January 2008

Here's an old one while I'm busy. Just two more after this one. Then what will I do for a quick fix?

January 9, 2008

I've just finished Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials" trilogy. There has been a lot of talk about the books and the movie they've already made of the first one. I was attracted to it when I first saw the trailer; it looked like a fun fantasy. I had no idea what the story was. Then came the talk about banning the books, or reserving them for adults only (he wrote them for teens, tho he can't have been aiming for much younger than 14). A school district in a nearby city pulled them from their library for a time. I think they put them back. But the Archbishop for this region said he thought they ought to be required reading.

When our friend (whose books I first started reading, as she was visiting) first told me some of the story, she only told me the most simple levels of the story. And I suppose that is the level at which many readers will read them. I assumed from her description that the trouble was over the fact that in the world he's created – or one of them – the humans all have daemons. Now, he's doing something far different here than Davies or anyone else I know of has done with the concept, but in fact it so resonates with what I myself was just writing and thinking about. Pullman's daemons are not "other." They are a part of us, a physical manifestation of our spirit. We find out later in the story that humans have three parts – body, spirit and soul. In Lyra's, the heroine's world, spirits take animal form, usually opposite sex, so they are also kind of our anima/animus.

So, since the folks in the film all speak with British accents, they pronounce the word more like "demon" (according to my friend), and the idea that every human has a sort of guardian demon, rathen than a guardian angel, and that demon's aren't all bad – too much for the "Christian" public to handle. Plus the church is portrayed in a negative light, tho not too terribly so in the first book. Or is it?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I thought the hullabaloo was about daemons, and it may have been, so far. If and when they make the rest of the movies, there'll be some serious banning and book burning going on. Why? First, let me say I think the books are extraordinarily well done. A truly fascinating, plausible, intriguing, thought-provoking story with characters so finely drawn I feel I really love them. And it has complicated physics, philosophy and theology, and it is written such that teens can understand it. And it is ballsy as hell. Literally.

The central argument of the books is that God, if he exists, has done terrible things to us, and must be destroyed. All of history has been a battle between wisdom and stupidity, with God using his power and the power of his church (es) to keep people stupid. God is petty, mean, envious, and cruel. He must be overthrown. Lyra's father assembles an army from many worlds for the second battle for heaven. As it turns out, God turned things over to Metatron long ago, and God himself is a frail, befuddled ancient of days, who falls apart into atoms as soon as he's exposed to air.

So what was god? Was he the creator of the heaven and eath, etc.? Not at all.

January 10

The world(s) were created, came into being, in an unexplained way. Probably thru the big bang or a similar process, and life began in the way modern evolution describes. But Pullman posits an element that in some worlds is called Dust, some Shadows, and in ours, Dark Matter. It is conscious. And where consciousness arises, or minds capable of it, Dust is attracted – created even. I'm still not completely sure which comes first. Anyway, long before there were humans in our universe, there were beings made of pure Spirit, or consciousness, or something. Angels. Made of something quite different from us, in that they have no real bodies, tho they do have forms, and as the Bible faithfully records, they were able to take the form of humans later and come and mate/have sex with human women.

One of the earliest angels, and smartest, was able to convince the later angels that he had created them – a bald faced lie – and therefore had authority over them. He claimed credit for having created everything – not just the angels but the universe and all that was in it. One of the other early-born/come-into being angels knew that for the lie it was, and she gathered a force around her who rebelled against the self-proclaimed Authority. Of course they lost, but they were not destroyed, and they've been fighting an underground, guerilla war for Wisdom and freedom ever since, against Stupidity and Authority/control. Since the Authority, God, won, he can place his people in all the positions of power, and thus all rulers (secular and religious) ultimately are on the side of Stupidity. Even if they are engaged in research, it is with one eye closed and one hand tied behind them, because they can't really search for the truth, seeing as how all their power rests on a lie.

The books, therefore, are deeply heretical. To any and all religions. They teach children to doubt whether there is a god, to wonder, if there is, if he might be a bad guy, and they encourage children to mistrust all agents of all churches and governments. And there are homosexual angels, good witches, and the idea that Eve's Fall is the greatest boon to all humankind. A wonderful trilogy! I think all teens should read it.

Not because I want them all to be little atheists, but because they should all have at least one time in their lives where they are given an opportunity to seriously question their faith. They ought to have some tools, some complexity, with which to do that.

In the meantime, I read Connie Willis' Passages, about near-death experiences, and it also spurred some new thinking. Right now I'm reading Annie Proulx's Postcard's. But I have got to get to work.

May 6-7, 2007

It is still warm! In fact, it is supposed to be 50 degrees today! It has been raining, which has been helping to melt some of the snow piles. The street actually looks strange; I hadn't realized how thick the layer of ice and snow was until there were big cracks and holes in it. We had been driving on a good 4 or more inches. It was pretty cool to see the melting start to make grooves in it, mapping networks to the sewer grates that people like Jim had cleared the ice from with shovels. And on the main streets, we have full lanes back - almost - on the sides nearest the curbs. Sorry to go on and on, but the melting is just so wonderful I can't help myself : )

I will try not to be sad when the temperature drops back to 16 on Friday. I hope everyone reading is having weather they appreciate, too.

May 6, 2007

With all the craziness of last week, classes ending and getting the grading done, etc., you know what I almost forgot? Almost nicely and sneakily put out of mind the fact that I promised myself and the Universe that I would begin to meditate when classes were over. No more excuses. I've picked up that progress in the goals of meditation takes a long time. So I need to get started on it right now. Maybe it is that gains will be so slow in coming, and I, like my compatriots, am dedicated to instant gratification. But I don't know that it will be slow. I might see some slight improvement right away. I won't know until I begin to do it every day.

What I need to do is think about and remember the journey into me that began when I first met my own eyes. This is the same thing, but without looking. It's turning inside, to explore the me in there. How can that not be exciting? Knowing from my experience that god is waiting for me in there? Why am I not racing to find him/her/it/me? I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter, because I am not going to allow that part of me to run my life anymore.

Oh! I just had this vision/understanding of a big wall of invisible pressure that keeps us all from looking too hard for God, and realized that Hinduism accounts for it; if God is hiding itself from itself, It wouldn't want the game to be over too quickly, so of course there would be some kind of thing, which I'm seeing as a kind of energy shield because of my cultural milieu. And then it hit me – oh – this is what Krishna meant when he said "My divine magic is hard to escape; but those who seek refuge in me cross over this magic." Or at least, it's part of what he meant.

So, take refuge! There is the bridge – just walk over it. I'm not sure right when I wake up is best, because the pain is so intense, and when it isn't its sometimes hard to wake up due to the drugs. But I'll figure out a good time and do it.

As the Eighth Teaching goes on, Krishna details how to be sure that you will join him at the time of death, thus escaping re-birth. I don't know that I'm ready to forsake life. I like life, even with all its suffering and tribulation. But I would like my next life to be one in which I am able to devote myself more fully to this, to understanding how it all works, and to jnana yoga. Of course, I'm terrified to ask for that, because I know what happens when we ask for patience or humility; we are given a thousand things that make us/tempt us to be impatient, or a hundred things to humiliate us.

But earlier Krishna promised a higher birth, one in which material needs are provided for. I'd like that one, please! On the other hand, it would be lovely to go to god and know all the answers to every question, to see everyone, in all their lives and understand the pattern. But won't that come eventually, anyway? Of course. And I do love life.

To get either place one must follow Krishna's directions. And again he sounds like Jesus: "Therefore, at all times remember me and fight; mind and understanding fixed on me, free from doubt, you will come to me" v. 7 Next he offers this promise, or just statement of fact:

Disciplined through practice,

Her reason never straying,

Meditating, one reaches

The supreme divine spirit of man.

Disciplined through practice! It isn't going to happen any other way girl! You must practice being one-pointed through meditation. And I will find, if I do, that Me that is the best Me. This beautiful verse:

One should remember

Man's spirit as the guide,

The primordial poet,

Smaller than an atom,

Grants of all things,

In form inconceivable,

The color of the sun

Beyond darkness.

Follow the inner me, the one who creates this life for me. She grants all things. Beg her for self-discipline. Entreat her to meet me half way. To help me arrange my life in such a way that I devote myself to all my sacred duties.

It sounds weird, doesn't it? And if someone read this journal (blog) without the context it might sound as if I've lost my mind and become so egotistic, so full of delusions of grandeur. But even Judaism says we are higher than and more beloved than angels, and Christianity follows with the belief that we are made in God's image. Islam places humans even higher. I'm human! However, I am not even talking about manifest nature, this body and this person. I'm talking about the God inside me. Whom I know to be there, but do not really know. This is really helpful to me, to think of Her as the guide. I think it will help me get somewhere.

Krishna gives instructions on how to meditate, which echo Easwaran (or other way around) and he says it's easy! We'll see! But then he goes on to discuss cosmology, the way the Universe is set up. It's fascinating. It got me thinking about What the Bleep Do We Know [a DVD I highly recommend if you haven't yet seen it] and physics, and how Krishna may be referring here to clues to the physics. I definitely think that if I were a theoretical physicist working on quantum and string theories, I'd be giving these statements a lot of thought.

Krishna does put himself above Brahma here, so one can see where the Hare Krishnas get that. But he also says Arjuna, us – we are above Brahma. So I think what he is saying is that Brahma is an idea to help us understand. Because first, Krishna talks about how Big and Long – no, Vast, Brahma is: each day and night stretches over a thousand eons (take that Bishop Usher!). And that really means even longer than eons, because creation, the entire Universe, is brought into being at Brahma's dawn, and falls apart, is dismantled at the beginning of Brahma's Night. But then creation and all the creatures are born again at Brahma's next dawn.

Beyond this unmanifest nature

Is another unmanifest existence,

A timeless being that does not perish

When all creatures perish

It is called eternal unmanifest nature,

What men call the highest way,

The goal from which they do not return;

This highest realm is mine.

It is man's highest spirit,

Won by singular devotion, Arjuna,

In whom creatures rest

And the whole universe extends. v. 20-22

Universes within universes, isn't it? Or not, because this being outside of the universe is impossible to conceive with this human mind. But it seems clear to me that Krishna is saying that it isn't just that he is Lord of that realm, or just that humans can get there by devotion, but he seems to be saying that in some mystical, impossible-to-grasp way, humans are that place! Right? "It is man's highest spirit . . in whom creatures rest and the whole universe extends." Wow. There isn't much more one can say. Wow.

One last thing before I go. This teaching concludes by saying that even once men understand this, who "know the infinite spirt" v.24, they still might not rejoin that unmanifest existence, and it has to do with when they die. If we die at one time, during the "light" period (which could include bright lunar night) during the "sun's six-month northward course" v.24, we "reach infinity." But if we die during the dark period, we "reach the moon's light and return" v. 25. Is this just mystical gobbeldy-gook? Or is Krishna pointing out some feature of physics? Moreover, I think he might be saying there is a choice:

These bright and dark pathways

Are deemed constant for the universe;

By one, a man escapes rebirth;

By the other, he is born again.

No man of discipline is deluded

When he knows these two paths. v.27

Maybe he is stating a fact about the way the material universe is constructed and is telling us to know these pathways and choose the time of our death appropriately. [Since I have been studying the Upanishads I've found some early references to these paths of the moon and to the role the moon plays in reincarnation.] It's funny that it seems like here is an answer to my earlier dilemma about both seeking to know God with all my self, and also loving life. Maybe we can reach liberation, moksha, and still return to play the game if we are still enjoying it. Why not? You really can have what you want in Hinduism!

May 7

The Ninth Teaching: The Sublime Mystery

Mystery is certainly a good word for it! I feel like I wrote nearly the same thing last time though. Krishna seems to contradict himself, or offer a paradox, and again I'm longing for the Sanskrit, to see which words he used. I really need at least another, different translation. Not that this one isn't good, but one decision of hers I question is to always translate a word the same way. So jnana is always translated as knowledge, yoga always discipline, brahman as infinite spirit, etc. But words have various shades of meaning, especially a word like karma, which I've seen transliterated as work, action, cause and effect, sacred law, etc. I think she sometimes loses or twists meaning away from the original intent by using the same word; a different word would more accurately reflect the intended meaning.

Anyway, it would be lovely to have another translation, especially one written by a Hindu. This teaching has some confusing verses. Recall, Krishna is telling Arjuna more about who he truly is, and that realm of existence (his, ours) that is beyond life and death. And he reminds him how important meditation is, of course. And the rest will have to wait. I've read the whole thing twice, but I have to meditate and then go to work now.

2006 - Nature of Evil

With the end of August in 2006 came the end of free time for a loooooooooong time. It was my first semester in my first academic job, and I could not believe how busy I was. I had thought graduate school kept me busy! Yet I found time (usually in those few minutes before sleep, to help my mind wind down) to read a few pages of fiction or something non-work related. And finally, in November, I had something of relevance to this blog to say.

November 12
What is on my mind today? Mostly my book (A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry), and India in general. Here’s the puzzle – how can the most ancient, most enlightened, most cosmic and yet most sensible religion the world has ever produced, spawn such evil? There are times when I wonder if there isn’t something inherently wrong with Christianity, since it so regularly leads to exclusion, discrimination, intolerance, hatred and injustice. But one only has to look at India to see the same things, and for Buddhism look at Cambodia and Sri Lanka and China. For Islam there is Egypt and Sudan and Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Jews also have bloody history and the current state of Israel could hardly be more evil. You know what they did this week? After the Palestinians had managed to hold to a cease fire for 7 months – a remarkable feat considering the heterogeneity of political/military groups in their midst – the damned Israeli army sent a succession – 6, not 1 – missiles to destroy a civilian apartment building in Gaza. 14 children were killed, 6 or 7 all from the same family. And what do the Israelis say? “We’re sorry, it was an accident.” Animals!
It is easy to see why some would come to the conclusion that religion is the root of all evil. I don’t believe that, but I do wonder why religion is so weak. Pundits talk about the power of religion to motivate people, etc., but really isn’t it that religion is powerless in the face of human greed and hatred? It certainly seems to me, looking back at all of history, that it is much more often the case that evil people turn religion into a tool, than that religion transforms and uses evil men.
I presented this to Jim just now over a cigarette and it spurred an hour long debate/discussion that began philosophically but ended with application. He first tried to make it about creating a stronger religion, one that could stand up to human evil, but we didn’t get far with that. It did lead me to say that I think humans are so fallen, so evil, that we can’t base a religion on human nature. He said I sounded like I was talking about Original Sin. I said not necessarily, the original “sin” could simply be a factor of how we evolved. Competition, he said, is the root of all evil. We are hard-wired to compete. Yes, and we discussed that awhile.
But, as I’ve said before, we are also hard-wired to cooperate. Our species would have died out had we not cooperated with one another. Jim made/used a clever metaphor of the Strong and Weak forces in physics – it looks like the strong force is stronger, it is when measured immediately. But it is the weak force that holds the universe together. So we both agree that what needs to happen is an increase in our awareness and practice of cooperation, rather than competition. We argued awhile about how to do that, and the extent to which it is already occurring.

November 13
Oh my. This book I’m reading . . . It is just one heartbreaking tragedy after another. Nearly unbearable to read. I keep looking at the table of contents, scanning the chapter titles for some sign of brightness, some hint of a happy ending. It doesn’t provide much optimism. How can people be so terrible to one another? Modern psychology, with its almost complete lack of attention to issues of power, provides no help in understanding it.
I, from my relatively safe, secure, loving childhood and privileged white middle class status, have no capacity for understanding what makes people hate so globally. I get being angry at someone you know, hating individuals for hurting or thwarting you. But how does that translate, or mutate, into a rage and hatred so general that one can be cruel to perfect strangers? And the contempt! How is it that people can sort others into categories and the despise and reject their humanity based on that category and their membership in it?
I have certainly felt contempt for individuals, and have bordered on hatred because of it. And I admit I’m more prepared to despise people who fall into certain categories – Neo-con Republicans, Bible thumping bigots, bigots in general. But I at least give individuals a chance. Its only when they open their mouths and utter opinions I find despicable that I feel contempt. And I don’t believe I have the capacity to deny food, water, or shelter to even those I despise the most, like Bush. I don’t believe I’m capable of beating or raping or setting their houses on fire, either. Or even shipping them off to be beaten and exploited and worked into the ground.
So how do so many humans find it so easy, so casual, to do all of the above and worse, to people they don’t even know? Just because they are poor, or black, or Mexican, or Buddhist, or Jewish or French, or female or working class or a stranger? I don’t even know how to begin to understand it. And it is so common! Much more common than simple kindness.
We talk about Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot as if they were rare aberrations. But really, aren’t their feelings and theories and callousness closer to the norm? There have been so many evil, despotic rulers, but for each one of them there are millions of soldiers, prison guards, gang members, lawyers, business men, shopkeepers, farmers and even religious leaders (high and low), who feel and behave in exactly the same ways. They just don’t have the power to do it on a grand scale. Although the inhuman decisions of CEOs and bankers destroy lives in vast, uncounted numbers.
How can one not despair? Why do we have it so good in the U.S.? Because we wrote laws and voted on them in an attempt to curb the worst abuses, to try to protect ourselves from the monstrous people in our midst. But now people, in their fear of unpredictable and largely fabricated threats of terrorists, are ready – no, eager – to suspend all those laws that protect us, just to have the illusion of security. Please tell me how removing all of our civil rights and liberties will prevent the spread of anthrax, or stop a nuclear missile, or prevent explosives from exploding? It’s a myth, but frightened people eat it up.
Maybe what they really need is a reminder of what happens in places without these protections. And someone to connect the dots for them, so they see why we must have freedom of speech, law of habeas corpus, and the right to face one’s accuser. Maybe they are so uneducated, taught all the wrong things in all the wrong ways, so that they don’t know.

December 21
Jim shared some of his struggle for meaning. By the end of that conversation I was convinced more than ever that he would benefit from Taoism. So I brought him down the Tao te Ching before I went to bed.

2006 - May and More Philosophy

You can always tell when school is in session and when it is not. The summer months - especially the early ones when I'm revelling in my freedom from grading, I guess I do go a little crazy. But this era we're reading about was especially important, as you've seen. For the previous decade, I had been thinking of myself as a practicing Christian, albeit with heretical beliefs. But I also - though I rarely said it out loud and sometimes did not even say it to myself - had a view of myself as truly being a Hindu who had chosen Christianity as a way of walking the bhakti path.

Now, free at last of the burden of graduate school, with a job secured for the future, I really wanted to recover/reconstruct a spiritual foundation for the rest of my life. I was further being driven by the daily need to find a way to deal with the intense physical pain.

May 7
I want to type up my statement of faith, so that I can send it off with Mom when she leaves. And when I type it, I’ll need to add a preface. I also wanted to make a list of questions for her, to take and think about and formulate her own responses. My motive is to get a different – a faithful Christian's – interpretation of what I see as very difficult issues. The exclusivity implied by much of what Jesus said, along with the pre-destination that accompanies them. Some of the behaviors – like sending the demons into the pigs. And bigger issues – how does she feel/think about the doctrine of original sin? How does she make sense of God’s setting humans up to fail? What then is the purpose of the Creation? Why does an all-powerful God allow an angel dominion over the earth?
I’m not going to be satisfied with the answer that these are mysteries. At some point I think one has to decide if it makes any sense. It seems to make sense to Mom, so I’d like to know how she squares these things with a loving God? I do not mean these questions as personal attacks. I realize some people take them that way . . . they seem to feel that any question or doubt one has is an accusation of them, or maybe it seems like a roundabout way of challenging their intelligence? I don't know. I don't mean it that way. I just want to know what intelligent people of faith actually believe, and how they deal with these things I perceive as inconsistencies.

I spoke to [another Christian friend] briefly about the Judas Gospel, and she was very dismissive. When I asked why, she said that it doesn’t fit with what we know about Jesus from the other gospels. When I pointed out that 1) I think it can be compatible, and 2) the inclusion of those four gospels was a political process, she became very distressed, so I made light of it and dropped the subject. What I want to ask her is, “What if that gospel turns out to be the truth? What would that change about your faith?” Because my personal belief is that one needs to be open to those possibilities – that the church, being human, may have gotten some things wrong.

I said to Mom that I thought it wouldn’t make any difference to the basic tenets of Christianity if Jesus had been married, and she did not seem to care for the idea. But couldn’t explain why on the spot [in her defense, Mom and I have often talked about how uncomfortable she is with verbal debate - which is why I was putting my questions and thoughts in written form]. Just because St. Augustine and others were all hung up about sex doesn’t mean that Jesus was. Why in the world should I accept, without evidence, that Jesus reversed 2000 years of Jewish thinking, that marriage and sex are gifts from God, and changed it to abstinence being holy just because Paul and Jerome and Augustine were misogynists with major sexual hang-ups? While it may be true that it is easier to focus on the things of the spirit when one is not engaged in a sexual relationship – for some people – it also seems true that God gave us bodies and made sex pleasurable for a reason. Why is marriage a sacrament if not because that is true? And why would Jesus be denied that sacrament? He may well have chosen celibacy, but I don’t see how it negates either his divinity or his teachings if he in fact was married. Yet many people apparently utterly reject that. Why?

I just can’t get past the belief that the early church messed a lot of stuff up. And got people thinking in entirely wrong directions on some matters. Well, I guess I’ve written part of what I believe about Jesus.

May 10
I’m feeling a little nervous about having given Mom my statement of belief, or my “ruminations” as I labeled it, when it is still in such an incomplete form. I’m worried that it will distress her unduly. I should at least have put in there somewhere a thought that reassures me, and might reassure her. Jesus said, “Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you.” I have to believe that this is true. If I seek with all my heart, then I will find. What I find may be slightly different than what she found, or we may interpret it a bit differently, but both will be True. My only caution is that I must be sure I am seeking with all my hear and mind and spirit. I worry that if I don’t end up believing the exact same thing as Mom that she will worry, and I don’t want to cause her any more of that.
[I am still worried about these things]

We talked briefly the other night about how cool it would be to write a book together. It would be a collection of these writings, which are in some ways responses to one another, questions and musings and prayers. We could maybe organize them by topic, and alternate voices. They wouldn’t have to be direct responses, although some of them could be. I think someone would publish it. That wouldn’t come for years, but I do think I’ll begin collecting all of it in one place. So it will be ready in the future if we decide to pursue it. In fact, I ought to talk to her about composing a legal document that would allow me to publish her work after her death, and ask her to start putting aside the things she writes that might be appropriate. I’ll mention it to her and see what she thinks. My Mom is the person I most trust to be able to show me how one can have faith in Christian doctrine. I look so forward to having her thoughts about the things I’m thinking and feeling.

And here was the origin of what became this blog
11:30 – I ought to go through all my old journals and tag every religious section. Then I’d have the record of what I really thought at different times, and we could see the evolution of my spiritual development. And we could maybe also find letters – Mom’s, Dad’s and mine, to flesh out the picture. What a cool idea, eh? Great summer project.

I also want to write out my current thinking about the creation, the Garden of Eden/Original Sin, Predestination, and of course, Jesus. For each, I think I want to write out as many different versions/interpretations as I know of, to help me pin down what it is, exactly, that seems true to me, and consistent with my logic and intuition, my experience. So I have a lot to do.

May 18
I guess I’m not really thinking anything interesting today. Or I’m too lazy to write it out, more likely. I’m getting close to finishing up Peter Hamilton’s Night Dawn trilogy. Have just the last 150 pages of the 6th and final book. So mostly my thoughts are about how cultures and societies develop, and the nature of human nature, and of this universe, and intelligence. As Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

In Hamiliton’s universe, which is so well-crafted one can easily believe ours is similar, humans meet other species who are so much more advanced than us that they may as well be gods. But there are others to whom our technology makes us seem like gods. Why haven’t any other species contacted us yet? I believe they are there, but any advanced enough to find us probably can see that we aren’t ready for knowledge of them yet. At least, that’s what I hope. It would be nice to think there is a rational, wise Confederation out there that might step in to protect us from total extinction, at least from the threat of hostile species.

I think it was Greg Bear who wrote Footprint, or Footpath – maybe it wasn’t him – but someone wrote a novel about our first encounter with xenocs being terrible. They come to take over our planet and don’t even bother trying to communicate with us. They either don’t recognize or don’t care about our sentience, they just begin “terra”-forming our planet and killing us off. That could happen, too.

When you think of the universe as holding many intelligent species, when humans are just one of thousands or millions or billions of sentient beings, then what kind of God would God be? How could we even conceive of its plans, desires, hopes, its Mind, or Purpose? It again casts doubt on the notion that God takes a personal interest in us as individuals, though with a God that big, it isn’t impossible, of course. But to what end? What does It want?

May 19
I’m near the end of the book. They’ve found the Sleeping God they were looking for. I’d forgotten that Hamilton avoids the larger question. The God – an entity that “sees the entire universe,” has amazing powers, and “exists to assist biological entities,” is an artifact constructed by a sentient species long ago. They created it to help themselves create(?), at least transfer to, a different realm, one in which they would no longer be biological. They used it to transcend, and left it behind to assist others on the same path. They believed in free will, so the artifact does, too. It is aware of other things like itself located in other super clusters and other realms. All of them were created for the same purpose, to assist their creators into a new, non-biological existence.
Still, it does know all that takes place in its part of the universe, as well as in other realms associated with it, and has an opinion (that of its creators) about what it is all for. If I understood properly, this universe is finite, and so subject to entropy. It will decay, collapse, eventually cease to exist. Together, all the beings who have ever existed will decide what is to come next, what new kind of universe they will create, and will, by deciding, create it. Here’s the way he puts it:
“The universe and all it is connected to will come to an end. Entropy carries us towards the inevitable omega point; that is why entropy exists. What is to be born next cannot be known until then. This is the time when the pattern of that which replaces it will be created, a pattern which will emerge out of mind, the collective experience of all who have lived. That is where souls go, their transcendence brings all that they are together into a single act of creation”
(p.726).

So the “beyond,” a realm which human souls experience as purgatory, has no spatial dimension – only time. It is the time between when someone dies and when this universe ends. The only beings who get stuck in it are the people who cling to this life, to what they have known; people who have lived unsatisfactory lives, who lack faith in themselves, who fear the future and difference. Humans have a relatively large number of souls trapped there, because we have such a large number who live miserable lives – poverty, pain and fear dominate human existence. At the point in the book, somewhere around 2800 AD, the only reason so many lives are like that is because humans have not made it a priority to eliminate them. We are at a point in our technological development when we could devote our energy and minds into creating molecular-level replication, like the Kiint have (a superior species), which can supply every individual with any material thing that it wants. An immediate end to hunger, poverty, envy, theft, etc. Since meeting the Kiint, some 200 years before, we knew such a thing was possible, but did not choose to pursue it.

Basically it’s the earth scenario on a larger scale. We’ve been so rich in space and resources that we’ve never had to really deal with our problems. We can always leave them behind by expanding into new areas. If we don’t develop inter-stellar travel, that’ll have to change; we’ll be forced to actually clean up the mess we’ve made of Earth. We’ve not put our energy into ending poverty, hunger and sickness because we haven’t had to. Eventually, Hamilton suggests, we will have to do that. Once those material things are taken care of, we can then turn our attention to preparing souls for the omega point. How? By loving them. When people are truly loved, they learn to love themselves, which gives them the ability to face challenges and the future with confidence in themselves and compassion for their fellows. At that point, we as a species will be able to contribute something wonderful to the consensus that shapes the next reality, the next universe.

Pretty cool idea. It leaves alone, though, the question of whether or not there is a God. One who sees the development of universes and put it all in motion. And what would its purpose be? Who could even guess? Although it seems consistent with what I already believe – God learning about itself by creating something that can become what It is. Where/when did such a God come from? It’s turtles all the way down. Ah well, enough for the moment.


May 21
One thing I’ve been thinking about that could use some discussion here is how I need to get more critical about some of my faults. I don’t mean in a self-flagellating way, as I’ve done plenty of. That kind of hopeless belittling of oneself is a dead end. Or rather a downward spiral of self-hatred, loathing and despair. Not interested in going there. What I would like to do is be back where I was in college, and even through most of my relationship with S. Be self-aware, and scrupulously honest about my feelings, my motivations, and my failings. Again, not so I can berate myself, but so that I can grow. So I can be the person, or more the person, that I want to be.

I’d like to catch all the times I slip into passive-aggression. I want to re-learn how to fight more fairly, to be able to recognize when Jim states a truth about my behavior, acknowledge it, apologize for it, and then get better. If I can do better at owning my own shit, I’ll also do better at not taking on his. I’ve talked about this before in these journals, but I kind of forgot how to fight in that wonderful way where even in anger I avoided being defensive and could admit a mistake when I’d made one.

I want to re-learn how to let go of defensiveness. To be vulnerable and completely honest even in the middle of a fight. Honesty requires always making “I” statements – not “you did” and “you act” because I can’t ever know what someone else meant, and I can’t blame my feelings on anyone elses actions. They do what they do. Its my response that I’m responsible for. It excludes all “nevers” and “always” because neither are ever true.

May 22
. . . [I’m reading] Annie Lamott’s new book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. Read the first few pages last week, and man is she pissed at President Bush! Maybe even more than I am, which is saying a lot! Yesterday there was an article in the paper about the growing size, outrage, and activism in the Christian Left. Its about time! It is heartening news, and I know Lamott has done her part ever since the beginning. Oh wow. I just love her. Have read the first three chapters. I think this is the right book for me to read right now. My inner voice has been prompting me to get more aware and more honest with myself, and she’s such a good role model for that.

May 23
Went to bed around midnight last night, and slept decently. Guess it did take at least an hour for me to fall asleep, and I woke up a couple of times, but it was much better than the night before. I woke up at 8:30 and read Anne Lamott for nearly an hour. Lot’s of great quotes; the last one was this: “Faith is not about how we feel; its about how we live” . . . Here’s a good one to remember – “Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to you and equanimity” (p.295). “I don’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”

You know, one of the things she says often is that we need to take care of ourselves. Be kind – not only to others but to our selves. I still don’t do a very good job of that. I’ve committed to getting myself medication, but that’s really just so I can stand to be alive. I do keep this journal, which is just for me and helps me a lot. I read some things that matter to me. But mostly I give myself time to play on the computer, and ice cream and cigarettes. Might there be better ways to be nice to myself? Hey! Ask and you shall receive. Here is what she says in the next paragraph about how to feed our spirit. 1 – find a path and some light to see by. 2. Push up your sleeves and start helping. “Every single spiritual tradition says that you must take care of the poor, or you are so doomed that not even Jesus or the Buddha can help you” (p.307). 3 – anything that helps you get your sense of humor back feeds your spirit. 4 – “Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all.” 5 – Rest, but pay attention. Refuse to cooperate with anyone who is stealing your freedom, your personal and civil liberties, and then smirking about it. I’m not going to name names.” (p.309).

That is all very good advice, and I need to take it. I need to help others more, and I need to rest more. Most of the things I do to relax (and distract me from pain) keep me busy. When is the last time I laid down in the grass and watched clouds? Well, I did watch the sky and the ocean in Puerto Rico, but I don’t have to wait until vacation! And I should take walks. We’ll be walking to class this summer, but I also need to walk for pleasure. I’m having a cup of tea, and I need to do that more often, too.

It is kind of subversive, isn’t it? That you can get closer to God and being a good person just by being nice to yourself? I have faint memories of that being true for me in the past. I mean of experiencing that for myself. My most joyful, most close-to-God eras in my life were times I was being gentle with myself, nurturing myself in ways I desperately needed, and had realized no one else was going to do for me. Those were also eras of singleness, and celibacy. But I am never going to be single again, and I cannot expect Jim to nurture me in all the ways I need. He gives me the gifts that are his to give, and they are wonderful and give me a lot of joy and pleasure and happiness. But there are things he cannot give me, like the smell of earth on a rainy day, the breeze in my hair. So I need to give those things to myself. And be kind to me on the inside, too.

Yes, I need to keep pushing myself to do good work, and hard work, and more of it. But I also need to give myself rest, and pats on the back, and kind thoughts about my body, my work, my life. My inner conversations seem usually to end with me berating myself. Come on, would that work if I did it to anyone else? No, we humans respond much better to praise and encouragement. So I’m going to try to be nicer to myself this week. An experiment. I wonder if, in a way, these middle-of-the-night sessions alone are a gift to myself? I used to just lie in bed feeling miserable, yelling at myself to “go to sleep for God’s sake!” This is much better. The cats have settled down, presumably are in bed. And it is 2:40 and I’m just about to try again.

May 24
The biggest project of all is already begun – that of reconnecting with God, re-learning how to pray, especially the listening part, which I’ve never been very good at. My heart is lighter this morning. I don’t know any better what to do, but my heart feels softer, like thawing. So I’ll just keep turning it over to God until an answer comes clear.
I am now re-reading Sophie’s World, by Josten Gaardner. I am where Sophie is just learning about mythological explanations for our existence. Her mysterious letter writer is explaining that before philosophy, all cultures developed myths to explain the central questions of life – why are we here, what happens when we die, where did the universe come from, etc. He uses Norse mythology as an example, but in truth, all mythologies are pretty much the same. In order to explain evil, and all bad things, people come to believe in a battle between forces of order and life vs. those of chaos and death. Humans depend on the gods to help them fight the evil forces, and gods depend on humans to make them strong by giving them offerings. I want to insert this into my ruminations, because this is humanity’s first answer to the big questions. Which doesn’t necessarily mean it is right, or that it is wrong. But it isn’t very sophisticated. And one wonders how much of the battle stuff is just a holdover from that kind of thinking. To hang on to these ideas of battles between good and evil seems kind of like the lazy-man’s way of dealing with the hard questions.

Here’s something important: it was Heraclitus who first used the term “Logos” to refer to the divine. For him, the Logos is the “universal reason” or “universal law,” that guides everything in nature, and causes opposites to co-exist, and who is the catalyst for transformation and change. Heraclitus (540-480 BCE) was a contemporary of Parmenides, who believed that nothing changes, and therefore we can’t trust our perceptions. We must only trust reason. Heraclitus argued the opposite – that everything is always changing, as we perceive. He believed opposites were necessary for the same reason I’ve outlined before – how can we appreciate peace without war, etc. The Logos must exist, to be the matrix in which all these contrasts exist, and to guide their changing.

The problem with both H & P is that they were going on the assumption that there is only one primary substance, and it had to be either air, water, earth or fire. It was Empedocles who pointed out that they were both right, and both wrong. There are, he said, in fact 4 basic elements, that combine and the come apart again. So the components never change, but the things we perceive are always changing. Pretty clever. And there are 2 forces, love and strife, which act on the elements and cause them to change. And this is still how we think, in terms of elements and forces.

It was Democritus (460-370 BC) who took the idea further, and came up with the notion of atoms. By his definition, atoms must be unbreakable and eternal, since “nothing came from nothing.” But he thought atoms were all different from one another, like Lego’s. And he didn’t believe there was any need for a divine force or being. There is no design – things happen mechanically.

Skepticism is the name of the school of philosophy which says we cannot know the answers to the big questions. But we do know that people have to learn to live together. The Sophists were skeptics, and they were the earliest cultural relativists. They were interested in pointing out that societies do things very differently from one another, and they introduced the debate about nature vs. nurture. It was as against them that Socrates developed his philosophy. I really do need to remember not to keep leaving Socrates out of my list of important people. Just because our society has classified him as a philosopher, not a spiritual figure, he had a lot to say that has bearing on faith. And, as Gaardner points out, they had lives which were quite similar. Jesus and Socrates, I mean.

Now on to Plato. He, of course, was searching for the eternal – eternal goodness, truth and beauty. But he didn’t believe atoms were eternal. All material things decay. So what is eternal must be the molds, from which form is made. Thus his notion of immutable, ideal forms, or actually “ideas.” Like the Buddha, he realized that one of our big problems is change. How can we ever understand anything when everything is on its way to being something else? We can only, therefore, truly understand things by using our reason. Reasoning out logically what the idea is behind the particular form that we perceive.

He believed there are two worlds – the sensory, material one, and the realm of ideas. We are bits of both – bodies decidedly material, but our souls are eternal and belong to the world of ideas. When our souls enter our bodies, they forget the idea world from which they come. Life is the process of remembering that world, by reasoning about the things we perceive with our senses. But why? Why would souls ever leave the world of ideas? I don’t think he ever answered that question. But he did see the soul yearning for a return to that place. Like the Buddha and the Hindu saints, we see in Plato a conviction that the material world is tricky, because it is a lesser world, a mere “shadow world,” that deceives us, provides the illusion that it is the real world.

Guess what? Plato was not a misogynist – he believed women had reason equal to men’s!
We are already moving on to Aristotle. Now he, we know, was a misogynist to the degree that even bent his logic and his observations to fit his notion that women ought to be lower beings. But we cannot throw him out just because of that. Here’s an interesting fact – records refer to 170 titles written by Aristotle, but we have only 47. Imagine what might have been lost. Maybe he even reversed his opinion on women.

Where Aristotle was right – was probably in many areas - but first with his refutation of Plato’s notion that “ideas” precede the material form. In other words, the idea of “chicken” existed before any actual, material chickens. All materiality is a falling away from, an imperfect copy of the original idea. Essence before existence. And I guess Jews and Muslims would have to agree, since God presumably had the idea of chickens before he created the real thing. Aristotle figured that the idea of a perfect chicken was a concept humans came up with after having seen a lot of chickens. So, perception wins out over reason. I can’t remember the term he gave this, this ability of humans to create classes of things, to generalize from one or two instances to an order of existence.

“Substance always strives toward achieving an innate form.” All change is a transformation of substance from the potential to the actual, and all things have some specific potentiality. A chicken egg has the potentiality to become a chicken, but not a goose.

Aristotle’s Causality
Material cause – the materials required, say for a statue. The marble must exist materially for there ever to be a marble statue.
Efficient cause – the action – the sculptor uses tools to chip away marble.
Formal cause – the sculptor has an idea of what the form of the statue will be. Without it, he could never accidentally produce a horse, or whatever.
Final cause – the purpose. Why did the sculptor sculpt?

Aristotle believed nature is purposive. The rain falls because (final cause) plants need it to grow. Did Plato believe in God? Aristotle did, at least as the prime mover, the formal cause of the universe.

12:30 am. On to Hellenism. This is a really important time – so much happened in the realm of religion and philosophy, mirroring the massive changes in culture and political economy. Sometimes, when I’m feeling hopeful, I think that the darkness of the time I live in is like this – the birth pangs of a new and better way for humanity to be in the world. Certainly the Hellenists, or many of them, thought “the world has grown old.” And became preoccupied with death. More, with salvation from death.
How funny, a couple of paragraphs down, Gaardner says, “Hellenistic culture could well be compared to the world of today.” People became preoccupied with ethics, how one should live. He details four schools of thought:
Cynics – Diogenes was one. Very eastern. Happiness is not in wealth or physical comfort or prestige. Their message – don’t be dependent on (make one’s treasure) material things.
Stoics – Zeno. Grew out of Cynic movement. Also very Eastern. We are all part of the Logos, by which Zeno meant “common sense.” Each one of us is a microcosmos, and reflects the macrocosmos. They were monists – there is only one reality. No dualism, no separation of individual and universe, or spirit and matter. Cicero was a stoic, influential in encouraging Greek culture in Rome. I think the guys in Ian Pears book were also Stoics. They were also humanists, who believed humans should accept their fate without complaint. Also accept the good things without taking credit. Like the Cynics, and with echoes of Hinduism.
Epicureans – Seek pleasure, avoid pain. Like an immature Hindu. However, Epicurus urged us to be wise in our search, and practice self control and temperance. It wasn’t all about sensual pleasure at all costs.
Neo-Platonists – Plotinus, so this is important. He was from Alexandria, where he was exposed to Eastern philosophy. He brought it to Rome where, says Gaardner, his doctrine of salvation “competed seriously with Christianity.” But we know other neo-Platonists were Christians. Hmm, I really need a book I’ve already packed away.
Dualists – two worlds, material and spiritual, and conflict between man’s body and soul. For Plotinus the world is a span between 2 poles:

The ONE eternal ideas living creations earth stone Absolute Darkness

All that exists is God, but there is a point, far away from the One, where light/being do not reach. Our souls are illuminated by the light, but matter is the darkness that has no real existence. Our souls are “sparks of the fire,” so we are, in fact, pieces of God, or the One. Thus we grow closer to God through our own selves. Sometimes we can experience ourselves as part of that divine mystery. Gaardner here provides a discussion of mysticism which is very good. I like this quote. It says what I keep trying to: “. . . the descriptions of mystical experiences given by mystics show a remarkable similarity across all cultural boundaries. It is in the mystics’ attempt to provide a religious or philosophic interpretation of the mystical experience that his cultural background reveals itself.” (p.137). Westerners experience it as a meeting with a personal god, Easterners as a total merging, or union.

I really do need to learn all I can about Hellenistic culture, philosophy and religion, because it is that context into which Jesus was born, and Christianity took shape. I think it holds one of the important keys to understanding how Western Christianity got its shape, why certain doctrines were developed and adopted. Gaardner is about to discuss some of that.
First he does a great job explaining the history and scope of Indo-European culture, with lots of wonderful linguistic examples to show that the religions and ideas of people from Britain to Russia, Italy to India, are all variants of the same thing. Part of their thinking included the notion that the world is a battleground between good and evil forces, so that is really, really old. Also the descendent cultures place emphasis on seeing – sight is the primary sense. They all saw time as cyclical, and came to emphasize that god is in all things.

We’ve already seen a number of parallels. But I never think about the fact that Greeks and Indians have the same ancestors, but in fact, they did. But the Semites did not. They are way different. They were monotheistic, had a linear view of history – all the stuff I teach in my classes. Ah – something new: hearing is the preeminent sense. “Hear, O Israel.” Proclaim. Recite. How exciting! Especially accompanied by the thunderstorm outside!

Gaardner emphasizes how the Jews used the terms Messiah (as a King), Son of God (which could be applied to the king, as he was God’s representative on earth) and Kingdom of God (which is a nation ruled by a king God has anointed). This sheds light on what Jesus might have meant when he used those terms.

Now this is a conundrum. The Semites did not believe humans had eternal souls. So how could they have believed in heaven or hell? They didn’t, which always shocks my students. There is a remarkable (to us) lack of interest on the part of Jews as to what happens after we die. That’s because they didn’t think anything happened. Dead is dead. You end. So the only thing Jesus could possibly have meant, that would make any sense to the Jews, was that one doesn’t have to die. One’s soul can be made to be eternal. It wasn’t about saving people from hell, as Christians have translated it, but from literal death.

Well, he doesn’t do such a good job with Christianity, I don’t think. He doesn’t explain, even, what God is, or how Jesus could be both God and Man. I mean, he says he was, but doesn’t subject the idea to any questions, as he did other philosophies. And he presents no opposing views. Kind of like Paul showed up in Athens one day and everyone immediately converted and threw philosophy out the window. Ah well, I have other books. In this one we’ll be jumping to Augustine. It’s 2 am, and I ought to be thinking about going back to bed. It is still raining and sounds nice. One more chapter.

The Church closed Plato’s Academy in 529, which “became the symbol for how Christianity put a lid on Greek philosophy.” (p.171), and took over all education, reflection, etc. Oh good, he’s come back to it. He describes all of medieval philosophy as the attempt to reconcile Greek philosophy with the Bible, to see if one can only believe Christianity, or if reason can also serve you. Which is precisely my question, so its going to be difficult to go to bed.

Augustine, 354 – 430. First a Manichean – dualism of light and darkness. Explains his preoccupation with “the problem of evil.” He became a Neo-Platonist and a Christian. And there you go – the Platonic ideas were present in God’s mind before he created the world. He also believed that evil has no existence of its own – it is the absence of God. There is a barrier between God and human souls, we are not “divine sparks.” I guess I’ll have to re-read Augustine. He seems to take a lot of short cuts and force his ideas into shapes that don’t make sense.
On to Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274, who has to grapple with Aristotle’s newly recovered works. He believed we could arrive at Christian truths through faith and reason. But I’m tired and going to bed.

May 25
I think I’ll go back to Sophie and her lesson about Thomas Aquinas. Gaardner just explains how Aquinas was able to justify Aristotle with Christianity by saying that Aristotle was right, but only so far. I.e. Reason tells us God exists, as the Prime Mover, but we need the Bible to tell us who God is. But like Augustine, he seems to be twisting his logic to fit doctrine. In some ways it seems a shame to me that such great minds were limited by that doctrine. Mightn’t they have taken us further if that wasn’t the case? And it is a real shame that Aquinas also adopted Aristotle’s misogyny. St. Augustine was pretty hateful about women, too, if only because he liked us too much. He almost single-handedly turned sex into something dirty and evil, instead of the sacred gift Jews and early Christians believed it to be. Of course, he had Paul to base his opinions on. How can women feel anything but abused and damaged by the actions and stances of the Church? Do you know how painful it is to be a faithful little girl, and meet such hatred and contempt on the part of the great men, the great minds, in one’s tradition? How can people justify that with Jesus’ treatment of women, and his commandments about “the least of these”?

When Gaardner begins discussing the Renaissance, he has to admit it: “Philosophy and science broke away more and more from the Church, thus enabling religious life to attain freer relationships with reasoning.” People began to emphasize that God was unknowable, and the important thing is not to understand, but to submit (p. 197).

As Europeans rediscovered Greek and Roman culture, they also adopted their humanism. Human kind, instead of the evil, depraved being of the Middle Ages, was again esteemed. But it was more than humanism, it was individualism. Hmm – the population of Rome had dwindled to 17,000 by 1417. Down from over a million at the empire’s height. The barrier between God and Man came down. Many Renaissance men were pantheists, believing God is present in all of nature.

Something I’ve been thinking about last week – a lot of the stuff in the Bible, and even more in the doctrine of the Church, only makes sense in the context of belief that Earth is the only planet, ours the only solar system, all other stars being merely decoration for us, and we humans being the only sentient species. No wonder the Church fought so hard and so bitterly against the heliocentric theory, and Newton’s physics, and then, the piece de resistance – Darwin’s theory of evolution. Because it knocks humans right out of the privileged, special position Christianity put us in.

One of the things I need to write is how the central figures of Christian history, who contributed so much to our understanding of God, and who seem right about a number of things, were also flawed people, and products of their own history and culture, and how their flawed thinking got accepted right along with their good ideas. There are Paul’s ideas about women, Augustine’s hang-ups about sex, Luther’s anti-Semitism, and view of humans as utterly depraved, etc. That’s just the beginning. But we are already moving into the Baroque period.

It was an era of conflicting, or opposite extremes. In philosophy there were idealists and materialists. Also determinists. If, as Newton and Hobbes believed, the universe, the earth, and people are mechanistic – we/everything can be described and explained as parts of mechanical systems, then everything is predetermined. So, doesn’t it seem likely that both Luther and Calvin would have been very much influenced by this view? What would pre-destination look like without Newton? Or Descartes?

There is a direct line of descent from Socrates and Plato, through Augustine, to Descartes. The rationalists. After the renaissance, Europeans were in need of a system builder, some one to organize and systematize all the new and old thinking. Descartes was the man. 1596-1650. His concern with the relationship between body and soul makes sense in the context of the materialism and mechanism of his own time. The body was increasingly understood as systems of mechanical processes. Maybe the mind, too. But what about the soul? Surely it isn’t just another machine?

I’m having trouble concentrating on Descartes. Partly it is because I get irritated with him right away. Always have [My first college paper at age 18 was about Descartes and his circular reasoning - I didn't buy it then, either]. If you are going to doubt everything, and require proof of the existence of everything, then you can’t go leaping to conclusions the way he does. He starts off great – it makes sense that he must exist as a thinking thing. But how does he get from there to the notion that because he can think of god, a perfect entity, God must exist? It’s a total leap. Gaardner says the difference between God and other things I can think of but that don’t exist, like unicorns, or world peace, is that existence is inherent in the concept of God. A perfect entity cannot be perfect if it doesn’t exist. I don’t buy it. So it makes it difficult to listen to anything Descartes says.

The other thing that annoys me about him is his dualism. I realize he didn’t have all the info available to him that I do, but it still seems to me he should have seen that mind and body are connected in more fundamental ways than he was willing to concede. Also it seems to me to go against doctrine. God is all-powerful, and perfect, right? And God created us in bodies. He must have had a reason. Why then should we look down on our bodies and feel superior to them? It doesn’t make sense in the Western monotheistic context. Let’s see if Spinoza does any better.

He had the good sense to be Jewish, at any rate. Ah, hurray for him! He argued that the Bible must be read critically, with a historic-cultural eye, bearing in mind the times in which it was written. And he was a pantheist, seeing God in all, or that all is in God. He rejected Descartes' dualism, and said there is only one substance, which includes Descartes “extension.” God – or Nature, as he sometimes referred to it – manifests itself as thought and extension (matter), and maybe in many other ways we are not aware of.

If everything is one, and all things are expressions of God’s in various modes, then my thoughts are God’s thoughts! (pg.252). No wonder he got run out of town and disowned by his family. I am one of God’s fingers. But what does that do to free will?

“Spinoza believed that God – or the laws of nature – are the inner cause of everything that happens. He is not an outer cause, since God speaks through the laws of nature and only through them” (p.252). He has a lot in common with the Stoics. We are ourselves, but we act in accordance with the laws of nature. So where is our free will? At what point do we get it? Exercise it? Spinoza says we don’t have free will. The best we can do is understand and come to peace with the idea of our own nature. Only God is truly free. But we are all a part of God, so if we come to realize the Oneness of things, we can achieve “the perspective of eternity,” which is the only way to find contentment. I like Spinoza. He doesn’t shirk. I’ll need to read more of him.

But we are on to Locke, with whom I have to agree, also, about some things. He responded to Descartes the same way Aristotle responded to Plato. In effect, he’s the “existence precedes essence” guy, although he can’t be called an existentialist. He’s an empiricist, in exactly the same way Aristotle was. Tabular rasa, nothing is in our heads except what get puts there by experience. And the things themselves that we experience have primary qualities (inherent to the thing, measurable, everyone can agree on) and secondary qualities (how an individual perceives them - taste, beauty, etc.). Of course, we do extrapolate from the things we perceive, and do use our reason, our logic and rationality, to create? Apprehend? things that don’t exist objectively or can’t be perceived with the 5 senses. “He believed it is inherent in human reason to be able to know that God exists.” (p.265). The idea of God was born of human reason. But how? Gaardner doesn’t tell us. He just leaves it at that.

Now for Hume. I think Chip is Humist, if that’s a word. He, according to Gaardner, is the most important of the British empiricists. 1711-1776. He ought to be important to human development, because he tried to strip things back to what we experience, which has to begin with infancy and childhood. Man has two types of perceptions – impressions (from senses) and ideas (recollections of impressions). But the mind can then put together 2 ideas, and come up with something of which it never had an impression – like a Pegasus, or a unicorn. The mind never actually invents anything, it just recombines ideas. So he tried to trace everything back to the original impression, in order to get rid of “false” ideas.

Like the Buddha, he had to conclude that there is no “I”: what I call I is a bundle of discrete experiences and impressions. “I” am never all these things at once. There is nothing stable about “me”; I’m always in flux. Bingo – Gaardner says on the next page that the resemblance between Hume and the Buddha in the way they put their arguments is uncanny. I guess now I know why Chip is such a fan. And Democritus is in there, too. So, there can be no enduring, eternal soul. “To prove religious faith by human reason was rationalistic claptrap, he thought” (pg.274). As many wise people have said, we have to get back to seeing the world as it really is – not as we have come by habit to expect it to be.

5pm Back to our British empiricists. Hume also wanted to make sure we don’t jump to conclusions. And don’t confuse reason with sentiment. It is not reasonable nor unreasonable to help someone, thus Hume rebelled against the notion (rationalist) that there is a natural law. “Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others” (pg.208).

6:30 – Good nap! I read the chapter on Berkley in bed. Essentially, he didn’t believe in anything. “Hey Rene,” he might have said, “how do you know its you going around believing things? Maybe you are just a character in a book!” Really, he thought we are all a dream God is dreaming. And he’s right, there isn’t any way to know for sure. All I know is what I perceive – I can’t be sure any of it is materially real. Glad I read it during the day. It kind of creeped me out. The problem he doesn’t bring up is this: how do you square that with a good, just, all-powerful God? Is he in control of the dream? Does he know that the dream people feel pain and suffer? If he isn’t doing it to learn something important about himself, then it seems inexcusable. Yet Berkeley was a Bishop, and a convicted Christian. How did he explain that? I’ll have to find out.

Now for the Enlightenment. Well, maybe not. It’s after midnight and I’m going to try to go to bed like a normal person.
2:30 am. So much for normality. The cat woke me up by puking right next to my head. Had to get up and clean it up, and the pain kept me up . . . And I’d just had a great insight falling asleep and praying. We were having a terrific thunder storm, and because she (my cat) was so afraid, she snuggled up close and didn’t care that I had bare skin. She lay against my back and we both fell asleep. It felt really nice to have her furry body there. And I said thanks to God for it. Then thought/prayed, “It’s too bad she has to be terrified to get close to me like this.” And I realized, duh! That’s how God must feel all of the time.

May 26
[discussion of pain – arthritis and shingles] . . . Shingles are just BAD, and so is PHN [postherpetic neuralgia], and they were caused by a virus. But it does prove Descartes wrong, because the virus only gets a chance to do its dirty work when the mind is over-stressed. And the body. It is difficult for me to sort out the difference between my body experiencing terrible pain as a result of my stress, and it all being my own fault. I can’t help thinking that I ought to be able to control the stress better, so that it can’t hurt me. How does that jibe with being more gentle with myself? If I blame myself it causes more distress, which in turn makes the pain worse. I need to see it as just unfortunate, like if someone was born with a deformed or weak leg, I wouldn’t blame them for not being able to run. If in fact all the pain I’ve experienced in my life is a response to stress, that is just the way my self is constructed. Wouldn’t I be kind to someone with a birth defect? Or who had been broken by life? Of course I would. So I need to be kind with myself, even in my head.

Gaardner just skims over the French enlightenment, which is fine. I’m pretty comfortable with them. Rousseau, anyway. But now we are on to Kant, and I can never remember that much about him or Hegel.

Kant thought both the rationalists (Descartes and Spencer) and the empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) were right, but both went too far. He was a synthesizer. We do get all of our info from our senses (I.e. we aren’t born with any knowledge or ideas), but there are certain conditions which influence the way we see the world. Like, we will always perceive things occurring in time and in space. He called them “the forms of intuition.” Those ”ideas” must be innate. Time and space are not “real,” they are forms of perception. How very quantum of him. Things conform to the mind, it isn’t just the mind that conforms to things. The law of causality, which Hume said we couldn’t directly experience, Kant says is actually a human attribute. The law of cause and effect is eternal and absolute, because human reason perceives it to be so. He drew lines between “things in themselves” and “things as they appear to us.” We can never know things in themselves, but that shouldn’t and doesn’t, stop us from talking about things as they appear to us. The way things appear isn’t wholly idiosyncratic, either, so no need to get all pomo yet. There are conditions all we humans are subject to, as aspects of our humanity.

In this way, Kant provides a way for us to go on, whereas the empiricists would have us saying there isn’t any point, since I don’t even know if I am real. Hmmm. I always thought I didn’t like Kant, but he’s kind of hard to argue with, so far.

In terms of the big questions, I.e. Is there a god?, Kant said we cannot have certain knowledge. Either way we answer the question is equally reasonable and unreasonable. Oh, I like him! He says that all attempts to prove God rationally are doomed to fail. Neither of our ways of knowing – sensory perception or reason – can prove there is a God, form any positive knowledge. So – all that can fill the gap is faith. And he nevertheless believed that it is essential for us to believe that God exists; souls are immortal, and we have free will. So, he smuggles God in through the back door, but unlike Descartes, he’s honest about it. He says reason did not bring him there, only faith. Those are his “practical postulates.” Ah, here’s a great Kantian quote: “If the human brain was simple enough to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn’t understand it.” (p.333).

But here may be where I disagree with him. Hume said it is our sentiment, not our reason, that provides our morality. “You can’t draw conclusions from is-sentences to ought-sentences.” Kant didn’t like this, so tried to find a rational basis for reality. Like time, space and causal law, we are also born with moral law. I guess that makes sense – if you are going to give us some innate ideas, then I guess you can give us whatever you want.

[later] I’m going to leave Kant alone and move onto the Romantic period. Really, the history of Western philosophy just flips back and forth between “reason” and “experience” over and over again.
Schelling is someone I should read. He, like Spinoza, saw no distinction between mind and matter. Both are expressions of the Absolute, or “world spirit.” Novales also said, “the path of mystery leads inwards,” as humans bear the whole universe within ourselves. Here’s a historian I ought to know about, named Johann Gottfried von Heider (1744-1803). He was the first to write about/see history as a process, and that each era could have it’s own reason, as could different nations.

May 28
Here’s a quote from Gaardner’s discussion of Freud: “This means nothing less than that everybody has an innate need to give artistic expression to his or her existential situation.” (pg.442) . . . I’m hopelessly behind in writing about my book, but its fine, because after Hegel its all thinkers I know well – teach, in fact: Marx, Darwin, Freud, and now Sartre. I don’t feel a need, really, to write out what Gaardner says. I am anxious to have access to other books re. the conflict/conflation of Greek philosophy and Christianity.

May 29
Well, there is a lot of philosophical stuff floating around in my head. Just read the last few pages of Sophie’s World. Gaardner ends with Sartre, and then the Big Bang. Of course, I’m pretty familiar with big bang theory, and have spent a lot of time pondering the implications. I remember being thrilled when I first heard [my physics prof] say that we are all star dust – every atom in my body was once part of a star, part of a nebula, part of that original stuff from which the Universe was born.

But what I never considered before was this: what if that yearning all humans feel for connection, that sense we all have of Oneness, of having once been all part of one thing, is some kind of “memory” of that time right before the Universe exploded into being? Or right after? When every atom was all packed tightly together. Actually, we weren’t even atoms then, just all the parts that would later bond into atoms when things slowed and cooled down and had created some space. As Jim just said when I mentioned it to him, that would require that atoms, or particles, have some kind of consciousness. Which I agree sounds far-fetched. But on the other hand, quantum physicists keep being astounded at the intentionality that particles and quarks have. Must have, to behave the way they do. Or at least, they behave outside time. Which makes sense, since in a way they create time. I mean, how does a photon “know” where it is going? It has to know beforehand how it is going to be observed, so that it can behave appropriately. The answer is really that it is a wave – each photon is in every possible place at once, until it is observed, and then it collapses down into one tiny point. Like an electron, it is potentially everywhere inside an atom until you “see” it – then it is only in one place. Or really, it was only in one place.

It is still completely mind-boggling. To think that the light from a far away star has been traveling in all directions for thousands of years, until it hits my eyeball, when its energy is transformed – it ceases to exist but is now part of me. How can one not be awed and amazed? What power it gives us! Just the fact that I can observe and be conscious of the universe means I am shaping that universe, making it take a particular form. Wild, no?

And has so many implications, for what we are, and what God is, and what we are for. And that is only the tip of the iceberg. It gets much stranger. But I’m going to have to postpone writing it all out. Its time to get moving. I think all I was intending to say earlier is that the universe is really strange, and that it isn’t that far out to suggest that there might be some sort of remembering going on. Maybe way down at the level of quantum foam. Which, in fact, if it has any awareness, never did experience itself as more than one thing. I mean, at that level, the entire universe is connected, and always has been. So maybe it is some deep awareness of that connection.

2005 - Free (from grad school) At Last! (May-Sept)

When I began this blog, I envisioned putting out small bits of my long-ago journals at a time, ekeing them out over a long period. But now I feel eager to get them all up and out of the way, so that I can be current and move on to the new things I'm reading and thinking about. Thus the enormous chunks and too-long posts, and the multiple posts per day, especially on weekends. It is Spring Break now, and I have a lot of work I'm supposed to be doing. But today is the first day of break, and I am in desperate need of doing fun things. So don't be surprised by the huge amounts of text! I'm hoping to get some pictures up tomorrow, but the ones I want are on my hubby's computer, and he is busy watching basketball today. This is how people celebrate their 11th anniversary, I guess : )

May 18
I allowed myself to read the intro to one of my new books, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, by Charles Freeman. Bought it while Mom was here and she didn’t like the looks of it. Hard to know if she had a point or was just prejudiced until I read it. One of the scary things about getting older is realizing how defensive one’s parents are about things that are important to them, and how that defensiveness hints at what they do not know.
But that isn’t fair. They clearly know a lot more about faith than I do, from the inside, and I feel sure they would say that faith is more important to them than any intellectual understanding or knowledge. But for me, being the rationalist I’m sure they taught me to be, I can’t believe something with my heart that my brain doesn’t accept. I would like to have faith – a relationship with a loving God. But right now I can’t – except on a simultaneously very deep and very shallow level, because I have to know what kind of god I’m having a relationship with. I don’t mean what he/she/it looks like, or even what church he/she/it most approves of.
Third paragraph I almost began with But. Okay, but how does one read scripture for guidance when one is always wondering, “Yes, but how did this get into the canon? Why this and not something else? What do all the other texts that didn’t make it have to say about this issue? Who actually wrote this and what was his political agenda? How can I possible believe this is what God said, wanted, thought, when there have been so many opportunities for human corruption?
I find myself reading the Bible with great intensity and excitement, but no longer with innocence. Hindus and Buddhists, even Jews and Muslims make far greater sense to me than Christians do. At least the Christianity of today. So, I find a need to steep myself in the history. If I am going to be a Christian it will likely be as a heretical one. And so I need to find answers for myself about how Christianity got to be the way it is, and see if there is anything at the core I can believe in. It is unfortunate that the Christians I know know so little about their own religion outside of the very particular brand they practice. And actually – it supports the thesis of this book; mostly what I get from Mom and Dad is “Oh, I don’t know about that and I don’t want to know.” And from my students, of course, it is much worse.
I guess I keep harping on it – and will continue to – because I find it [that attitude] confusing and distasteful. The confusing part is how otherwise intelligent, open-minded people can be so, not irrational, but anti-rational and closed minded when it comes to things that are truly important. It is distasteful to me because it often smacks of fear. To me, having “the courage of our convictions” means facing fear, doubt, etc. But sometimes from my parents I feel they are afraid of learning something, as if the whole structure will fall apart if one brick proves faulty. That’s not a belief system I’d want to stand on.
I find myself in the unflattering position of feeling contemptuous of a couple whose faith I have seen working, and whose love for me and for others is deep and unquestionable. And yet, why are they afraid to discuss the construction of the canon? I guess it is very modern of me, but I hate the idea of people believing things out of fear. I’ve said since I was a teen that I’d rather spend eternity in hell than believe something because I was afraid not to. And the thing is, I just can’t make myself believe in a God who would throw me in hell just because I used the mind he gave me.
The whole story of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge gives me the heebie-jeebies. It always has – or at least, as far back as I can remember. Why in the world would an all-knowing and loving God do that? He knew what would happen – he designed the creatures so that they would disobey, and then punishes them for it? So, if I genetically engineer a child to be curious, if I love it would I then put neat things in front of it and tell the child not to touch them? And if I did that, and the child touched them, would I be right to punish it eternally? And all of its descendents?
Jesus supposedly said something about how even imperfect humans know how to love their children, so how much more does our heavenly father know how to love us? To me, these two stories are in flat contradiction. If true, there seem to me only two ways to interpret the Genesis story. Either 1) What God does and his reasons for doing it are so incomprehensible that there is no point in ever trying to figure out what He means, or 2) those Gnostics who claim Yahweh was a lesser god who, on an egomaniacal rampage convinced himself he’d done away with the other gods, is largely in control. Not all-powerful, not all-knowing, just sort having a fit teenage rebellion.

The first thing that strikes me as I read this today is fear that it is going to hurt my Mother's feelings. I really do not want to hurt her or anyone else. So why am I posting it? Because this is a recurring refrain - not just with Mom, but with a few other Christians I know who often take my questions or doubts personally. There is this tender area, fraught with tension, surrounding all questions for which there are no or difficult answers. Its about disclosure, I guess. I want my cards to be all on the table. That's why I'm posting it, even though it might hurt. And I post this reminder, that just because I thought it, and even though I still think that there is a tendency to be defensive on behalf of Christianity as a religion, and on behalf of the Bible (I.e. for being inconsistent), and on behalf of other Christians, doesn't mean I'm right.

Anyway, the second thing that occurred to me as I read this was what a struggle it has always been for me to wear both my anthropological and my Christian hats at the same time, whereas that has been less of a problem when pursuing other faiths. There I sat, reading an important Hebraic myth, and it did not even occur to me to analyze it as a myth! For the first few months of grappling with Christian theology again (see below) on an emotional level, I seem to approach it without any of the tools I had just picked up with 10 years of study. I reverted right back to where I had left off, or perhaps even farther back.

May 22
In terms of the book Mom didn’t like the looks of, I’ve found a couple of errors and one area of sloppy research, so it does cast doubt on his scholarship. Overall, though, I think he’s pretty even-handed. He isn’t one of those people who is so pissed off at the church that he can’t be objective. So that’s good. And most of what he’s talked about so far I already knew. But it is helpful to have certain things re-iterated. I can’t wait to be able to turn my whole mind over to these other non-dissertation things!

May 27
I’m trying to get back to serious study of Closing . . ., but I feel like I need to read it side by side with Armstrong’s History of God, because I trust her more than him. And that ends up seeming like a lot of work. In the meantime, I just finished reading Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, and am about to start in on the sequel. She writes so beautifully, and I was beginning to feel the unfairness of examining Christianity with only the intellect, since it is the faith experience that is so essential to the religion. Russell deals unflinchingly with the most difficult challenges to faith – both intellectually and spiritually/emotionally.

May 31
[reading previous journals]
1994 – Humboldt was really good to me. In May of ’94 I was becoming a Christian for all the same reasons I’ve held since then. Except my faith is no longer so strong that there IS Someone who cares about me (us) and sees or makes a pattern in our lives. Maybe I’m just not allowing myself to make the leap. To feel the pull. Although, I finished Mary Doria Russell’s second book today, and she said, or had a character say, that what breaks God’s heart is not pain or hate or denial, but indifference. Surely I can’t be accused of ever being indifferent to God. Sometimes I’ve hated, sometimes been bent on knowing what exactly God is, sometimes I’ve despaired of ever finding Him/Her. But I can’t recall ever being indifferent.
I was learning about faith. What happened? Oh yeah, the cynicism of graduate school. Why did I give in to it? Pure peer pressure. A sense that I wasn’t strong enough, smart enough, myself, unless I joined the herd.

July 4
The other issue that occurred to me this morning is his [Dad’s] attitude and his beliefs about homosexuality. This one kills me. I found out a couple years ago that he is really prejudiced against gay people. We had a big discussion about it. I think we were actually talking about gay clergy, because the Episcopalian church had just ordained, or installed, a gay bishop. It got a lot of coverage here because he was from Kentucky. But I was there in { } for Mom’s by pass surgery.
It was also when he was in the middle of having to choose between a mediocre organist with the right sexuality or an excellent one who is gay. He eventually made the right decision, but it wasn’t easy for him, and I could hardly believe it. His feeling is that homosexuality is clearly a sin. It says so in the Bible in several places, and he said he felt we cannot practice moral relativism. A sin is a sin, no matter what the prevailing social norms. In theory, he adopted the “hate the sin, love the sinner” credo, but in fact I think this organist was the first gay person – that he knew of – that he has ever gotten to know, and he was certainly struggling with having to reach out to him Christian love.
So, for the church to ordain openly gay ministers, Dad feels they would be saying that in fact you can pick which parts of God’s words you are going to obey, and which you’ll ignore. I can buy that. I don’t agree with him, but it is a tenable position to hold.
He wasn’t sure if sexuality is innate or not. But I asked him if that were so, didn’t it mean that God had made them that way? And if so, how can it be a sin? He felt that even if you were born with the tendency to desire members of your own sex, you don’t have to act on it. The sin is not the feeling, it is the behavior. Never mind what Jesus said about lust in the heart being the equivalent of the behavior. Let’s just focus in on his belief that 10% of the world’s population must learn to control their sexuality – must fight their nature their entire lives – or they will spend eternity in hell.


August 3
Spent the rest of the day reading Mary Doria Russell’s latest book, A Thread of Desire. As I commented to Jim, that woman excels at writing books that are so painful you can barely stand to read them, but so beautiful you can hardly put them down. This one is about Jews in Italy during WWII. It’s set in 1943, when Italy has just declared armistice with the Allies, and Germany has promptly invaded. So all the Jews who’ve been trickling south and then make a break for Italy expecting a warm welcome are now fleeing from Nazis once again.
Someone like me simply cannot comprehend the hatred humans are able to maintain toward one another, nor the courage and faith of others that allows them to persist in loving others and God in the face of that hatred. We read and read, and I guess some write novels, and we study and research and some times are able to attach labels and theories to both phenomena – but they are really just mysteries, aren’t they? We really understand so very little of the workings of the human heart.

August 12
[after describing a quarrel with Jim]
But I’m asking myself right now, so what? So what if he never notices anything nice I do for him? I want him to live up to Paul’s description of love in Corinthians, but do I? Love doesn’t count the cost. Love does not keep a tally sheet. I need to do things for Jim out of my love for him. To offer as true gifts whatever I am able. . . Hindus, Buddhists and real Christians have it right – how can it possibly hurt me for Jim to remember more bad than good, or to blame me for everything, or to fail to notice something I’ve done, etc., if I am simply doing what is right for me to do, and offering myself to him as a loving gift? Do my duty without any expectations. And that doesn’t’ mean I have to do his duty. It doesn’t make me a door mat.
Okay, I know that I want to become more like the old me, only better. How do I get there? I think it would be good idea to get out Paul’s definition of love and St. Francis’ prayer, the “Where there is hatred, let me bring love” one, and read them slowly and meaningfully every day. Pray them, really. That would help me get my head in the right place before I start my day. Then, as the Buddha instructed, I need to watch myself. Notice, be aware of my behavior and ask myself why I’m doing it. As I become more and more aware of my motivations, using this forum to help me, I ought to be able to change.

August 13
Need to find those prayers I mentioned. I believe we are what we think. Our minds have tremendous control over our bodies. So if I have those reminders every morning of what I’d like to be, I think over time I will naturally live my life in accordance, without having to work quite as hard. As the wise Buddha said, having the Right View and the Right Intent go a long way toward helping one have Right Speech and Right Conduct.

August 15
One thing I forgot to write here is that I had an insight about the no-soul, anatta doctrine of Buddhism. I learned that the founder of Jainism lived and preached about the same time and in the same area as the Buddha. He taught that karma is a real, physical substance. It’s atoms attach themselves to the jiva and accumulate there. They are attracted by acts of violence and selfishness. The Buddha’s teachings make a lot more sense when seen in that context. I hope that by learning these things I’ll be able really show my students how important context is – that ALL of these religious doctrines took shape in particular, historical situations and formed as against other available doctrines – sometimes as part of vicious debates.

August 17
I also have not dug out those spiritual guides yet. I know I really need to. Need help focusing on others, remembering to make service to others my highest goal. Isn’t it interesting that the central theme of all the world’s major religions is to turn from the self, to reduce selfishness or self-centeredness? It does make one wonder if it isn’t all really just a way to make it possible for humans to live together. In other words, sociobiology is right, and religion, or the capacity for religion, was simply an evolutionary adaptation that allowed humans to be more successful by allowing them to work together more harmoniously. If so, the laugh is on us, isn’t it? Since more people have been killed in the name of religion than anything else? Of course, those wars are in direct contradiction of the doctrines of all religions, but what the hell.

September 27
As I was thinking about my religion class I remembered that I’d meant to watch “What the Bleep Do We Know?,” a movie that is kind of hard to categorize. It’s part documentary explaining quantum physics, and what it teaches us about the nature of reality and thus spirituality. It’s also part story – how one woman has trapped herself in a life of pain by clinging mentally to her image of life as a painful place, and how she reorients herself by applying the new spirituality of physics which is really Hinduism.
I think it is quite powerful and might really help the students to think about these things in a different way. But it is long. I taped it, so I’m thinking to put it to a vote . . . I’d actually be more inclined if I could cut the story part out, but perhaps it will be meaningful to them. The movie was meaningful to me in that it challenges us to take seriously the proposition that we create our own reality. Not just spiritually, or psychologically, but materially, physically. We create our own bodies, maybe we even created/are creating/will create the very physical laws by which our universe is governed.
They discuss the connections between how our neurons fire to construct reality in our minds, how our bodies then create proteins and other chemicals that get sent out to our cells. Every emotion, as the Buddha pointed out, has a corresponding physical change – we now call that a chemical. Our cells can thus become addicted to our emotions. We have some control – no – we have total control over that; which neural networks do we construct over and over, by associating certain things together? “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” We can consciously break them, and thus break our addictions.
What if I choose to break my addiction to guilt? To worry? To feelings of inadequacy? To fear about the future? Would I not then be free to create new ways of being in the world? There were three things that really stood out to me that people said. Two actually by the person they interview in the film who annoys me the most. Not exactly sure why she does, her mannerisms, I guess, which may simply be because she’s SO real it makes me uncomfortable.
First, a theologian (Irish), before her says that all the time and effort we’ve put, in the West, into constructing a jealous, rule-crazy, punishing god, is not only incorrect – it is blasphemy. Then she says, to paraphrase, “To think about the immense size and glory and wonder of this universe, and to imagine that our little specks of humanity in the backwaters of the Milky Way can sin against the Creator of all that? It is not possible.” It is, of course, what one automatically understands when they look at the photos from deep space – all those galaxies, all these huge, beautiful, strange nebulae, the trillions and trillions of stars – a God that large could not possibly be seeking opportunities to punish me. As someone else says, it is the ultimate arrogance to create God in one’s own image. Not to mention the tragic waste of time and energy.
Later she says, “Do I think you are bad? No, I don’t think you are bad. I don’t think you are good, either. I think you are God.” Goes back to that Hindu idea of our ultimate responsibility for ourselves. So the third thing is a guy talking about his daily practice of picturing how he would like his day to go, what reality he would like to manifest in his life. People like Shakti Gawain have been saying such things for a long time, and I kind of ended up treating her as a nut. But why not? If we control literally everything, then why cannot I have a day in which I have great energy and enthusiasm and patience for my students? And my husband and family? Why not write application letters that will knock the socks off the people at the perfect liberal arts school for me? Why not a day in which pain has no control?
This will take practice. I need to break many well-established neural networks and chemical addictions. But with time, so they claim, it can be done. And as they, along with the Hindu and Buddhist saints, say, don’t accept this at face value; Try it! See if it works! So I began today, and I’ll keep working at it.