Life is a Journey

Posted in Self Discovery on 04/16/2010 12:53 pm by Normal Guy

For years now I have struggled with religion and with finding myself.  In the 1970′s I had read Herman Hesse novels such as Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game, Journey to the East, Narcissus and Goldmund and found myself wanting to change because of his philosophy.   That of course was almost 40 years ago.  What happened in the interim is life I suppose.  Still lost I went through many periods - some of which included extensive travel, another where I worked at a home for emotionally disturbed children and still another where I got married, moved to a small town and tried to be a responsible adult.  Through all of this I never could find the confidence and courage to stop depending upon others to verify my self-worth.  I was even told once by a therapist that I did not have a personality of my own but was just an extension of my mother.  That was at a point in my life where I even contemplated suicide, something Hesse had done early in his life and something I would contemplate periodically for years

It was not as if I wasn’t intelligent.  I had attained a B.ED at university but had promptly had a nervous breakdown when I first stepped out on my own to teach.  Failure was something that I always felt would eventually occur and as this was as high as I thought I could ever go this was the time for it – a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Finally, I did get back into education but always on the periphery as either a substitute teacher or an aide.  Believing in my abilities seemed to be beyond me.  However, it all brought me to where I am today and that is at peace with who I am and what I have done.  Now retired from teaching I still go in and substitute from time to time and I thoroughly enjoy it.  What has changed?  Why can I accept myself now when I never could before?  Certainly my accomplishments are not exemplary, but I have affected people positively including me.

The major change has been in how I view the world.  All the books I have read and all the people I have known and worked with including my wife, son, students, animals and colleagues as well as my own thought processes have led me to a philosophy of life that works for me.  Those Herman Hesse days from years ago had always been working at my psyche and then my son put me on to books by Alan Watts and I read a couple of books by Eckhart Tolle.  These and a propensity towards eastern religions, especially Buddhism seemed to solidify in my mind an attitude toward the universe that helped me reconcile my past and live in the now.

I believe in the Big Bang Theory of the Universe but not in the normal sense.  God was the Big Bang.  He is everything and everybody including you and me, rocks, trees, planets, empty space, stars – all that exists – every electron, atom, and molecule that make up the universe.   Everything has a consciousness and an energy inside it that is connected.  God is the universal consciousness that encompasses it all.  We come from this consciousness, are always connected to it and will rejoin this consciousness in a meaningful way when we die.  We will know all the parts we have played in God learning about himself through us.

How do we develop our own inner being to unite with this universal consciousness?  Meditation of course is a good way to quiet everything inside us that gets in the way – our Egoic selves - which Buddha realized causes our suffering.  Buddha did not mean we had to get rid of our desires, just that we had to find a way to release ourselves from the control of these desires.  I find, if I admit to myself that when I have a desire, that is just my ego wanting to control something or somebody and then hand that job off to that inner voice that attempts to tell me what the universe wants I realize that most of my desires are irrelevant.  The desire for Nirvana however is a suitable desire.  My son always said that Buddha’s philosophy had this dichotomy in it – Nirvana is a desire.  But the word desire was mistranslated.  Basically, the First Noble Truth states that life is unsatisfactory and imperfect.  The Second Noble Truth states that there is a cause for this thirst and ignorance – to try and fill our unsatisfactory and imperfect lives with meaning.  The Third Noble Truth states there is a way to overcome this thirst and ignorance and that is to strive for Nirvana – to realize your oneness with the universe and with God.  We are all the sons and daughters of God because everything in the universe is God.  The 4th Noble Truth is a package of self-cultivation know as “The Eight Fold Path ” that enables the practitioner to attain the goal of “Nirvana”.  That path is important but comes quite naturally if you try and live your life by calming your “Ego” and striving to strengthen and follow that inner universal voice within you.   The path deals with three major areas – Morality, Concentration and Insight all of which help one to discover and cultivate their inner self as separate from Ego and connect to universal consciousness. 

Much of the above paragraph came from a Buddhist website http://www.serve.com/cmtan/buddhism/fournt.html which goes into greater detail on the Eight Fold Path and gives a better idea of what Buddha really meant by the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path.  Please refer to it for this detail.

I sign off this first post now and hope to add more in the future.

 

Organized Religion

Posted in Self Discovery on 04/16/2010 04:53 pm by Normal Guy

Has more harm or good been done in the name of organized religion?  What with the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, witch burnings, heretic burnings, Popes with mistresses, September 11, 2001, priests defiling children, and other events, one really has to wonder.  How was anyone able to do any of these things in the name of God, Allah, Jehovah, Christ, Mohammed, etc.  Well, it is always claimed that humans did these things and you can’t blame religion.  But humans created these organizations and hide behind them in order to carry out their actions.  When does organized religion have to accept responsibility for what is done in its name?  It will probably never happen. 

So, people have to accept responsibility for their own actions.  This is where I think that religion becomes an individual experience.  In my last post I stated that God is everything and everybody.  He is universal consciousness and inside of us right now.  There are really about 7 billion different religions in the world because we have to discover that part of ourselves that is connected to everything.  God is everything and everything is God.  Have you ever wondered why inventions and discoveries of new knowledge are often made almost simultaneously at different geographic locations?  It is because we really are connected to a universal consciousness.  Discovering that part of us that makes that connection, is vital to our well being.  Our Egoic mind gets in the way of this connection because it always puts its own wants and desires ahead of what that inner voice tells us is true.  Organized religions because they are manmade have a tendency to attend to man’s desires.  This is not to say that organized religion is an evil in our world.  Many good things are done by religious organizations.  However, individuals within those organizations really have to start accepting individual responsibility for what the organization does, good or bad.  Congregations need to demand it.  Individuals need to demand it.  If we all get in contact with our inner being, this will begin to occur.   We need to stop desiring more things, more power, more money and more physical gratification and start desiring a spiritual connection with our universe. 

Seven billion people can have their own relationship with universal consciousness – God, and still belong to an organized religion but it takes those seven billion people striving for Nirvana to bring about any real change.  People accepting responsibility for themselves, their world and the universe can be miraculous.  Look at Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed.  They took it upon themselves to make a better world.  However, other humans have distorted their real message over time.  They were all sons of God because we are all sons and daughters of God.  Act like sons of God as they did.  Restore your connection with the universal consciousness that is always there to assist you to do the right thing.  Practice meditation – calm your Egoic minds, and get into contact with the real you, the one that is connected to God.  After a while you may find that instinct will lead the way. 

I know, kind of preachy but someone had to say it. 

 

Religion in America

Posted in Self Discovery, Uncategorized on 04/22/2010 11:08 pm by Normal Guy

Early America was a place for people to come and find a religious freedom that they felt they did not have in their native lands.  Some of these religious groups played a prominent role in  forming the original thirteen colonies as did their religious tenets.  The Pilgrims, Quakers and the Puritans are prime examples of this.  The Puritans tried to make everyone in the colonies practice religion in the Puritan manner.  They persecuted other groups, banished and even whipped people in order to bring Puritan conformity to the colonies but eventually freedom of religion won out.   Only the Salem witch trials seemed to permanently mar this zeal to practice religion freely in the new colonies.

Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians and Baptists soon arrived from England.  Later Lutherans arrived from Germany.   Freedom of religion became firmly established in the original colonies and religion became very involved in American politics.  Eventually however, the founding fathers began to debate the separation of church and state and they decided to keep religion out of politics.  This did not sit well with many groups but the founding fathers felt such a separation was necessary.  Indeed, many of the influential founding fathers were deists who believe that God did not bother himself with human affairs and that faith and organized religion were not necessary to prove God created the universe and everything in it.

When we look at America today, we notice that religion still has a grass roots appeal to many citizens.  Athletes are constantly thanking God for their exploits on the field of play.  Movie stars, politicians, announcers, American Idol participants and countless other individuals and groups are often giving credit to God.  This happens more in the United States than it does in Canada and if we do hear it in Canada, usually it is an American athlete saying it.  I suppose there is nothing wrong with this, but it does seem odd to think that God would involve himself in such inconsequential actions with humans when he has a universe to run.

Then of course you have the evangelical set who preach scripture in a manner that brings back ‘Old Testament’ images of fire and brimstone.  They and other right wing theologians seem to have quite a calling in middle America that no amount of poor ethical behaviour on their part undermines to any great degree.  Their strong influence on politicians and politics,  if not out of place in the politcal arena can be downright scary.  This influence can and has reach to the highest echelons of power – the White House and even the President himself.

In war, everyone seems to think that God is on their side.  In fact, George W. Bush is quoted in the new book by journalist Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, as describing himself as a “messenger” of God who is doing “the Lord’s will.”  If he is such a messenger, then his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were religious wars.  He certainly does seem to be a messenger for the religious right but he and the United States seem to be going down a road that the founding fathers of America termed dangerous.  Combining religion with governance puts us on the same slippery slope that has trapped many theocracies.  When you are divinely guided, how can your leaders be wrong and if they are never wrong what about the other side who claims they are also divinely guided?

Has former President Bush caused a “Holy War”?  Muslim extremists certainly think so.  He and his buddies have given not only extremists but even moderates reasons to doubt the United States’ foreign policy.  When religion gets mixed in to foreign policy, all hell can and will break loose.  Calm minds are needed that are connected to what the world needs.  Thus, more of a need to connect to an inner self that views an overall picture connected to the needs of the nature, the planet and the universe.  That inner voice will find solutions that work for everyone and everything because we are all connected.  Everyone, every animal and plant and everything is here because it is universal consciousness.  Everything is part of everything else and everything is God.  We are not separate. We are not islands alone in a sea of turmoil.  All has to work together and those things that don’t do this will cease to exist.  We think as humans, we will always be here.  Why?  Does the world really need us – maybe and maybe not?  I for one don’t think we are indispensible.  If we become extinct, that does not mean that our being is gone from universal consciousness.  The parts we have played and did not play will always be resident in that consciousness because that consciousness is God.  He is everything that has existed and that will exist.  God experiences life through everything that has ever existed and we experience God by tapping into that inner voice that guides us into making better choices and decisions.  If we let ego get in the way, we often make the wrong choice.  Religion and politics seem to focus on ego.  To make wise choices mankind must seek the answers that the universe will supply.  The answers are there if we truly want to find them.  The world needs to work together to find acceptable answers or soon there will be no more questions.

Will the United States be able to reach out to others.  So often they seem to think that such reaching out is socialism – a hated concept in the heartland of America.  But humans are a social animal and if we don’t take care of each other, who will?  Why is it wrong to supply basic security to citizens so no one has to worry about food, shelter, education or medical care.  Give everyone an equal footing in the beginning and just see what might happen to the growth of a country and its citizens.  Taking care of people is not a bad thing.  Social consciousness is not a bad thing.  Why are Americans so frightened of these concepts?

 

Noetic Science

Posted in Self Discovery on 07/15/2010 11:51 pm by Normal Guy

I first heard of Noetic Science in Dan Brown’s book “Lost Symbol” and it intrigued me.  Looking at the site www.noetic.org one finds that the word noetic comes from the ancient Greek word ‘nous’ which refers to an inner knowing, a tapping in to an inner consciousness, which allows one to access knowledge that is not normally available to our senses and can’t be reasoned out through rational means.

Now it seems that almost everything I read is leading me in the same direction.  For example, I just finished a thriller by James Rollins titled “The Judas Strain”.  He talks about a hidden language buried in our genetic code and backs this up by referring to an article in Science Magazine (1994) which said resoundingly that this is absolutely true.  No one really knows the why of this hidden language but it would seem that humans have a lot to learn. 

A couple of interesting points to make is that it is said we only use 10% of the capacity of our brain and a fact according to Rollin’s book that only 10% of the cells in our bodies are human and the rest are bacteria or parasites.  Is this language hidden in our DNA there to assist us in discovering our potentail over vast periods of time?  Does our inner consciousness delve into that language and discover knowledge that seems to be beyond the pale of rational thought?  Well, Noetic Science explores the potential of human inner consciousness and how it relates to the physical world and attempts to use statisically significant data to back up its claims.

We seemingly have a greater effect on everything around us -animals and plants certainly but even material objects – than we know.  This can be proven statisically by conducting stringent scientific experiments that study specific variables while controlling others.  I won’t get into this experimentation now but leave it up to my readers to search for books and information themselves as real growth only comes through being open to all knowledge, letting your inner being digest, ruminate upon and regurgitate it until conflict disappears and you decide your truth.

Nirvana comes through this inner discovery that we must all go through.  Buddha knew that such knowledge can really not be taught but he could define a life style that could possibly lead to consciousness using multiple ways of knowing including intuition, feeling, reason and the senses to discover how the inner self relates to the physical world.

Noetic Science want to assist people to discover and develop their own subjective consciousness through meditation or other spiritual practices, the emphasis being on inner knowledge and a personal transformation.  Secondly, this science is looking into ways of developing interactive consciousness in communities or between groups of people.  Thirdly, Noetic Scientists are gathering data about the physiological corrolates of consciousness including experiements in psi, mind-body healing, and subtle energies such as the affect of human bonding with specific groups of plants on their growth and health.

All of this is difficult to describe easily but it does show how interconnected everybody and everything is in this wonderful world of ours.  For me this interconnectedness has been brought home time and time again and I think it is happening to many others.  Look at the popularity of the movie Avitar which was about a new world order built on a closeness to the one source which is within us all.  So many people are discovering or proving the same thing without really knowing it.  The whole universe is interconnected and our job as human beings is to discover how and why?  By discovering our part in this dance through the development of our inner consciousness we can reach a place where the oneness of everything is self-evident.  This process is not for the faint of heart as you have to lose the self to find the whole.  Good luck on your own journey.