Church of the Churchless

Internal martial arts have a lot to teach us

For about thirteen years I trained in the external martial art of karate. For the past seventeen years, since 2004, I've trained in the internal martial art of Tai Chi.

Yes, Tai Chi is a martial art. At least, it can be. Tai Chi Chuan is martial. (Chuan is translated as "fist" or "boxing.")

Most Tai Chi instructors aren't interested in the Chuan part, and don't understand it well.

I've been fortunate to learn Tai Chi from someone who started practicing it after many years of hard style martial arts experience, so he is expert in how Tai Chi can be a martial art.

Recently I've been re-reading Ron Sieh's book, "T'ai Chi Chuan: The Internal Tradition." (It wasn't published in 1842, no matter what the Amazon listing says.)

Here's how Sieh describes the external and internal martial arts.

Typically the martial arts are characterized by how they arrive at power: the external, by muscular effort; the internal, relaxed and effortlessly.

All "karates" are considered external, and most of the Chinese arts, plus Judo, Capoeira, and Kali, are lumped into the external category.

T'ai Chi Ch'uan, Hsing I Ch'uan, and Pa Kua are the Chinese internal arts and of course, Aikido is a Japanese art. There is a flow in the internal arts that is missing from the external ones.

In the external there is a quality of fighting, of pushing against the way things are, to change what is happening to better fit our "plan."

In the internal tradition a more inclusive approach is cultivated, a quality of non-interference, of using your opponents' strengths to your advantage without the struggle to change them.

It's much easier to learn an external martial art than an internal one.

Our usual inclination is to use force to accomplish something. Children naturally punch and kick. They don't naturally deflect a blow by smoothly moving their body.

Ron Sieh studied with Peter Ralston, an accomplished master of Tai Chi Chuan. He describes that experience in a Technique chapter.

When I used to box with Peter, he would quickly and impactfully fill any holes I would open. The reason was not necessarily his superior technique but his quality of presence and willingness to play the game.

This was a game in which, when the going got rough, the willingness to be there and deeply feel your own experience "as is" became increasingly hard to do.

Our tendency when "confronted" with pain -- either the pain of getting hit or the unwillingness to play (any game) -- is immediately to jump into our well-practiced and often entrenched sense of defending ourselves, our position, or to space out.

Boxing or playing push hands with Peter made it very clear to me, over and over, that at least in my relationship to Peter, denial didn't work and was a great hindrance. It was also simply bad strategy. 

...The centerline is a notion that is important in many martial arts. It is basically the line that runs down the center of our bodies.

...The centerline is that core of the body around which we rotate when we turn the pelvis, whether to dodge a punch, yield to a push, or whatever. In the game of two-person work the centerline is what we should seek out in our partner. 

It is often felt as a core which many people have a hard time yielding. Particularly in push hands it is the target.

...We can rotate around our centerline whether it is located centrally or on the left or right half of our body. It is the feeling of centerline that is important. 

If pushed in the center of the chest we can, with feeling, move the core around -- we rotate to the left or right of that and swing open like a door on our off-center centerline to accommodate the push.

Those words are difficult to follow if you haven't experienced what Sieh is talking about. This video of Peter Ralston playing at push hands is a much better way to grasp what an internal martial art is all about.

And, by implication, what taking a more flowing, less resistant approach to life as a whole is all about.

Push hands in Tai Chi isn't about winning or losing. It isn't a contest. It's a playful way of putting into practice what otherwise remains an abstraction. Until someone is trying to throw us off balance, we don't know how to respond in a way that, hopefully, enables us to keep our balance and composure.

Peter Ralston is the older guy in the light-colored cap. But you could figure that out just by watching the video, since his Tai Chi skill is considerably greater than the other guy's. 

It may not look like Ralston is doing much.

However, if you focus on his core, his centerline, you'll see that he is able to control the other guy with relatively small well-timed moves that look effortless, but take a heck of a lot of training to master.

In push hands a move is released before it becomes a full-on joint lock, takedown, strike, or whatever. So over and over you'll see Ralston releasing moves that, in an actual fight, would appear much more martial.

Have faith in the mystery of what we don't know

Today Spence Tepper, a frequent commenter on this blog who, pleasingly, uses his real name when commenting, left a marvelous comment on a recent post of mine. 

You can read it below. 

What Tepper said reminds me a lot of what Alan Watts wrote about faith in one of my favorite books, The Wisdom of Insecurity. 

Here's part of the Watts quotation from that book that I included in a 2008 post, "Real and false faith."

We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use it here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be.

The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.

Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.

Tepper isn't Watts, obviously. But his attitude toward faith is very much in line with what Watts said above. 

Enjoy. I corrected one apparent typo and broke up some paragraphs for easier reading.

Belief and faith rest on qualities of personality. They do not depend upon proof. If you prove anything, there is no need of faith. Your proof ends the necessity, and possibly the romance of faith.

But it also ends the grounds for opinion.

Both faith and opinion thrive in the absence of information. They are the ways in which the human brain tries to bridge the gaps to create a clear picture.

Just as the brain fills in the blind spots in your visual field as best it can, just as it turns the image on your retina upside down, and takes curved lines and makes them straight before you see them, so too the brain fills in gaps of knowledge with its best guess and presents them to you as ideas that pop into your head.

It's a healthy process if you are going to test those ideas, and a harmful process if you are not.

The kinds of things your brain comes up with as explanations for what it doesn't know are opinion. And faith is largely in your own opinion.

But there is another kind of faith. Faith in the mystery of what we don't know.

Not faith in your version of God, science, or politics, or your certainty of a leader's strength or corruption on the basis of limited information, or their own claims, or even faith in your opinions about what is going on, or even your faith in someone else's opinion.

Because that isn't actually faith. It's just opinion.

And opinion is not only a poor substitute for Truth, it gets in the way of seeing Truth. And then we can confuse opinion for Truth. And that makes letting go of a favored opinion difficult when facts prove otherwise. Then we just reject the facts as someone else's opinion.

Real Faith is not knowing. It's loving confidently in that place where we know we don't know everything.

And what we experience, we understand is just from our point in space. Faith that new information is actually there but we don't see it yet. Living that way, because it is the truth. Faith that the invisible truth yet to be discovered is greater than any opinion.

Faith enough in what is there that you don't know, to give up opinion and say, confidently, honestly, "I don't know, and I don't think having an opinion about something I haven't experienced, something I have no actual knowledge of, is of any help in learning about that, in finding what I don't yet know."

Real Faith is no faith if it is faith in a preconceived opinion.

Faith is valuing the unknown Truth higher than any opinion, with the maturity to know from experience the dangers of holding onto opinion.

If there is a God, they would like you to put aside your opinions as a first step to seeing them. Even about God. And when you see them, you won't say "I see God", because that is just your label, your opinion, for what you are seeing.

You will just enjoy seeing what you are seeing. That's a higher value than trying to fill in the gaps of what can never be known, but fully experienced. The cost? Faith in your opinion.

     -- Spence Tepper

India's worsening Covid crisis partly due to religion

Since for 35 years I was a member of a religious organization headquartered in India, I have a special interest in how that country has been doing during the Covid pandemic.

Recently I've been seeing dire stories about rapidly increasing Covid cases and deaths in India. 

The reasons for the deteriorating situation are complex, but a big part of the blame seems to be related to factors that have been evident here in the United States, especially during the time Trump was president.

Namely, poor leadership from those in charge of the country; declaring victory over Covid prematurely; allowing large religious and political gatherings in the midst of the pandemic; failing to communicate the importance of wearing masks and following other public health advice.

Here's excerpts from a Washington Post story today, "India's 1.6 million new covid-19 cases in the past week are breaking its health system."

Four months ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory over the coronavirus pandemic. Now the country is in a new covid-19 crisis, with more than 250,000 new confirmed infections daily. India has now overtaken Brazil, with the second-highest number of confirmed cases worldwide.

The actual number of cases may be much higher — testing lags are increasingly common, and some states have curtailed coronavirus testing. Similarly, official numbers report a seven-day average of around 1,300 deaths per day, but undercounting and misclassification of deaths is rampant. Long delays and price-gouging at crematoriums — amid reports of makeshift cremations on sidewalks — suggest the death counts are far higher than reported.

The Modi government faces public criticism for allowing political rallies and religious gatherings. There has been little official focus on further investments in either the country’s health infrastructure or vaccine production capacity. Domestic politics factor into India’s covid crisis in these ways.

...Last week, millions of Hindu pilgrims headed to the Maha Kumbh Mela for a five-day pilgrimage, held in the state of Uttarakhand. Over 1,700 devotees tested positive, and the festival itself lacked adequate coronavirus protocols.

Uttarakhand is seeing record-high covid cases, and 11 percent of devotees leaving the festival by train have tested positive. Many in India criticized the Modi government for permitting the festival and even facilitating travel for devotees from all across the country.

The lack of public health concern also stands in stark contrast to the government’s handling of a much smaller Muslim religious congregation last year, which resulted in several charges being brought against attendees. The incident led to increased communal backlash against Muslims across the country. This year’s court-mandated restrictions on Ramadan prayer congregations in Mumbai and Delhi also demonstrate inconsistent government guidance on religious gatherings.

And these are excerpts from a New York Times opinion piece, "India's Second Covid Wave is Completely Out of Control."

A lethal, fast-paced second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has brought India’s health care systems to the verge of collapse and is putting millions of lives and livelihoods at risk.

On Sunday and Monday, the country recorded more than 270,000 and 259,000 cases, respectively, of Covid-19, a staggering increase from about 11,000 cases per day in the second week of February. Reported coronavirus infections shot up from about 20,000 per day in mid-March to more than 200,000 by mid-April.

The newspapers and social media are scrolls of horror and failure of the health system. There are reports of lines of ambulances with patients waiting outside the largest Covid facility in Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat because ventilator beds and oxygen had run out.

...How did things change so dramatically between March and April?

India’s rapid slide into this unprecedented crisis is a direct result of complacency and lack of preparation by the government. As the number of cases dropped significantly in mid-February, the Indian government and various policymakers, cheered on by a pliant, triumphalist media, prematurely declared victory against the pandemic. By early March, senior government ministers were speaking about the endgame of the pandemic in India.

Cricket matches where tens of thousands of spectators filled stadiums were allowed, and movie theaters were opened. The government did nothing to prevent enormous religious gatherings such as the ongoing Kumbh Mela, a festival in Haridwar in the northern state of Uttarakhand, where millions of Hindus gathered for a dip in the River Ganges. Unsurprisingly, Covid-19 cases in Haridwar have soared.

...The mass political, religious and sporting events, which are extensively covered by the Indian media, sent mixed messages about the seriousness of the pandemic. Popular impatience to get back to earlier lives made things worse. Indians started mixing widely and playing down the threat also because there is an unfounded sense among a large number of Indians that exposure to pollution and microbes had endowed them with superior immunity.

...The risk of getting infected through exposure to someone with the coronavirus is no different in India. The proportion of people who died after a Covid-19 diagnosis is lower in India compared with many other countries. But that is simply because 65 percent of Indians are under 35 years old.

Indians with Covid-19 ages 40 to 70 were more likely to have died in India because of the high prevalence of comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes and respiratory disorders. Covid-19 patients in our study in their 40s in India were twice as likely to die as Covid-19 patients in the corresponding age group in the United States. The rate was 75 percent higher in India than in the United States when we compared patients in their 50s.

Dealing with Covid-19 is tough enough without politicians like Modi and Trump making things worse by failing to follow public health science. Hopefully India will find better ways to handle the current wave of Covid cases.

Ending the spiritual search

It's a bit difficult for me to tell when my spiritual searching began.

Was it when I tried to figure out in high school the deeper meaning of Bob Dylan's enigmatic song lyrics? Was it when I devoured Sartre, Camus, and other existentialists during my early college years? 

Maybe.

But for sure it started when, in 1969, my wife-to-be and I began learning hatha yoga and meditation from a crazed Greek guy who melded Christianity and Eastern philosophy in a decidedly weird fashion. 

Ever since, I've pursued some sort of spirituality. 

For several decades I spent about two hours a day meditating in accord with a mystical practice that aimed at uniting my soul with God.

Eventually I came to doubt whether soul and God even existed, which understandably deflated my interest in trying to join them together.

In my early 40s martial arts became a sort of spiritual search.

After earning a black belt in a karate style that was pleasingly eclectic, I switched to Tai Chi in 2004, which I've practiced ever since.

Taoism and Buddhism became my favorite spiritual philosophies. I made mindfulness my meditation.  

Now, at the age of 72, I've started to ponder the pros and cons of ending my spiritual searching -- with a emphasis on the pros. 

Always looking for more from life than what life already is giving me is beginning to seem unwise. 

More meaning. More happiness. More purpose. More depth. All that more, more, more seems to lead to a hamster-wheel sort of existence.

Spiritual seeking can become such a habit, the seeker doesn't realize that they're going around and around without really getting anywhere.

If we're in an endless loop of seek-find-seek-find, the way out is to either stop seeking or find that which satisfies completely. 

Since I'm not completely satisfied with life (who is?), it seems to me that giving up a quest to make life into something that it isn't already is the best way to go.

Understand: in no way do I see this as embracing fatalism or not trying to make my life better.

But I want to do this in a natural fashion. I want to just be an average person living life as it is, not as some imagined Spiritual Life with capital letters. 

Three weeks ago an inguinal (groin) hernia came into my life, an unexpected guest. 

About a quarter of men will get a hernia at some point. So what I'm dealing with is common. Last week I had a consultation with a surgeon, which went well. 

My old spiritual self would have tried to find some deeper meaning in the hernia. Working off karma? A way to test my equanimity? The universe sending me a message of some sort?

My new not-so-spiritual self just wants to handle the hernia as smoothly as I can and to get it surgically repaired ASAP.

In other words, I'm viewing myself realistically. I'm just a guy who, like lots of other guys, has a hernia that he wants fixed. End of story.

This is, of course, the way lots of people look upon problems in their life. 

Not as an opportunity to evolve into a more refined spiritual being. Just as a damn problem that needs attention. 

I can't say that I've totally given up my addiction to spiritual seeking. I just see the light at the end of the seeking tunnel. 

Or maybe more accurately, the lack of extra light. 

Life already has plenty of light. That's how I'm able to write this blog post. An LED bulb is shining on my desk. My laptop's screen is aglow. 

Where's the need to be spiritually enlightened when the world already has so much light?

Open Thread 37 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread. 

If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread.

As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks on someone are an exception, as is hate speech. Argue with ideas, not insults.

Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

How animals navigate would be a "miracle" if people did it

After thirty-five years of believing in weird mystical stuff, I've become a naturalist.

I'm still open to the possibility that there's more to reality than what's evident in the natural world, but lacking solid evidence of that possibility, my bet is that it doesn't exist.

Yet in no way do I feel a diminishment of cosmic awe. There's plenty to be amazed at without imagining a realm beyond the physical.

A story by Kathryn Schulz in the April 5, 2021 issue of The New Yorker provides a good example of this. My mind was blown by "Where the Wild Things Go: How animals navigate the world."

(The online version has a different title.)

Consider how we humans would look upon a member of our species who could do what a rock lobster  is capable of.

You can cover a rock lobster’s eyes, put it in an opaque container filled with seawater from its native environment, line the container with magnets suspended from strings so they swing in all directions, put the container in a truck, drive the truck in circles on the way to a boat, steer the boat in circles on the way to a distant location, drop the lobster back in the water, and—voilà—it will strike off confidently in the direction of home.

Scientists have done these things to rock lobsters in order to eliminate the most obvious mechanisms a lobster could use to navigate, such as using the earth's magnetic field to track its location.

We'd be amazed if a person could do what a rock lobster does, as the New Yorker story says in the next paragraph.

Needless to say, you and I cannot do this. If you blindfold human subjects, take them on a disorienting bus ride, let them off in a field, remove the blindfolds, and ask them to head back toward where they started, they will promptly wander off in all directions. If you forgo the bus and the blindfolds, ask them to walk across a field toward a target, and then conceal the target after they start moving, they will stray off course in approximately eight seconds.

Of course, humans also are capable of amazing navigation feats. But we've done this largely through learning, not instinct.

The Polynesians were able to move from island to island in vast reaches of the south Pacific through careful observation of currents, clouds, birds, and such, then pass on that knowledge to another generation.

Some animals also learn from members of their species -- geese learn a migration route from their elders -- but much of animal navigation is based on talents we're mostly clueless about.

Cats, bats, elephant seals, red-tailed hawks, wildebeests, gypsy moths, cuttlefish, slime mold, emperor penguins: to one degree or another, every animal on earth knows how to navigate—and, to one degree or another, scientists remain perplexed by how they do so.

Yet even though what animals are capable of seems miraculous, no reputable scientist claims that animals possess some supernatural power. We don't know how they navigate, but almost certainly some day we will.

So in the realm of animal navigation there's agreement that natural causes are producing amazing effects. Why would the mystery of human consciousness be any different? Just because something is astonishing doesn't mean it stems from a supernatural source.

More generally, the astonishment is that any physiology can contain a navigational system capable of such journeys. A bird that migrates over long distances must maintain its trajectory by day and by night, in every kind of weather, often with no landmarks in sight.

If its travels take more than a few days, it must compensate for the fact that virtually everything it could use to stay oriented will change, from the elevation of the sun to the length of the day and the constellations overhead at night.

Most bewildering of all, it must know where it is going—even the first time, when it has never been there before—and it must know where that destination lies compared with its current position.

Other species making other journeys face additional difficulties: how to navigate entirely underground, or how to navigate beneath the waters of a vast and seemingly undifferentiated ocean.

The New Yorker story describes various mechanisms animals use to find their way around. I don't want to give the impression that scientists are clueless about how animal navigation works.

My point is that astounding capabilities require careful research to understand what is going on. This applies to exceptional human feats, whether mental or physical. There's a huge amount to learn about the natural world.

None of that learning needs to be based on supernatural fantasies.

QAnon, like religion, doesn't care about truth

Last night my wife and I finished watching the sixth and last episode of HBO's "QAnon: Into the Storm." 

I've written two previous posts about how QAnon bears a lot of resemblance to religion. (See here and here.) 

QAnon devotees are like religious believers. Neither cares about actual truth, while both pretend that they understand reality in a deep sense that eludes ordinary people.

I found the HBO series fascinating.

It shows us the people behind QAnon -- the computer geeks who administer the sites where Q posted his "drops," often enigmatic and usually totally wrong observations about politics and what-not.

We also see the people who interpret Q's communications via podcasts, You Tube channels, and the like. They're akin to high priests who mediate between the Almighty and the mass of believers.

The final episode doesn't definitively say who Q is, but a lot of evidence points to Ron Watkins, including Watkins' own words. 

Ron Watkins

Watkins was the administrator of 8Chan, which morphed into 8Kun, the places that Q chose to host his posts/drops. His father, Jim Watkins, also plays a large role in the HBO series.

Both Ron and Jim are intelligent schemers. They're highly watchable, along with being highly irritating at times. 

When the closing credits of the final episode appeared, I said to my wife, "I wonder if the faith of QAnon followers would be shaken if they knew that probably Q is a computer geek who wears a green baseball cap, not a high level government official with a super secret Q security clearance."

She replied, "It wouldn't matter to them. They'd continue to believe what they want to believe and wouldn't trust that Ron Watkins likely is Q."

My wife is right. 

After all, there's no demonstrable evidence that the founder of any religion actually knew anything about God, nor that God even exists. Yet billions of people worship that non-existent entity regardless.

A FiveThirtyEight review of the HBO series made the same point. (Cullen Hoback is the director of QAnon: Into the Storm.)

But even if Hoback had managed to elicit a full confession, it likely wouldn’t have much impact on QAnon as a movement. Q followers would do what they always do when confronted with conflicting evidence to their belief system: they would either dismiss it or find a way to fold the information into their worldview.

Even if someone admitted that Q’s posts were a complete fabrication, it would not be enough to penetrate the hard outer shell of belief for many followers. Q, after all, has gone underground. He (or she or they) hasn’t posted since Dec. 8, 2020, the longest stretch of silence since Q first began posting in 2017.

It's interesting that Q's postings started in the first year of Trump's presidency and ended when it became clear that Trump had lost to Joe Biden.

These were dark years for truth-telling, in Washington D.C., at least. Now truth is making a comeback, since the Biden administration is hugely more committed to honesty, science, and transparency. 

The final episode of the HBO series ends with footage of the January 6 attempted insurrection at the nation's Capitol, where  Biden's electoral college victory was being finalized. 

QAnon believers were convinced that somehow Trump would stage a "storm" of a comeback, arresting his enemies, including leading Democratic politicians, and remaining president. When this didn't happen, the QAnon faithful were deeply shaken.

Just like religious believers when, say, the predicted second coming of Christ comes and goes with no appearance by Jesus. 

However, the power of mass delusion is very strong. QAnon still has lots of adherents, as does Christianity, obviously. Inconvenient truths aren't going to dissuade people who believe in falsehood that's immune to disproof.

In a brilliant move, Episode 6 of QAnon: Into the Storm shows the Trump rioters breaking into the Capitol as the Jefferson Airplane song, "White Rabbit," plays. 

This musical paean to going down the rabbit hole, psychedelic variety, made the attempted insurrection look like the bizarre fantasy that it actually was. Sadly, I couldn't find any clips of the final episode with White Rabbit playing.

But you can hear this classic song by Grace Slick via You Tube video. I'll also share the trailer for the HBO series and a CNN interview with Hoback where he talks about his strong suspicion that Ron Watkins is Q.

A message from someone who woke up to RSSB deception

Getting a message like this one makes me feel like all the work I put into this Church of the Churchless blog is worthwhile. 

RS stands for Radha Soami. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the India-based religious group I belonged to for 35 years. Gurinder Singh Dhillon is the current RSSB guru.

         Dear Brian

I pondered upon your website quite a few years ago, and I thought this guy has lost it. He has lost the 1 valuable thing in life, the guru...

 

Fast forward to now.  I have been RS follower and initiate of gs dhillon for over 20 years.

Rssb is such a net, that once inside, its very hard to escape...and luckily I have realised that this large establishment is not going to get me God realisation. 

 

Never in history has any saints had large institutions and millions of followers and they achieved God.

 

I was attached to GS dhillon and thought guru knows best.  The teachings are good, but how can anyone teach and not have practiced or experienced anything, have any effect on us.

 

I am really sad that I wasted 20 years of my life thinking I was special, the chosen one...and its still very hard to get the establishment out of my head.

 

I wonder how you feel, you also left after a long time, and up till now, what thoughts or attachments crop up in your mind? How do you overcome them?

 

One thing i told my parents is that don't worry, study other things, if this is the true real master, then we have no worry, apparently he will fulfil his duty and come at death....

I tell the above to my mum, so that she can wake up, and understand that she has nothing to lose by exploring other ideas.

 

It's very difficult for a rs follower to come out of this.

I don't criticise the current guru or the following, just upset and sad that nothing was achieved.

 

I feel something went wrong long time ago, after the first 2 gurus, the first 2 had no large establishment or large monies involved, and from sawan singh, a large institution was created....what I am saying is maybe the path started of correct and got corrupted later on.

 

Thanks for reading my story.

Behold... my uncluttered office. Miracles do happen!

I wish I'd taken a "before" photo of my office before I was forced to move everything out so it could be painted after wallpaper was removed.

Just believe me when I say that while some people might consider that I have too much stuff in it now, the post-painting makeover is an astounding de-clutterization.

Which makes my wife happy.

You can marvel at the New Look via a post on my HinesSight blog, "My office looks more Zen after painting forced it on me."

Truth is all-important, in mysticism and everywhere else

Sometimes a comment is left on one of my blog posts that leaves me with a WTF (what the fuck) feeling. Meaning, I can't begin to understand where the commenter is coming from.

Here's a recent example that starts off with a quote from a post of mine.

>>If mystics claim to find a new reality, they need to prove it<< WHY? WHY do they need to prove it? No mystic owes anything to anybody.

Wow. The answer to that all caps Why is one-word obvious. Truth.

Truth is why a mystic needs to back up their claim of finding a new reality with solid proof. Reality belongs to everyone. Reality is the home of everyone.

No one gets to spread falsehoods about my home, which is your home, which is everybody's home -- reality.

Now, I understand that truth is taking a beating these days.

Here in the United States, a majority of people who belong to one of our two major parties, the Republican Party, have shown they don't give a shit about truth.

They wrongly claim that election fraud is widespread. They wrongly claim that the Capitol insurrection on January 6 wasn't carried out by Trump supporters. They wrongly claim that Georgia's new election laws are intended to expand voter turnout rather than suppress it.

Obviously I don't claim to always speak the truth or live the truth. Like everybody else, I make mistakes all the time when it comes to understanding things. 

But I've always pointed myself toward truth, even if I fail to reach it much of the time. Intention is all important when it comes to truth. Much can be forgiven if someone sincerely aims to embrace truth, rather than pushing it away.

One of the first posts I wrote when I started this blog in 2004 was called "Just have faith." Here's an excerpt that I still heartily agree with.

Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) Belief

After you open a door, you have to walk through it. The door then will shut and you never will be able to leave the place you have entered.

Choose Reality and you will know things as they really are, from top to bottom of the cosmos. You will know whether or not God exists and, if so, the nature of this ultimate divinity. You will know whether death is the final end of your existence or if it is the beginning of another form of life. You will know whether there is a meaning to the universe beyond what human beings ascribe to it.

Or, choose Belief and you will know only what lies within the confines of your current suppositions about the nature of the cosmos. For the rest of your life you will be confident that what you believe to be true, really is. Any evidence to the contrary will not make an impact on your mind. You will remain doubt-free, faithful to the beliefs you now hold about God, creation, life, death, and the purpose of human existence.

Which door would you choose to walk through?

Before answering, consider carefully the potential ramifications of your choice. Reality is an unknown, a mystery. It could be frightening or fabulous, painful or pleasurable, warmly loving or coldly uncaring. Do you want to embrace absolutely real reality? Or would you rather hold on to your beliefs about what is real?

Someone with the type of faith extolled by the Church of the Churchless would unhesitatingly choose Door A and boldly stride into Reality. For their faith is not in anything particular, but is a faith that truth can be known, should be known, and, indeed, must be known.

Getting back to the comment about mystics not owing anything to anybody when it comes to making a claim about having found a new reality, back in 2006 I talked about the need for questioning such claims in "With God, from 'I believe' to 'I know' is a huge step."

Here's the core of that blog post. The A.H. Armstrong quote comes from my book, "Return to the One."

If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I don’t know,” we’re comrades in unknowing. Grab a chair and belly up with me to the clueless bar.

If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I believe…,” we can have an interesting conversation. I probably won’t agree with you, but I enjoy learning about other people beliefs, or lack thereof, in a higher power.

If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I know…,” we are going to have a really interesting conversation. For once you say “know” rather than “believe,” my skeptical radar sets off a Dogma alert! Dogma alert! siren inside my psyche.

I don’t expect reasons for beliefs. They’re your business. Just like sex, whatever turns you on. Go for it. But also just like sex, beliefs need to remain personal if they are to be unquestioned.

As soon as you say, “I believe _____, and you should too,” there’s going to be a stiffening of my argumentative spine. I’m pleased to be given advice by someone who is more knowledgeable about something than I am. However, that something needs to be objectively real, not imaginary.

And beliefs aren’t real, even though lots of religious people seem to think that they are.

Going further, some people actually claim that they know the nature of God or ultimate reality. Now, this requires some serious questioning. A claim like that, why, it’s amazing. I mean, in the entire span of recorded history there hasn’t been a single clearly evident, unquestionable, plain-as-day revelation about God or the divine.

So if you tell me that you know for a fact that God exists, or that God is such and such, or that God is realized in this particular fashion, then I’m going to be super-duper interested in how you’re able to back up that astounding assertion.

I want you to lay your cards on the table. Face up. All of them. Show me your four aces. And let me know in detail, exactly, precisely, how you were able to come up with that winning hand.

Of course, I know that this won’t be possible. If you’re just bluffing, and don’t really know about God, then you’ll be empty-handed. But even if by some miracle you truly are God’s bosom buddy, you still won’t be able to lay any material proof on the table.

I’m pretty confident about that, because nobody else ever has been able to do so, and I’m willing to bet that this run of “busts” will continue.

So, please, please, please. Pretty please with blind faith crumbs on top. If you write or talk to me and go beyond “I believe…” when speaking about God, bring your best stuff. Show me the money, as the saying goes. The proof.

I’ve shared this quotation before, but it’s worth sharing again. To my mind, classics scholar A.H. Armstrong hits just the right tone.

When claims to possess an exclusive revelation of God or to speak his word are made by human beings (and it is always human beings who make them), they must be examined particularly fiercely and hypercritically for the honor of God, to avoid the blasphemy and sacrilege of deifying a human opinion.

Or, to put it less ferociously, the Hellenic (and, as it seems to me, still proper) answer to “Thus saith the Lord” is “Does he?,” asked in a distinctly skeptical tone, followed by a courteous but drastic “testing to destruction” of the claims and credentials of the person or person making this enormous statement.

If mystics claim to find a new reality, they need to prove it

I've been enjoying the recent comment conversations between some of the Church of the Churchless regulars. Meaning, frequent visitors to this blog.

Having featured a comment from "Appreciative Reader" in a blog post a few days ago, I generally find myself agreeing with this person's perspective.

Which I'm not going to attempt to summarize, since that perspective is nuanced.

Instead, here's my take on a theme that features in the above-mentioned comment conversations: how someone can tell the difference between genuine and spurious mystical experiences.

My first assumption -- which seems inarguable to me -- is that while mystics and mystic-sympathizers like to say that mystical experiences can't be put into words, that's the case with all experiences.

Every experience is had by a subjective consciousness. I have my experiences. You have yours. Other people have theirs.

None of us has direct access to anyone else's experiences. They are directly experienced by the experiencer alone. This direct experience means there's a huge difference between saying "I ate a raspberry" and experiencing the sensation of eating a raspberry. 

No amount of words ever add up to a direct experience. I can feel happy and say to myself, "I'm happy today," but those three words don't begin to capture my experience of happiness.

So let's put to rest any notion that mystical experiences are special in regards to their ineffability, their inability to be described to others in anything but an abstract manner. Again, this is the case with all personal experiences, without exception.

Further, I don't consider these sorts of experiences to be genuinely mystical:

Feeling at one with the universe; being awestruck at the wonder of existence; having a sense that all is right with the world; intuiting that death is not the end of the road, but a turn in a never-ending journey.

Lots of people have profound experiences that alter how they look upon life. Heck, probably most people do. We humans are meaning-making creatures. Finding meaning is a favorite thing to do.

Let's turn then to the question of what distinguishes a genuine from a spurious mystical experience. 

The way I see it, mysticism rests on this hypothesis: there's a realm of reality apart from this physical universe, or if you will, the physical cosmos -- since there could be much more to physical reality than our single universe, as unimaginably vast as it is.

Thus a genuine mystical experience would occur through contact with a realm of reality separate from the physical universe. 

If mysticism simply led to an experience of a different aspect of physical reality, this would mean little or no difference between mysticism and science.

For example, if it were possible for a human mind to have ESP, Extra Sensory Perception, this capacity wouldn't be mystical, since it would occur via the physical brain and operate in this physical world.

That discovery of ESP would be groundbreaking, really big news. However, it would add to the store of knowledge of how humans experience the physical world, not a non-physical "spiritual" realm.

So based on my own personal experience of pursuing a mystical approach to meditation for thirty-five years (an approach I now have discarded), I can confidently say that the goal of mysticism is to experience a new reality, a reality beyond the confines of physical existence.

The question then becomes, how is it possible to tell whether such a "spiritual" reality exists, and if it does, whether someone has experienced it?

Words such as "I saw and heard God" aren't enough, obviously. Even if those words are uttered sincerely, people can be mistaken about what they experience -- the familiar "mistaking a stick for a snake" analogy.

Further, psychotic people can see and hear God. People who have taken LSD or some other psychedelic can see and hear God. People who are deeply religious can see and hear God. 

This doesn't prove that God exists. It proves that people have experiences that lead then to believe God exists. 

Similarly, people have experiences of a realm of reality beyond the physical. This doesn't prove that such a realm exists. It proves that people have experiences that lead them to believe the realm exists.

Thus it seems to me that if a mystic claims to have found a new reality, that person needs to provide some solid proof of that discovery before it can be taken seriously. Otherwise, that person is just one more of countless humans who have claimed to experience a realm beyond this physical universe.

Excuses won't cut it. 

"Impossible to put into words." Again, all experiences are impossible to put into words. So not being able to describe a mystical experience doesn't make it genuine.

"Can't bring anything back from that reality." OK, I can't bring anything back from the dreams I have at night either. That doesn't make dreams anything more than my subjective experience.

"It's a matter of faith, not of proof." Fine, have as much faith as you want, tons of it. Just know that I have no faith in your faith as a guide to reality. Faith leads people widely astray when it comes to knowing what is real.

I'll end by saying that I'm absolutely fine with people trying to have mystical experiences. I've been there and done that -- for thirty-five years. 

I'm also absolutely fine with people talking about their mystical experiences. I've read countless (almost) books along this line, enjoying each one. 

Just know that talk is much different from proof.

In my first book about relating the new physics with ancient mysticism, I observed that the Nobel prize committee would laugh at someone who wrote to them saying something like:

"I've discovered the Theory of Everything that others have sought for but never found. I'm unable to provide proof of my discovery, so you'll just to believe me. Nobel Prize, please!"

Narratives and cognitive structures aren't "traps"

What never fails to amaze me is how religious believers and mystical enthusiasts will use the power of their human mind to criticize other people who use their human mind to criticize religion and mysticism.

The plain fact is that there's no way to communicate with other people except through mental capabilities such as language, reason, and such.

So unless someone wants to remain in their own private internal world -- and everyone who comments on this blog has indicated this isn't what they want to do -- narratives and cognitive structures are the only way to interact with others.

That doesn't have to be done through language, of course, though words are a powerful means of communication. Paint a picture. Dance. Perform music. 

There are lots of ways to communicate a narrative. But underlying all of them is a message to be shared, and someone else to share it with. Absent that, each of us lives in an isolated subjective realm.

Below is a comment on a recent post from "Appreciative Reader." I liked it so much, I felt it deserved to be featured in a blog post.

One of the points made by Appreciative Reader is what I restated ahove: if a person wants to communicate with others, it makes no sense for them to denigrate language, narratives, and cognitive structures.

After all, that denigration is occurring by means of -- no big surprise -- language, narratives, and cognitive structures. This is like someone standing on a sidewalk, yelling at passers-by, "No one should be standing on the sidewalk!"

Dude, you really should practice what you preach before you do your preaching. Here's the comment from Appreciative Reader.

Hello, Dungeness. Long time!

I’m afraid I’m hogging the comments section of this thread. But I’m going to permit myself one more longish comment, because I disagree in the strongest possible terms with your POV, and I would like to articulate my disagreement clearly, and invite you to see if you wouldn’t, in light of what I’m going to say, like to revise your view.

-------

Now at one level, obviously, I agree with um, and with you as well, as I’ve already said earlier on. If personally you don’t care to engage with narratives as far as some particular field, or even more generally, then that is, at one level, merely a question of your personal predilections, and as such your business and no one else’s. No question of “disagreement” with an essentially personal choice of that nature.

-------

But the part where you generalize that kind of approach, when it comes to mysticism? The part where you seem to see narratives and cognitive structures as “traps”? I’m sorry, that’s something I find entirely nonsensical. Here’s why.

The beauty of the scientific method is this, that it helps us navigate through, and discover more and more about, and make use of, reality as we find it. Irrespective of the nature of that reality.

What you’re resorting to is basically magical thinking. Faced with any and every thing, the closed-minded God-believer will say, “…because God!”, without thinking through what that means. What you are doing is the exact equivalent of that, except instead of “…because God!”, you’re using the more sophisticated but essentially similar “…because mysticism!”.

And you know what, even in a world of actual magic, that kind of magical thinking is …I’m sorry, nonsensical.

What is Rowling’s Hogwarts after all? It’s a system of understanding, and cataloging, and analyzing, and then channelizing the magical forces in a (fictional) magical world. No real magician (as in, real magician in a hypothetical or fictional world where magic reigns) would simply put up his hands and say “…because magic!” and leave it at that.

The real magician will find out how exactly the magic operates, essentially use the scientific method and empiricism on that magical world, much as we apply the scientific method to QM [quantum mechanics, I assume] for instance. Unless he is able to do that, he can never even become a magician.

So, I’d say your view, that narrative-building as far as mysticism—even granted, for the sake of argument, that mysticism is a thing (which after all in a larger context is by no means a given)—as something that is essentially beyond cognitive understanding, is …well, blinkered, not clearly thought through.

-------

Of course, in a mystical world, or in a magical world, or in our everyday mundane world, whether you personally engage with some particular narrative, or any narrative, that like I said is a whole different matter. That is your business and yours alone.

I can choose to live in this world without having formulated any detailed narrative, any detailed personal worldview, about the nature of QM, or for that matter even gravity, or the universe, and still manage to live a full enough life, as long as those aspects are not important to my everyday functioning.

But to see all narratives as “traps”, and to see mysticism, should mysticism be a thing (or for that magic, should magic exist) as something essentially beyond cognitive understanding, that kind of POV simply does not hold up to examination.

-------

I’m reminded here of the fable, parable, whatever, of someone-or-other finding a piece of truth on the way. And the Devil looks on at what’s happening, smiling. The Devil’s minions are super worried, and grovel their miserable way up to their horned scarlet master, asking him in wheedling tones why he’s not worried, because that piece of truth can take that man forever out of the Devil’s reach.

And the Devil smiles knowingly, and says, This has happened before, and this will happen again, and all that poor fool will do is go cataloging that piece of truth, and never actually leave my dominion.

I guess the message within that fable, parable, whatever, is what you’re channeling here, right? Well, okay, at a personal level that message does make some kind of sense. If I wish to live in this world, using things like computers and GPS and computers and whatnot, then, if I get caught up in compulsively understanding the mechanism of each and every thing I see and would use, then that bottomless rabbit hole would end up being what my entire life will devolve into.

I’ll never actually use those things, I’ll never find the time to live my life. Which is clearly dysfunctional, unless that kind of inquisitiveness is, A, somehow limited and focused, and B, somehow channelized, into a profession perhaps, such that I draw some kind of personal benefit from it.

To that extent, and also to the extent that it is, like I’d said earlier, a matter of one’s own predilections, this kind of attitude, of not wanting to get into cognitive structures and narratives, might work, at a personal level, as long as one doesn’t get too deep into whatever-it-is, and as long as one is …well, lucky enough to get by despite one’s ignorance. The channelizing of one’s energies away from cognitive understanding might then even be beneficial, at a personal level.

But to generalize that argument, as you are doing, and to think of cognitive structures and narratives as “traps” is, …I’m sorry, that makes no sense at all.

UPDATE: Here's a response from Dungeness.

Brian, since my name is invoked in your commentary, I hope you'll include my
response to this off-point screed about my remarks. I certainly didn't generalize
any attack on cognitive structures and narratives at all. Gosh, I didn't build up
or advance any "narrative" except that it's entirely dubious to opine that
an inner transcendent experience can be "proven" hallucinatory or bonafide
through cognitive means either by skeptic or believer.

Here's my full response:

@ But to generalize that argument, as you are doing, and to think of cognitive structures and narratives
@ as “traps” is, …I’m sorry, that makes no sense at all.

Wow, that's quite an indictment AR. I was responding to your targeted question
of whether a transcendent inner experience was a "hallucination or bona fide". I
only asserted that the cognitive trap was trying to make sense of a transcendent
experience in an attempt to validate it as "hallucination or bona fide". Language and
logic as we know them fall short in that Solomon-esque endeavor to validate an
transcendent experience. I only suggested a different lens and a mystic's discipline
were needed. Perhaps in lieu of "needed", "helpful" would be a more acceptably
non-denominational term.

I never "generalized" this to "cognitive structures and narratives". That's overreach.
By the way, I explicitly lauded scientific rigor and never suggested we abandon it
either. At a practical level, the clarity, heightened awareness, and health benefits
of a mindfulness discipline only enhance science and its path of discovery.

@ Faced with any and every thing, the closed-minded God-believer will say, “…because God!”, without
@ thinking through what that means. What you are doing the exact equivalent of that, except instead of
@ “…because God!”, you’re using the more sophisticated but essentially similar “…because mysticism!”.

To equate mysticism with magical thinking and close-mindedness is dismissive and
misses the mark also. Ironically, mysticism, in contrast to the blind faith of religion,
insists that you confirm premises experientially within via a disciplined practice of
mindfulness. Mysticism acts collaboratively and complementarily with science.
There's no place for magical thinking.

"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive
where we started And know the place for the first time." --T.S. Eliot

QAnon is the religion of right-wing crazies

My wife and I have watched the first two episodes of HBO's "Q: Into the Storm" because we find QAnon both ridiculous and dangerous.

Ridiculous, because QAnon faithful believe in absolutely crazy stuff -- such as Hillary Clinton and other Democrats operating a pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant.

Dangerous, because so many followers of Trump in this country accept the QAnon insanity, including that mass arrests of Democrats will take place and the Orange One (Trump) will become president again.

I can't recommend the HBO series because it is much more boring than it should be, given its subject matter. 

As a review correctly points out, the makers of this documentary went overboard on filming the people involved in the web sites Q posts on in excruciating detail. Their disputes, eccentricities, and such are mildly interesting, but what gets lost are the larger questions.

Notably, how can so many people be so infatuated with the QAnon conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact?

I don't have an answer. All I can say is that the first two episodes show how closely related QAnon is to religiosity, a subject of a previous post, "QAnon and religion are both mass delusions." 

No one knows who Q is.

However, posts from Q appear on the Internet. Likewise, no one knows if God even exists, much less what the probably non-existent God is like -- since there is no real evidence of any communications from God.

Yet QAnon believers and religious devotees spend a huge amount of time conjuring up theories about their chosen faith.

Every detail of Q's posts is examined for hidden meanings, in much the same way religious writings and utterances of religious leaders considered to have a direct connection with God are studied by the faithful.

QAnon followers wrongly consider that they're part of a truth-seeking movement.

Even when predictions by Q fail to come to pass, his acolytes are spurred to dig deeper and find the reality hidden from everyone else -- you know, the people who accept facts and reason, a group I'm proud to belong to.

This bears a lot of resemblance to religious fantasies such as the Second Coming of Christ, the Christian version of QAnon's "storm." 

A new conspiracy theory called “The Storm” has taken the grimiest parts of the internet by, well, storm. Like Pizzagate, the Storm conspiracy features secret cabals, a child sex-trafficking ring led (in part) by the satanic Democratic Party, and of course, countless logical leaps and paranoid assumptions that fail to hold up under the slightest fact-based scrutiny. However, unlike Pizzagate, the Storm isn’t focused on a single block of shops in D.C., or John Podesta’s emails. It’s much, much bigger than that.

I'm bothered by the fact that so many otherwise normal people are so easily sucked into the fact-free whirlpool of QAnon. Sure, religions have been doing this sort of sucking for thousands of years, preying upon the gullibility of humans who enjoy a good story, even if it is made up.

QAnon, though, lacks the moral foundation that most religions have, which tends to limit how destructive they can be. So far as I can tell, QAnon has no ethical standards, no commitment to caring and compassion, no respect for open debate into the nature of reality.

QAnon, like the worst of the world's religions, only cares about spreading lies. Flee from it, if you're ever tempted to embrace some aspect of QAnon craziness. 

Buddhism can help silence your inner critic

I enjoy reading movie reviews. The people who write them are called critics.

When they criticize a movie, or streaming show, that I was considering watching, often I'll decide to see something else instead. So critics can be wonderful.

However, there's also a critic who is uncomfortably close to me. In fact, it is me.

Or at least, a part of me who isn't shy about pointing out my screw-ups, mistakes, and such -- often in a caustic manner that leaves me feeling bad about myself.

I don't mind getting feedback about things I could have done better, whether from myself or anybody else.

But that inner critic often goes overboard, constantly reminding me of mistakes from long ago that I'm already well aware of and which can't be undone because they're in the distant past.

So I perked up when I came to a section in Robert Wright's book, "Why Buddhism is True," that talks about how Wright was able to deal with his own inner critic through mindfulness meditation. 

Here's what Wright said about this.

I've always been good at convincing myself I've made a mistake, at chastising myself for it, and sometimes at pretty literally hating myself for it. For decades people have told me I shouldn't be like this.

They've said things like, "Don't beat yourself up about it." 

This has always annoyed me. My feeling has been that you should beat yourself up about things you do wrong. Otherwise you may keep doing them!

And let's be honest, isn't one of the big problems with the world how many people do bad things and then don't feel any need for self-chastisement?

...The experience I had that night wasn't a full-fledged hallucination. As I entered that weird visual space, I didn't lose contact with the real world. I was aware that I was sitting in a meditation hall and that intense concentration had put my mind in a place it had never been.

But where was this place? Only after looking around a bit did I realize that the place my mind had entered was my mind -- or, at least, my mind's representation of my mind.

The tipoff was that I "saw" -- and, I guess, "heard" -- a particular thought I've had many times after doing something arguably stupid or inept or wrong. 

The thought was "You screwed up."

Actually, "screwed up" is a sanitized version of the phrase I tend to use and of the phrase that constituted the thought I observed that night. Anyway, the main thing is this: I now saw this thought assume a form I had never seen it assume before.

Come to think of it, I had never seen this thought assume any form at all. But it now looked as if -- literally looked as if -- one part of my mind was speaking the thought to another part.

There was even a kind of line tracing the path of the message, like an arrow on a diagram indicating the direction of communication.

I watched this intracranial conversation, watched the message travel from sender to recipient, as a kind of outside observer, even though I thought of the recipient as in some sense being me.

It's almost impossible to convey in words the power of this experience and its aura of significance.

...And what was the truth I was seeing? What struck me at the time was that, for the first time ever, this standard thought of mine -- "You screwed up" -- didn't seem to be coming from me.

It was just some guy in my head doing the talking. And it wasn't clear that he was worth paying attention to. Who the hell was he, anyway?

Now, more than a decade later, having thought about this stuff more and written this book, I might answer, "He was a module in my mind."

But at the time I was thinking less academically, and the lesson seemed to be that in the future I could treat my inner critic with some critical distance, if not outright disdain.

As much as I had resisted efforts to quit beating myself up, as much as I had minimized the toll it took on me, the prospect of living without this self-torture now seemed powerfully appealing. I'm not much of a crier, but I started crying. I tried to do it quietly, but I did it fully.

...And then I lived happily ever after.

Actually, no. Another line in that Foreigner song, right after "feels like the very first time" is "like it never will again." And, indeed, I haven't had a meditative experience that joltingly powerful since then.

My belief that I would be able to access this plane again and again and use it to orchestrate my own personal spiritual renaissance was naive.

So was my belief that I would quit beating up on myself, though the frequency and severity of the beatings seems to have fallen off a bit.

OK, Wright's meditation experience wasn't truly mind changing. Still, it benefitted him. Here's another excerpt from his book that's an overview of his attitude toward meditation.

In case all this sounds too abstractly philosophical, let me try to put it in more practical form, as the answer to this oft-asked question: Will meditation make me happier? And, if so, how much happier?

Well, in my case -- as  you will recall, I'm a particularly hard case -- the answer is yes, it's made me a little happier. That's good, because I'm in favor of happiness, especially my own.

At the same time, the argument I'd make to people about why they should meditate is less about the quantity of happiness than about the quality of the happiness.

The happiness I now have involves, on balance, a truer view of the world that the happiness I had before.

And a boost in happiness that rests on truth, I would argue, is better than a boost in happiness that doesn't -- not just because things that rest on truth have a more secure footing than things that don't, but because, as it happens, acting in accordance with this truth means behaving better toward your fellow beings.

So that's why I'd say that increments of happiness that insight meditation may add to your life are especially worth working for: because these are increments of valid happiness.

This is a happiness that is based on a multifaceted clarity -- on a truer view of the world, a truer view of other people, a truer view of yourself, and, I believe, a closer approximation to moral truth.

Motive of a mass murderer wrongly assumes conscious will

One of the things that comes through loud and clear in the many modern neuroscience and psychology books I've read is that we humans are lousy at knowing why we act a certain way.

Experiments on split-brain patients, for example, where the connection between the two brain hemispheres has been severed, shows that even when the left side of the brain (which controls language) is unaware of the reason the right side did something, the patient will make up a "why" story that has no basis in fact.

We don't like to admit that we don't know. So the brain makes up reasons in an effort to make sense of the world, even when those reasons lack a connection to reality.

The legal system is behind the times in this regard, as evidenced by the talk after every mass shooting in the United States about it being important to learn the killer's motive.

This assumes a direct link between (1) what we do, and (2) a preceding conscious thought or emotion that impels us to engage in that action. This assumption is highly suspect, since there's a lot of evidence that conscious awareness is a caboose at the end of an Action Train, not the locomotive that leads the way.

After Robert Aaron Long killed eight people in Atlanta, six of them Asian women who worked at massage parlors, many commentators saw the murders as racially motivated. But police reported that after they talked with Long, he said that his killings stemmed from a sex addiction, not racial hatred.

Well, the plain scientific fact seems to be that Long can't accurately say why he killed those people, just as nobody else can accurately say why they did this or that -- except, perhaps, for the simplest of actions.

Here's an excerpt from the book I've been writing about recently, Robert Wright's "Why Buddhism is True."

The split-brain experiments powerfully demonstrated the capacity of the conscious self to convince itself that it's calling the shots when it's not. However, this demonstration was done with people who don't have normal brains. How about the rest of us, whose two hemispheres aren't separated? Do our brains actually make use of this capacity for self-deception?

There is good reason to believe the answer is yes.

In one much-cited experiment, the psychologists Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson asked shoppers to appraise four pairs of pantyhose and choose the best pair. It turned out people had a strong tendency to choose the pair on the far right.

But when asked why they had chosen the pair, they didn't say, "Because it's on the far right." They tended to explain their choices in terms of the quality of the pantyhose, sometimes going into detail about the fabric, the feel, and so on.

Unfortunately for these explanations, the four pairs of pantyhose were identical.

...At a minimum, it seems fair to say that the role of our conscious selves in guiding behavior is not nearly as big as was long thought. And the reason this role was exaggerated is that the conscious mind feels so powerful; in other words, the conscious mind is naturally deluded about its own nature.

...From natural selection's point of view, it's good for you to tell a coherent story about yourself, to depict yourself as a rational self-aware actor. So whenever your actual motivations aren't accessible to the part of your brain that communicates with the world, it would make sense for that part of your brain to generate stories about your motivation.

There's good reason why the terms "implicit bias" and "systemic racism" are used so often in discussions of racial discrimination. People may consciously believe that they aren't racially biased, while actually they are.

Sometimes racism is subtle. Sometimes racism is so much a part of society that it goes unnoticed, being so familiar.

And sometimes, maybe most of the time, a mass shooter who kills a number of people of some race is unaware of why he did this. So I don't think investigators of the Atlanta shootings should put much credence in how Robert Aaron Long explains his murders.

Perhaps the law requires that a conscious motive be present for there to be a hate crime. But neuroscience and psychology don't require this -- quite the opposite, in fact.

There are no essences, just interpretations

We humans want to make more of reality than is actually there. We believe that things have more substance, more independence, and more of an unchanging essence than is justified.

This is the message of my previous post about the relative nature of the quantum world. And as I noted in that post, it fits with a core tenet of Buddhism -- emptiness.

Buddhism emptiness doesn't mean a void, or nothingness. 

It refers to the fact that nothing has inherent existence. Nothing has an unchanging essence. Nothing stands alone, complete in and by itself.

In the book I've been writing about recently, "Why Buddhism is True," Robert Wright, the author, says that essence is closely linked to emptiness.

Essence, as we've seen, is central to the Buddhist concept of emptiness. At least its absence is central to the concept of emptiness. The idea of emptiness is that, while the things we perceive out there in the world do in some sense exist, they lack this thing called "essence."

Essence appears in quite a few of the neuroscience books I've read. Often the example used is of, say, someone being told that they could have a nice used sweater at no cost.

The person is delighted.

Then they're told that the sweater belonged to a murderer who killed his victims in a grisly fashion. Learning that, often the sweater offer is refused, because somehow the essence of the murderer is felt to be part of it.

More positively, Wright cites the true example of someone who paid $48,875 for a tape measure owned by John F. Kennedy, "apparently motivated by a sense that it was imbued with some sort of presidential 'essence.'"

He then wonders what would have happened if the successful bidder was told that a mistake was made, and the tape measure actually belonged to a plumber.

The bidder's altered facial expression would leave no doubt that there had been an alteration of feeling. A tape measure that moments ago inspired awe and adoration would now inspire nothing of the kind. A precious relic had turned into a mere object, emptied of the essence it possessed only moments before.

What this points to is another subject discussed by Wright, how perceptions and feelings are intimately related. In fact, they are virtually inseparable. 

Meaning, how we look upon something or someone is deeply affected by our prior experience and emotional attitude. 

I've talked about this sort of thing in reference to how devotees of a guru typically view his qualities in absolute terms, whereas actually they're relative.

I had personal experience of this when my wife went with me to see the guru who led the religious organization I belonged to at the time, Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

Well, actually my wife went to Palm Springs for shopping and sightseeing. But she was able to see the guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, at a small group session where she got to sit in the front row.

She wasn't at all impressed. To her, Dhillon just seemed like a regular guy.

But to his devotees, the guru was imbued with marvelous qualities: love, wisdom, charm, and so on. This shows something obvious: beauty, or any other quality, is in the eye of the beholder, not anywhere outside.

Essence also is tied into stories, as Wright describes.

The stories we are told about things, and the stories we tell ourselves about things, influence how we feel about those things and, presumably, thus shape the essence that we sense in them. 

If the story behind a tape measure is that it belonged to JFK, that implies a different feeling -- and a different essence -- than the story that the tape measure belongs to a plumber.

If we think of ourselves as having a successful marriage and wonderful, thriving children, then the sight of our home probably gives off more positive vibes than if we think of ourselves as trapped in an obsessive marriage that has bred ne'er-do-well kids. And so on.

...But that's just one example of a more general illusion: that the "essences" we sense in things really exist, that they inhabit the things we perceive, when in fact they are constructions of our minds, with no necessary correspondence to reality.

Things come with stories, and the stories, whether true or false, shape how we feel about the things and thus shape the things themselves, giving them the full form we perceive.

Why quantum is relative, as Buddhism surmises

For many years I've had a strong interest in quantum physics -- from the perspective of someone who knows next to nothing about its mathematics, but is fascinated by the philosophical side of it.

There's a "shut up and calculate" position that most quantum physicists embrace. 

The theory works. Spectacularly. If it didn't, our technological modern world would be much different.

So lots of scientists don't worry about the philosophical foundation of quantum physics. They're just interested in applying the mathematical underpinning to practical problems and applications. 

Then there are physicists like Carlo Rovelli.

He wrote a fascinating piece in the March 13 issue of New Scientist, "Why quantum is relative." The online version has a different title. Here's a PDF file.
Download Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist | New Scientist

Rovelli has written a book about his take on quantum physics, Helgoland. It's to be released in the United States in May. Naturally I've put in a pre-order.

Here's the Amazon description of the book, which sums up Rovelli's approach.

One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving.

Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Full of alarming ideas (ghost waves, distant objects that seem to be magically connected, cats that appear both dead and alive), quantum physics has led to countless discoveries and technological advancements. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious.

As scientists and philosophers continue to fiercely debate the meaning of the theory, Rovelli argues that its most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness.

Rovelli makes learning about quantum mechanics an almost psychedelic experience. Shifting our perspective once again, he takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better comprehend our place in it.

Since I'm supremely confident that if I tried to sum up the New Scientist article on my own, I'd screw it up, I'm sharing some excerpts from it that I found particularly compelling.

Read the whole piece via the PDF file above to get a fuller picture of Rovelli's quantum philosophizing. It sure seems like Buddhist notions of reality are extremely close to Rovelli's viewpoint.

Dig down deep enough, and things have properties that are independent of anything else, right?

Perhaps not. Quantum physics, which describes the bizarre behaviour of the physical world at the most elementary level we know, may be telling us the opposite.

Things don’t have properties exclusive to themselves: their properties only exist by virtue of their relationship to other things, just like there are really no “chairs” without someone around to interact with them and see them as such.

Coming to terms with this idea may clarify the persistently mysterious nature of the quantum world. It might even help make other mysteries, such as the nature of our conscious experience, a little bit less mysterious.

...A chair is the way it interacts with its surroundings. To talk about the properties of the chair by itself, when it isn’t interacting with anything, is meaningless.

All of the properties we commonly use to characterise a chair – its colour, its comfort, its weight – are defined through interactions with something else. And so it is for the properties of the single atoms or elementary particles forming the chair.

...As hinted at in the opening of this article, it isn’t a novelty to realise that aspects of the world are relational. Biology, psychology, economics and many other sciences focus on relations more than entities.

Physics itself is already full of relational notions: velocity is only defined with respect to something else, as are electric or gravitational potential and orientation, to name just some examples. The physical world seemed to provide a non-relational substratum formed by substances with absolute properties.

Quantum mechanics, I think, is the discovery that this isn’t the case: the world is woven by relationships that go all the way down to the smallest physical entities.

An understanding of the world in terms of relations rather than entities might even help us disentangle other thorny issues, for instance the nature of consciousness. If we think of the physical world as if it were made by little stones each with its own properties, the jump from this picture to the subjective experience of mental phenomena is huge.

But if the physical nature of the world is better described in terms of how physical systems, simple as well as complex ones, affect one another, perhaps the disjoint will appear less dramatic: products of the mind are just the complex phenomenon formed by the tangled and richly interwoven interactions between the world and the brain.

Our old metaphysical prejudice was that physical reality is made by some fundamental substance with absolute properties. Quantum theory questions this.

I think this is fine: our metaphysical prejudices have formed and evolved within the restricted domain of our everyday experience. We are used to thinking about the world in terms of things with absolute properties because this is what we experience, thanks to the stability generated by decoherence.

But we shouldn’t force what we have discovered about nature to align with these prejudices: rather, our prejudices should be modified by our discoveries about nature.

Quantum theory has altered our understanding of physical reality in ways that are even more profound than the Copernican revolution, when we learned that we live on a madly spinning rock. Digesting the full implications of Nicolaus Copernicus’s work has taken centuries.

We are only beginning to digest the full implications of the quantum revolution.

 

Not having an illusory self has some real benefits

I'm continuing to enjoy my re-reading of Robert Wright's "Why Buddhism is True," a book that I neglected to write about after I first read it several years ago. My first post about it is here.

In his The Alleged Nonexistence of the Self chapter, Wright offers some advice.

Continue to entertain the proposition you've probably been entertaining your whole life, that somewhere within you there's something that deserves the name I.

And don't feel like you're committing a felony-level violation of Buddhist dogma just because you think of yourself as being a self.

But be open to the radical possibility that your self, at the deepest level, is not at all what you've always thought of as it being.

If you followed the Buddha's guidance and abandoned the massive chunks of psychological landscape you've always thought of as belonging to you, you would undergo a breathtaking shift in what it means to be a human.

If you attained the state he's recommending, this would be very different from having a self in the sense in which you've always had one before.

Basically, what Wright means by this is that it's possible to look upon our emotions, thoughts, perceptions, and such as not being in the realm of good and bad, nor as being lasting parts of who we are.

Nothing lasts. Nothing stands alone. Everything changes. Everything is interdependent, connected to other things.

Wright says:

Think of yourself as having, in principle, the power to establish a different relationship with your feelings and thoughts and impulses and perceptions -- the power to disengage from some of them; the power to, in a sense, disown them, to define the bounds of your self in a way that excludes them.

Think of some degree of liberation being possible -- and don't worry about the fact that this would seem to imply that there's a self to be liberated. There are worse things than being a self that gets liberated. 

One aspect of this liberation is being free of two illusions. Wright describes them clearly. 

So, all told, we're under at least two kinds of illusions. One is about the nature of the conscious self, which we see as more in control of things than it actually is. The other illusion is about exactly what kind of people we are -- namely, capable and upstanding.

You might call these two misconceptions the illusion about our selves and the illusion about ourselves. They work in synergy.

The first illusion helps us convince the world that we are coherent, consistent actors: we don't do things for no reason, and the reasons we do them make sense; if our behaviors merit credit or blame, there is an inner us that deserves that credit or blame.

The second illusion convinces the world that what we deserve is credit, not blame; we're more ethical than the average person, and we're more productive than the average teammate. We have beneffectance.

[Defined as the way people naturally present themselves to the world, as beneficial and effective.]

In other words, if you were to build into the brain a component in charge of public relations, it would look something like the conscious self.

In the next chapter, The Mental Modules That Run Your Life, Wright shares this compelling passage.

Indeed, if there is something that qualifies as a constant amid the flux, something that really does endure, essentially unchanged, through time, that something is an illusion: the illusion that there is a CEO, a king, and that "I" -- the conscious I -- am it.

We saw in the previous chapter that this illusion makes sense in evolutionary terms. The conscious I is the I that speaks, the I that communicates with the world, so it gets access to perspectives whose purpose is to be shared with the world.

These perspectives include the sense that there is an executive self, and that it is a pretty damn effective and upstanding executive self at that!

Now, this might seem kind of depressing. I, and you, and everybody else, we wrongly believe that our conscious self is much more in control of what we do than is actually the case.

Plus, we wrongly believe that this illusory CEO or king/queeen is much more loving, effective, competent, and so on than it actually is. (Again, ignore the paradox of an illusion having qualities; this is just the way Buddhism puts things.)

I like what Wright is saying, though. 

Because we think we're better people, a better self, than we truly are, most of us are harder on ourselves than we should be.

Mistakes, screw-ups, failures -- these challenge our sense of ourselves. We can't understand how someone so caring and competent could mess up so badly. 

Well, this assumes that there's a caring and competent self inside our head. It's akin to a general taking responsibility for a battlefield defeat because he's in charge and should have known better than the failed strategy that his troops followed.

But what if there's no general, no CEO, no king, no one in charge? What if our brains are just highly complex entities with many different modules, or states, that come into play as different circumstances arise? 

Then there would be little reason to engage in regret or recriminations for something poorly done. 

We simply do the best we can with what evolution has given us. No one is in charge of our life, of all our doings. There's just things going on inside and outside our psyches. 

Wright says:

Buddhist thought and modern psychology converge on this point: in human life as it's ordinarily lived, there is no one self, no conscious CEO, that runs the show; rather, there seem to be a series of selves that take turns running the show -- and in a sense, seizing control of the show.

If the way they seize control of the show is through feelings, it stands to reason that one way to change the show is to change the role feelings play in everyday life. I'm not aware of a better way to do that than mindfulness meditation.

Religions are sort of like conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories always have been around. But they've proliferated, in the United States, at least, in recent years.

Donald Trump deserves much of the credit, better termed blame. 

Trump never saw a fact that he didn't like to denigrate, calling every media story which irritated him "fake news." 

Of course, almost always there wasn't anything fake about the news. However, Trump's devotees came to feel like they were in a special club of People in the Know.

Meaning, people who think they know what is really going on in the world. Which is much different from actually knowing.

At the moment, QAnon is the craziest conspiracy theory, though it has lots of competition. 

What gives QAnon its special wacko flavor is that supposedly there's someone who goes by "Q" who's privy to deep dark astounding secrets, such as that Democratic politicians and other liberals are part of a pedophile ring.

More specifically, a ring "devoted to the abduction, trafficking, torture, sexual abuse and cannibalization of children, all with the purpose of fulfilling the rituals of their Satanic faith."

That's absurd. No one should believe it. But a great many people do.

Likewise, every world religion makes other sorts of absurd claims. And billions of people believe those claims -- such as that Jesus was born of a virgin birth and Muhammed had the Koran dictated to him by an angel.

Recently I came across two stories in The Atlantic about conspiracy theories that got me thinking about their relation to religious belief. 

"What Conspiracy Theorists Don't Believe" starts out this way. 

Some people believe the most extraordinary things. Earth is flat, and airplane GPS is rigged to fool pilots into thinking otherwise. COVID-19 vaccines are a pretext to inject thought-controlling microchips into us all. The true president of the United States is Donald Trump; his inauguration will happen on January 20, make that March 4, make that a date to be arranged very soon.

The question “How could anybody believe this stuff?” comes naturally enough. That may not be the most helpful question, however. Conspiracy theorists believe strange ideas, yes. But these outlandish beliefs rest on a solid foundation of disbelief.

To think that Trump is actually still the president, as some in the QAnon movement do, you first have to doubt.

You have to doubt the journalism practiced by any mainstream media outlet of any political persuasion; you have to doubt all the experts and the political elites; you have to doubt the judiciary, the military, and every other American institution. Once you have thoroughly disbelieved all of them, only then can you start to believe in Trump’s ascension being just around the corner—or in lizard overlords or alien prophets.

Religious fundamentalists also doubt. Notably, they doubt science and the scientists who produce scientific research. 

Without doubting evolution, for example, it is much more difficult to embrace Godly creation stories. Yet it doesn't really work to make believers in something unbelievable accept evident facts. Typically that just makes them harden their stance in favor of what they already believe. 

Instead, says the story:

When someone has dismissed the obvious facts, repeating them will not persuade him to see sense. But when people are given time and space to explain themselves, they may start to spot the gaps in their own knowledge or arguments. The psychologists Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil coined the phrase “the illusion of explanatory depth” to refer to the way our self-assurance crumples when we are invited to explain apparently simple ideas.

I like to do this when someone asserts that human consciousness isn't produced by the brain.

OK, then explain why anesthesia makes people lose consciousness? Or being hit in the head with a baseball bat? If consciousness isn't physical, why does Alzheimers change consciousness so much? Or a brain tumor?

The other story is "The Truth Seekers Are Coming." It talks about the people who claim to be devoted to truth, yet what they consider to be true is decidedly weird -- just like religious truth seekers.

Sometime in the middle of the pandemic year, and sometime in the middle of a prolonged and compulsive scroll through Instagram, the “truth seekers” came into my life. The term was showing up over and over in the bios and captions of the women I followed, so often that I was starting to feel as if I were seeing things.

The lockdowns seemed to have inspired a new kind of internet identity: There were truth-seeking fashion bloggers, truth-seeking travel influencers, and truth-seeking expectant moms who prayed that their daughters would be truth seekers too.

Some would even seek the truth across platforms, beckoning their followers to new podcasts about the truth, new Telegram group chats in which the truth was up for discussion, or new lines of truth-related merchandise.

“If Jesus were walking the Earth today, do you think you’d see him for his miracles?” a QAnon-obsessed fashion blogger and “relentless truth seeker” asked several weeks ago. “Or would you label him a conspiracy theorist?” I knew why she was asking, and it was not because she was leading Bible study.

It didn’t take me long to realize that the “truths” these women had in mind were highly suspect and disturbing ones.

They wanted all the facts about the Democrats’ scheme to harvest the blood of children, and all the evidence proving that the COVID-19 vaccines have microchips in them. The stress of that pursuit frequently culminated in angry speeches, delivered to a front-facing camera, about how Instagram was trying to silence their unpopular opinions and original perspectives.

Like-minded Instagrammers may refer to themselves as “critical thinkers” or “true journalists,” among other coded phrases, but the term I saw most often—the succinct and pretty hook that has pulled so many women down the rabbit hole—was truth seeker.

It's our 31st anniversary today. Here's some wedding photos.

Easy to remember our anniversary when it is St. Patrick's Day.

I shared some photos of our 1990 wedding and my ghastly-botched attempt at a marriage proposal in a HinesSight blog post, "Been married for 31 years today. But I'm not great at proposing."

From the photos you'll see how much marriage has aged me. Or...wait, maybe it is aging that has aged me. 

Buddhism can free us from evolution's delusion

It happened again this morning, a sign from the non-God. 

I'd tried to continue reading a couple of Buddhist books that appealed to me, aside from occasional mentions of supposed supernatural phenomena, which had been bothering me.

Today the bothering overcame my liking of the books. 

In the course of returning them to the Buddhism section of my bookcase, my eye hit upon a book by Robert Wright, "Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment."

Highlighting indicated that I'd read the entire book. But so far as I can tell, I never wrote a blog post about it. Well, that changes with today. And I'm sure I'll write more posts as I re-read the book.

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter of the book that I got through this morning. I really like Wright's writing style and his approach to Buddhist meditation.

Evolutionary psychology can be described in various ways, and here's one way I had described it in my book [The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life]: It is the study of how the human brain was designed -- by natural selection -- to mislead us, even enslave us.

Don't get me wrong: natural selection has its virtues, and I'd rather be created by it than not be created at all -- which, so far as I can tell, are the two options this universe offers. 

Being a product of evolution is by no means entirely a story of enslavement and delusion. Our evolved brains empower us in many ways, and they often bless us with a basically accurate view of reality.

Still, ultimately, natural selection cares about only one thing (or, I should say, "cares" -- in quotes -- about only one thing, since natural selection is just a blind process, not a conscious designer). And that one thing is getting genes into the next generation. 

Genetically based traits that in the past contributed to genetic proliferation have flourished, while traits that didn't have fallen by the wayside. 

And the traits that have survived this test include mental traits -- structures and algorithms that are built into the brain and shape our everyday experience.

So if you ask the question "What kinds of perceptions and thoughts and feelings guide us through life each day?" the answer, at the most basic level, isn't "The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that give us an accurate picture of reality."

No, at the most basic level the answer is "The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that helped our ancestors get genes into the next generation."

Whether those thoughts and feelings and perceptions give us a true view of reality is, strictly speaking, beside the point. As a result, they sometimes don't. Our brains are designed to, among other things, delude us.

In the rest of his book, Wright describes his exploration of Buddhist meditation and how it can lead us to a less deluded view of reality.

One reason I like non-supernatural Buddhism so much is that it flips around the Hindu conception of maya, the illusory nature of this world. 

In Buddhism the world is simply what it is, the world.  

There's no problem with the world. The problem lies with the human mind that is trying to comprehend the world, to find the world satisfying, to treat other people compassionately. 

This is one reason why the Buddha reportedly wasn't much interested in abstract discussions of how the world is. His focus was on how a correct view of the world can lead to much reduced suffering, which Wright suggests is better termed "unsatisfactoriness."

At the end of his second chapter, Paradoxes of Meditation, Wright cites the questions he's going to explore via the scientific foundation of a Buddhist worldview.

Why, and in what particular ways, are human beings naturally deluded? How exactly does the delusion work? How does delusion make us suffer? How does it make us make other people suffer? Why would the Buddhist prescription for dispelling the delusion -- in particular, the meditative part of that prescription -- work?

And what would it mean for it to work fully? In other words, does the elusive state that is said to lie at the culmination of the meditative path -- sometimes called enlightenment -- really qualify for that term? What would it be like to see the world with perfect clarity?

Great questions.

I look forward to learning the answers through a second reading of "Why Buddhism is True." I'm a different person than I was almost four years ago, when I bought the book in August 2017.

So my comprehension of what Wright has to say also will be different now.

"Nothing special" explains a lot about human nature

A few days ago I'd woken up in the middle of the night. In the course of lying in bed, waiting to get back to sleep, the thought of "nothing special" suddenly came to mind.

I then pondered the fact that I'm nothing special; that all of humanity is nothing special given the vastness of the cosmos; that, nonetheless, religions try to make their followers feel very special by supposedly enjoying a special relationship with God; that if people could somehow have a sense that they're nothing special, along with everybody else, the world would be a better place.

Since, I've been enjoying playing around with this "nothing special" idea. 

It seems to go a long way toward explaining the gap between how reality actually is, and how we humans typically consider it to be.

Meaning, we're really good at deluding ourselves.

And one reason this happens is our failure to look upon ourselves as nothing special. Instead, we have a strong tendency to see ourselves as being in a spotlight on the Stage of Life, while other people play supporting roles in the shadows.

This is to be expected, I guess. The only person we are in an intimate subjective relationship with is our own self. Everybody else we view from the outside, while we know ourselves from the inside.

So it takes some effort, some spiritual work, to alter that I-centered point of view into a more realistic I'm-nothing-special perspective.

For example, we see death all around us and know that no one is able to escape being dead at some point. Yet most people believe in life after death -- because their religion tells them that they're going to have a nice afterlife, while non-believers in that religion won't.

Today I wondered if Amazon had any books with the title Nothing Special. I found several, but only one book that had a similar philosophical perspective on how I viewed that term, Charlotte Joko Beck's book with the subtitle "Living Zen."

Amazon informed me that I'd bought this book on June 24, 2012.

Indeed, I found it in the Buddhist section of my bookcase. Interesting. Maybe my mind popped up with that nighttime "nothing special" thought on its own, but it seemed entirely possible that a memory of the title of Beck's book surfaced out of the depths of my unconscious.

I'd written a couple of blog posts about Nothing Special. 
What zen practice is... so simple...
Anxiety stretches between real and unreal

I've started to re-read Nothing Special, or at least parts of it. Here's how the book starts out. I like this imagery.

We are rather like whirlpools in the river of life. In flowing forward, a river or stream may hit rocks, branches, or irregularities in the ground, causing whirlpools to spring up spontaneously here and there.

Water entering one whirlpool quickly passes through and rejoins the river, eventually joining another whirlpool and moving on. Though for short periods it seems to be distinguishable as a separate event, the water in the whirlpools is just the river itself. 

The stability of a whirlpool is only temporary.

The energy of the river of life forms living things -- a human being, a cat or dog, trees and plants -- then what held the whirlpool in place is itself altered, and the whirlpool is swept away, reentering the larger flow. 

The energy that was a a particular whirlpool fades out and the water passes on, perhaps to be caught again and turned for a moment into another whirlpool.

We'd rather not think of our lives in this way, however. We don't want to see ourselves as simply a temporary formation, a whirlpool in the river of life. The fact is, we take form for a while; then when conditions are appropriate, we fade out.

There's nothing wrong with fading out; it's a natural part of the process.

However, we want to think that this little whirlpool that we are isn't a part of the stream. We want to see ourselves as permanent and stable. Our whole energy goes into trying to protect our supposed separateness.

"Unique" -- fascinating book about the science of human individuality

I love science. So I love scientific books.

Since I'm also fascinated by what makes us into the person that we are, David Linden's "Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality" hits the sweet spot for me of reading pleasure. 

Linden is a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute.

Impressive credentials. Plus, Linden is an excellent writer with a sense of humor. 

Here's some excerpts from the three-fourths of the book that I've read so far. These will give you a flavor of the fascinating facts that Linden shares on every page.

Heritability of human traits. One main conclusion of MISTRA [Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart] and related studies was that most human traits, regardless of whether they are physical or behavioral, have a significant heritable component, usually ranging from 30 to 80 percent.

...For decades, the dominant thinking in the field of psychology, and in society at large, was that the most important determinant of one's adult personality was the influence of immediate family, particularly the parents.

This idea came from the twentieth-century psychological movement called behaviorism, which held that humans come into the world as blank slates, ready to be molded by social experience. 

As a result, it was quite a shock when the MISTRA experiments showed significantly higher correlations in personality measures in identical twin pairs than in fraternal ones. The main result was that about 50 percent of the variation in personality can be accounted for by heritability. 

...Importantly, while one's likelihood of having religious beliefs is influenced by both heredity and shared environment, the specific religion you choose has no hereditary component. 

Your genes might contribute to making you religious, but they will not specify a Hindu or Wiccan or Roman Catholic faith -- that's mostly a family and community affair.

Human genome. On average, considering the entire DNA sequence (both the genes and the stretches of other DNA between them), each human is about 99.8 percent similar to any other human, 98 percent similar to a chimpanzee, and 50 percent similar to a fruit fly.

This is because, if you go back far enough in evolutionary time, about eight hundred million years, humans, chimps, and fruit flies al share a common ancestor.

If only a 2 percent difference separates us from chimps, then it follows that small differences in the DNA sequence have a big effect on traits.

...The genome is not a detailed cell-by-cell blueprint for the development of the body and brain, but rather a vague recipe jotted down on the back of an envelope.

...The key point is that the genetic instructions for development are not precise.

...That's the main reason why identical twins, who share the same DNA sequence and nearly the same uterine environment, are not born with wholly identical bodies, brains, or temperaments.

This means that your individuality is not a matter of "nature versus nurture" but rather "heredity interacting with experience, filtered through the inherent randomness of development."

Free will. We like to imagine that we are fundamentally creatures of free will. We reliably call certain facts, events, and concepts to mind. We make conscious decisions and act volitionally. Our individuality is inextricably bound up with a deep sense of agency and autonomy.

To a large degree, this is a trick our brain plays on us. Most of our behavior is subconscious and automatic. In the words of neuroscientist Adrian Haith: "Almost everything you do is a habit." 

...Almost all of our instincts about memory are wrong. We feel like creatures of free will, with detailed and unlimited recall of those events that have helped to form us as individuals.

In reality, most of our behavior is composed of learned, subconscious habits and skills with only a thin veneer of decision-making at the surface.

Our recollection of specific events is unreliable and subject to further distortion every time we recall them. Our memories of facts and concepts are only marginally better. When asked about how confident we are about the veracity of a particular memory, our estimation bears no relationship to the truth.

We feel like we can learn more and more with no limit, yet intensive training in one type of memory seems to degrade our ability to store some other forms of memory.

Our memories are suboptimal, and yet we hold them close. They feel true and important. They are central to our sense of individuality and agency. The mismatch between how we revere our memories and how often they fail is striking.

Why we should feel more agency than we really have is an interesting and open question. I tend to see it as more of a feature than a bug.

When we feel that we are in charge of our behavior, that we are making decisions based on accurate recollection, this allows for more rapid decision-making in those cases of the "thin sliver of cognitive deliberation" where it is truly required.

In other words, when we don't have to stop and second-guess whether we are in charge, we can be decisive when it really matters.

Sexual orientation. There have now been several large-scale anonymous surveys of sexual orientation performed using random sampling in the United States and Europe.

They indicate that approximately 3 percent of men and 1 percent of women identify as consistently homosexual, about 0.5 percent of men and 1 percent of women as bisexual, and the remainder heterosexual.

...Ask a straight man, "When did you decide to be straight?" and he'll likely answer that it didn't feel like a decision at all, but rather like a deep compulsion that became evident around puberty or before.

Gay and bi men will give the same answer: in one survey in the United States, only about 4 percent of all gay and bi men reported that they chose their sexual orientation -- the rest felt that they were "born that way."

...If sexual orientation had no heritable component, we'd expect that the percentage of twin pairs where both are gay would be roughly the same for fraternal and identical twins. 

Conversely, if sexual orientation were entirely determined by genes, then every gay identical twin would have a gay twin sibling.

The best estimates to date, from a population of 3,826 randomly selected twin pairs in Sweden, indicate that about 20 percent of the variance in sexual orientation in women is determined by genes; in men, it's about 40 percent.

...The conclusion is that genetic variation is one factor in determining sexual orientation, but it is far from the whole story and it is a somewhat stronger effect in men than in women.

As always, it's important to remind ourselves that these estimates of heritability are measures for populations, not individuals. 

It may be that there are some individual women and men who carry gene variants such that their sexual orientation is entirely genetically determined, and others for whom their sexual orientation has no genetic contribution whatsoever.

As with all behavioral traits, there is no single gene that determines human sexual orientation. Rather, many different genes each appear to make a small contribution, and at present we do not have a useful list of these genes. 

I get a flash of churchless insight: "Stop. Just stop."

For many years, at least seventeen, but really even longer, I've been steadily discarding bits and pieces of the religious beliefs (Eastern variety) that held sway in my mind for thirty-five years.

I've done away with overt religiosity, but subtle remnants remain. 

For example, at times during the day for a short period I like to repeat a Buddhist mantra, Namu Amida Butsu. 

And while mindfulness doesn't strike me as being at all religious, sometimes I go beyond simply paying close attention to what I'm doing and imagine that mindfulness can lead to benefits such as fewer problems in my life.

That might be the case. However, that sort of imagining can edge mindfulness into prayer territory, a hope for what might be rather than focusing on what is in the present moment.

Last night I had an interesting experience.

It was one of those times where I feel like something that's been churning away in my unconscious suddenly bursts through into conscious awareness -- unexpectedly, strongly, clearly.

The experience only lasted a second or two.

What flashed brightly in my mind was a message that wasn't expressed in words, but via an intuition. Stop. Just stop. 

Instantly, without thought, I knew what the "stop" meant.

Stop finding problems in your life when they don't actually exist.
Stop trying to improve yourself, since you don't have a self.
Stop trying to control what can't be controlled.
Stop adding an unnecessary "spiritual" dimension to reality.

The flip side of that "stop" was equally vivid. 

Relax.
Let go.
Worry less.
Enjoy more.
Embrace not knowing.

Today I still had a feeling along the lines I've just described. I had a lot of chores to do. I did them. All of them. I didn't make more out of them than was necessary.

Here and now physical reality seemed just fine to me. 

Yes, things weren't perfect. I didn't need them to be. I didn't even need them to be any different than what they were.

That included my mind, my awareness, my focus, my emotions, my thoughts. 

I felt like a psychological weight had been released from my psyche, a burden consisting of should's left over from the many years when my mind was filled with religious rules, vows, commandments, aspirations, and such.

Of course, this isn't the first time I've had that sort of "Stop. Just stop." message appear in my mind. Here's some blog posts along that line.

Believing in problems may be our only problem
What is the problem religions are trying to solve?
My meditation evolves to an exalted state of doing nothing

I talk chakras and meridians with a churchless visitor

Following on the heels of a previous email exchange of views that I fashioned into a blog post, here's another one.

This time I was asked about a relative of a Church of the Churchless reader who surprised this person by embracing a yogic view of chakras that was "woo-woo." 

Here's the message that I got, followed by my response.

Dear Brian,

 

You might remember, a while back, you were kind enough to send me that lovely killer list of books that I'd requested for a cousin of mine who was working on her thesis.

 

Well, she finished that course of hers, and ended up starting a Yoga retreat of her own, and then ended up losing her fledgling entrepreneurial venture to the Covid thing. 

 

Which is sad, of course, but the other day I happened to meet her, after ages, and when I asked her why she wanted to start such a woo-woo venture in the first place (it doesn't -- didn't -- just teach you physical exercises and stuff, it claimed to clean your chakras and whatnot), we had a falling-out of sorts. 

 

No doubt we'll get over this, we're generally pretty close, and blood is thicker than water, et cetera, but the reason I thought to write about this to you is because this thought, this idea, it occurred to me, that probably there are people who instinctively shun the dodgy woo, and people who lack that instinct. 

 

My cousin, bless her soul, she's a good enough girl otherwise, probably is of the latter bent. I myself wouldn't dream of touching a woo retreat with a barge pole, ever, no matter how lucrative, but apparently this cousin of mine is open to that kind of deal.

 

I mean, it's weird.

 

First, because my cousin isn't the gullible kind that swallows this kind of nonsense.  And two, because she isn't the venal kind, the greedy get-rich-at-all-costs kind who is amoral about how she makes her money: exactly the opposite, in fact, she gave up a lucrative corporate career to shift to more "spiritual" vistas (and in general minus the superstition that sometimes comes with this hankering after the "spiritual").

 

My point is, I find it so weird, someone like my cousin going down this path. The setting up of this woo shop, I mean. 

 

And yet of my kin and my friends, that I discussed this with, not one found her "career decision" odd or unbecoming, not one. On the contrary, it was my criticism that came to be criticized, without exception. 

 

And when I find I'm the only guy who's seemingly thinking straight, in the midst of heaps and heaps of folks who're seemingly deluded, I generally pause and think, hard, whether I haven't somehow hit some blind spot of mine own, if I'm not missing something. And I really don't know whom else to ask!  Hence this email.

 

I'd welcome your views on this, well, on what is after all a non-issue, in the sense that this is nothing to do with me really,but which troubles me, nevertheless, on general principles.

 

With my good wishes, ________

 

This was my response.

 

_______, good to hear from you again. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to say anything wise, or even cogent, about your cousin’s embrace of woo-woo. Meaning, so-called “spiritual” stuff with no grounding in fact or reason.

 

Well, let’s make that a certain kind of reason — one that is founded on science, demonstrable chains of causes and effects, open to debate and questioning.

 

Chakra theory is reasonable within its own yoga context.

 

In my college days I got quite intense about yoga for a while, even teaching it under the auspices of the Greek-Christian yoga instructor who managed to cram together aspects of Christianity and Eastern religions into an approach that appealed to me at first, but later struck me as too damn weird.

 

Anyway, back then I accepted the notion of chakras, kundalini, all that stuff. Of course, I also accepted a lot of other stuff that now strikes me as, to not coin a term, overly woo-woo.

 

Bringing things more toward the present, for seventeen years I’ve been practicing Tai Chi with a nice group of people. I enjoy Tai Chi for a number of reasons, none of which have anything to do with the Chinese concepts of meridians and subtle energy channels that my instructor embraces, along with some members of my Tai Chi class.

 

I’ve learned to keep a faint smile on my face when the instructor, or anyone else, talks about how they feel the energy of Chi/Ki coursing through their body. I believe in energy, and I feel the energy of my body. I just don’t look upon that energy in the same fashion that they do.

 

Yet this has no bearing on my Tai Chi practice, in the same way that not believing in chakras would have no, or very little, bearing on the benefits someone gets from yoga practice. In these cases the extra topping of woo-woo doesn’t really change the character of the main dish of Tai Chi or Yoga.

 

So I can understand why most of your relatives and friends look upon your criticism of your cousin as being largely unjustified. After all, almost everybody believes in some weird stuff, whether supernatural (God/miracles) or natural (Big Foot/space aliens). 

 

I mean, woo-woo is a continuum, not a dichotomy.

 

I’m pretty sure that if the most scientific, reasoned, fact-based person in the entire world were pressed to disclose everything they believed in, deep down, and probably hidden from the outside world, would be some beliefs about objective reality that can’t be defended.

 

Many top-notch scientists, like Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, are deeply religious. By and large they don’t try to justify their religious belief by recourse to rational arguments. It is a matter of faith that offers meaning to them.

 

The way I see it, and the way I’ve argued it on this blog for seventeen years, is that someone’s religiosity or embrace of the supernatural is no one else’s business unless that someone attempts to force their beliefs onto others, or presents those beliefs on an open forum (like this blog, via comments) that invite a skeptical response.

 

If your cousin enjoys believing that chakras are true, fine. That isn’t your cup of tea, as the saying goes, but she enjoys sipping from it. 

 

Again, we’re talking about a continuum here. In the grand scheme of religious beliefs, ranging from least dangerous to most dangerous, I view a belief in chakras or meridians/energy channels as being way down on the “barely bad” side of things.

 

I doubt that anyone has ever gone to war over chakras, burned someone at the stake over chakras, or hurled threats of divine retribution if someone doesn’t believe in chakras. 

 

One thing that I find helpful is to physicalize woo-woo notions. Here’s what I mean by that. Chakras refer to different parts of the body. Those parts definitely exist. For example, we have a head. We have an abdomen. We have genitals. 

 

Our attention can be focused on different parts of our body. When I’m thinking intensely, I feel like I’m in my head. When I’m hungry, I feel like I’m in my abdomen. When I crave sex, I feel like I’m in my genitals. 

 

This isn’t what chakra theory is about, but it is some of what it’s about. Thus there is a bridge from a purely physical view of “chakras” to a yogic spiritual view of them. 

 

In a similar sense, I feel energy within my body when I’m doing Tai Chi.

 

I don’t know if that is the same feeling other people refer to when they speak of Chi/Ki. I look upon the energy as physical. They look upon it as spiritual or supernatural. Again, though, there’s a bridge between these ways of looking at energy meridians, because we’re speaking of a continuum, not a dichotomy. 

 

And it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that acupuncture, say, one day will be found to have a foundation in solid science. I’m unsure if this will happen, but I’m open to it. 

 

Thus you might find it interesting to speak with your cousin in more depth about her embrace of yoga, including what she finds appealing about chakra theory. There might be common ground between you and her in this regard. Or, maybe not. Regardless, it’s worth exploring. 

 

      — Brian

A message from someone finding purpose in Judaism, and my response

Recently I found a message from someone in the depths of my email inbox that I had ignored for a long time.

I wrote back to them. A few days ago I got a reply, which I'm sharing below. 

It's a well-written honest explanation of how they went from being non-religious to finding a sense of purpose and belonging in Judaism. 

I can understand why someone would embrace the commandments/rules of a religion rather than struggling to find their own moral code, even though this doesn't make sense to me any more.

After this person's message, minus their name, I've shared my reply to them.

Brian, thank you so much for getting back. I read through our conversation and I am blown away by the full span of emotions I used to feel at the ripe age of 22. I've recently returned to Judaism and have found a lot of peace and meaning in it.

My view of Judaism is very similar to a Zen interpretation of Buddhism: I can't explain to you why G-d exists or whether anything in the Torah is historical, but I know what the practice does for me and that it is beneficial.

As I reread our conversation, I realize I take you a lot more seriously now than I did then (if you could believe that). Memories come back to me of thinking "well maybe he doesn't know" regardless of my affirmations I've expressed; for example, when you say that Buddhists are just as dogmatic, I remember denying the possibility (due to dogmatic thinking), although now, in retrospect, I come to understand that reality.

Judaism has truly given me a lot of divine purpose. I find that it has this uniqueness that there's something in it for every Jew. They say for every two Jews, there's three opinions. I find that to be absolutely true because, as someone looking for spiritual fulfillment, freedom from attachment, and a drive for my compassion, I find all that there ready for the taking.

The idea of taking all of my concerns, throwing away their selfish value, and using them for the purpose of serving G-d is a level of detachment itself.

The idea of G-d is so far away from human understanding that taking all my pleasures and my pains and realizing that it is for the purpose of worshiping something completely intangible has the function of removing the responsibility to be concerned with them from a selfish point of view.

I've noticed that the less I worry about my happiness and more about the happiness of The Intangible Creator, the happier I really am due to the abandoning of my sense of self.

Three times a day I say the most important prayer in the Jewish religion, known as the Shema. Hear O' Israel, The L-rd is Our G-d, The L-rd is One. Meditation is a necessity during this blessing as I run the ideas through my mind respectively, "I am given this responsibility to serve G-d, He is in control of everything and I don't have to worry, and He pervades all matter and all entities and ideas, therefore nothing should ever feel unfamiliar."

This is the Jewish version of taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha.

Another thing I love is Shabbat. This is the fact that once a week, we turn off all of our electronics and spend a joyous day where worry is forbidden, family is together, and we are disconnected from all the strain and pain of the world that our phones make sure to frequently remind us of.

I've absolutely fallen in love with Judaism. Once again, I could never point to science and explain why it confirms my beliefs, but I can explain why it makes me happy and can improve my life; and it has.

The amount of "everyday" philosophy that it's provided has been enormously helpful. It's a huge relief to stand on the shoulders of giants with thousands of years of moral documentation. The greatest thing that made me come to the realization that Judaism was something that I needed goes back to the day I "found G-d." I was sitting in my car one night after a tough visit with my therapist.

I was at a crossroads trying to decide if I wanted to do the "right thing" or the "easy thing." The easy thing was something that I knew to be obviously immoral but would allow me to live my life the way I wanted.

Sitting in my car writing down all my thoughts and feelings, I realized that in a case like that, I would not do the right thing unless I subscribed to a form of objective morality to keep myself accountable. I realized that my subjective morality was too unreliable to make me do the right thing and I really wanted to do the right thing.

Right then and there, I felt a rush run over me and an intense calm from the idea that I could prescribe to my life the Torah and finally have a manual on how to live my life in this clueless world. And that's what I did, I subscribed to this ancient morality and decided to do the right thing.

I ended up having my cake and eating it too. Everything happened to go as smoothly as it could be. Ever since then, I feel a huge responsibility to make the world a better place which I am enthusiastic to bear.

I'm sorry to come back to you after reading your blog for about three years about open-mindedness and free choice to seem that I support the established order. However, Judaism is not Christianity and a wandering Jew like myself would be pleased to find that if happiness is what we're all chasing, we may be able to find it in our own backyard. After all, as the Buddha taught, peace isn't something you find outside of yourself.

Thank you for your correspondence and I hope this new year finds you many blessings.

Here's my reply to the message above.

 

I’m glad that you have found so much support in Judaism. I look upon Judaism as being as much about fostering a sense of community among Jews as being a belief structure.

 

Regarding the latter, which includes complying with the Torah, I’ll simply do some arguing (very Jewish!) and observe that your distinction between subjective and objective morality, though superficially correct, has to be taken in a larger context.

 

There is no evidence that Torah morality, or any other religiously-based morality, is objectively true in the sense of reflecting a universal law, as scientific laws do, particularly laws of physics.

 

So choosing to accept a certain form of religious morality is a subjective decision. There’s little doubt that if you had a Hindu background, you’d now be finding support in Hindu traditions. Ditto for any other religion that was a part of your heritage.

 

In no way am I saying that the satisfaction you feel in following Judaic law isn’t genuine and real. We all need something to lean on.

 

I’m just suggesting that in my view the only possibly genuine form of universal human morality needs to rest on evolutionary principles, which some philosophers and scientists are attempting to do. For example, it seems clear that early humans were more likely to survive and thrive if they had a common set of moral beliefs, of what is right and wrong.

 

And our sense of empathy and compassion is tied into this, since the more we help others in our “tribe,” the more likely the group can handle challenges.

 

So it’s no wonder that you are finding such satisfaction in belonging to your particular Judaic tribe. Members of every religion feel the same way, as do secular people like humanists and atheists. However, the latter lack rituals such as those you mentioned, so this limits the power non-religious groups have to bind people together.

 

        — Brian

Blog post about my great-uncle, Conrad Hilton

If Church of the Churchless visitors want to see a photo of me as a kid, looking questionably cute, I just wrote a post for my HinesSight blog that included one.

See "The Hiltons" is a book about my great-uncle, Conrad Hilton.

We don't know what we don't know until it's too late

My mind, like God, works in mysterious ways. Of course, the big difference between my mind and God is that I, along with my mind, actually can be shown to exist.

At any rate, this morning I found myself thinking along this line. If you consider that this shows I'm questionably sane, I'd be the first to agree with you.

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. So have you, I'm confident. But from here on I'm going to use "I" to refer to myself as an example that applies to almost everybody.

The problem is, those mistakes have only been evident after the fact. Meaning, after I'd already done what, a bit or a lot later, I regretted doing. 

So at the time I did what turned out to be a mistake, my mind was feeling that I was doing the right thing.

This is obvious, because if I'd had a feeling that I was doing the wrong thing, I would have stopped and tried to figure out what needed to be done right.

Now, this shows that it is really difficult for me to not do the wrong thing, since there's no warning light in my mind that flashes when I'm heading off the right track.

My Subaru Crosstrek, on the other hand, makes a chirp when I cross the center line of the road. In that sense, my car is smarter than I am.

On the positive side -- assuming there's something positive in doing wrong -- it's hard for me to blame myself when I didn't know that I was screwing up at the time, only later.

Hard, yet not impossible, because I often do berate myself for not recognizing what I should have done differently.

I then pondered the question of what to do about this vicious circle of not knowing that I don't know what I should be doing until it is too late to do anything differently.

At first I thought it would be possible to carefully consider alternative ways of doing something before I did it, to have a better chance of doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing.

But there's several problems with this.

One is that it would take too much time, even if I only did this for new or unusual things that needed doing. Washing dishes, for example, is so habitual and familiar, I rarely mess it up. 

By contrast, last Saturday I changed the oil in our generator after it had been running for most of the day during a full week after an an ice storm caused massive power outages in Oregon. 

I got the warm oil draining into a quart yogurt container and figured I had time to change the air cleaner on the other side of the generator. When I went back to the oil change side, the container had started to overflow with oil.

I immediately thought, "That was stupid of me." Yet at the time I had no thought that taking my eye off of the draining oil was going to cause a problem. 

So is it possible to eliminate our screw-ups when we have no idea that we're doing something wrong? No. Screwing up comes with being human. I do feel, though, that focusing on doing one thing at a time reduces the chance of a screw-up.

If I'd patiently watched the oil drain into the yogurt container instead of changing the air cleaner simultaneously, I would have been able to prevent the minor oil spill onto our carport cement.

However, no matter how carefully we try to do things, frequently we'll find that we've done something wrong. In that case, compassion appears to be in order.

After all, few of us consciously set out to mess something up. Almost everybody tries to do the right thing, even if it seems clear to almost everybody else that we did the wrong thing. Thus self-compassion is as important as compassion for others. 

Often we just don't know. And we don't know that we don't know. Neither do the other people who don't know that they don't know.

If the person in the car ahead of me knew that their left-turn blinker has been on for several blocks, I'm confident they would have turned it off. So they're not trying to irritate me by pretending they're turning left, yet never do.

They, like me frequently, are just caught in the grip of not knowing that they don't know.

This, of course, gets us into the much larger question of free will. Along with many, if not most, neuroscientists, after a lot of reading about how modern science looks upon free will, I don't believe it exists.

Which doesn't stop me from getting upset when generator oil being changed overflows a yogurt container. I do, though have a more philosophical attitude when I do something that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't done.

How to become an atheist in three easy steps

This says it all, in just a few words.

Escaping from the need to escape

My wife and I have been without electricity for 11 days during the aftermath of the worst ice storm to hit Oregon in a long time. In fact, it might have been the worst ice storm ever to hit the state.

Today, while I was on a dog walk around our rural south Salem neighborhood, I heard someone scream in delight. Then I noticed lights on in houses. 

For the rest of my walk home I visualized coming back to a house with electricity. I pictured myself taking a hot bath for the first time in over a week and a half. I thought about the joy of turning our generator off.

Then I walked in our front door and flipped a switch in the entry way. Nothing happened. We still lacked power. After calling PGE, our utility company, it became clear that we were one of only a few houses whose electricity hadn't come back on.

On our neighborhood's Facebook page person after person was posting about how happy they were.

Me, I was astoundingly sad. After eleven days of worrying about when our power would be restored, now I had to start over -- worrying about when a repair crew would fix the small outage of ourselves and a couple of neighbors.

For much of tonight I felt listless, low energy, too despondent to write a blog post.

So I decided to make a transcript of a guided meditation by Jeff Warren I'd listened to this morning on my Calm iPhone app. It helped a lot to do this. 

You won't get the same feel from Warren's words as if you heard him speak them himself. And the pauses in the guided meditation aren't shown in the transcript.

But I hope you'll like what Warren says as much as I did. Enjoy.

The Great Escape

Do you ever find yourself plotting your escape? I do. My mind goes around and around, trying to figure how to get out of my situation. 

I think, maybe I can travel somewhere new. Nope. 

Maybe I can go see my friends. Nope.

Maybe I can just go outside and lay down in the sun, and just escape my responsibilities for one day. Nope.

Right now the pandemic has many of us confined. All our normal escape routes are blocked, all the usual ways we take care of ourselves. 

What to do? It's an ironclad rule of human existence, when there's nowhere else to go, when we can't escape from our life, then we have to learn to escape into our life.

The greatest escape actually isn't an escape at all. It's showing up in a new way.

So here's a practice for whenever you're having a hard time and feeling trapped. If you're feeling just fine, this is also a good practice to explore.

Because the skills you strengthen here are relevant to being human anytime. Let's go.

Close your eyes and then take in a few full deep breaths. As you inhale, stretch up the spine, find some dignity in the posture, like you're connecting to human nobility and fierceness in facing your life.

Then, as you breathe out, imagine you're breathing out an intention, or reservations, or worry. 

Some nice long exhales. Now find your equanimity. Equanimity is the muscle of staying open. Open to the full 360 surround of sensations and sounds and thoughts, open to what actually is here.

So let's start with some basic Humanity 101. 

Sometimes life is hard. Feeling like life is hard puts everyone of us in good company. So we can practice sending some kindness to ourselves, whether we're feeling just fine or whether we're not feeling so fine.

You can say something to yourself like, hey, I've got your back here. I'm the part that sends in the love. Here you go. 

So you're not after some big sentimental swell here, though that can happen. You're more after an acknowledgement of caring. 

Take a moment to just feel what you feel. Caring about yourself exactly as you care about a friend who is having a hard time. To you, it feels calm, patient. You're just being present.

Or maybe I feel strong and supportive. Maybe it feels warm and loving. All these are expressions of caring. You can say your phrase and send in your caring, in your way.

Try this for a bit.

OK, so keep that caring attitude going on in the background. Our next move is acceptance. Can you feel everything you're feeling without needing to change it?

This is how we make space. It's the beginning of escaping from the need to escape. 

If you want a bit of extra support, it can help to lightly pay attention to a home base. It may be the feeling of the breath at the nostrils, or some background sound. 

Keep going here.

OK, so maybe you are lightly paying attention to a home base, like the soft sensation of the breath. And all the while, you've got this attitude of caring, of accepting your situation. 

Letting go the problem solving, the scheming, of any attempts to avoid whatever it is you're feeling. You're just being where you are.

This is being human practice. Opening to how we are. And if the feelings are strong, remember your support. The breath, or your home base. 

Remember your caring acknowledgment that this can be hard.

And now, in this final stretch, just rest. 

No external freedom is forever, because life keeps mixing it up. That's just how it is. Fortunately, freedom also can come from the inside. 

It has to do with our capacity to make space, moment by moment, for exactly what's here. 

Instead of getting free from our life, we get free around it and with it. Sometimes this is easy. Sometimes this is ridiculously hard. We do it anyway. 

Because that's what humans do. 

When you're ready, open your eyes. Very good to be human with you.

What we pay attention to depends on what demands attention

At the moment it's hard for me to write about anything other than the ice storm aftermath here in Oregon, the subject of my last churchless blog post, "Being without power for a week shows what's important." 

Well, it's now been nine days since our electricity went out. All of our neighbors are in the same power outage situation, along with 38,000 other Oregonians. 

Last night my wife and I hosted a Zoom meeting of our monthly Salon discussion group. Our generator powers a Starlink satellite internet connection, which worked great all through the 100 minute meeting.

After the meeting I wrote on my HinesSight blog about three themes that dominated our conversation: How to prepare for no electricity, Independence versus reliance on society, Staying in touch with others.

It wasn't surprising that everyone wanted to talk about what's been the focus of their minds recently -- coping with no electricity. 

One person only was without power for about a day. Others, about a week. My wife and I, along with neighbors who also are part of the discussion group, were the only ones still without electricity because we live in a rural area.

Usually talking about politics takes up about half of our conversation time. Sometimes even more. Last night, no more than five minutes, or about 5% of the Zoom meeting, focused on politics. 

What this shows is something obvious that is nonetheless often overlooked.

What we pay attention to depends on what demands attention. This relates to the familiar hierarchy of needs. I'm not sure where politics and religion are on the hierarchy, but they seem to be near the top of the pyramid rather than close to the base.

Being without electricity for more than a short time when you're used to it -- which is the case with almost everyone in the United States and other wealthy nations -- shifts one's focus into the safety and physiological levels. 

It is more difficult to cook, get water, flush the toilet, sleep comfortably. People reach out to neighbors in a different way than before, because they seek safety and a sense of belonging. 

It isn't that I'm no longer interested in politics or in pondering the downside of religions. Those subjects just haven't been much on my mind the past nine days, because I've had to focus on playing my part in keeping our electricity-less home going.

(Yes, we have a generator, so we have 7,000 watts of electricity available. But that isn't enough for our heat pumps, hot water heater, most lights, oven, dishwasher, garbage disposal, and other things in our house that have been dormant since our power went off.)

So this experience, which is the longest time I've been without full electricity in my 72 years of living, has given me more of an insight into how lots of people in the world live all the time. Namely, struggling to find the necessities of life.

For them, a religion often provides a sense of comfort and meaning.

But if that religion takes up too much time and attention, that detracts from their ability to meet their safety and physiological needs. Same with politics. A little attention is fine; more than that is counter-productive. 

Which raises a question. If what seems important to us is so dependent on our circumstances, can we ever be really confident that what we care so much about at any given time truly deserves all that attention? 

I guess the answer is that in one sense it does, and in one sense it doesn't. Which isn't much of an answer, but it's the best I can come up with.

Being without power for a week shows what's important

My wife, Laurel, and I, along with all of our neighbors, plus over a hundred thousand other Oregonians, have been without electricity since last Friday night, February 12.

That's when a massive ice storm hit Northwest Oregon, powered by cold air from the polar vortex that afflicted much of the United States and a moisture-laden storm coming in from the Pacific. 

The result was snow in areas to the north of us, including Portland, but freezing rain in our area. Which, believe me, is way worse than snow.

I shared photos of the damage to our property in a Saturday post on my HinesSight blog, "Photos of the Great Salem Ice Storm of 2021." The next day I wrote a light-hearted post, "Our dog is enjoying no electricity. Me, not so much."

After that, my mood turned darker as Portland General Electric, our power company, stopped providing estimates to their customers of when power would be restored.

I wrote "PGE getting well-deserved ice storm criticism" and "Ice storm disaster should prompt close look at PGE." By tomorrow PGE claims that power will be restored to 90% of those with outages. I hope we're not part of the 10%.

Laurel and I have a wood stove, a fairly plentiful supply of oak firewood, and a generator -- so we're more fortunate that lots of other people in Oregon lacking power. Still, it's been tough.

Our routines have been disrupted, obviously. 

First thing in the morning Laurel starts a fire in the wood stove. I add gasoline to the generator, check the oil level, and start it up.

That provides us with warmth that slowly permeates through part of our house, and enough electricity to power some lights, the microwave, cooktop, TV, and internet router, plus some outlets to charge our phones.

During the rest of the day we have to keep the wood stove going and the generator supplied with gas. We've done quite a bit of cleanup of tree limbs that fell from ice accumulation, but there's a lot more to do on that front.

The chain on my chainsaw came off and was damaged in the process. So I had to take the chainsaw in to Ace Hardware for a chain replacement. The seal on our wood stove door fell off, which required a drive to a wood stove store that, thankfully, was able to glue in a replacement seal.

Otherwise it would have been difficult to burn wood, our only source of heat.

In short, going without electricity changes one's focus to immediate needs. Heat, water, food. Sure, we still watch TV in the evening, but much of our day centers around activities that were absent from our life prior to the ice storm.

I'm a political person. For the past week I've thought of politics much less often. 

In fact, recently I emailed our conservative Republican state representative to complain about PGE not giving estimates of when a customer could expect to have power restored, and to ask him to urge PGE to start providing estimates.

Ordinarily Representative Nearman and I are on opposite sides of the political divide. We've never talked, but if we did, we'd disagree about most issues facing our state and country. However, when it comes to PGE giving its customers an estimate of when their power would come back, we were in perfect agreement.

Nearman told me that he also lacked electricity. So we had that in common. It felt good to have a pleasant exchange of emails with someone whose politics I heartily agree with. 

That didn't matter, because coping with an electrical outage provides the common ground that politics lacks. 

Something similar happens during the two-mile late afternoon dog walk that Mooka (our Husky mix) and I take around a road loop in our rural neighborhood. 

I end up talking quite a while with people who I usually just exchange a nod and "Hi, how's it going?" with. The electrical outage creates a bond that brings us closer together, since everybody out here has to figure out how to get the same basics of life -- again, heat, water, food.

Sometimes it seems like what divides us is stronger than what unites us. 

But the ice storm electrical outage has shown me that this really isn't the case. Underneath the divisions of politics, religion, nationality, and such lies a common humanity that rests on our common needs to stay alive and well.

It's been a very good thing to realize this more fully. That said, I really, really hope our electricity is restored soon.

Satan and Kal

Here's a guest blog post from Bob Russo, who sent this essay to me a while back. I recently discovered it in the depths of my email inbox, liked it, and asked Russo if it would be OK to share it on Church of the Churchless.

He said, "sure." Enjoy some thoughts about Satan and Kal. "Kal" is how the so-called Negative Power is viewed by an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a branch of Sant Mat.

Growing up within the crystalline and dualistic (heaven and hell; Jesus and Satan) landscape of Catholicism and having the Pope to look to for spiritual direction (as a representative of Christ on earth), it was just one hop, skip, and a jump from that world to Radha Soami (Guru path). 

The only difference between the two was that I now had a Perfect Living Master to guide me out of Satan’s (Kal’s) world to Sach Khand (True Land) above.   

So what we have in both systems is the unruly hands of some “negative power” whose goal is to lead the spiritual seeker astray. 

This concept of a negative power or satanic force goes back thousands of years to Ancient Judaism and probably beyond that. Yet, apparently more strident than any “satanic” temptation is the use of this concept by religious leaders and spiritual groups to ingest fear into the minds of sincere individuals and thus control them. 

It’s the same ole problem, reaction, solution scenario that we see played out time and time again under authoritarian religious organizations, which RSSB is certainly one of. They identify YOUR problem and of course, as part of their modus operandi, have the solution.      

Consequently, during a recent trip to Shambala bookstore on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, I couldn’t help being drawn to a book entitled The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels.

What made this book a must read for me was its historical overview of Satan from Judaism through early Christianity, and, IMO [in my opinion], seeing a blending together of adversarial roles he/she played (or plays) in both religions and with Kal’s role in Sant Mat.  I suspect the concept of a negative power or entity found its way to Northern India from the Middle East.  

Without going into too much detail, it appears that Satan may have evolved from being part of God’s Grand Hierarchy and his loyal servant, as in Sant Mat (Radha Soami path), to one opposed to God in his/her entirety in early Christianity (the fallen angel set apart from God). In Judaism, Satan’s role was to obstruct human activity, that is, to create chaos, misfortune, conflict, and to test the soul’s loyalty to God (see story of Job).       

During my years in Sant Mat, whenever mention was made of the hapless condition of the world, with its wars, hunger, and plagues, it wasn’t long before someone would comment or read something from an RSSB book on not expecting more from Kal’s domain.  

In RSSB, Kal is responsible for humankind’s screwups and misfortunes as we see with the Satan of Judaism (since Kal is the ruler of the three lower worlds). And as such, continues to confuse humankind as it helplessly and aimlessly drifts about with no direction in sight (until the Perfect Living Master comes to the rescue).    

According to RSSB theology, once an individual gets initiated the situation changes because although Kal rules the world, anything that happens to the Satsangi (followers of the Radha Soami path) is supposedly the amiable work of the Master. 

IMO, this whole thing is very confusing, because if an earthquake strikes and both Satsangis and non-Satsangis are injured, then who do we claim is responsible for the earthquake, the Master or Kal?   

Now, with the development of Christianity, Satan evolved into an evil entity completely opposed to God as seen in the New Testament where Satan was held responsible for the arrest and execution of Jesus.  And, the Jews unfortunately, were labeled as agents of Satan for having played their fateful part in Jesus’ death.

(We can effortlessly glance into history to see the results of this horrific prejudice that has cost the Jewish people countless lives and hardships over the past two millennium). Thus, a major rift grew between this new religious movement called Christianity (which had a lot of Jewish members), and the Jewish people, particularly the Judaic religious ruling class.   

Now, as Christianity grew, most people were looking for “rules” and guidance on how to be true Christians. Thus, an “orthodox” branch of Christianity made firm headway among this new religion, and as such, became institutionalized with its various do’s and don’ts, priests, and bishops. This new branch of Christianity (which evolved into the Catholic Church), ultimately labeled any other branch of Christianity and all other religions for that matter, as evil products of Satan.   

Certain members of this orthodox branch, such as Tertullian, whom according to Pagels, was a convert from Carthage in Northern Africa around 180 C. E., denounced all those who deviated from the “majority” or orthodox teachings as heretics. 

What I found interesting is that the Greek translation for heresy (hairesis) is choice. Therefore, one who makes a choice is a heretic. 

Pagels mentions on pg.164 of her book that Tertullian insists that making choices is evil, since choice destroys group unity (which probably means less control and $ for the spiritual elite leaders).  She goes on to quote Tertullian as saying “that church leaders must not allow people to ask questions, for it is questions that make people heretics.”    

Since Satan was opposed to God, it becomes quite clear that Christians were involved in a sort of spiritual cosmic war between good and evil. They, of course, represented good, while all “unorthodox” Christians and pagans were viewed as agents of Satan.

Pagels writes on pg. 165, “Instead of admitting Christians into debates over the Scriptures, Tertullian says, ‘straight thinking’ (the literal translation of orthodox) Christians must simply claim the Scriptures as their own exclusive property’…but, how do heretics come up with such ingenious and persuasive arguments from Scripture?  Their inspiration comes, Tertullian says, ‘from the devil, of course, to whom belong the wiles that distort the truth’”.

How’s that for enforcing mind control? We can also see how “ownership” of the “truth” as “exclusive property” is a prized tool in controlling the masses!

Thus, although more subtle, IMO, the Radha Soami tradition, at least in Beas, has firm distain for any polemic or  “revealing” questions that may potentially uproot the reality or spiritual competency of the guru and/or the philosophy he represents (this is quite obvious to me from their response to internet discussions of RS and their letters to David Lane). 

And, as a friend mentioned recently, a ”true believer” will never ask the real questions while those that would are probably never going to be there to ask them in the first place.

Here we are in the year 2002, and we can still walk the streets of Dera or stroll along the freshly landscaped gardens of Petaluma or visit the cascading waters of Calvary Baptist College (formerly Murrieta Hot Springs) and what will we find in common among the members of each group? 

A firm belief that they, themselves, are the “chosen” ones, the lucky few who have God on their side while the rest of the world wallows in Satan’s nebulous and dingy shadow! For the Fundamentalist Christian, the cosmic war between good and evil is alive and well today while for the satsangi, this dreary epic is faced each day in meditation.    

Unfortunately, this dualistic outlook has created a split society or “them and us” mentality that has caused unimaginable pain, suffering, and death to countless individuals and unbearable hardship to innumerable families throughout modern history. 

And, this “split” is not limited to externals but has caused considerable mental anguish and cognitive problems to individuals living within a strict right versus wrong world.  

Too much mindfulness can increase anxiety

Someone sent me a link to an interesting BBC story, "How too much mindfulness can spike anxiety." It describes research about the downside of mindfulness and meditation in general. 

In any discussion of mindfulness, it’s important to remember that there are many different techniques that train particular types of thinking and being. The best-known strategies are mindful breathing, in which you focus on the feelings of respiration, and the body scan, in which you pass your attention from head to toe, noting any physical sensations that arise in the course of the session.

These kinds of practices are meant to ground you in the present moment and the effects can be seen in brain scans, with growth in the insula cortex, a region that is involved in bodily perception and emotion. As a result, mindfulness training can leave us more in touch with our feelings, which is important for good decision making.

Many mindfulness practices also encourage a more general “observing awareness”, in which you train yourself to notice your thoughts and feelings without reacting or judging. With practice, this can increase your capacity for emotional regulation so that you are no longer as susceptible to flashes of anger, for instance.

Ideally, these changes should complement each other and result in greater wellbeing. But that’s only possible if they occur in balance and moderation. Unfortunately, some meditators may pass the optimum point on either one of these elements, leading to distress.

The article ends with some sentiments that I heartily agree with. Sticking with one meditation approach for the rest of your life doesn't make sense if you aren't getting the results you want from it. Experiment. Try something different. Be flexible.

For those who still like the idea of contemplation, it may be time to consider a broader range of techniques. Certain religious traditions encourage practitioners to focus on things outside your body, for instance – such as a bunch of flowers on your desk or even a passage from a poem. These may be better at calming overwhelming feelings of anxiety, or coaxing yourself out of those feelings of dissociation than observing your body or your breathing, says Britton.

There’s also a growing interest in meditative techniques that encourage you to think about others’ perspectives and to cultivate feeling of compassion – strategies that are especially effective against feelings of loneliness.

At the moment, some people may feel like they have to stick with one particular strategy – like mindful breathing or the body scan – without considering the alternatives. But this is a mistake, says Britton.

“We should really honour the diversity of contemplative practices that are available, because they all do different things, and people would have a much better chance of matching what they need, if they had a bigger buffet of choices.” Each person should choose the best technique – and the correct “dose” – for their particular situation, rather than doggedly pursuing a plan that is not working.

Ultimately, Britton thinks that these issues should be incorporated into all mindfulness courses – in much the same way that the visitors to a gym are taught about the potential for injury. “It comes down to giving meditators a bit more agency.”

And as I discovered myself with my own ill-fated attempts to gain mindfulness, this may sometimes include the decision that enough is enough.

Final thoughts on the wonderful irrationality of modern science

Having finished Michael Strevens book, 'The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science," I wanted to close the book on this book, so to speak, by sharing some further ideas about how Strevens' Big Idea applies to us in everyday life.

(My three previous posts about The Knowledge Machine are here, here, and here.)

The Big Idea that makes modern science a highly effective way of generating knowledge is restricting scientific communications -- journal articles, research reports, and the like -- to only empirical evidence. 

So if a scientist wants to argue some point, they must do so on the basis of empirical evidence, not on philosophy, religion, personal beliefs, and so on.

In their non-official life, scientists are free to speculate all they want about whatever they want. Only in their official communications are they limited to what Strevens calls the Iron Law -- the Big Idea in his book.

Most of us aren't professional scientists. 

However, I think we all would benefit from embracing the wonderful irrationality of modern science when this is appropriate in everyday life.

At first I found it difficult to understand the subtitle of The Knowledge Machine, since I've always considered rationality to be a hallmark of science. 

Surely, it is.

But as Strevens discusses, it took a long time for the Iron Law of empirical evidence to take root, because we humans are so addicted to philosophizing, telling stories about our life, finding reasons for why this or that happened that make sense to us.

Giving that up would have seemed crazy to the early Greeks, as to medieval thinkers like Descartes. They wanted to fathom the workings of the entire universe, the cosmos. 

Thus to them the scientific method involved grand conceptual schemes, not data-driven empirical evidence. Hence, the seeming irrationality of the Iron Law.

Given the many examples offered up in The Knowledge Machine about how almost obsessive attention to minute detail is how scientific progress usually occurs, I came away convinced that our everyday lives would also benefit from fewer stories in our heads and more empirical facts.

Here's a couple of examples from my own recent life.

Last night I wrote a post for my Salem Political Snark blog about a controversy over Salem's Mayor, Chuck Bennett, failing to assign a progressive city councilor, Jackie Leung, to any City Council committees other than a single spot as an alternate.

Since Leung is a woman of color, quite a few people commented on Facebook that this showed how racist and sexist Bennett is.

They were outraged that Leung had been treated so badly by the Mayor, since other members of the City Council got three, four, five, or six committee assignemts.

At first I shared some of that outrage, but the more I thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed that racism and sexism explained Bennett's behavior.

So I emailed the Mayor, asking him to explain himself. 

In other words, I sought some empirical evidence in the form of a reply to my message. That reply turned out to be highly believable. Bennett told me that last year Leung hadn't wanted any committee assignments because she was too busy.

When she failed to respond to a request from the Mayor to list her committee preferences for 2021, he figured that once again she wasn't interested in being assigned to some committees. Yet actually she was. 

It turned out, then, that a failure to communicate by Bennett and Leung led to a simple mistake. As far as I can tell, the claims of racism and sexism were just stories people used to explain what the Mayor did.

Here's another more personal example of how a failure to use empirical evidence and attention to detail led to a preventable error.

This morning I got a call from an unknown number on my iPhone that didn't ring, because the caller wasn't in my Contact list. That happens frequently. 

I did what I usually do: click on the "phone" icon on the home screen, so by going to Recents, the red "1" (for one call) above the icon would go away.

But after doing this, or at least believing I'd done this, the red "1" was still there. That made me think that perhaps the caller had left a voice mail message, and that message was creating the "1."

Checking Voicemail, I listened to the top message. I couldn't understand all of it, the gist of it being that Amber wanted me, Brian, to call back at _____ Health. When I Googled the phone number, I saw that it belonged to Salem Health Urgent Care.

Which perplexed me, since I haven't been there for quite a few months.

Still, I wanted to find out what Amber wanted. I called the number on the voicemail and found that I was third in line to have my call answered. I listened to annoying music and repeated messages to be patient because my call was important to them for about ten minutes.

Then I was able to talk with someone. "Amber left a message for me," I said. "Is she there?" "No," I was told, "Amber isn't working today." 

That led to me being asked my name and date of birth so they could look up my records and try to figure out what Amber wanted. Eventually I was asked a simple question, "What time was the voice mail message left?"

"Well, it was February... oops. February 27, 2020. A year ago. Wow, sorry. Last night I deleted a bunch of old voice mail messages and the one from Amber a  long time ago now was at the top. So I thought it was a recent message, having forgotten that I'd deleted other old ones."

The Salem Health Urgent Care person laughed and said that she's done something like that before. That made me feel a bit better, a little less embarrassed. 

Now, in retrospect I should have paid more attention to details rather than jumping to the conclusion that today I'd gotten a voice mail message from Salem Health. I'd stared at the message several times, but never noticed the date of the message, since I'd assumed it was from today.

Not a scientific attitude. If I'd gathered more empirical evidence rather than believing the story I'd told myself, I wouldn't have spent time trying to unravel a mystery of my own making.

The good life is the life you already have

lt took me a few months, but today I finished reading John Gray's provocative little book, "Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life." (Other books took priority in my morning reading time; my first post about this book is here.)

The final chapter contained some nice observations about our search for meaning, and what cats can teach us in this regard. Here's some excerpts.

If cats could understand the human search for meaning they would purr with delight at its absurdity. Life as the cat they happen to be is meaning enough for them. Humans, on the other hand, cannot help looking for meaning beyond their lives.

The search for meaning comes with awareness of death, which is a product of human self-consciousness. Fearing their lives ending, human beings invented religions and philosophies in which the meaning of their lives carried on after them.

But the meaning humans make is easily broken, so they live in greater fear than before.

The stories they have fashioned for themselves take over, and they spend their days trying to be the character they have invented. Their lives belong not to them but to a figure conjured up in their imagination.

One consequence of this way of living is that human beings may become fixated on occasions when their stories are disrupted. They may lose loved ones, find their own lives in danger or be forced to leave their homes.

Those who turn their life into a tragic story are coping with experiences of irremediable loss. But it is a way of coping that comes with a cost. While thinking of your life as a tragedy may give it meaning, it binds you to your sorrows.

...Contrary to the post-modernists, there is such a thing as human nature. It is expressed in the universal demand for meaning, for one thing.

But human nature has produced many divergent and at times antagonistic forms of life. How can anyone know their own nature, when human nature is so contradictory? Might the idea that each of us has a nature of our own be just another metaphysical fiction?

The truth in the fiction of an individual nature is that the good life for each of us is not chosen but found.

Even when they come from decisions we believe we have made, our experiences are not determined by us. The good life is not the life you want but one in which you are fulfilled. Stripped of metaphysics, this is Spinoza's idea of conatus and the Taoist belief that we must follow the way within us.

In this we are at one with all other creatures. 

Humans do not rank above other animals, or below them. There is no cosmic scale of value, no great chain of being; no external standard by which the worth of a life can be judged.

Humans are humans, cats are cats. The difference is that, while cats have nothing to learn from us, we can learn from them how to lighten the load that comes with being human.

One burden we can give up is the idea that there could be a perfect life.

It is not that our lives are inevitably imperfect. They are richer than any idea of perfection. The good life is not a life you might have led or may yet lead, but the life you already have. Here, cats can be our teachers, for they do not miss the lives they have not lived.

QAnon and religion are both mass delusions

The Real Time With Bill Maher show always ends with a feature called New Rules. Most of the rules are brief and humorous, while the last takes longer to explain and is more serious, though still funny in a different way.

I just finished watching our recording of the February 5 episode. 

Maher's closing New Rule was a right-on discussion of how the craziness of QAnon relates to religious belief. Probably you're familiar with this cult, but if you aren't, a BBC story describes what QAnon is about.

At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media.

QAnon believers have speculated that this fight will lead to a day of reckoning where prominent people such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed.

That's the basic story, but there are so many offshoots, detours and internal debates that the total list of QAnon claims is enormous - and often contradictory. Adherents draw in news events, historical facts and numerology to develop their own far-fetched conclusions.

Here's a five and a half minute video of what Maher had to say. It's both entertaining and persuasive. Once someone believes in one thing without evidence (like religion), it is easy to transfer that gullibility to another thing that lacks evidence (like QAnon). 

The You Tube video description says:

It's fun to laugh at QAnon, but if you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, you’ve already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad.

Enjoy.

Have a listen to my Everyone's Autonomous podcast interview

Today my rather lengthy interview with Marie D'Elephant's Everyone's Autonomous podcast interview appeared on her web site. The episode starts off with about 35 minutes of Marie talking before our interview starts.

So click your way to the 35 minute mark if you're mainly interested in the interview with me. There's a few gaps in the recording, but they don't last long, so stick with the silence and it will soon end.

https://everyonesautonomous.com

We covered a lot of spiritual, philosophical, and religious ground. The focus of Everyone's Autonomous is on recovering from dogmatic religiosity. Mostly Marie speaks with Christians who have had a bad religious experience.

So I provided a somewhat different perspective, having spent 35 years as an active member of an Eastern guru-centered religion. 

It's always a bit disturbing for me to listen to myself, especially my frequent use of you know. But that's something I have no control over when I'm talking, so I guess it doesn't make sense for me to be disturbed. 

That's one of the themes we covered in the podcast. How we often are much harder on ourselves than we would be if someone else came up to us and said, "Should I be so worried about this?" Usually we'd answer, "No." 

Compassion, like other good qualities, is in us, not the cosmos

As noted in a recent post, I've been playing around with using the Buddhist mantra, Namu Amida Butsu.

I like the way it sounds. I'm attracted to Buddhism, so long as it is stripped of extraneous supernaturalism. I don't believe that Namu Amida Butsu is anything special. It's simply a way for me to focus and calm my mind.

That mantra is part of the Shin aspect of Buddhism. 

I have some familiarity with Shin, also known as the Pure Land tradition. In 2005 I talked about Namu Amida Butsu in "Mantra meditation: what's in a word?"  In 2013 I wrote "Interesting take on how Shin Buddhism supports social activism." 

Here's an excerpt from the 2005 post. 

D.T. Suzuki, a noted Zen adept, says that there are two ways of conceiving the purpose of a mantra.

In the first case the name itself is regarded as having a wonderful power, especially over human affairs; it is a magic formula…In the second case, the name is pronounced not necessarily as indicative of things that are therein suggested, but in order to work out a certain psychological process thus set up.

He is speaking here of “namu amida butsu,” but the principle applies to every variety of mantra. When we repeat certain words over and over, is it with an outward or an inward intention? Are we trying to influence someone or something out there that is separate from us, or is it we ourselves in here who is affected by the repetition of the mantra?

In every religion there are outward-directed and inward-directed followers. For example, in Buddhism the Pure Land believers consider that repeating “namu amida butsu” brings all kinds of benefits from various deities:

When we say "Namu-amida-butsu," the countless Buddhas throughout the ten quarters, surrounding us a hundredfold, a thousandfold, rejoice in and protect us.

OK. Maybe. I doubt it, but everyone is entitled to their own beliefs.

I find that the Zen approach to mantra meditation makes a lot more sense, for it is psychological rather than theological. D.T. Suzuki says that when “namu amida butsu” is repeated without regard to the meaning of the words, or envisioning that countless Buddhas are hearing the invocation, a profound alteration in consciousness may occur.

Psychologically considered, the aim of the vocal Nembutsu is to do away with the fundamental dualism which is a condition of our empirical consciousness. By achieving this the devotee rides over the theoretical difficulties and contradictions that have troubled him before. With all intensity of thought and will he has thrown himself into the deeps of his own being.

And what is found in those depths, ultimately, is Buddha nature. So the Pure Land devotee and the Zen practitioner seemingly arrive at the same destination via different avenues. Zen, however, takes a more direct path, since the journey doesn’t involve any appeal to beings or entities separate from the devotee’s own consciousness.

Wanting to better understand what Shin is all about, I bought a book by Taitetsu Unno, "River of Fire, River of Water: An Introduction to the Pure Land Tradtion of Shin Buddhism."

Well, actually this is the second time I've bought the book, something Amazon reminded me of when I went there just now to get a link to it. I recall that I gave the book away because it didn't resonate with me as much as my other Buddhist books.

But on my second reading, I'm taking a different attitude toward "River of Fire, River of Water." That attitude is in line with the Zen approach described in the above excerpt from my 2005 post.

Meaning, psychological rather than theological. 

I don't believe that repeating Namu Amida Butsu causes countless Buddhas to rejoice in and protect the person reciting those words. However, this mantra, as with any mantra, has an effect upon the person speaking it.

Thus if we find that a mantra produces some good quality in us, this is  wonderful. We just shouldn't believe that the quality entered into us from the outside, from some corner of the cosmos. 

For example, Unno says in his book, "To bring about such a transformation is the sole purpose of the Primal Vow of Amida, the working of great compassion that courses through the universe."

When I read those words, I thought about disease, hurricanes, tsunamis, birth defects, and all the other nasty stuff that seems incompatible with a compassion that courses through the universe. Then it struck me that compassion isn't out there. It is in here.

Within us. 

Almost everybody is compassionate. Not all the time. Not to everyone deserving of it. But at least to some people, to some living beings, some of the time. Which  naturally includes ourself, for compassion begins with self-compassion.

And we can learn to become more compassionate through a variety of means, including Buddhist practices.

Thus we shouldn't be led astray by the familiar habit of believing that a feeling we have is produced by an external force. When I was a member of a guru-centered religious organization, people would return from seeing the guru and say, "He made me feel so wonderful."

No, he didn't.

The proof of this is that other people can see the guru and feel nothing, or even a negative emotion. Likewise, a movie doesn't make us cry, or laugh, or scared. Our own mind produces those sensations, stimulated by the movie. Someone else may feel no sadness, humor, or fear from the same movie.

That's why I'm confident that the universe doesn't have compassion coursing through it. Our mind can, though. And if repeating Namu Amida Butsu makes us feel more compassionate, or more relaxed, or happier, that's a wonderful thing. 

Religious nationalism must be fought, no matter the religion

Nationalism is dumb. Religious nationalism is dumber.

Believing that your country is superior to all others makes no sense, since lots of people in many countries, maybe most countries, consider that they're fortunate to live in the best country on Earth.

But at least there's no doubt that these countries exist. They have governments. They have boundaries. They can be photographed. So nationalism, as misguided as it is, has a foundation in objective reality.

Religious nationalism, though, adds a fantasy -- the unproven belief that Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, or some other religion is rooted in a supernatural realm that truly exists even though there is no demonstrable evidence of it.

This makes religious nationalism a delusion attached to a irrational assumption.

Not surprisingly, religious nationalism is destructive. Hindu nationalism leads to violence and oppression of minorities in India. Jewish nationalism makes it more difficult for Israel to reach an agreement with Palestinians. Islamic nationalism encourages terrorists. Christian nationalism fosters divisiveness in the United States.

Actually, more than divisiveness. Christian nationalists played a central role in the January 6 insurrection at the nation's Capitol that was notihing less than a coup attempt. 

An opinion piece in USA Today describes how the Trump rioters who broke into the Capitol used Christian rhetoric to justify their unjustifiable actions. Here's excerpts from "Christian nationalism is a threat, and not just from Capitol attackers invoking Jesus."

After a portion of the mob entered the Senate chamber on Jan. 6, a handful of men mounted the podium. One of them lifted his hands and cried out, “Jesus Christ, we invoke your name. Amen.” Then Jacob Chansley, sometimes called the "QAnon Shaman," took his bullhorn and announced gratitude to God for being able to “send a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs.”

Bare-chested to expose his white supremacist tattoos, he had paused briefly to remove his Viking-inspired horned headdress and cap — presumably to assume a properly humble posture as he claimed the United States for himself and his fellow-believers.   

...It is easy to protest when white Christian nationalism turns violent. Within the chorus of critics, however, are a substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, a leader of the misinformation campaign that led people to believe (falsely) that the presidential election was stolen, is among them.

Speaking in his official capacity as attorney general of Missouri in 2017, he proclaimed at a “Pastors and Pews” meetingthat their charge is to “take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations — of our nation… to influence our society, and even more than that, to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Hawley is aware that not everyone will become Christian, but believes we should all live by his interpretation of Christian values. The lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, asserts that elected officials should look to Scripture when making policy, “because every problem we have in America has a solution in the Bible.”  

Look, there's nothing wrong with loving your country, just as there's nothing wrong with loving your religion. But this is akin to loving your spouse or children.

Love isn't a competition. I can love my wife and my child without thinking that they are the very best wife and child in the whole world. It would be crazy  for me to think that way.

Yet that's what religious nationalism does. It perverts the natural love of country and religion into an extreme view that elevates a particular country and a particular religion into an exalted position that is indefensible and dangerous. 

There are pros and cons to repeating a mantra

On this blog I've done a lot of writing about mantras. I just used the Google search box in the right sidebar to locate posts dealing with "mantra." The results went on for 10 pages, all of most of the posts being written for Church of the Churchless rather than my other two blogs.

I assiduously repeated a mantra silently both in meditation and during some of the rest of my day for thirty-five years. 

That was the meditation method I first was taught, though it had a component of open awareness to go along with the focused attention of repeating a mantra.

At times I've considered that mantra meditation basically is useless. In part, that's because I no longer like the idea of separating my body and mind. 

When I was really into repeating a mantra, I found that this created a distance between what I was doing physically and my awareness, because part of my mental energy was devoted to the mantra while, say, I was doing the dishes.

Now I prefer to be mindful of whatever I'm doing, no mantra required, which is why I've said that mindfulness has become my meditation. 

But I still play around with repeating a mantra -- the operative word being "play." I no longe view a mantra as anything serious, a cosmic secret between me and the guru who gave me supposedly sacred words to repeat in my mind.

Nor do I consider that a mantra has any special powers, or is a means of achieving some sort of supernatural consciousness. Rather, I like to try out various mantras just to see how this feels to me, sort of like an actor playing various roles. 

An actor tries to inhabit the role being taken on in order to make their acting appear genuine. But they never lose themselves in a role so deeply, they aren't conscious that what they're doing is just an act.

Being inclined toward Buddhism, though in no way am I a Buddhist, I've been trying on the Shin/Pure Land mantra of Namu Amida Butsu. 

Basically those words mean "I take refuge in the Buddha." There's quite a bit of weirdness associated with the Shin branch of Buddhism, but I don't have to embrace all that when I'm repeating Namu Amida Butsu. 

I like how those words sound, especially when repeated slowly, one word to each out breath.Namu ends in "ooh." Amida ends in "ah." Butsu ends in another "ooh." Nice soft vowels. They relax me.

Mostly I play at repeating the Nembutsu, as it is called, when I'm not doing anything else. Going to sleep, for example. 

But there's other times when I enjoy repeating this mantra, or some other word(s), especially when my mind is overly active. Yes, in general I believe in not diffusing my attention with a mantra when I could be simply fixing lunch, taking out the trash, or whatever.

That assumes my mind is quiet enough to be mindful of what I'm doing physically, However, sometimes thoughts of something I've done, or something I need to do, keep intruding. 

In that case, I figure that it makes sense to have a few simple words being repeated mentally than to have a whole bunch of complex thoughts rattling around in my head. 

I'd rather be speaking to myself Namu Amida Butsu than, say, "Geez, I can't believe Governor Brown decided Oregon teachers should get a Covid vaccine before seniors. So wrong. Maybe I should write about this tonight. Or maybe not. Hard to decide. Politicians are doing so much that's stupid. Mostly Republicans, but Democrats also. So irritating..."

Most of our inner speech isn't productive. it's just how our mind likes to pass time, by talking to itself. So a mantra can be a useful means of quieting the mind, sort of like giving a baby a pacifier it can suck on rather than crying. 

Grappling with the fact that existence has always existed

Recently I got this email from a fellow marveler at the inescapable fact that existence must always have existed in some form, or the universe we are a part of couldn't have come to be. 

Hello Brian, I recently read this article of yours and was amazed how precisely it described the issue that's been on my mind for a long time. It seems inescapable to posit that something has always existed, something that never had a beginning. And as you point out in the article, trying to conceive and imagine that seems impossible: "the very possibility of cognizing an answer vanishes".

And I agree with that, but the reason I'm writing you is that this realization is a source of great anxiety to me. I can't seem to accept this incomprehensibility of existence. Do you have some word of advice or maybe some resources that could help me deal with this?

The article referred to was written in 2015 for the Spiritual Naturalist Society. I also shared the piece in a blog post, "Wow! Existence has always existed." Here's an excerpt.

Thus I’ve lost interest in the why of existence. Why is there something rather than nothing? is a meaningless question. As Kuhn points out, absolute nothing contains no way for existence to exist.

 

So while religious believers are awestruck at the supposed existence of God, I find an equal or greater measure of awe in the fact of existence itself.

 

This isn’t a feeling of being in the presence of something greater than myself. After all, I exist. A grain of sand exists. A subatomic particle exists. We all are on the same basic ontological level; we exist. For me it’s more like looking into a bottomless pit. I feel like I’ve reached the end of my knowing. And not only that: anyone’s knowing.

I could be wrong, an ever-present possibility.

Perhaps some human with a consciousness far different than mine, or an alien being with abilities beyond my capacity to fathom, would be able to look upon the mystery of existence and see it as…

Words fail me. Unsurprisingly.

I simply am open to the idea that however dizzying I find the notion of ever-existing existence, the necessity of existence having always existed, the blunt facticity of the cosmos that is at odds with my experience of everything else having a why, a cause — my mind could be as incapable of grasping the essence of reality as a chimpanzee’s is incapable of grasping calculus.

There’s another possibility: the mystery of existence is a non-existent problem.

So that's the easy answer to the question I was asked about how to deal with the incomprehensibility of existence: accept that some things defy human understanding, leaving open the possibility that some other form of consciousness could grasp a notion like existence has always existed. 

Assuming there is anything to grasp. 

My suspicion is that existence is simply a given, a brute fact incapable of being delved into. For any delving presupposes the existence of the entity wishing to grasp the existential nature of existence. 

In other words, there is no place to stand other than existence if one wants to ponder existence. Anything nonexistent isn't going to be doing any pondering, whether or existence of something else.

The way I see it, existence stands alone in this regard.

Consciousness might seem to be similar, in that any investigation into the nature of consciousness requires that someone be conscious. However, it's possible to study non-conscious entities, such as someone in a deep coma, in an attempt to learn what differentiates consciousness and a lack of consciousness. .

It may also be possible for machines to become conscious, which would provide valuable insights into the foundation of consciousness. 

But it isn't possible to do an experiment that compares existence with non-existence, since a comparison requires two existing things. Nothing obviously isn't a thing.

I've been dancing around the question I was asked because it is so difficult to talk about the anxiety of being confronted with an unanswerable question. Unanswerable, at least, by us Homo sapiens, whose sapience is bounded by the limitations of the human brain, as marvelously complex as it is.

For me -- and naturally I'm speaking only about myself here, not the person who wrote to me -- I find considerable comfort in simply acknowledging, "I don't know, and I never will." 

How is it that existence has always existed? I don't know, and I never will. 

It is difficult for me to feel anxious about something that I'm incapable of grasping. My anxieties relate to what could have been, but wasn't; to what might occur, but probably won't; to what is happening, which I wish wasn't. 

The idea that existence always has existed fills me with awe, not anxiety. I'm fine with living from birth until death with some Big Cosmic Questions unanswered. And not only unanswered -- incapable of any steps, even tiny ones, being made toward an answer. 

If someone said to me, "Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you never existed?" I'd say, "No." 

After all, if I had never existed, there would be no me to wonder about this, nor about anything else. Likewise, if existence hadn't always existed, there would be no anything. Something can't be produced from absolute nothing. 

I don't think I've done a great job responding to the person who emailed me. But this is the best I can do. 

I got a transcript of a call to the Spiritual Surrender support line

Thanks for calling the Spiritual Surrender support line. How may I help you today?

Well, I've heard a lot about the benefit of surrendering to a higher power. Isn't that how some addicts get off drugs and alcohol? I think it is. Anyway, i've got quite a few problems -- who doesn't these days -- and I'm wondering if some sort of spiritual surrender is right for me.

Excellent. You've come to the right place. We specialize in helping people like you. Let's start with me asking you a few questions.

No problem.

OK. Do you have an idea of who, or what, you'd like to surrender to? 

I'm open to suggestions. Some possibilities I've been toying with are God, or maybe a guru. I like the idea of letting some higher power handle my problems instead of me having to deal with them on my own.

Fine. Do you believe in God? More specifically, are you sure that God exists? And if so, that God is willing and able to take on your problems?

I sort of believe in God. I mean, I was raised to believe in God, but I've got to admit that there's no proof God is real. I just hope this is true.

A lot of people who call us say the same thing, so you're in good company. However, I need to ask if you would feel comfortable handing your problems over to a being who might not be real. Wouldn't this lessen your confidence in undertaking a spiritual surrender?

I guess so, now that you mention it. But what if I felt better turning my problems over to a higher power, like God, whether or not that power actually existed? Sure seems like this would be better than the anxiety I'm feeling now, being unsure what to do a lot of the time.

You make some good points. Consider this, though. We want to make sure that you get the best spiritual surrender that meets your needs at the lowest possible cost, ideally for free. So if you're good with turning your problems over to a God who may not exist, aren't you really content with turning your problems over to yourself, to a part of your own mind?

Hmmmm. I need to think about that. Give me a few moments... [pause] Yes, I guess you're right. What I want is the relaxed feeling of not having to worry about my problems so much. How that happens doesn't really matter to me. I just want to lessen my worrying.

Great. We're making progress. I'm getting a better understanding of your situation. Now, you mentioned the possibility of surrendering to a guru. Tell me more about this notion.

I have a couple of friends who follow a guru. They got a secret mantra to repeat that's supposed to connect them with the inner guru. Then, they tell me, the inner guru guides them when they have a problem in their life. That sounds cool to me.

It does indeed. But how can they, or you, be sure that the guru is really doing the guiding? Isn't this just like you not being sure that God exists, yet you hope this is true? If you turned your problems over to a guru, what makes you think the guru actually is capable of handling your problems?

Well, I couldn't be sure about that. I just would feel better if I turned my problems over to a guru whether or not... Wait, I'm repeating myself. That's what I just said about God -- that it doesn't matter if a higher power is real, so long as I worry less by surrendering to it.

Exactly. What you say you want is to not worry so much about your problems. Maybe, just maybe, your best approach would be to simply... do you see what I'm getting at here?

To simply not worry so much about my problems, right?

Right. Something to consider, at least. Let's leave things like this. Give us a call back if you still have questions about spiritually surrendering. From what you've told me, I think your best bet is to surrender to yourself -- hand your problems over to a part of you that will say, "No need to worry; just deal with your problems without worrying about them."

Thanks. You've helped a lot. I have a feeling this will be my first and last call to you.

Don't let Phantom Energy Vampires suck you dry

This morning I listened to a guided meditation by Jeff Warren on my iPhone's Calm app that I liked so much, I wanted to describe what he said before it slips my mind.

Phantom Energy is a real thing. It's the energy consumed by electronic devices when they are off, but still using power, such as the clock on a microwave oven that displays even when the oven isn't being used.

Within our mind, Phantom Energy Vampires are those worries, anxieties, frettings, and such that are running in the background of our consciousness even when there is no real purpose for them. 

Meaning, there isn't anything we can do about those concerns at the moment. So the mental energy they're using is being wasted. Taken to extremes, this can leave us feeling tired, listless, out of sorts -- just as we would if a vampire were sucking blood out of us without our being aware of it.

The wise advice is to do one thing at a time, as much as possible. This means that if we're walking the dog, say, as I'm about to do, we should walk the dog -- not use that time to fret about the future or lament the past.

Daniels says we should approach our Phantom Energy Vampires as a loving hippie would, not as a combat soldier would.

We don't try to kill them. We simply ask them respectfully to leave us alone. The first step in doing that is becoming more acquainted with them. We need to check in from time to time and see what background worries are running in our mind. 

Then we say to them, "Hey, Phantom Energy Vampire, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me alone. I have better uses for the mental energy you're sucking out of me."

Nice. I'm going to give this a try. 

Science requires demonstrable evidence. Religion doesn't.

Most mornings recently I've been reading a chapter from Michael Strevens' marvelous book, "The Knowledge Machine." It describes why science is so effective at understanding reality.

I find the book inspiring, both scientifically and spiritually.

Ever since I started this blog in 2004, I've been using the term demonstrable evidence frequently. Often I ask for that -- demonstrable evidence -- when someone makes a supernatural claim.

Maybe they claim to have seen God, or something Godly. Maybe they claim to have experienced a cosmic realm beyond physical existence. Maybe they claim some sort of special power like ESP. 

There are lots of possible "maybe's," because the human mind is capable of imagining all kinds of things that aren't real, yet seem like they could be, or should be.

Strevens makes clear that scientists aren't immune from those sorts of wishful thinking. Scientists are just like everybody else: imperfect, flawed, prone to thinking errors.

But modern science has something that enables it to generate valid knowledge about reality that other fields such as religion and mysticism lack: the iron rule.

I wrote about it in "The iron rule of science is empirical evidence." 

The title of that blog post sums up the iron rule. When scientists argue about whether this or that is true, they must "conduct all disputes with reference to empirical evidence alone."

Now, this doesn't mean that scientists, or anyone else for that matter, can't entertain ideas unfounded in empirical evidence.

So if someone wants to leave a comment on this blog about how they are certain that God exists, I'm totally fine with that. They believe strongly in God. Fine. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs.

However, the moment someone claims that God or some other supernatural entity is objectively real, we have a problem. We also have a problem if someone expects that other people should respect their claim as being valid.

To make the problem a non-problem, I like to ask people, "What is your demonstrable evidence?" In other words, empirical evidence. 

If someone is claiming that they're  privy to secrets about the cosmos that turn upside down the scientific understanding of reality, asking for proof is entirely appropriate.

Sure, I understand the objection religious believers have to this request. This is what I said in my previous post about the Iron Rule.

Now, I realize that religious people say that an experience of God or some other supernatural entity can't be proven, since it takes place within the psyche, not anywhere outside. 

OK. But that means a supposed supernatural experience is akin to a dream. It is available only to the person having the experience, and there's no way to tell whether the experience points to a reality outside of the consciousness of that person. 

So religious believers need to stop claiming that what they experience has any sort of objective truth. Like a dream, the reality is in the consciousness of the beholder, not anywhere else.

Of course, a religious believer can continue to have faith in their supernatural entity, whatever it might consist of, without demonstrable evidence. They just have no right to expect that anyone else will take them seriously if they claim that this entity has any effect in the physical world.

For if there is such an effect, it falls within the domain of science. Thus a miracle or a miraculous capability, such as knowing what is in the mind of someone else, must be demonstrated through empirical evidence. 

Otherwise it is just an unfounded belief. And the world is full of them. Nothing special to see here if there is no demonstrable evidence.

 

Living with fewer expectations can be more fulfilling

Expectations come in many guises. Perhaps the simplest and least problematic expectation is anticipating the outcome of a physical action. I raise the lever of a faucet and expect that water will come out. I take a step and expect that I won't fall down. Almost always I'm right about this.

On the other extreme, I may buy a single lottery ticket and expect that I'll win a hundred million dollars. Or I take up meditation and expect that I'll learn all the secrets of the cosmos. Those expectations are so grandiose, I don't really  believe they will come to pass (though I'd be ecstatic if they did).

It's the middling sort of expectations that cause us the most trouble. We expect more from life than we're getting, so that makes us dissatisfied. Whether or not our expectation is justified -- often or usually it isn't -- that gap between what is and what we feel should be sets us up for disappointment. 

This morning I read another chapter in Domyo Sater Burk's book, Idiot's Guide to Mindfulness. It's called "Accessing More Joy." A key to enhanced joyfulness is managing our expectations. 

And this isn't really about lowering our expectations, something I did recently when the long-awaited Starlink satellite internet device arrived via FedEx and I could test out how it worked. As I wrote about in a HinesSight blog post yesterday, I didn't expect much because I hadn't yet gotten the equipment needed to mount the dish on our roof.

So when I got a fast download speed from a spot on our upstairs deck, but the connection kept dropping because of trees obstructing the signal from space, I wasn't disappointed because my expectation for the first Starlink test was so minimal.

As you can read below, Burk has a more radical view of expectations. We should be cautious about having them. Instead, experiencing things as they are is a better way to go. This can be difficult, since we're so used to expecting that life will give us this or that.

I enjoyed what Burk says about expectations. She is skilled at taking Zen teachings (she's an ordained Zen monk) and communicating the essence of them in an easy to understand fashion without resorting to Buddhist language.

Enjoy.

There is a lesson we can take from the natural mindfulness of someone facing death: living with no expectations lets you see being alive as very precious. When I suggest you live with no expectations, you may think I'm telling you to take a pessimistic approach, but that isn't the case.

When someone says they have no expectations about something , it often means they have strong expectations -- they're just low. Living with no expectations at all is very different.

It means you're watching and waiting for things to unfold and then engaging them directly.

You aren't focusing your attention based on expectations of what's going to happen, and you're not comparing results to ideas about what should have happened. 

There are an infinite number of ideas you can hold about life and how it should go, and each can interfere with your mindfulness. Simply identifying your expectations and ideas is the first step in getting free of them. Here's the kind of thoughts to look out for:

• • If I work hard, things should go well for me.
  • If I take care of my body, I won't get sick.
  • If I'm nice to people, they will like me.
  • As long as I do my best, my efforts will be appreciated. 
  • The world should be free of injustice, violence, and greed.
  • My life should be pleasant or fun.
  • I shouldn't have to deal with this.
  • That person is always _______.

Identifying your preconceived notions doesn't mean they disappear. You simply recognize them for what they are: thoughts. Thoughts are generated by your body-mind in response to a given situation, and they're just part of the whole picture.

"Oh," you might observe when a new policy is announced at work. "I'm having a thought that this isn't fair." Your judgement is most likely based on preconceived ideas you have about fairness, or about your workplace.

To practice mindfulness, you take note of your thoughts about things, but then try to stay receptive to all aspects of the situation instead of completely believing your ideas about it.

Holding on to expectations about how things are, or how they should go, not only interferes with mindfulness, it can also make you miserable. 

When you experience something, you immediately compare it to your expectation about it. Viewed objectively something may be unpleasant, disappointing, or even painful, but it seems even worse if you dwell on how it shouldn't be happening to you. 

Alternatively, it may be unfortunate that something you want is eluding you, but your expectation that you should have gotten it by now makes the situation even more frustrating.

As mentioned earlier, sometimes the prospect of letting go of expectations sounds like adopting low expectations instead -- as if you're sighing in resignation and inviting the world to walk all over you.

On the contrary, letting go of all expectations leaves you even more able to engage life effectively and take care of your responsibilities. 

When you live your life directly instead of constantly comparing it to your ideas, you're more receptive and open-minded. You can adapt quickly when things surprise you, and are less likely to bias outcomes ahead of time. You'll deal with challenges as needed without getting caught up in resentment.

All of your skills and intelligence will be available for your use -- the only difference will be that you're paying more attention to the way things actually are than to your own ideas.

...Life experienced without any expectations lets you access joy much more easily. It helps you feel sincere gratitude for the good things you already have or experience. Imagine if you replaced the preconceived notions above with these observations:

• • I try to work hard, and it's great when things go well.
  • I take care of my body, and it feels good to be healthy.
  • I try to be nice to people, and it's great when they like me.
  • I do my best, and appreciation is sweet.
  • It's inspiring that there are so many people who voluntarily work for justice and refrain from violence and greed.
  • I love it when my life is pleasant or fun.
  • I don't really like this, but it's what I get to deal with right now.
  • That person is sometimes _______; I wonder what they'll do now.

...If you were to die right now, would your heart be filled with gratitude for all you have, or would there be lingering regrets about the past? Is some of your current happiness contingent on the fulfillment of hopes for the future?

Few of us can honestly say we are perfectly satisfied with all aspects of our lives, all the time, but if you're able to live mindfully and free of expectations, it's possible to experience a deep sense of peace about the state of your life.

Open Thread 36 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread. 

If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread.

As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks on someone are an exception, as is hate speech. Argue with ideas, not insults.

Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

Since there is no free will, "responsibility" needs to be redefined

Over on his Waking Up app, Sam Harris has posted a series of podcasts regarding the absence of free will -- a subject Harris has frequently written and talked about. 

The titles provide a feel for Harris' subject matter.

(1) Cause & Effect
(2) Thoughts Without a Thinker
(3) Choice, Reason, & Knowledge
(4) Love & Hate
(5) Crime & Punishment
(6) The Paradox of Responsibility
(7) Why Do Anything?

Today I listened to the talk about responsibility. Harris made a lot of sense, as he always does.

When we think about someone acting responsibly, such as by telling the truth, there's several assumptions underlying the usual way people look upon the meaning of "responsible."

Most obviously, if I am responsible for an action, this means that I was the one who carried out the action. This is akin to a parent saying to her three children, upon noticing that a dish has been broken, "Who is responsible for this?"

But the meaning Harris talked about involves whether someone could have done an action differently. An example Harris used was a golfer missing a short putt.

Given my putting skills, it wouldn't be a surprise if I missed a three foot putt. However, Harris said that if the top-ranked golfer in the world misses a short putt, questions are going to be asked: What went wrong? How did this happen? Could the golfer have done better?

The first two questions fall within how Harris views free will. Namely, that it doesn't exist. Causes and effects make the world go 'round, including making skilled golfers miss short putts occasionally. Maybe something distracted the golfer, so his mind was elsewhere.

That would answer the "how" question. We're left with the question of whether the golfer could have done better, if he could have made the putt.

Not if the state of every atom in the universe, including the golfer's brain, was in the same state as when he missed the putt. Exactly the same causes are going to produce exactly the same effects. There's no immaterial free will genie inside our head who can conjure up a different outcome from precisely the same inputs.

So if somehow the golfer had been able to return in time to the moment he was about to attempt the putt, the same thing would have happened. He would miss the putt. 

Where does this leave the second notion about responsibility, that the golfer could have made the putt if he had just tried harder? That would be true if the golfer's brain was different from the state it was in when he failed to sink the putt. 

If the golfer had been more focused, more attentive, more relaxed, more something, then the outcome of the putt could have been different. But this assumes that time travel is possible, that the golfer could change the past to fashion a more satisfying result -- a successful three-foot putt.

But this isn't possible, so it is senseless for someone to say, "That top-ranked golfer is responsible for missing a short putt." Sure, as noted above the golfer moved the club that struck the ball that failed to go into the hole, so in that sense he was responsible.

However, in no way was the golfer at fault for not doing something that could have been done differently, because there always is only one thing going on in reality: whatever is going on. 

Harris notes that since free will doesn't exist, this should make us look upon criminals in a more enlightened fashion. Just as the golfer did the only thing he was able to do, so is a murderer; so is a thief; so is any other sort of law breaker. 

Unfortunately, the legal system is founded on a mistaken belief that a person could have acted differently, if they had chosen to do so. This makes punishment a primary motivation since it is assumed that a criminal deserves to be held responsible for their actions. A more enlightened view would see that prevention of future crimes is a better goal, which might require keeping a person in prison during a hoped-for rehabilitation period. 

Of course, that isn't guaranteed. But it is worth a try, since punishment makes no sense if free will is an illusion.

It would be akin to punishing a baby for pooping in its diaper. That's what babies do. They have no choice. Likewise, punishing a grizzly bear for attacking a human makes no sense, since the bear had no choice.

I find this view of responsibility to be highly appealing.

All of us can think of things in our past that we wish we had done differently. That sense of regret is healthy if it motivates us to perform wiser actions in the future. But it is unhealthy if we revisit past mistakes, believing that it would've been possible for us to have behaved more responsibly. 

No, that wasn't possible. Missed putts can't be redone, nor can anything else.

We can learn from our mistakes. We can't undo them. Only in our imagination is it possible to have done this rather than that. In the real world, there is only what actually happened, not what might have happened in an alternative reality.

So forgive yourself for what you regret. There's no real need to do this, given that you could only have done what you actually did. However, it might make you feel better to say to yourself what a good friend would say to you: "Don't be hard on yourself; it wasn't your responsibility."

Stillness can make action more effective

I'm continuing to enjoy Domyo Sater Burk's Idiot's Guide to Mindfulness. 

Today I read her take on getting comfortable with stillness and silence. This appealed to me, not only because I've been meditating every day for over 50 years, so I understand how difficult it can be to keep the mind and body more or less still and silent.

This also is espoused in Tai Chi, which I've practiced for the past 16 years. Of course, you can't be perfectly still in Tai Chi, which I like to call "Taoism in motion." 

But listening skills are a big part of the effectiveness of Tai Chi as a martial art, a quality that applies to other martial arts such as karate. Tai Chi, though, promotes a certain quietude and stillness in sensing what an opponent is intending that is uncommon in more active forms of self-defense. 

The idea is to sensitively sense the energy of a punch, kick, or whatever without initially interfering much with it, if it is interfered with at all. Only then can the attack can dealt with effectively, because you haven't allowed a premature urge to respond to interfere with learning what it is that needs to be dealt with. 

Here's some excerpts from the " Comfort with Stillness and Silence" chapter I read this morning.

To cultivate the receptive attitude required for mindfulness, you temporarily stop trying to influence your circumstances and just open the doors of perception. You try to let go of activity, judgement, and trying to figure things out using your ordinary level of thinking.

You momentarily set aside commenting on things and explaining your point of view to others.

Your body-mind may generate thoughts and feelings all on its own, but you simply observe them as being part of your overall experience of the moment. You're just watching, listening, sensing, and perceiving,

The subjective experience of this purely receptive mode is stillness or silence. The absence of activity or noise may be internal, external, or both. It can be very uncomfortable if you're not used to it.

Fortunately, you can increase your ability to let go of activity and be still. You might even end up liking the experience! The more familiar you get with this simple mode of being, the easier mindfulness will get. 

...Stillness is simply letting go of all activity. The activity you let go of may be working to obtain something you want, trying to avoid or get rid of something you don't want, or escaping something you find neutral or boring. It can be obvious or subtle.

...When you're able to rest in stillness, you become much more receptive to what's going on in your life. It's as if your mental and physical activity create a whole lot of noise. When you let go of that activity, it's like turning off the noise.

Suddenly you can hear. You're able to perceive what's going on around you.

In addition, when you turn off your volitional actions and thoughts, you dramatically increase your ability to see, touch, smell, taste, and objectively perceive the feelings and thoughts that are present in your body-mind in spite of "you" (that is, the conscious, willful part of you).

It isn't necessary -- or advisable -- to choose stillness and then do nothing. Mindfulness isn't about becoming passive. What you're trying to do is see your life clearly so you can take better care of it.

At some point action is necessary and wise, but you're unlikely to be able to know the best time to act or the best thing to do unless you take some time to rest in stillness first. This turns down the noise in your body-mind and opens up the doors of perception.

It's important to realize that stillness is not ultimately useless; it's only apparently useless at the moment. 

As you rest in stillness, your body-mind is still present and operating; it's just not being guided or censored by the part of you responsible for ordinary discriminatory thinking and judging. The information that you receive while mindfully aware goes into your body-mind and affects you. You're just temporarily suspending judgment and action.

This actually gives you a chance to process things in a more holistic and deep way than you habitually do. Ironically, resting in stillness can help you make better decisions and be more effective in your life.

Cult of Trump shows how delusion is linked to blind devotion

Cults come in various forms. Sure, religious cults are what first come to mind, but any form of blind devotion to an authority figure can result in cultish behavior and attitudes.

On January 6 I wrote a post for my Salem Political Snark blog, "Insurrection at Capitol today caused by the Cult of Trump."

This is what happens when people fall under the spell of an authoritarian cult leader.

A woman died today in the Capitol building after a mob incited by Trump stormed the building in an insurrection aimed at stopping Biden from being declared president-elect by Congress.

...The only good news out of today's disaster is that maybe, just maybe, it will cause those who have joined the Cult of Trump to find the guts to abandon the worst president in our nation's history.

It's astounding that so many people in the United States can be devoted to such a horrible person after Trump's many failings have been on prominent display for well over four years.

Somehow they've been sucked in to the black hole of Trump's ego, narcissism, lying, and inability to come to grips with reality, either choosing to stay in that dark place willingly or not having the capacity to break free of all the nasty stuff that Trump stands for.

A New York Times story, "'Our President Wants Us Here': The Mob That Stormed the Capitol," has this subtitle -- They came from around the country with different affiliations — QAnon, Proud Boys, elected officials, everyday Americans — united by one allegiance. To Donald Trump.

They traveled from various corners of resentment in 21st-century America. Whether motivated by a sense of economic disenfranchisement or distrust of government, by bigotry, or conspiracy or a belief that Mr. Trump is God’s way of preparing for the Rapture, they shared a fealty to the president.

In the rally that preceded the march to the Capitol (photo above), Trump told the crowd that he would be marching with them. That was a lie. Trump went back to the White House and watched the mob break in to the Capitol on TV, coward that he is. 

Now many of the Cult of Trump members who did what their beloved leader asked them to do are facing criminal charges. Serves them right. This wasn't a joke. A woman was killed during the storming of the Capitol, along with a policeman who died after being struck in the head by a fire extinguisher. 

It appears that Trump will be impeached again for inciting this murderous riot. Nonetheless, most of Trump's devotees will stick with him, because they have lost the ability to see him as he is, only as they imagine him to be. 

Here's a tweet that shows the quasi-religious fervor of Trump supporters.

And here's another tweet that shows how delusional the Cult of Trump can be. This Republican official actually believes that Trump will be president for another four years, even though Biden's electoral college victory was affirmed by Congress on January 6. 

Again, political delusions and religious delusions differ only in their subject matter, not in the warped state of mind that produces them. Likely this same official also believes that Jesus rose from the dead and redeems the sins of those who believe in him. Hey, that beats Trump!