I'm glad I named this blog Church of the Churchless when I started it up back in 2004. But since I no longer adhere to any religious dogma, I'm free to experiment with my churchlessness.
So here's a mini-sermon from the Church of What the Fuck. The name came to me yesterday as I was thinking some more about why I started to disagree with what Tim Freke was saying in his book, "The Mystery Experience."
(Reasons described in my previous blog post, "Allow cosmic mystery to live, not killing it with religion.")
As I read deeper into Freke's book this morning, I learned that he's big into God is Love. Well, I've got no problem with love. In fact, I love love. But I'm not attracted to the sort of lovey-dovey spiritual God is Love stuff that clearly turns Freke on.
Especially when the source of that love, the ground of that love, is believed to be cosmic being -- which Freke considers to be unconscious of itself until conscious creatures like us humans come along and start loving, along with all the other stuff we experience.
This is conjecture.
Yes, love is real. It's part of what we Homo sapiens do.
However, there's no good reason (nor any good intuition) to support a belief that what lies in the realm of Mystery beyond all human knowing is love. While I'm not out to be a love killjoy, it irks me when people claim that love is the wellspring of existence.
Here's what we know about the wellspring of existence: nothing.
Nobody has any idea why there is something rather than nothing, or even if that question makes any sense. So nothing is known about existence pure and simple, which some prefer to call being.
I love to ponder the mystery of existence. That's why I bought Freke's book, "The Mystery of Existence." I loved the title. But I can't accept God is love as the essence of that mystery. I much prefer three other words.
What the fuck? or What the fuck!
(It'd take a whole other sermon to discuss what a difference the ? and ! make to these three holy words; brief answer is that they differ somewhat as to how fuck is used as an intensive; aspiring theologians in the Church of What the Fuck may wish to study here and here.)
What the fuck is my preferred way of relating to cosmic mystery. It's a terrific phrase, pregnant with meaning, as befits its sexual overtones. Here's the Wiktionary definition:
-
- (vulgar) Used to express astonishment, shock, incredulity, or disbelief (as a shortened form of expressions such as "What the fuck is going on?", "...are you doing?", or "...is that?").
- (vulgar) Used to express nonchalance or the dismissal of any consequences of something one is about to do. I finally said “eh, what the fuck” and quit my job.
Beautiful.
What the fuck? exactly expresses, both emotionally and cognitively, how I feel when I envision the mystery of existence -- how it is that here I am, doing what I'm doing on planet Earth, which is circling one of hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe, which came into existence some fourteen billion years ago, yet existence itself has existed for... What the fuck?... nobody knows... probably eternally.
So since nobody has any idea about what existence/being is all about; since nothing is the only honest answer to what is known about the mystery of existence -- I choose to proclaim a truthful What the fuck? before the majesty of our not-knowing, rather than the much less defensible God is love.
Leave mystery mysterious. Don't contaminate cosmic mystery with human conjecture. Honor honest not-knowing. These are the main points of my first Church of What the Fuck sermon.
I'll end with a preview of a follow-up sermon, where I'll discuss the sacred differences between What the fuck! and What the fuck? As noted in the Wiktionary definition above, What the fuck! expresses nonchalance and lack of regard for consequences.
I'm not suggesting this as a wise course of action in many circumstances, such as smoke coming out of an electrical outlet in your home, or a hacking cough that won't go away. No, I'm talking about a sense of cosmic nonchalance.
What the fuck! is a highly recommended attitude for those in recovery from religious dogmatism, rigid commandments, fear of falling into the Devil's hands, and other fundamentalist bullshit. If you feel like doing something, and can't think of any reason not to other than your religious conditioning, embrace...
What the fuck! Just do it.
Blogger Brian - I surmise that you are repulsed by the phrase "God is Love" because of the common understanding of the two nouns in the sentence. When the word "God" is detected, there is some vague notion of a separate being who is in complete control of everything. "Love" creates a mental image of pro-active regard toward an object, most notably another human being. Put them together in a sentence, and you come away with the notion that behind the scenes is a primary reality that actually cares about you.
When I hear or see the sentence "God is Love", I humbly acknowledge that "God" is another word for "Reality", and "Love", for me, is the fact that absolutely anything that happens has a de-facto status of being allowed, and that whatever happens makes no difference to "God".
There is no explaining anything. No explanation is necessary. So, quite definitely - God is Love.
Tim Freke (with a "k", not a "g")would mosat likely agree.
Posted by: Willie R | June 11, 2012 at 05:11 AM
Willie R, thanks for pointing out my "Frege" misspelling. I started out correctly with Freke, then somehow shifted to Frege halfway through my second post about his book, and continued on Frege'ing in this post (until I edited it).
Evolution is proven! Random mutations can be passed on to future generations.
I like your way of looking upon "God is love."
However, after reading a few more Freke chapters this morning, I'm pretty certain that Tim Freke finds meaning at the root of reality. He believes that so-called synchronicities point to an underlying oneness which may not exactly guide events, but has some influence upon them.
Yet Freke also says that we humans have free choice, which seems at odds with his vision of a unity underlying appearances. However, he's big on both/and rather than either/or. This may indeed reflect the nature of the cosmos.
A benefit for a writer, though, is that whatever is said, it can't really be criticized, because the opposite view is part of the stated view. "Sure, maybe that does look white, whereas I said it is black. But there can be no white without black, so all is one, dude!"
Posted by: Brian Hines | June 11, 2012 at 11:28 AM
Hey, that's a good topic.
I haven't read Freke, but from what you've written, these ideas are far from unique, so I'm not sure it's appropriate to ascribe them to Freke himself. It's been said in Gita, it's been said in Bible, it's been said by Lev Tolstoj, it's been said by thousands.
Yet Freke writes about it and a person compelled to write a book must feel like they really get it and want to say it in their own words, so maybe through their view and form of expression someone will appreciate it, if they couldn't find it in their heads to appreciate it somewhere else.
Words like god and love have, through development of each individual, taken on so much balast, so many archetypes, so many meanings, that they just do not fit the descriptions. Simply for the fact that they freely go and fire up all sorts of neuron synapse clusters in human heads and bring up everything a person has linked those words to, over the years. Labels, emotions, relations, attitudes, etc.
Adyashanti says that the 'cosmic love' is something that transcends our experience of it. That's at least a good point in terms of open-mindedness. Who says we are made to be experientially capable of perceiving the ultimate reality beyond the veil of illusion.
The synchronicities give mocking hints that the world we live in may not be what it seems. It's nothing new. People have seen it for as long as the written word exists. Plato's cave for example. People (including myself at some point) derive from this observation, that everything is working according to a 'divine' plan. Hey, it's just like the holy book says, where so much of the 'sat' is. So if this is true, one must also assume that there is no free will. Who knows. What the actual fuck!
I personally like to tell myself that everything we see and do is like a movie.. or a roller coaster ride, and that our every thought and action is determined - we only have an illusion of it being a choice. What our actual free will is - is our attitude to what's going on. Isn't it so? As long as something is bothering you, you will continually be put in the situations where the thing that is bothersome, happens again and again. Murphy's law! And it will keep happening until you say 'Fuck it, let it happen, I don't care any more.'; and that's exactly the moment when it stops happening. So it may just be that this movie is somewhat interactive.
Where this insight came from for me is the same they call the higher self, but in my case that doesn't give it any validity. Subconscious is a powerful thing and lies in uncharted waters, but then again if we assume that the physical is an illusion, then the brain is an illusion along with it.
With this I'd like to conclude and quote Socrates with 'I know that I know nothing' or with other words; 'What the fuck?' A pleasant day to you fellow somethings.
Posted by: Matjaz | June 11, 2012 at 11:38 PM
"I personally like to tell myself that everything we see and do is like a movie.. or a roller coaster ride, and that our every thought and action is determined - we only have an illusion of it being a choice. What our actual free will is - is our attitude to what's going on."
--What is meant by the "determined" word? Likewise, how is the "illusion" word being interpreted? What our actual "free will" actually is, probably is still mysterious.
Posted by: Roger | June 12, 2012 at 09:22 AM
Hi Roger;
Determined in this case: pre-existing, agreed upon, already recorded. No word is really spot on.
Illusion interpretation: the hindu concept of 'maya'. Everything our senses tell us is not real. we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us.
Or like A.Einstein said “Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one.”
I purposefully included the 'I like to tell myself' sentence to say that I do not really consider it as truth, but it's something that would make sense according to observations from my perspective on this journey so far.
I spotted a similar explanation in Vadim Zeland's book 'Reality Transurfing'.
It's easier to go around life with some sort of explanations for it for some reason.
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
Posted by: Matjaz | June 13, 2012 at 01:20 AM
Thanks Matjaz,
How do you absolutely(or actually) define "free" will?
"Everything our senses tell us is not real. we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us."
---Everything, in absolute terms is not real. The "itself" can be relatively experienced by a projection of it, created by the mind/ego. Our senses can create an illusionary real-ness.
Posted by: Roger | June 13, 2012 at 09:25 AM
How do you absolutely(or actually) define "free" will?
I define it as any action based on decision, which is mind's/ego's in origin.
Is there such a thing? I don't have the faintest idea. It's funny how according to statistics, more than 60% of the population believes in insights into the future events (fortune telling, visions, prophecies), but it never occurs to them that if this is valid, it negates the possibility of free will.
Please do not confuse the definition of what 'maya' means with my world view.
I agree with what you said.
Everything we perceive is our interpretation of the world around us. We still don't know if there actually is one, or is something just convincing us that there is one.
Posted by: Matjaz | June 13, 2012 at 10:55 AM