It is easy to become disgusted with the world.
What is suprising is the number of people that have good lives that are disgusted with the world. This is a result of what I call baseline blindness, or blindness to how good you do have it.
We may have to take a certain amount of guff from our bosses at work because they have an over-inflated self-importance, and we may have to work at jobs that we don't like in order to keep that paycheck coming. Ultimately, this is not a very high price to pay in order to have a roof over our head and a meal or two every day.
The problem is that over time we tend to think of this as the baseline of our lives when in fact it is nothing of the sort.
On any given day a sequence of events may suddenly unfold that results in our suddenly becoming aware of just how good we had it prior to that sequence of events.
One may become aware that ones life is about to end rather violently.
In that very brief period between realization and actualization, our consciousness of things will speed up is such a way that everything moves in slow motion except our thoughts, and we have time to think of all the precious things that we will never experience again, and that we never appreciated when we thought that they would always be there.
Hearing a friend's voice on the phone, the color of the sky, these are going to be hard to give up.
Suprisingly though, our self-important bosses and our unsatisfactory jobs are going to suddenly be treasures soon to be forfeit as well.
One purpose of meditation is to eliminate this baseline blindness so that everything we see and do has a subtle shade of newness and beauty about it. Another is to eliminate illusions such as eternal continuity from our minds.
A third is to develope mindfulness so that one is aware of events as they unfold and thereby provide oneself the maximum oportunity to avoid or effectively confront those things that may result in our sudden end.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Esoterica and Science
In your host's view, the universe was shaped in such a way that the sincere could communicate with the Divine Ground. This is accomplished through such means as meditation, the I Ching, the Tarot, Astrology, etc.
Those who practice such things with diligence and sincerity swear by the results. I, for one, have found that the symbolism of the I Ching, also known as the Jou I and the Book of Changes, resonates stongly with me and provides me with invaluable assistance in pursuing my Heaven Path fulfillment.
Our scientist pals, however, tell us that these methods provide nothing but random gibberish.
They base this assessment on the fact that the information provided by these methods cannot be tested in a way that would constitute proof of efficacy.
On the one hand, whatever it is that the I Ching does (I will limit my discussion to the I Ching because that is the only one that has consistantly provided benefit for me), it does with absolute consistency for me right up until the moment I begin to test it. This is consistant with the Commentaries of Confucius which indicate that the I Ching does not like to be tested.
And on the other hand, this untestability actually serves as a sort of a weak, indirect proof that it is in fact a means of communicating with the Divine Ground because as we have looked at elsewhere, the Great Work depends on there being no objective proof of the existence of the Divine Ground.
If you feel the desire to explore the esoteric methods of communicating with the Divine Ground, then the fact that you won't be practicing a scientifically sound methodology should not put you off, because if it was scientifically sound, it wouldn't be communicating with the Divine Ground.
Beyond that (and I paraphrase Heinlein here), if you think turning your hat around makes you win at poker, by all means turn your hat around.
Those who practice such things with diligence and sincerity swear by the results. I, for one, have found that the symbolism of the I Ching, also known as the Jou I and the Book of Changes, resonates stongly with me and provides me with invaluable assistance in pursuing my Heaven Path fulfillment.
Our scientist pals, however, tell us that these methods provide nothing but random gibberish.
They base this assessment on the fact that the information provided by these methods cannot be tested in a way that would constitute proof of efficacy.
On the one hand, whatever it is that the I Ching does (I will limit my discussion to the I Ching because that is the only one that has consistantly provided benefit for me), it does with absolute consistency for me right up until the moment I begin to test it. This is consistant with the Commentaries of Confucius which indicate that the I Ching does not like to be tested.
And on the other hand, this untestability actually serves as a sort of a weak, indirect proof that it is in fact a means of communicating with the Divine Ground because as we have looked at elsewhere, the Great Work depends on there being no objective proof of the existence of the Divine Ground.
If you feel the desire to explore the esoteric methods of communicating with the Divine Ground, then the fact that you won't be practicing a scientifically sound methodology should not put you off, because if it was scientifically sound, it wouldn't be communicating with the Divine Ground.
Beyond that (and I paraphrase Heinlein here), if you think turning your hat around makes you win at poker, by all means turn your hat around.