety net. But my wife couldn't. And there's nothing I can do about that. Knowing that infects the appreciation for the gift with a flavor of regret.

 

[Windwalker]

Faith and reason aren't separate things; faith is reason. Specifically, it's a kind of inference based on what is understood to already be known, which is perhaps the most fundamental application of logic. No sane definition of faith has it as believing in something for no reason. When Christian scriptures use the word it's always in reference to trust based on prior evidence or experience. The reduction of faith strictly to blind faith is a very recent and disturbing semantic development.

I really like what you said in post #47 and it resonates with me in that way as well in most every point. The difference is I do not adopt Buddhism as an official religious practice to follow, though I certainly do benefit from my knowledge, respect, and associations with those from within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It was for me too letting go of my anger to the rigid fundamentalist forms of Christianity that I am now able to truly grow. Or it could be said the other way around as well, that as I am able to grow, I am able to now see the beauty that is there within it, which those who are the most insistent of "believers" are oblivious to through the vehemence of their beliefs.

Now to the point above. I take a different approach to understanding of the term faith. Let's make a distinction between a rational reason and an intuitive sense as reason. I would say in the religious sense faith is not a deductive or inductive form of logic, nor is it simply wishful thinking based upon some blind emotional desire. It's a lot deeper than all of those. It is an intuition that is a sensed truth that the mind cannot put its wrappers of ideas around. It is as the Bible aptly puts it, "the evidence of things not seen". It is that felt sense of "knowing" deep in the soul before the mind interferes trying to deduce the reasons, or even what it is pointing to, which is something mind cannot put any adequate face upon.

It is also not wishful thinking based upon emotional desires or fears in the sense of just wanting to believe. It's not a wanting or desire to believe, it is a deep knowing, despite not being able to always rationally defend it. But here's the real key, being in touch with one's faith means they have to be able to know what voice they are listening to in themselves, their emotional, wishful thinking voices driven from ego needs, or are they in touch with that which intuits the ground of being, emptiness, the Abiding Silence within themselves and all that is?

It is in fact, through faith, that one even embarks on this path to unite themselves with that which is unknowable. But once there is that apprehension, then faith is replaced by direct experience. That which was intuited, that deep inner faith which was heard, listened to and followed, led to a full opening within them and now no longer "sees through a glass darkly" (faith), but now sees "face to face", "known even as I am known" (satori). There is no longer a reaching or seeking, but an abiding knowing through experience. How you perceive the world now is forever changed, not through the eyes of faith, but the eyes of experience.

Beliefs on the other hand are mental ideas, constructs we look at and lean upon with faith in order to try to climb its ladder. But someone of true faith, someone really trusting in that intuition is far more able to allow beliefs to change and be modified, because that faith is the base camp they continue to return to in the face of challenged ideas, or more aptly put a crisis of "belief". The "True Believer" on the other hand has to fight to the death defending their beliefs because that is all that have to come home to. Take that away, and they would collapse into a heap, and find another set of beliefs to replace the old ones with. They "switch religions" in other words, not to further grow and pursue that faith with better tools, but to find a new self-identity in their new system of beliefs. They become another form of militant believers in a different God, in a different system of beliefs.

So, bottom line, there is a reason for faith, but it isn't a cognized one.

 

[Typist]

I have faith that this thread rocks like few I've read, and I've read SO MANY over the last twenty years. I'm feeling a bit like one of those hysterical teenie booper girls at a Beatles concert.

It is in fact, through faith, that one even embarks on this path to unite themselves with that which is unknowable.

I would guess it is not faith which is fueling the journey, but pain. And thus yet again we see the dualistic polarities of pain and joy which exist in our minds united in to a single force in the real world.

I am also attracted to your phrase "unite themselves".

Why are we divided in the first place? Or more precisely, why do we feel divided? Isn't this the central question of religion?

If the division arose from false ideas, it seems that by now we would have stumbled upon the correct idea. Of course many people feel they have, but upon a closer inspection the experience of division usually seems quite alive within them, as it is for us all. Or perhaps almost all.

To me, just one view, the evidence is screaming that if the division was arising from the content of thought, from poor ideas, 5,000 years or more of investigation by some of the best minds among us would surely have solved the problem by now.

But it hasn't. We are still as always dancing along on the knife edge of self extinction.

I propose the division arises from something deeper than ideas, than thought content. It arises from the nature of the thought itself.

This medium is not just what we use, it is what we are made of, it is who we are as human beings. That's why these problems are so intractable, and efforts to resolve these problems must continue seemingly eternally.

If it is true that division arises from the nature of thought itself, then all philosophies which seek to unite would seem to be doomed to failure from the start, as they are all made of an inherently divisive medium.

I love you, YEA, YEA, YEA, I love you, YEA, YEA, YEA, and with a thread like this, you know you can't go wron-ong!

 

[Vishvavajra]

Beliefs on the other hand are mental ideas, constructs we look at and lean upon with faith in order to try to climb its ladder. But someone of true faith, someone really trusting in that intuition is far more able to allow beliefs to change and be modified, because that faith is the base camp they continue to return to in the face of challenged ideas, or more aptly put a crisis of "belief". The "True Believer" on the other hand has to fight to the death defending their beliefs because that is all that have to come home to. Take that away, and they would collapse into a heap, and find another set of beliefs to replace the old ones with. They "switch religions" in other words, not to further grow and pursue that faith with better tools, but to find a new self-identity in their new system of beliefs. They become another form of militant believers in a different God, in a different system of beliefs.

Good post, especially this part. In any case, I think it's crucial to distinguish faith from belief, and here you have offered a clear explanation of that difference in practical terms. Would that everyone understood this.

 

[lovemuffin]

It is in fact, through faith, that one even embarks on this path to unite themselves with that which is unknowable. But once there is that apprehension, then faith is replaced by direct experience. That which was intuited, that deep inner faith which was heard, listened to and followed, led to a full opening within them and now no longer "sees through a glass darkly" (faith), but now sees "face to face", "known even as I am known" (satori). There is no longer a reaching or seeking, but an abiding knowing through experience.

I'm not sure if I'm wandering afield of the original topic, but maybe you'll indulge me a little. Ever since I started trying to learn Greek and discovered the phrase, I've been fascinated by "through a glass darkly". Darkly is ἐν αἰνίγματι, "en ainigmati", in enigmas. It's the only occurrence of that word in the NT, and in exploring the intersection between early Christian thought and Greek philosophy and religion, the word seems to just overflow with resonances that aren't really at all captured by the English. This is why I ended up naming my blog after the phrase.

In Greek rhetoric, "enigma" doesn't just mean a "riddle" in a general sense, but specifically speaking in a metaphorical or allegorical way, in a way that's misleading if taken at face value. As a hermeneutical key, it's a very suggestive phrase to say that for now we see in enigmas, taking into account Jesus' tendency to speak in parables, or Paul's occasional explicit use of allegory (Gal 4 for example), and the obvious wealth of symbolic imagery in religious tradition. Gregory of Nyssa, who I mentioned last night, prefaces his homilies on the Song of Songs with a defense of "spiritualized" or allegorical understandings of sacred texts based around this idea of enigmas, parables, the "spiritual" law, and etc, while acknowledging that not everyone in the Church agrees with such readings. The entire thing is quite remarkable.

And part of why this interests me, why it matters, is that often times I think we tend to see the "literal/historical" mode to be the default and objective reading, and having realized that it's not tenable, the only other option becomes rejection. Seeing the mythical elements as "mythical" is dismissed as cherry picking or as a sort of wishful thinking, a kind of irrational reaction to the modern rejection of the myth. But the fact that this tension between the literal/historical and the symbolic/spiritual exists even in the 1st century, let alone the 4th, suggests that our way of looking at is wrong. The entire presumption of the default validity of the literal/historical is already an anachronism that doesn't represent the "original" meanings, necessarily. The entire concept of an "original" meaning is somewhat flawed, insofar as there has never been universal agreement.

And so, all of these considerations, in my view, tie back neatly to the problem of belief and experience. The literal/historical mode lends itself to cataloging a list of historical propositions, and really the only reaction you can have to the list is to judge those propositions true or false. The criterion of religion becomes belief that they are true. On the other hand, the symbolic/spiritual mode invites participation with the reality of the symbolized, because a symbol is not a symbol (for you) unless you participate in it. It invites experience because that is the entire purpose. Its clearly in this mode that the celebration of the Eucharist, or even of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ make sense, not as merely historical propositions, but as symbols that Christians participate in. "Commemoration" is also communion, koinonia, participation. "Take up your cross and follow me". "It is no longer I who lives, but Christ in me".

In practice, I think there has to be some balance between these two approaches at least as I've suggested them. A complete rejection of the validity of a historical approach seems too often to become a completely ungrounded esotericism, but it seems to me that the fault of modern Christianity especially is the over-emphasis on the literal/historical, rather than the symbolic/spiritual. And that is what leads to the inability to grasp "faith" as more than "belief"

 

[Typist]

I'm not sure if I'm wandering afield of the original topic....

Huh? An original topic?? Surely you don't expect us to believe in the existence of such a thing.

 

[Windwalker]

I have faith that this thread rocks like few I've read, and I've read SO MANY over the last twenty years. I'm feeling a bit like one of those hysterical teenie booper girls at a Beatles concert.

Be careful. At your age such exuberance may lead to a stroke or a heart attack!

I would guess it is not faith which is fueling the journey, but pain.

I would say pain in the sense of aloneness and isolation caused by the perception of separateness. The Upanishads say "where there is other there is fear". If you think about what that means, when you see something outside of yourself, you see yourself isolated and separate, alone. And then you see death and it is perceived as annihilation. The separate self becomes annihilated, but if the separate self is the only self you know, then you vanish into blackness. This is existential angst, "I" shall be no more, not just your individual body will decay, by all you self-identify as will be taken away as well. Death then is facing that annihilation of the separate self. It is seen as the great Void, where all is consumed and nothing escapes.

What fuels the journey however is not fear of the Void, or the pain of separateness, but rather a singular desire for Life. It is a desire to unite with Source, to return from whence we come, One with the Great Mother, the Wellspring of Life Herself. But, and here comes the hitch, we cannot return! The path or return is the path of death, to unmake the body, to decay, to dissolve, to deny mind, to deny all awakened awareness, to deny the unique self. It is a path of suicide. One cannot crawl back into the womb of our mothers. One cannot destroy what has awakened in favor of return to our former oceanic bliss of infantalism. The infant is not in Union with its Mother, it's in an undifferentiated fusion with the world, not "One" with the world. The path of return is barred by the flaming swords of angels.

So the myth of Adam and Eve is not one of humans living in an Awakened, fully Enlightened state, but rather blissfully ignorant infants fused with the ground. The fruit they ate was a choice to awaken to Life as self-aware individuals. And that choice, to open our eyes, separated us from the Great Womb as differentiated individuals. And that awakening moment caused all that comes with this sense of separation from Source, we became afraid. The world is outside of us, and we are naked and alone! We cover our nakedness with our creations of masks, self-identifications that mark the territory of me from the territory of you. And we protect these at all costs! We become our coverings. We identify with them. We know ourselves as these articles of differentiation. These clothes are the ideas of ourselves we tell ourselves as we see ourselves reflected off the other. This is "me", that is "you" , and we dance the dance of the scripts of the our self-texts. All the while desiring to re-unite with our Source.

And so reaching upwards to the face of God, we sense great terror awaits us, as it appears the same as the path of return into the death of self. So we create projects of avoidance, substitutes that assuage that yearning to be One with God, but are too afraid to face as it appears as Death to us. But the substitutes begin to break down and we are left in existential crisis, afraid to face the Void, and unable to avoid it. So we create a new substitute, and the cycle begins again, and again, and again, until all substitutions are broken down and we give up. We fall into the Abyss. We release all the projects, all the created self-images as substitute Self, the small "selfs" we identified with. And now, with eyes fully opened, as self-aware beings fully differentiated, fully actualized up the ladder of growth from infant to self-realized human, we offer up everything, letting it all go, sacrificing it as it were to God, and we move beyond the veil of flesh to our true Self, the Ground and the Goal of our awakening. We are united with Source, as the Unique Self, the Son of God, as it were. We are God incarnate. We are the eyes and ears of God, with unique points of view, no longer separate from Source in our small selves, no longer in the ignorant bliss of undifferentiated fusion, but as fully differentiated, fully self-aware union with Source as the unique self. This is the nondual nature of the awakened being.

So, Adam and Eve, was a choice to move into pain in order to know themselves in God. What a wonderful myth when looked at this way. What a wonderful expression of our awareness of this existential angst embedded within its storylines. We didn't get thrown out, we stood up and walked out because we were compelled to know God in order to know ourselves. And what a journey it has been!

All I have time for right now. I owe you a response to your other post, as well as in response to others recently. Work interferes with the important stuff.

 

[Typist]

Be careful. At your age such exuberance may lead to a stroke or a heart attack!

I have to get to the other side somehow!

I would say pain in the sense of aloneness and isolation caused by the perception of separateness.

Yes, the perception, what I meant too.

What fuels the journey however is not fear of the Void, or the pain of separateness, but rather a singular desire for Life.

Life. Another word for death. Not two things but one. The moments of our life we enjoy the most are those moments when we aren't there. Surfing, flying down a wall of tons of water, no room for me, I'm gone, exquisite.

It is a desire to unite with Source,

A desire to escape the illusion we are not united with Source.

One cannot crawl back into the womb of our mothers.

You're right. But we can spend a life time trying. I have no further salacious comment on this matter at this time.

The fruit they ate was a choice to awaken to Life as self-aware individuals.

We gained power over the Garden of Eden by biting the apple of knowledge, and the price tag is being kicked out of that garden, as thought divides us from it. We now rule the Earth, but we can't taste it, so we are destroying it.

We kick ourselves out of the garden a thousand times a day when we choose the symbolic realm between our ears where we rule as gods, over the real world where we are specks of dust blowing in the breeze.

We cover our nakedness with our creations of masks, self-identifications that mark the territory of me from the territory of you. And we protect these at all costs! We become our coverings.

Good God my man, it's worth having thought to be able to read paragraphs like that.

This is "me", that is "you" , and we dance the dance of the scripts of the our self-texts. All the while desiring to re-unite with our Source.

All the while, all the while, like the force of gravity, never leaving us. In all things great and small, looking for the road home.

So, Adam and Eve, was a choice to move into pain in order to know themselves in God. What a wonderful myth when looked at this way. What a wonderful expression of our awareness of this existential angst embedded within its storylines. We didn't get thrown out, we stood up and walked out because we were compelled to know God in order to know ourselves. And what a journey it has been!

Hmm... The chimpanzee had no choice about where evolution would take him. He had not the ability to make an informed choice to choose power over unity. Poor guy, he was tossed out of the garden, like an impatient parent tosses her teen age son out of the house and tells him to go get a job.

All I have time for right now. I owe you a response to your other post, as well as in response to others recently. Work interferes with the important stuff.

No worries, always fun whenever it comes. I have to take a break too. Not a lack of interest, too much interest.

 

[Windwalker]

And part of why this interests me, why it matters, is that often times I think we tend to see the "literal/historical" mode to be the default and objective reading, and having realized that it's not tenable, the only other option becomes rejection. Seeing the mythical elements as "mythical" is dismissed as cherry picking or as a sort of wishful thinking, a kind of irrational reaction to the modern rejection of the myth. But the fact that this tension between the literal/historical and the symbolic/spiritual exists even in the 1st century, let alone the 4th, suggests that our way of looking at is wrong. The entire presumption of the default validity of the literal/historical is already an anachronism that doesn't represent the "original" meanings, necessarily. The entire concept of an "original" meaning is somewhat flawed, insofar as there has never been universal agreement.

I'm going to make a suggestion here that addresses the tension of the historical-literal mode and the symbolic-spiritual mode in both the 1st century and today. It's simply people's abilities to thinking abstract, metaphoric, "as-if" terms, or them being restricted to predominantly concrete-literal terms. That existed then as today. In other words, again, it's a developmental thing, a matter of the maturity of the set of eyes through which one reads and understands these stories.

If you tell a child about Santa Claus he will imagine a literal, actual being at the North Pole who flies through the use of magic. He doesn't engage with Santa as a metaphor, saying he knows Santa is a figure of some interior reality. His mind cannot think in abstractions like this, and certainly is incapable of exploring the inner terrain of his own psycho-spiritual landscapes! That comes much later with a more advanced stage of development. So it's really not an issue of what is the correct technology to unwrapping the mysteries of God in analyzing scripture. It's a matter of a shift in consciousness itself in how one sees and interprets the world. It is a mistake to believe that ALL early Christians thought one way or the other about these myths. Just as it is a mistake to expect everyone to be able think in symbolic terms today.

An objection to this comparison of magic and mythic beliefs in 3 to 7 year olds with adults' mythic-literal beliefs is that they are cognitively much more developed than that, and it is insulting to their intelligence. They're not little children, but adults. But here's the thing, there are multiple lines of intelligence, multiple lines of development. Someone can be advanced in one arena, and stunted in another. The spiritual line of development where one envisions and relates to ultimate reality, is in fact stuck at a magic or a mythic stage of development. It imagines the Ultimate Reality in the same way a child of five sees Santa Claus, as a literal supernatural being that can break the laws of time and space and bring special joys into the world, gifts and presents to all who believe in him. Again, Santa is not a metaphor to a child, and he really believes he exists literally.

But then as a child matures, Santa becomes understood as the face of Christmas joy. Santa is not a literal person at the North Pole, but is still celebrated nonetheless because he symbolizing that joy in us. He is a symbol to express the magic within, and in so interacting with the symbol, actually activates that magic in us. But of course, those that couldn't mature that understanding of Santa and came to view it "rationally" as "nothing but a myth, a 'mere' symbol", take pride in discovering Santa doesn't exist, and oft times with their skepticism slide into cynicism and kill in themselves what was once alive through their once literal beliefs, and often seek others to join them in their disbelief.

And so with the mythic-literal view of Absolute Reality,"God" becomes a "person" in the sky, in heaven. It is related to literally because it cannot be understood in the more subtle and nuanced ways. We begin our development by thinking in very concrete-literal terms, it is either true or it is false, factual or fictional. There is no gradations, not subtleties of perception. And so it is in the spiritual line of development. A good high-level overview of these developmental stages in the line of faith, can be read about here in Fowler's Stages of Faith. The mythic-literal stage is stage 2 in his 6 stages. Personally I think it goes higher than 6 into the realms of saints and sages, bodhisattvas and Buddhas, but its a good basic view of how people interpret the Absolute.

So, with that in mind, you will not have all people in the 1st century at say stage 3 or 4 or higher, but the majority at the earlier stages of mythic-literal belief, just like you do today. A very good many people are simply not able to see myth as anything but literal facts, and thus only enjoy that view of the Absolute, relating to God as the Guy in the Sky who loves them. And that's fine, but just not moving deeper into the boundless reaches of the infinite developmentally.

And so, all of these considerations, in my view, tie back neatly to the problem of belief and experience. The literal/historical mode lends itself to cataloging a list of historical propositions, and really the only reaction you can have to the list is to judge those propositions true or false.

I think I just came up with my answer to this modern approach to try to make religious figures verifiable in modern scientific/historical terms. It's the cognitive line of development in modern adults trying to superimpose that on their spiritual line of development, or rather to try to elevate that spiritual development line to the rational level! It's a case of trying to force fit one more advanced line onto a less developed line. It doesn't work like that. What you end up with looks like a child wearing the oversized clothes of adults, with a big hat engulfing their tiny heads. It's really that simple. What needs to happen is to take what you learn from other more advanced lines, and allow them to inform you into how to advance other lines. But you have to develop those lines, as those lines. You can't be a great long distance runner in athletic development and try to know say because you are that there, you will also be as a musical performer. Music is a different line of development. But what you learned in becoming a skilled athlete can be taken help inform a separate line of development, knowing that kinesthetically you must train the body.

I'm going to have to refine my analogies here, but I think the general idea is valid.

I'm going to leave it at this for the moment. But I want to stress that this is not meant as an insult to say that stages of spiritual development have less developed stages. It doesn't make them "bad", it just makes them less developed, less sophisticated, and as such less capable of operating at higher levels. It doesn't preclude anyone from them, but makes it understood it's not just dropped on someone magically. It has be develop through practice. People at the mythic-literal stage simply cannot see or understand what faith looks like from a later stage of development, because it is a set of eyes they have never yet developed to look through. But once we did see through the mythic-literal lens, so we can relate.

There's lots more in what you said I'd like to address, but I'll just toss this out there for now.

 

[Nakosis]

I think I was just mad at the presumption of knowledge by people I trusted to mentor me.
There was no truth to offer but most are desperate to possess it they'll buy it from anyone who can make a convincing argument.

So you create your own path. There is no destination except where you are right now at this moment. The point as I see it is simply the experience of being on the path.

I attack the truth so that people maybe will stop trying to search for or possess the truth and just accept they are the truth.
You are the truth in all its glory. Go forth and create as you will.