Consciousness - Comment on an article

A friend posted the following article on FB and solicited thoughts. 

https://www.sciencealert.com/research-finds-it-might-not-be-consciousness-that-drives-the-human-mind

From my own perspective I do not think they are really saying anything new, but I think, like almost everyone with any big idea that everything is supposed to fit within or be explained by, they take it too far. I think they are observing from their own professional paradigm what is the proper understanding of “it is all Grace” in Christianity, or the crux of Taoism, or really any religion or philosophy has its concept for it. Freud and Jung, of course called it the unconscious, and said it was almost completely in control of things. I think what they are saying is mostly correct, but they take it too far. The best example of this is, “The personal narrative exists in parallel with our personal awareness, but the latter has no influence over the former.” At the absolute least personal awareness should be viewed as they view free will and personal responsibility later in the article, as something used by the “non-conscious” as part of a personal narrative. So at the absolute least, this personal awareness would have a function, which they deny when they compare it to a rainbow that has no function at all. When considering the possibilities of what is the least in function and meaning to ascribe to this personal awareness/consciousness they are discussing, I’d go further and say that the least is that even this personal awareness/consciousness is a tool used by the non-conscious to refine or hone the personal narrative and itself, the non-conscious. This is actually much more than the absolute least I mention above because, even while conceding it is under the dominion and thus only used by the non-conscious for its own ends, it modifies and refines that non-conscious. The personal awareness of the non-conscious ultimately being in control of even it and using it as needed and desired to bring about it’s own objectives, still changes that non-conscious and its personal narrative and thus how we feel, think, and act, or in other words relate to ourselves and the world we find ourselves. While initially introducing it as the least that can accurately be ascribed to personal awareness, I believe it to also be the accurate function and meaning to give it. And in those broad brushes I like to use, I’d say getting to that is the middle way and function of all religion and philosophy. Getting there changes everything and makes this personal awareness a great influence on the non-conscious, even as it stays under the ultimate dominion of the non-conscious. I continue after a friend asks why we do not use our reasoning to be more rational.   I’ll start with an observation from another recent discussion. We humans are social/connected creatures. Whether we can see it and admit it or not we are connected to each other and to our surroundings, which are connected to everything else.  When we are born we cannot even distinguish that we are separate from our surroundings and caregivers. Soon we learn that things we do seem to make those around us happy, mad, sad, etc, and that our felt needs/desires are sometimes at odds with our caregiver’s. This is how we first learn that we are also in ways separate from everything else. In order to find our place in this world we develop what I’ll call unconsciously constructed frameworks (UCF) for the way the world works and how we fit into it. This primarily forms with what I call visceral beliefs guiding our emotions very early in life, well before we develop any reliable thinking or reasoning, as we figure out what leads to feeling secure or scared and otherwise good or bad in our family/preschool/etc environment. Later we are taught how to reason and view things from our family’s/groups’s/culture’s perspective. Most of the time we are taught and naturally want to use our reasoning to justify and fortify our UCF, rather than to challenge it. I’ll note here though that the elite educate their children in exclusive boarding schools that do require constant reassessment and modification of their UCFs, which is what I think we’d agree is desirable. These boarding schools also demand civility and thinking of things from a collective and big picture perspective, even while they allow/demand the students to formulate their own perspective and regularly defend and modify it. Those classes less than the elite probably never demanded this regular reassessment, defending and modifying, but they used to always demand a collective perspective – benefiting the family/group/culture. Starting with the boomers as parents we seemed to even lose a lot of that. Unknowingly this meant that our primordial felt needs, which all have to do with being a connected and valuable part of things beyond us, could not hoped to be satisfied. I do not know if the elite were wise enough to do this on purpose, but it turned us into consumers looking for anything and everything to futilely try to satisfy, suppress, deny, avoid, etc, and distract ourselves from these felt needs that cannot be met without being a connected and valuable part of something beyond us. This consumerism also includes looking for and trying to adopt new ideologies for the problem and solution, and we generally get stuck fighting over which pure ideology is best or to implement our own preferred ideology, which keeps us blinded to the only fundamental truth there is, that we are all hopelessly inseparable. This results in the elite generally being pragmatists, while everyone else is at each other’s throats and fighting over ideologies, which are not allowed to be questioned or when they are questioned a new rigid ideology is adopted. Worse yet, we rarely even try to actually apply these rigid ideologies to our own lives. Instead we seem to be operating under the false assumption we need to successfully get our ideology implemented for all and then it will be easy or we will naturally follow it. Simplified the solution seems to me to be to find/demand a community that allows/encourages this regular reassessment of our UCF by expecting its members to accept and try to rectify the natural consequences of their errant actions while celebrating doing that, and where that community also teaches and celebrates satisfying our felt needs in ways pleasing and beneficial to one another. However, I do not think this can actually be a formalized community because the rules and hierarchy of any formalized community will prevent the continual maturing of its leadership and members. I believe it will have to be an informal community of individuals maturing as they reassess their UCFs, learn how to meet their felt needs in ways beneficial for others, and then patiently and generously demand, coax, encourage, etc, those they choose to be in relationships with to do the same. If we as a human race are going to survive without a catastrophe and learn and better way, that is my guess for how it will probably have to occur. We are of course running out of time, but that is generally what it takes for an individual or a society to actual reassess at a deep enough level to create a new and better way.

Mental Illness

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke Good stuff there.  If I had one wish, unfortunately I’d probably use it on something selfish, but a top contender would be that those struggling with mental health issues (including substance abuse problems) would realize that the root of their issue is that they have intuitively sensed answers they could not live for various reasons. Probably the two main reasons being they did not have a framework to put the answers into and whatever their community and surroundings were are not ready for that answer. And it definitely turns into a balancing act, finding a framework to put the answers into in order to live them without being paralyzed unless or until we find that framework or unfairly demanding we get to live what we think is our (or the) answer in a way that prevents others from equally being on the same type of journey. Another facet of this is that labeling anyone discontent with the status quo enough that they are having a hard time fitting themselves into it as mentally ill is a brilliant way to silence or at least marginalize our modern day prophets before they can get a head of steam and be dangerous to those in power benefiting from the status quo.

Sovereignty

The Father is the Entirety (including eternity in both directions). Jesus is The Way to the Father or being one with the Entirety. The Holy (whol-ing) Spirit is our innate guide to The Way to be one with the Father, which includes eternal life since we are joining the eternal Father. 

Viewed in this way it is accurate or legitimate to say God is sovereign over all because He is All. However, people (and their theologies) intuitively realize that becoming a part of it all means we are vulnerable to that which we are a part, which is of course completely overwhelming. As such, our theologies (personal and institutional) try to give God an intervening sovereignty that is not accurate or defensible when soberly examined.

In other words in exchange for trying to meet God in our weakness/vulnerability/neediness (the only place He can be found), we try to give Him the attributes required to make that seem possibly safe or wise. In reality when doing this we are limiting our experience of Him, which is the only way to actually know any of Him. This can normally be easily seen by how we subtly or overtly want favor/perks or a preferred status from surrendering/accepting/embracing God. The only perk possible from knowing God is becoming one with Everything (Him). This is indescribably wonderful, but does not include any intervening or alterations to our material world. However, it does change how we feel, think and then act and how those we interact with feel, think and then act, which has the potential to change everything.

And it is all Grace because all we are offering or can ever offer to receive this union and eternal life is our surrender to our individual weakness/neediness/vulnerability and thus need for it. Now to the extent we actually do this and join the Father and his ways, we will truly be a part of something all powerful and all good and we will know this and feel this. Unfortunately, we will still probably confuse how that came about and try to sustain in or re-discover it without the personal weakness/neediness/vulnerability.

Edit

Is Morality Relative?

I think you may be incorrect, maybe because you are assuming we are each (as individuals or groups) separate from everything else. Even if morality is completely relative, if we realize we are all part of the same thing and hopelessly connected to everything else I think we would want the morality of Jesus or the core of any great religion. I am not necessarily saying that all morality is relative, but I am saying the problem is not viewing it as relative. The problem is not seeing our connection to everything else and being willing to set up our society accordingly and then act accordingly. Wouldn’t we then mostly set up our society and want to act based upon treating others as we would like to be treated because that is how we would like to be treated and the world we would like to live in. After requiring everyone (and everything) to be treated with dignity and value there would be some negotiated tradeoffs, such as, between freedom and security, between the rewards for hard/dangerous/undesirable work on other behalf of others and treating everyone equally, etc. Now if we did not realize we were each connected to everything else and we thought morality was relative and we were in a position to be able to do so we would likely act as you suggest. ... It is interesting isn’t it? Those who seemed to honestly believe that admitting morality is relative (or arbitrary) would lead to chaos and all sorts of repugnant things actually do so because (without knowing it) they demand this arbitrariness or relative standard of morality for themselves by defining their God and his morality, often including lots of favorable exceptions or reprieves for themselves, the in-crowd. ... Right, saying morality is not arbitrary, especially when emphasizing a personal relationship and guidance, is actually the way to have it be arbitrary for the individual. Very convenient. ... But I guess I think you are right in that formulating and refusing to compromise from some ideologically pure way (rhetoric against arbitrariness) is what has kept people from actually coming together to realize their commonality and find good (arbitrarily agreed upon) solutions, even if those solutions are not perfect because none are. ... Being a part of things greater than ourself including the incredibly large and complex universe does lead to wonder/awe, which leads to our benevolent thoughts, feelings, and actions. It also leads to realizing (or trying to deny) we are a vulnerable part of things beyond us, which leads to all of our objectionable thoughts, feelings, and actions. ...

Fears, Resentments, and Conceptions

I’ve enjoyed pondering this since the only place to do that is in the awe and mystery, which is a great place to hang out. 

Getting to that awe and mystery happens to the extent I allow myself to simply be a part of it all. Part of that is getting past my fears and resentments, which for legitimate and illegitimate reasons say it is not safe or wise to be a part of it all, starting with my immediate surroundings.

These fears and resentments are of course what Christianity tries to get us to let go of with its focus on faith and forgiveness, as well as among what Buddhism would label attachments and also pinpoint as barriers to knowing (from experiencing) union with everything else. Until I can get past the fears and resentments, at least for periods of time, I will be trying to figure out ways to be safe and not experience more of the hurts that led to the fears and resentments and uncertainty that leads to fear, which together generate the worldly power structures that cause unnecessary suffering and keep us focused on having an advantageous position in the power structure rather than focusing on being a benevolent part of our surroundings.

To get past our fears and resentments most of us need safe times, ideally with safe people, to discover and explore what they actually are, and then also the courage/faith to act benevolently in spite of them and often in direct contradiction of them.

Buddhism correctly adds all conceptions, such as what we are, the world and its parts are, and God is, as attachments that keep us from this awe and mystery. Christianity does the same by telling us not to judge. Avoiding these types of attachments is important because as long as we are attached to our conceptions of things we will forever be trying to fit our experience of the world into these conceptions with resulting judgments. The practical effect of this is we will miss out on actually experiencing our world (and the awe and mystery involved) while we try to fit it into our (normally adopted) conceptions of how it is supposed to be.

I am not advocating forever avoiding having conceptions/judgments of how things are or ought to be. I am suggesting we need to find ways to suspend them to allow a deeper reality to consistently mold these conceptions/judgments, which is what I think Aristotle meant when he said, “educating the mind without the heart is no education at all.”

...

I worry I might have given the wrong impression when I said we need the courage/faith to act benevolently in spite of our fears and resentments and often in direct contradiction of them. Before we have found much of the awe we are generally acting blindly and part of this can wisely be guided by acting benevolently in the opposite direction of our resentments and fears. However, this is not a long term solution because it will leave us miserable, which we will eventually (even if inadvertently) share with others. The only long term solution is to prioritize finding, spending time with, and being guided by the awe.

Knowing the awe will be what is left when we let go of our attachments (fears, resentments, conceptions) and allow ourselves to be simply a part of it all, as it is and guided by this awe, that is the faith that heals and moves proverbial mountains.

Beyond the fact that being guided by acting against our fears and resentments will make/keep us miserable, which we will inevitably share with others, doing so will keep us enslaved to them - fighting them in ourselves and everyone else. This is actually a foundational pillar for our objectionable worldly ways and resulting power structures. As such those beholden to those power structures must keep us focused on and guided by our fears and resentments in order to maintain them. They also must try to crush those who would try to free/save themselves and others. It is precisely the opposite of the love Jesus describes or the ways of the Spirit Paul discusses, which is actually finding and being guided by the awe underneath and before the fears, resentments, and resulting conceptions/judgments.

Being Ordinary

Most suffering is only felt as suffering because we are trying to avoid being simply a part of it all, and experiencing the vulnerability of that. We demand more than that, which causes our separateness, brokenness (from everything else), incompleteness. When we really accept our place as a run of the mill part of everything else, we realize the things we once felt as suffering are actually the bonds to everything else and feel like connectedness, wholeness, oneness, and being saved even when objectively negative things occur.

In an odd sort of way the suffering from demanding our own way is our and God's friend because it is often the suffering that ends up making us surrender to just being an ordinary part of it all.

Entirety

Could it be that God is a part of each part of it all and we are really supposed to honor it all, moment to moment? Wouldn’t that be what love actually looked like and as beautiful as any other conception, as well as consistent with all the different ways Jesus described his path to becoming one with the Father?  Wouldn’t it actually be a lot more beautiful (like a God of Love) than a God that wanted us to seek him in ways that created divisions and strife?

Community

I’ll start off saying that it takes tremendous bravery/courage/faith (whatever term you prefer) to continue to seek authentic relationships after being hurt by manipulative ones, whether that is within a formal church setting or not. In other words it takes great faith to continue to pursue Jesus’ path to the Father (aka wholeness with oneself and everything else, which is the crux of the Sermon on the Mount) inside a church or outside. Our defensiveness and lashing out at others comes from the parts of ourselves we have not yet been successful reconciling to this path.

That being said, I am not sure everyone here that seems to think they are so at odds are actually in disagreement nearly as much as they think. There are many churches that (often seem way too diluted to many) are a great place to meet unpretentious fairly safe people who are genuinely caring and want a wholesome type of friendship/community. And many of those churches have leaders who are sufficiently humble or just like the comfort of sermonizing and not digging to deep into their flocks personal lives, that those wholesome friendships can and do develop that are fulfilling and life supporting.

Generally the problems arise when the leaders or flock (both are just as guilty) make some idealized conception of the church (and rules for how things ought to be done to bring about that idealized conception) the focus because invariably they are each trying to create a safe environment so they do not have to hide parts of themselves – become whole with themselves and everything else. Without realizing it they are trying to figure out a way to make actual faith unnecessary by joining or creating a group that is ultra safe, and tragically instead create a group that rejects most of themselves, each other, and life/reality.

So these fairly safe and unpretentious people we desperately need in order to help support us on our journey of becoming whole with all parts of ourselves and everything else (aka Jesus’s path to the Father) can be found within traditional churches and without, although they are fairly rare both places because they have to being doing the same thing and having some success at it or they will be stuck in wordly ways of rejecting the deeper vulnerable parts of themselves and everybody else.

Fitting in

I can relate (to not feeling like I fit in) but I was probably much more extreme, and of course I am not saying any of this necessarily applies to you. I really did not have friends K-12. For example I went home for lunch every day K-12 to avoid the pain of being obviously alone. Actually being alone was not that bad, just somewhat lonely rather than very painfully alone when in a group. When I was 16yo though I would drive 80 miles many, if not most, weekends to hang out with cousins 4-6 years older. Before that it was mainly just a younger brother and dogs that I could connect with.

The first couple years of undergrad I lived with one of those cousins and hung out with his friends and developed a hard drinking entertaining people persona and carried that with me to another undergrad and for the first time kind of had my own friends who mostly seemed to enjoy me except when I went way too far, which was not uncommon. Basically, I think I am saying I developed a persona/role/ego that was capable of without too much discomfort hanging out in groups, about a decade or two after most. While this ego/role/persona is something we ideally overcome to a big extent to allow authentic wholeness internally and at the same time with everything else, it was a huge step for me to finally develop a workable form of it.

Unfortunately, I have found that all groups demand everyone assume a role, even if that role is to rebel in various ways against that group. They also have something like stereotypes about themselves and their members you are not supposed to buck too much. In this way the group can have predictability so members feel secure if they follow their role, and this security is traditionally one of the main reasons people want to be in a group. So today, I am OK assuming a variety of roles in a variety of groups, but experience much of it as a façade, and I do not have much desire to spend much of my time like that. Fortunately, most of the time today I seem to be able to connect at a deeper level (than the façade) with almost anyone when one on one (or in very small groups dedicated to moving past the façade), and that is how I choose to spend most of my free time, when I can find anyone interested. 

Brief FB comment

Yes, most believe what they need to based upon their experiences/"life education" and make scripture support that.  Realizing this can be a great beginning for the freedom you mention, not to mention much closer alignment with the actual message from the author of the scripture who is writing from at least a glimpse of of that freedom.

Free will

One of the most interesting aspects of this Susan Blackmore talk (to me) is that she seems to think that if we gave up on the idea that we have free will that we would end up acting much more meek and poor in spirit as Jesus suggested we should or with much less attachment to things, including ideas and concepts, as the Buddha suggested we should. She does not explicitly go to this, but if you view it from a philosophical perspective I think it is where she is headed. And as counterintuitive as that seems (to a red blooded American) I think she might be on to something.

I personally think we have a tiny amount of free will, probably about 0.1-1% of what we have generally been taught we have, and even at those times it is primarily a choice to embrace or reject/fight reality. Even that amount of free will though when exercised changes everything downstream from it and used over a lifetime changes plenty. Most will not even entertain the notion of us having much less free will than we have been taught we have because they think that would mean we should not punish others for their actions (and they really should forgive others).

In a way it does mean we should not punish people for their actions but it does not mean we should not impose consequences for their actions. The consequences would just be much better tailored to actually changing their behavior to make them a safe and responsible person to have in society rather than punishing them, and if consequences could not make them safe for society they might still need to have some sort of humane sequestering.

At this point we should be honest and admit wherever we draw lines between safety and liberty the line is arbitrary and favors one or the other. And we should always error on the side of liberty because only the side of liberty leads individually and collectively to progress and a sense of well-being.

Theories as blocks

It really is as simple as Jesus showed and taught us how to be saved, which means joining Him in being one with the Father. This was by loving and serving others as He did with the pinnacle of that demonstrated with his crucifixion.

We have tried to replace this simple and straightforward path with elaborate theories requiring mental gymnastics in order to try to avoid actually doing the things Jesus taught and demonstrated. No other way actually works though because all the other ways are, without us realizing it, built upon trying to maintain our separateness and safety rather than voluntarily giving up our separate identity to become one with our surroundings/Our Creator and His Creation.

Erroneous theories like the substitute atonement theory are attempting the impossible, to be both separate (for safety) and yet one with Our Creator to be saved/have eternal life with Him. In fact the whole idea of being saved as a separate individual is antithetical.

The moment we choose (which often is more like surrendering than choosing) and to the extent we choose to be united with Our Creator, which would always look in some way like how Jesus acted and taught us to act, we are one with Him/saved/have eternal life.

His Creation that we are called to unite with is often violent, but the violence/pain/suffering that is inevitable from our inescapable connectedness and mortality is beneficial to the Whole and thus us to the extent we are united with It. That inevitable violence/pain is normally the only thing that actually gets us to admit our need for God and each other, where we might be so lucky as to stumble upon His Grace and surrender to It and become unite.

However, if we are violent towards each other, creating unnecessary violence/pain/suffering, it makes individual attempts to unite dumb.

To summarize, we are violent towards one another to try to avoid the inevitable suffering caused by our mortality and inadequacy as separate individuals and then develop theories to try to justify ourselves. This violence towards one another, trying to shift or transfer inevitable pain, can make the only solution of becoming one with our surroundings dumb. This leaves the only answer to be the path Jesus and then the apostles taught and took, which is to build communities where we refrain from violence inflicted upon each other and shines a light upon those trying to shift their own (personal or group’s) inevitable suffering upon others.

When Paul talks about Jesus dying for our sins, what that means is that Jesus has paid the price that we might join Him in becoming one with the Father the instant we choose. We know that we have spent most of our life trying to enhance and protect our individual physical and emotional security and status (which is what he refers to as the ways of the flesh) and in this process shifted the inevitable pain of our individual existence onto those near and dear to us and the less fortunate. So we have mostly acted diametrically opposed to being one or united with Him and if there was justice we would have to sacrifice and make up for these things before we could join Him. We do not because this is the price Jesus paid for us.

We are instantaneously and without any preconditions invited to join Him at all times, and that is what He constantly yearns for us to do, which is his unending Grace. However, it is also completely true that we will only know to what extent we have actually chosen to join Him by how we act, to further our own security/status/materials (the way of the flesh) or following him to look out for others. To the extent we have joined him we will WANT nothing more than to rectify our past harms as much as we can, to reduce any current harm we might cause, and to help others to join Him/their surroundings.

Mental Illness

Often what is characterized as mental illness is people no longer willing/able to go along with the societal or group/family crazy dynamics that we (society/groups/families) create and adopt to try to take off the rough edges or totally avoid the harsh life we are currently a part of where we and everyone we love dies and lots of other pain also occurs.

So at least some of the time (and I’d say a lot of the time) what is characterized as mental illness at least starts as intuitively seeing/feeling things too clearly without having a good solution for the problem that we are willing and able to work towards. Unfortunately since society/groups/families are so invested in their crazy dynamics and most help for those seeing things too clearly tells the person they and how they are seeing things is the problem, rather than accurate, the person normally develops coping mechanisms also to survive that are accurately described as mental illness.

Unfortunately, our mental health system has pretty much given up on ever seeing the accurate root cause of the problem and true solutions to that and has instead shifted to trying to help people develop more effective and less disruptive coping mechanisms, while still labeling them as the problems and ignoring the root crazy thing the person was originally reacting to.

The Road Less Traveled (by M. Scott Peck) came from the end of an era of actually trying to heal the root of the problem, as we went to drugs and superficial cognitive behavior therapy as the answers starting in the late 80s and early 90s full bore with very few looking back since to see if that was a wise thing to do. I’d say the short term results are probably better with our current approach but the long term results are not hardly positive at all. And there is good evidence that we are not really improving our mental health at the societal level with our current approach. Instead at the macro level we are probably getting worse rather than better. To be fair we were not very effective with a deeper approach either though.

The way I write is often confusing, my apologies. And I am perfectly fine with you having your answer and I having mine. To clarify though, I was not saying mental illness develops as a result of a distorted world view. I was saying the opposite, that its original root is normally a more accurate world view than can be implemented in our current immediate surroundings.

I actually think we mostly agree, but I could be wrong, and again we do not need to at all. I’m saying that something like a trauma or intuitively seeing things clear enough to no longer feel OK going along with the status quo of our immediate surrounds causes changes in brain functioning and chemicals that along with our surroundings still normally being inconsistent with what our intuition is telling us, leads us to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms, like lashing out, withdrawing, escaping with or without chemicals, anxiety, depression, creating alternative realities, etc. That further exacerbates the problem, including brain functioning and chemicals. So then, yes, a combination of drugs and therapy are often needed to find the best solution possible. The legal and/or properly prescribed drugs never did much for me, but I absolutely know they do greatly help a lot of people and are probably indispensable for many.

And of course there is a heredity/innate component to all of it also. Part of the exciting thing to me though is that if what I am saying is true, being sensitive and perceptive and thus maybe more prone to what we characterize as mental illness can be every bit as much as a gift as a curse once we work through things and find ways to live that are consistent with what our intuition tells us, both in finding our own wholeness and happiness and in sharing that with the world. And I am not saying this is the norm, but I am saying that I have seen it play out in too many great examples to think/believe anything else.

LIFE

I want to start up again with the following because I think it may hold a facet of a most important truth, and yet more than just words not being able to hold that truth, it gets that truth somewhat wrong.

Our faith is obscured by our refusal to accept our current internal (feelings and thoughts) and external reality. If as I believe, God is creation from its beginning though eternity (or even if simply still present as the Holy Spirit), when we refuse to accept our current reality, this is precisely what separates us from Him/It, and to the extent we do, that refusal makes us the dead burying the dead.

The path to LIFE (as Jesus taught), aka path to the Father, is by having faith (as Jesus taught), which means knowing wholeness/connection with the Father/Holy Spirit/Entirety is the only thing that ultimately matters and that wholeness can only be found to the extent we stop rejecting the parts that scare us, within us as well as in our surroundings. Let me say that much more simply. LIFE is embracing Reality by having sufficient faith to equal or surpass the fear of being whole with It.

The exact opposite of this, the dead burying the dead, which we all do, is trying to create an alternative reality where things are not so scary and we do not need such faith, probably including most peoples’ concept of heaven, which doesn’t seem much different than everyone there taking an eternally acting euphoric drug. This concept of heaven is basically saying they deserve the right to be eternally numbed from LIFE because they have so successfully rejected/avoided it. I do not begrudge them and if they cannot find and choose the real thing (LIFE) I genuinely hope they get the heaven they want, although I doubt that one exists.

If the crazy things I am saying are actually somewhat correct, how then specifically do we choose this LIFE, which if we can we will find to be bottomless Grace. It turns out to be an inside job because to the extent we find wholeness within ourselves, we will realize we have always been and always will be an inseparable part of everything else/God. The thing that blocks us from knowing we are inescapably a part of everything else is the pain we have experienced allowing ourselves to be deeply connected to things beyond us, and the fear of more pain if we allow ourselves to be whole and present today. Part of our wholeness with things beyond ourselves is vulnerability, which is real. However, as previously mentioned we are inescapably a part of everything else whether we realize it or admit it or not and thus vulnerable whether we admit it or not. So spending most of our lives trying to avoid this inescapable vulnerability is how most of us waste most of our life and opportunities to experience and thus know LIFE/Grace.

I am not saying we need to go out of our way to allow or make ourselves vulnerable, but we do need to find ways to accept our inescapable inherent vulnerability. This might be in prayer and meditation or communing with nature or having a heart to heart with a close friend or singing and dancing or doing something kind for someone else with no strings attached or allowing someone to do the same for us or many other ways. Whatever it might be we will need all the faith we can muster if we are going to truly allow ourselves to be vulnerable and present in that moment without internally walling off a part of ourselves. Just as importantly we will need to give ourselves the freedom and right to choose when and how we do this. It will only be sustainable and not exploited to everyone’s detriment if we allow ourselves that gift, and we need to at least start to believe the good news, that if we do allow ourselves this freedom and work to become whole we will want absolutely nothing more than to be kind and generous.

Slowly becoming more and more internally whole in this manner we will automatically find ourselves more whole with everything else. We will find ourselves more and more willing and able and wanting to do things for others without any strings attached. After all we are now whole with them and a part of a larger whole with them and doing something for them is doing at least as much for that whole that includes us. The thing that creates the strings is our unwillingness to accept our vulnerability, which prevents us from knowing or embracing our wholeness with them, which makes us feel/think we need to be repaid (have strings) for the things we do for others.

(Let me interject a quick side note here that I am not saying every relationship we have can be or even ought to be based upon each freely giving as they want. For one thing it is absolutely necessary that we have relationships with those not capable of this if we are going to bring new wholeness to the world, but even beyond that all relationships need to have basic negotiations and understandings for minimal baseline expectations from which each party can go above and beyond with generosity as they feel compelled.)

To related this to a post of yours a couple weeks ago, in a nutshell I am saying to the extent we try to bypass this life in a spiritual manner, we miss out on both, and conversely, to the extent we embrace our current messy life we find what all the great spiritual teachers and many of the great philosophers are trying to convey.

To conclude, let me confess that I am only decent at the things I am discussing here. I truly used to be awful though and these are my observations on that journey so far from awful to decent, with decent meaning I have my doubts that I am even average yet.

Belief and/or Acts

I would explain what sometimes is seen as a conflict between belief and acts in this way. When the NT in various places talks about belief being foremost, especially for being saved, that is true, but assumes that means a deep conviction in Jesus’ path to the Father as he explained it (red text). So then what it means to say only belief in that path is necessary to be saved means is that if we are trying to follow this path (red text) and we error/sin in trying to do so this will not be held against us.

When belief is a mental assent to a doctrine, rather than a deep conviction we are actually trying to follow, the mental assent becomes an excuse and alibi for not following Jesus’ path to the Father, although we generally do not realize this.

Interestingly and unsurprisingly, the Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism) says much the same thing when it says:
A leaf, a flower, a fruit, or even
Water, offered to me in devotion,
I will accept as the loving gift
Of a dedicated heart. Whatever you do,
Make it an offering to me –
The food you eat or worship you perform,
The help you give, even your suffering.
Thus will you be free from karma’s bondage,
From the results of action, good and bad.
https://www.bmcm.org/inspiration/passages/whatever-you-do/

Desires

We of course intuitively know we ought to be contributing to our family, friends, and community. The problem is we think (and are taught in a wide variety of subtle and overt ways) that this is mostly at odds with our own wants/needs/desires. So we believe our task is to suppress our own desires and serve others. Trying to do this we often end up needing vices to help us suppress our own desires and we often try to serve in subtlety manipulative ways to get our own desires met without admitting we are doing that or that we even have them to begin with.

Our desires are often somewhat at odds with contributing to our family, friends, and community, but our deepest desires are always about contributing to the communities we are a part of, whether that be a marriage, other family, friends, workplace, church or other group, or earth inhabitant. Spending the time and effort to get to know these deepest desires of ours and how to act upon them in ways that benefit our communities ends up being the only way to give without also subtly and/or covertly taking. As such, that is our responsibility.

We and our communities are heavily invested in trying to get our needs/desires met without admitting we have them though. Ourselves because admitting them makes us somewhat vulnerable and often feel very vulnerable, and our communities because it underlies most of our social fabric and hierarchy. As such, we may find great resistance to this path being the correct one and to implementing it if we decide to proceed on it.

Additionally, many of us have a few decades or more of practice and autopilot pointing in the wrong direction of demonizing, suppressing, and otherwise trying to avoid at least most of our desires, and this takes a while and concerted effort to alter. And even when doing everything right we are likely to fail as much as we succeed for a while in trying to live from our deepest desires in a way that benefits our communities, which added to our revulsion to being or feeling vulnerable and the resistance we might experience from others makes this path require the faith Jesus often mentioned as the thing that healed.

That faith is obscured by our refusal to accept our current internal and external reality, somehow thinking we know better how things ought to be and we will only join the present after we first make things different. I am not saying we need to accept and stay in a dangerous or harmful situation or a safe and meaningless one, but we need to first accept if that is where we are at to gain/find/be granted the faith to move out of it in a sustainable way.

We do have a responsibility to give of ourselves and serve, but if that does not come from the very foundation of our being as something that is an honor and mostly a pleasure to provide, it is inevitably taking us further away from that foundation and will have to eventually collapse to allow us to start from the only solid foundation there is. And to the extent we learn to give and serve from this source we will find the giving and serving actually expands rather than depletes that foundation/source. And that is some really good news.

As such, our responsibility is to abandon ourselves as much as we possibly can to discover, spend time with and act from this foundation found at our individual core and in the connections between ourselves and things beyond us.

I am not trying to persuade anyone that what I am describing is the same thing as being baptized in the Holy Spirit, but I am saying I think it is. The Body of Christ is creation from its inception through eternity, and being baptized by the Holy Spirit is claiming our spot and destiny as a slightly unique, connected and valuable part of that Body of Christ, and spending the time in communion with It to have It teach us how to live from this whole and united perspective. And the good news is that this whole and united perspective is both the external reality (truth) because we are all inescapably connected and our deepest internal reality.

All of our thoughts and feelings to the contrary are the pain of being hurt by the world and the fear of being hurt again, which are based upon reality, but being baptized by the Holy Spirit means accepting this real pain and fear to get to and live from the deeper reality of communion, which of course takes the faith Jesus talked about as the thing that heals. To the extent we actually do this the pain and fear are transformed into the very connection to the Body of Christ/Holy Spirit and go beyond bittersweet to peaceful and pleasurable union.

Now please do not get me wrong and think I am being negative towards people who have not found sufficient faith/Grace for this transformation. No one can decide to acquire it and be confident they will, and it is normally a combination of pursuing it and surrendering to not being able to acquire the faith by our own volition that helps us slowly build a foundation of it that mostly seems like successive failures, as we are without our knowledge building it. Basically, in this way we are surrendering a bit more to Grace with each struggle and seemingly failure. Then at some point, if we are really lucky, we realize this Grace/union is Reality and embrace our tiny little spot in It. At this point we realize intuitively that we have found what everyone has always been looking for and we did it as a result of our efforts. However, not from being successful in those efforts but rather from failing at what we thought we were trying to do. So in a real sense it occurred both as a result of our efforts and in spite of our efforts.

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I do have a strong preference for myself and others to error on the side of being too nice, but I also fully agree that this can be just as much a way to avoid the very real fear, challenge and pain that make up the only reality we actually have irregardless of what we try to tell ourselves our reality is or should be. And either way it equally and unfairly pushes the negatives of our actual shared reality onto others and keeps us stuck with the avoidable consequences and pain of trying to avoiding it. In other words coddling ends up having the same effects on a society as the powerful rigging things in their favor and thus oppressing the less fortunate. And our particular society at this moment seems to have a great deal of both whom think only the other ideology is to blame. (And I should put in the disclaimer that I have been greatly coddled in ways that have helped me come around to some better ways after life made continuing the old way impossible and in ways that have allowed me to stay way too spoiled still.)

Faith of our Fathers or our own

I do not think there are any safe roads (paths) to God, and that is why people normally opt for a safer alternative.

I concur with the late Carl Jung when he said, "One of the main functions of organized religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God." (I am not saying that is true among the initial creators and followers of what becomes an organized religion.)

If we do choose (or probably more likely find we have no other viable alternative) to going after the real thing we will almost certainly find we are always somewhat wrong and frequently very wrong in our beliefs and motivations. Additionally, we will find that we are often unsuccessful in living out those beliefs and motivations even when they are mostly right. As such, the only way we can actually be successful is if we are continually reflecting upon/contemplating our path with whatever connection we know from experience how to make, and then willing to admit and correct our mistakes as we realize them.

In this way, over time, our actual (as opposed to aspirational) beliefs become refined to something more and more accurate and we do improve considerably in successfully living them. At the same time we are generally drawn to new and more challenging arenas of beliefs and actions to live in and share the ever expanding Grace we find, which keeps us forever in need of a great deal of contemplation/reflection/prayer and the willingness to admit and try to correct our errors as we discover them.

Sin from the illusion of separateness

I really did not want anything to do with religion for a long time because it seemed to me that religion was trying to teach me that God created me as a sinner and then was mad at me and planning to punish me for being a sinner. I am still not sure if that is what religion was trying to teach me or not. I am sure I still want nothing to do with any religion that is trying to teach me that.

Fortunately, I was desperate enough that worrying about theories of various religions/denominations/etc became a luxury I could not afford and I had to focus on actually doing spiritual practices, such as confessing sins to the most trustworthy I could find, trying to make up for harms I’ve inflicted, engaging consistently in some sort of contemplative meditation/prayer practice, trying to be a trustworthy and generous fellow to those trying to do similar things, etc.

As a result most of my spiritual answers come from these practices, as opposed to any particular authority, whether person or scripture or textbook. I realize that makes me misguided at times, and acknowledge that. At the same time when people have completely opposite interpretations of what scripture or anything else means, I’d suggest they are being guided similarly – by their own spiritual practices or refusal to submit to spiritual practices and trying to find a way around them - and just do not recognize this or admit it. I say this to be transparent to help anyone who might read the things I write to understand where they come from. I also say it with the great hope that maybe it will encourage others to trust the process of spiritual disciplines and the answers they provide as the best and most accurate ever evolving answers we can grasp while also knowing they will always be incomplete and somewhat wrong and sometimes completely wrong.

With that disclaimer of sorts, I am going to explore what sin is, where it came from, and how we should view our continued use of it. My definition of sin is any action to gain an advantage at the expense of someone or something else. The root of all sin is seeing myself as separate from everything else, which is a good rudimentary description of consciousness, and I believe what the Bible is talking about with eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Consciousness is the ability to view ourselves as separate from our surroundings and evaluate how we fit into those surroundings. If you combine that with free will and the desire to survive and prosper we are bound to act in ways that try to gain advantages at the expense of other people and things, which again is my definition of sin. Essentially, I am saying the things that make us human are the very things that make us sinful, but also trying to present it in a way that removes an element of moral outrage from it since to be human is to be sinful by design unless or until we develop the wisdom to realize there is more to the story.

While it is true that we are somewhat separate from our surroundings it’s even more true that anything and everything is only defined and meaningful as it related to its surroundings. Each of us and everything else are inseparable parts of greater wholes and The Greatest Whole, which means if we try to prosper at the expense of our surroundings we are harming and putting up artificial boundaries with what we are inescapably a part of. As such, what I am defining as sin (and allowing ourselves or others to engage in it) is dumb as much as it is anything else. And viewing it as something dumb that we want to find wiser solutions for is often a much more helpful perspective to successfully find those solutions for ourselves and our communities.

This does not mean competition is necessarily bad. We often do not reach anywhere near our potential for ourself or our surroundings without being pushed by something like competition or calamity, and being lazy and not wanting to be pushed is as much taking from our surroundings as cut throat competition. It does mean that competition should not be rigged to favor those setting up the competition or their friends and that the loser is not crushed and is given a chance for further fair/level competition or providing other meaningful/valued contributions.

Judging

We can only be whole with/connect to/experience others and God to the extent we can be whole with all parts of ourselves in their presence. The things we judge in others are the things we feel/believe prevent us from being whole/honest/open in their presence. Often good reasons exist from our experience with them or others we project them to be similar to to feel/believe the parts we hide will be rejected if we expose them. So we need wisdom (a certain type of judgment) to help guide us to people, places, and ways that will be somewhat safe to explore and share the parts of ourselves we are (justifiably) scared to share and Faith in this wisdom, our fellows, and God to overcome this fear and move towards communion. To the extent we are able to become whole in this way with ourselves, others, and God we will also be gaining compassion for those that we once judged too harshly.