With this I mean the God many seeking is not there to be found, the God I become familiar with arise from within the practitioner of a spiritual teaching. So by seeking outward you will not find God, the quality of God is within you. God is a state of consciousness. Only by realizing the God consciousness will you see God. Only when you find God you will know yourself, only by knowing yourself will you know God. Any thoughts?
I would say more or less the same thing, but leave God out of it. Why isn't this a description of one's own mind being mistaken for something else?
I've shared this story before on RF. I had experiences that I interpreted as the presence of the Holy Spirit while I was a Christian that I later came to understand were my own mind when I was discharged from the Army, left my first congregation upon discharge (I converted to Christianity in the Army), and returned to California. I went to about a half dozen congregations there, finding them all lifeless. Eventually, I realized that what I had been interpreting as the Holy Spirit was just a psychological state induced by a gifted and charismatic pastor in Maryland, since that feeling didn't come with me to California.
And there is a great deal of evidence that this is a mistake man has been making for millennia. Before man had a concept that his own mind could be creative, he understood his creative intuitions as muses whispering in his ear. Did you just acquire an idea for a play or a dance? Where did it come from? Muses. Eventually, man came to understand that he was experiencing his own mind's creations, and attributing them to an external source.
Christianity has long depicted the cognitive dissonance that arises when subcortical, more primitive (reptilian) parts of the brain inform one to act one way while a higher cortical center instructs it to act another way (Freud's id and superego). Freud saw these as intrinsic to the mind, but early man framed this as a struggle between the forces of good and evil, which was depicted as an angel and a demon each sitting on a different shoulder arguing through the earholes of the conflicted person, once again mistaking one's mind for what is the equivalent of muses or gods.
This idea accounts for why some people say they find God and others do not. The latter presumably have similar mental experiences, but understand them differently as I do now. When I hear others claiming that they have found God, I understand that to mean that they are misunderstanding their own minds. When they say that if I haven't found God, I just haven't tried hard enough, my answer is that I did find God, but it was my own mind, and I stopped calling it that. Others say that the beauty and mystery everywhere is evidence of God, I understand that to mean that they aren't aware that those experiences are the same ones others have, but don't call God and don't project onto the universe as coming in from without.
But it does annoy me with god questions and I can almost guess an atheist would say "it's all in the mind, FSM, 'I don't believe that," or something.'"
Yes, pretty much what I just said. Why does that annoy you? It's a sound position with supporting evidence such as my personal account above. It's also supported by what I see on RF, where those who believe by faith describe their mental states as experiencing God, but then never have anything to show for it beyond what others who see those experiences differently gain from the experience. Where's the special insight or clarity of vison, or the newfound power from having communed with a deity? What is gained by calling that God? Nothing that I can see, except a comforting belief for those comforted by such things.
Occam would say that my understanding of the evidence is the preferred one, as it is more parsimonious. It doesn't require gods to exist. Plus, it's probably correct, just as it was correct to fire the muses.
