Purpose-Reality-Meaning-Life & catboxes

Mystery of Darkness or Bright Mystery of Light

Copyright 2009

Don Ray

“The mystery” Ben eloquently called it on Sunday, this life, the Source of that life, and our relationship with it all.  Ultimately, when we finally lie exhausted from our intellectual, philosophical, and theological exercises, it all does indeed come back to mystery.

It is not given us to fully solve or understand the mystery. But I believe we are empowered by virtue of our freewill consciousness to choose whether to see the mystery as dark and impenetrable, or bright and welcoming.  Is it mystery because it is hidden, or is it mystery because there is no bound to its dimensions, and each step of discovery leads to ever brightening light?  Is it mystery because it is inexplicable, or because none can explain it to us, leaving us each invited to discover it for ourselves as individuals?

Is the mystery cause for despair or celebration?  We are fully free to choose our answers to those questions, that freedom itself being part of the Mystery.  We may freely choose whether to let our heart and soul experience that which our mind cannot grasp.  Perhaps the great imprisonment wrought by modern science has been the decree that if we cannot analyze and measure something, it does not exist; this capricious and arbitrary decree leaves us in spiritual solitary confinement, all interaction, experience, and awareness limited to what can be slipped in through the bars of our physical senses and intellect.  Yet even with senses satiated with experience and intellect saturated with knowledge, we still hunger.  The mystery has returned.

With invocation of mathematical symbols, rigorous logic, evolutionary pragmatism, and scientific inquisitions we seek to dispel the mystery.  We need but faster processing speeds and greater bandwidth, and of course expanded budgets, to conquer this impudent “mystery”.

Indeed, we are free to do so, to turn our back on mystery.

Or, with the same invocation of math, science, logic, and evolution, we can turn toward the mystery, not conquering, but exploring, children at play in bright woods and meadows without bound.

Such a subtle difference in attitude toward mystery would at first glance seem inconsequential.  But in our acknowledgement of mystery we open ourselves to experiencing that which we cannot understand or explain or categorize or quantify. (Three seagulls fly over as I write!  Here?!   Now that is a mystery!)

The Mystery inexorably returns, however steadfastly we deny it.  Dark and impenetrable, it lurks behind our conscious awareness.  Or bright and promising, it welcomes us when we turn toward it and walk into the warm embrace of relationship with the incomprehensible.

Copyright 2009

Don Ray      S.D.G.

Economic madness

Copyright 2008

Don Ray

An economic system based on utterly contrived and artificial fabrications?!…..subject to the whims of mob psychology and panicked stampedes of wild eyed herds?!

What madness is this?!  Doesn’t it make you long for the security of the gold standard, or at least the silver standard, or at least a cash-based economy?

….those secure and dependable economic systems worked for thousands of years, based on something tangible and real, like humanity’s infatuation with shiny baubles. 

Of course relative poverty or riches of a nation depended on whether this spring’s galleon sank in a storm.  Isn’t that a remarkable thing?  The fate of a nation, would its people be able to obtain food and buy a new ox cart, depended on pillaging and shipping shiny minerals from a far off land. 

When this spring’s shipments of gold got captured by pirates, surely the people of Spain or Venice or Egypt wondered why suddenly their labors and lives and families were seemingly worth less, and their nation’s prospects suddenly insecure…..because some yellow blocks of metal wound up in that other country’s temple instead of our temple?

Might it be that madness is intrinsic in all economic systems that place a contrived, arbitrary, psychologically based value on objects, materials, or stocks?

When the gold shipment did not arrive at the port, were your ancestor’s worth, labor, and time, really of less value?

When the stock market plummets this morning, is your worth, is your labor, is your time, actually of less value than it was yesterday?

On the day after the bullion sank or the market plummeted, do we need less or want less? 

Our economic systems historically turn from riches to rags based on a monarch’s tantrum or the investor herd stampeding over a cliff. 

I certainly offer no brilliant insight into how to construct an economic system not fundamentally based on unstable psychology, irrational whims, and consumer madness.  But perhaps if the royalty and the business owners, the conquistadors and the investors, and the peasants and the consumers realized the capricious, arbitrary, psychological nature of our economic systems, whether based on gold or hedge-fund derivatives, we would take those economic systems a little less seriously.  And because of the arbitrary, adrift-in-the-psychological-winds nature of our economies, taking economies less seriously would itself render them more stable, and our lives more secure.

 Copyright 2008

Don Ray

key terms: economy; collapse; economic foundation; financial system; monetary system

Judge, Jury, and Prosecution in the Trial of God

Don Ray

Copyright 2009

What about that fact that the fundamental, God-created nature of our being seems pretty much opposed to the high spiritual state to which we are supposedly called?

Protection of the self, optimizing survival, avoiding pain, maximizing comfort and security……there we have the basic, universal components of the human being.

That is our starting point from which to try to attain spiritual purity?!

My gosh, high spiritual calling is a calling to the antithesis of our very God-created nature!  Striving for spiritual purity is no small undertaking!

To grow in courage, in selflessness, in generosity, in self-sacrifice, in peace, this is almost like telling God S/He blew it and we’re going to strive to become the opposite of what S/He created!

I thought of this as I watched ‘Tasha kitty hunt bugs and lizards earlier today.  She is being exactly as cats were created to be, utterly devoid of mercy, compassion, and any empathy for that baby lizard scurrying through the grass between the rocks, the lizard trying to dodge little black paws pouncing on and around it.

Are we different from the programmed 'Tasha kitty?  In trying to become Christ-like, or Buddha-like, or Mohammed-like, we are not even starting from ground zero, we’re starting from way below zero, a handicap start so profound as to make you question whether to bother running the race.

It is awfully natural to bear a grudge, to want revenge, to feed yourself before the other guy, and to feed your comfortable vehicle with gasoline made from corn when one tank full of that gasoline (or the corn that produced it) could have fed a starving village for a month.

We fill out our application for admission to Heaven while every cell of our human nature seems programmed to invest all our energy in protecting ourselves and optimizing our enjoyment.

Kind of seems like a goofy system to produce residents for some eternal Heaven, don’t you think?  “Let’s program ‘em with all kinds of self-oriented survival instincts, limit their intellect, wire pain and fear and lust signals directly to the central control circuits of their brain, then make them overcome all those natural tendencies for surviving a few years on earth if they want their soul to survive for eternity.”

This hardly seems sporting! 

So what witnesses can the weary defense attorney’s for God call to the stand to counter this incriminating testimony and try to salvage that image of a loving, compassionate Supreme Being that the institutional PR agencies have worked so hard to polish for the past thousand years?….(while ignoring the previous few millennia when the institutional religions painted God(s) as vengeful, wrathful, arbitrary, jealous, and demanding, a much easier PR assignment by the way).

Maybe this spiritual court-case drama will be resolved by a surprise ending, concluding in a shocking twist of events as a former witness for the prosecution breaks down under cross-examination, revealing what really happened in that infamous Garden. 

Or maybe the witnesses for the prosecution, those witnesses in our own hearts, will begin to question what they saw.  Maybe some new evidence, some new evidence of the heart, will reveal that along with the innate ability to hunt and kill and survive and market and profit, we also feel other behavioral influences, influences not always cultivated and encouraged, but still undeniable; tuggings of compassion and empathy, awareness of tenderness and cuteness, an ability to recognize beauty and the sublime and right and wrong.

For all our insistence that we are as programmed as my cat, naturally seeking to kill critters smaller than us, determined to define and defend our territory, and consistently choosing the softest chair to sleep in, under cross-examination we cannot quite deny that we do sense and feel and discern other levels of awareness, awareness that gives us conscience, and truth be known, awareness that gives us free Choice.

That saintly behavior we are told to follow, so directly in contradiction to our God- created nature, is perhaps not as impossible as we would like it to be. 

And then there is that other extenuating circumstance.  For all our condemning testimony that God demands we behave in ways directly counter to the instinctive nature we were supposedly given by that God, in fact, transcripts contradict our testimony.  It seems the record shows that quite consistently God has said we do not have to attain saintly behavior in contrast to our worldly nature.  Rebellious tribes still enter promised lands, zealous persecutors of the faithful still get a second chance at serving that faith, thieves and prostitutes gain entry along with, and maybe in front of, the well dressed and properly behaved.

I think the trial of God for allegedly creating our human natures to fail Heavenly entrance requirements will end in a hung jury……as it always does……ample evidence and arguments supporting the premise of both sides.  The jurors, each of us when we are not in the witness box for the prosecution, are each left to search their own hearts and ask themselves the verdict they want.  

Just keep in mind how many court dramas end with the star witness for the prosecution instead finding him/herself on trial. 

Copyright 2009

Don Ray

key terms: Heaven; getting into Heaven;

The Invention of Religions

Copyright 2008

Don Ray

This morning I have some sense of things unfolding within the Purpose.  Perhaps I have that sense this morning because everything seems so totally hosed up in my life, and I desperately need that sense of “it will be OK, it’s all for a reason”.

There is always that question, how much of our faith and belief arises out of simple desperation, for without faith and belief we could not go on.

I don’t subscribe to such a theory though, at least not usually.

Sure, we may convolute our beliefs to conveniently ease our pain and make ourselves the ultimate winners over the bad guys and guarantee that we go to Heaven.  The fine details of our beliefs, at which altar we burn candles and to which saint we pray, certainly appear to outsiders as purely self-contrived hokum.

But I believe that overall, “believing” in the first place does not arise from simply a desperate mental gymnastic providing escape from our wretched worldly condition.  For you see, it would be far easier to simply not care about our condition.  A huge portion of our misery arises from grief and loss and emptiness and loneliness.  If we are going to look for a way out of our misery via mental gymnastics, then it would be far easier to simply cease to care enough to grieve and sorrow, instead of contriving elaborate models of gods and heavens, models that by their nature must fly in the face of worldly common sense.  Of course many people do resort to this former recourse, turning off their feelings, compassion, and connection as a way to avoid the otherwise inevitable, overwhelming grief and sorrow.

But of course there is still that inconvenient little matter of our own death, and our programmed fear of that death.  That fear of our own annihilation is not so readily turned off by whim and wish.  So that fear of oblivion certainly provides ample motive to create elaborate models of afterlives and heavens. 

So is that the source of all our religions?  We’re simply too scared to face the unavoidable reality of our pending demise so, like frightened children, we concoct elaborate tales and models and faiths to ease our blind date with death?

That premise is actually hard to argue against.  Without question, uncountable masses have for millennia engaged in ritual, sacrifice, and general towing of the social line out of fear of eternal oblivion or hell.  As one of the few inhibiting influences on our enthusiastic propensity for interpersonal larceny and violence, belief in a hereafter has played a pivotal role in fostering at least the occasional fleeting blossoming of civilizations, such as they are.  But “blossoming civilizations” digresses to a different topic for another time.

Returning to the premise that simple cowardice about the prospect of the eternal demise of our own personal consciousness underlies the foundation of mythologies and religions, we need to look more closely at the nature of true faith.

I have long argued that a significant number of the people in church, synagogue, temple, or mosque on any given morning are not even remotely committed to the beliefs represented by that institution.  Their participation simply provides an insurance policy, their alms paying the premiums, to ensure entry into paradise.

That promise of eternal life is the greatest marketing pitch of all time, putting to shame even the promise of boundless sex that comes with every soda, soap, and sports car sold today.  You better believe, that heaven and eternal life sales pitch has, does, and will pack the house on Sabbath morning.

But if we look closer at those people on their knees on Sunday, Saturday, or Friday morning, we see some, in fact, more than a few, for whom the ritual and liturgy and rules and regulations are not actually the most important thing.  We see people that don’t just follow the rules about “don’t do this and don’t think that”, but proactively do actions, actions of senseless compassion and irrational generosity.

We see devotees for whom their religion is not belief and guidelines, but a way of living, a way of bringing their God into the world.  We see people not assaulting others’ lives in the name of religion, but giving their own lives in the name of a spirit of compassion.

We see people not seeking to please their God by robes, rites, and ritual, but joyfully seeking to invite their God into their hearts, lives, and activities.

In how such lives are led we see a compassionate faith that goes far beyond superficial religion.

This we cannot explain by reference to a fear of death that motivated myths of Heaven.

In the cold, analytical evaluation of beliefs, religions, and institutions, humanity’s almost universal fear of personal end can certainly be invoked as a pretty darned significant motivator for tales of gods eternal and paradise never ending.

But such evaluation of history of religion cannot experience, cannot feel, that core of faith that goes far beyond mere self-preservation.  Inarguably, fear of death makes for one heck of a marketing opportunity for any religion peddling eternal life.  But in the eyes, hearts, souls, giving, compassion, warmth, tolerance and ready forgiveness of some of the faithful, we experience factors that do not lend themselves to ready analysis based on logic of worldly needs.

We find something more, something deeper, a deeply personal, selfless willingness to sacrifice that arises not from mere recitation of credos.

In that which is intangible and immeasurable, in a gentle touch, in an unconditional welcome, we find the essence that testifies to the foundations that underlie spiritual awareness.  From that foundation, into the world and distorted by the world, grow our various religious institutions with their structures and systems that must accommodate our fears and human nature. 

That foundation of nascent spiritual awareness speaks of Truth, and Spirit, and Source, and the nature of our relationship to that Truth, Spirit, and Source.  That foundation, though often well hidden and disguised, underlies much of what we call “religion”.

Much of the history of church and religion can indeed be analyzed by, and in its superficial forms explained by, the sciences of sociology, psychology, and anthropology. 

But at the intensely personal level, that level of individual Choice of how to respond to your world, your life, and the person standing before you, we come face to face with those foundational issues of spirit.  In the many moments of each day when we choose whether to strive for deep awareness of that living, breathing, feeling person before us; when we choose whether to look up at the heavens or down at our own feet; when we choose whether to open to whatever might lie beyond us or to remain closed in our own needs and fears, then we share a moment that every human has, does, and will experience.

Those are the moments of personal awareness of Spirit, even if dim and initially unrecognized, that through human history have given birth to faiths borne not of fear, but of courage. 

Key terms: "development of religions"; "fear of death"; "eternal life"; "invention of religions"; "reason for religions"; "purpose of religions"; "sociology of religion"; "evolution of religions"; "psychology of religion"

Copyright 2008

Don Ray

S.D.G.

Seeking a God upgrade

Copyright 2008

Don Ray

The fact is, the unremitting harshness, unrelenting suffering, and inevitable death that comprise this temporal world stand as almost insurmountable barriers to many seekers trying to discern a loving, compassionate creator.

From even my relatively gentle exposure to human suffering I can understand why Gnostics and others would indict this world and its creator as evil, or at least not particularly adept at love and compassion.

Yet we can find love in the world, in fact we can create love in the world.  That fact seems all the more outrageous considering the brutal ambient in which that love must be instantiated.

Indeed, sometimes it seems this is hardly a loving world….other than the beauty we choose to see and the love we choose to create.

We can look at this world and summarily declare it harsh and brutal, along with its creator.  Like the Gnostics, the aesthetics, the mystics, we can then invest our life in seeking some other higher world, in search of a more desirable creator.

Or we can surrender to the world’s nature, immersing in it, seeking to saturate our senses with at least whatever temporary, carnal pleasures we can briefly salvage.

Or, in our freedom, we can choose to do something about the nature of this world, not running from it, not immersing in it, but declaring our intent to claim our individual potential as one created in the image of God.

Nothing in this harsh world, not an evil demigod creator, not some malevolent underworld spirits, not any institutional perversion of religion, not Satan and his numberless minions, keep us from choosing to love.

Escape into pleasant meditation or immersion into exhausting debauchery, exotic spheres of spiritual transcendence or reductionist nihilism….these responses to the harsh and loveless cruelty of this world do not excuse us from loving, in whatever little sphere of influence we find ourselves, with whatever meager abilities we possess.

How dare we blame God for this loveless world! Let us not deny its harshness,  but let us not deny our complicity in that harshness.

Fine, see God as heartless or non-existent, but know that in your response to that god’s, or non-god’s, world, you define yourself.

 Fine, the world is merciless, God’s Creation is unremittingly cruel, but what has that to do with how you choose to shape your Youniverse?

Those that cannot believe in a loving God because they see so little love and compassion in this harsh world are simply being reasonable, rational, and observant. 

But I know that even in the face of all the horrors, grief, and loneliness that fill this world, any individual who freely and defiantly chooses to compassionately love anyway will find their light illumines a dark corner; there in that dim but warming glow, they will see theirs is not the only love;  and in the faces newly revealed by that individual’s waxing light will be seen the face of God, present here, in Love, when invited by our freely chosen acts of selfless compassion.

Copyright 2008

Don Ray

S.D.G.

key words: Gnostic Creator God mystic compassion merciless cruel purpose