All Posts Tagged ‘atheism’

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Of Atheists, Agnostics, Church-goers, Philosophers, and Maytag Repairmen

May 24, 2019
41 comments

 

 

 

How important is it to perceive deeply in life?  (Have you ever asked yourself that question?)  Is the essence of all life and existence rather meaningless and superficial, such that no matter how deeply one perceives, it (i.e. such perception) may be essentially a waste of energy in the long run?  Could it be that there is something in life that is immensely profound, such that looking deeply allows great, eternal treasures to manifest and blossom?

A broken mind, a mind crippled by such things as bad dietary habits, poor sleep, and by propaganda media designed to mold minds (for ulterior reasons), of course, would not be able to look deeply (if true depth really exists in the first place).  It would likely be content with living a superficial, second-hand life that would accept within the limits of that superficiality (though, to it, such superficiality would seem plenty deep enough).  Through miseducation, stagnation is often learned, absorbed, clung to, and cherished.

To go through life merely believing in something without ever having actually perceived it (without delusion) is a tragic thing.   A belief that something does not exist, (without ever having perceived wholly), is an equally tragic thing.   Both are — despite people arguing otherwise — empty acceptances.   Stagnant minds cannot perceive because they have been shaped and molded by other minds that (also) are limited.  Minds can change, however; the mind is a dynamic and wonderful thing (if real care is taken).   Stagnation can end.  Contamination can end.

There are plenty of gullible people deluding themselves (and others) about having had experienced something profound or “otherworldly.”  However, i would suggest waking up and discovering and passionately finding out for yourself.   Look with every fiber of energy that you have.  No one else is going to do it for you; that is for sure!  How critical, how important is this “discovering and passionately finding out (for ourselves)” in our lives?   Personally, i feel that it has profoundly immense and eternal consequences.   Of course, there might be a chance that i am very wrong, but find out; there may be real magic out there!

 

[Note:  Marla is out of the hospital — after her fourth reconstructive shoulder surgery — and is doing well.  I am acting as her nurse and am helping her with enteral feedings and other medical-oriented things.  She is calling me “Nurse Matilda”!   🙂   ]

Miniature Wildflower – Purple Deadnettle (3/4ths of an inch long total for full arrangement)… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019

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The Story of Lo Zu and the Atheist … (Another short Lo Zu tale)

October 21, 2018
13 comments

 

 

The elderly Lo Zu was sitting on a huge fallen log next to a beautiful pond that was not far from the village.  A much younger man, who was an atheist, came by and said to him, “Many people in the area say that you are a great wise man, a holy man, but if there is no God, then you are not a holy man, you are nothing.”

Lo Zu invited the man to sit next to him on the large, fallen log, which he did.  Then Lo Zu, said (while smiling), “We two can agree on one thing; I am nothing.”  

“Then there is no God,” the man pronounced with confidence.

Lo Zu then said, “‘God’, for most everyone, is an image (or series of images) that they have learned.  (They will insist that it is something much more than absorbed images.)  To these images, they associate power, dominance, kindly (special) protection, fatherliness, and unlimited knowledge.  However, these images (and their associative emotions) are self-protrusions of thought/thinking.”

“And so not anything real?” asked the man.

Lo Zu then said, “The sign on the road, just outside of town, that has the name of the town upon it, is not the town.  If someone steals the sign, they are not stealing the town.  If someone wants to visit the town, they do not crawl up the sign.  Additionally, to really be sure that the town is there, one must visit the town.”

“I see what you are getting at,” said the man.  “So, you are suggesting that one, such as you, can visit God.”

“Not really,” said Lo Zu.  “If one, through supposed will and choice, decides to visit ‘God,’ one is visiting one’s own learned images, one’s own learned thoughts and strong emotions associated with such thoughts.  Such a ‘visiting’ is usually a self-deluding form of acquisition that involves greed.” 

“So there is no real God,” the man insisted.

“Jumping to conclusions,” Lo Zu suggested, “may be as foolish as worshipping mere self-fabricated symbols, mere signs.   A strong belief that there is no God may be as superficial and primitive as a strong belief that there is a God.  Holistic perception inquires (without accumulated patterns) into what might be sacred; it inquires with a passion that surpasses beliefs of any kind (and actually finds out).”   

“So what are you saying?” the visitor queried.

Lo Zu replied, “I am saying that I will not encourage you to worship or to cling to any symbols of power, any symbols of divinity.  Worshiping self-created or learned images, that one projects (from what one absorbed from others), is similar to worshipping parts of oneself.  It may be that the true answer has to come to you.  (It cannot merely be visited, like an ordinary town.) The true answer is probably rather unapproachable, but that may be a real key; conclusions, accumulated images, and greed cannot expose it.  It is beyond foolish grasping.  The internal images of self are nothing when foolishness ceases.  When all of the windows are open and the room is not filled with garbage… only then can the breeze, perhaps, flow through.”

With that, Lo Zu stood up and began walking with his meandering cane and said,  “We must go; we see someone carrying a heavy burden and we will help them with it, to a certain point.  You can come along also… unless you prefer to remain stuck where you are.”

 

 

 

Bumblebee covered with Golden Pollen … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

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That Original Source

June 17, 2018
13 comments

 

 

That original source, if it is to be discovered at all, must be seen firsthand (and directly).  Seeing it through the second-hand scraps of another — including me — is never seeing it at all.  The mind must be free of the contamination of others — the second-hand rubbish of others — for that seeing to take place.  That seeing — of that wholeness — may have nothing to do with visual perception whatsoever.  (Don’t be foolish enough and greedy enough to think that closing your eyes and sitting with crossed, pretzel-like legs will get you there!)  Regarding this, the mind must be free of all the hand-me-down knowledge and systems of others and be of a sweet, pristine, innocent purity.  However, even that is not enough, for the human mind cannot ever be totally spotless and original, and if that miraculous immeasurability ever occurs, it is not ever because one made it occur.  It is much too immense, intrinsically intelligent, and freely mysterious, to merely be a shoddy effect from some paltry human cause.  It is (though words are never the actual thing) an ineffable, sacred whole beyond mere causality.  So many charlatans write in books and blogs and talk in temples about what they “think” it is.  Additionally, many claim that it does not exist.  Beware of all others and find out for yourself.  Inquire with profound passion and never allow that passion to be quenched by mediocrity.  

 

 

 

Fungus on Forest Floor… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

 

 

 

 

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On atheism and beyond…

July 17, 2016
21 comments

 

If you play the lotto, here in one of the U.S. areas, for around (approximately) 500 times — on 500 separate occasions, or so — and do not win… you need not automatically assume that the prize money doesn’t exist (and never existed for anyone, ever).  It is easy to come to conclusions about things without ever having had deeply explored, without ever having seriously enquired.  One might ask, “Well, why doesn’t God, if he exists, help us more… reveal himself to us more?”  Of course, the aforementioned question is full of loaded, anthropomorphic assumptions.  The natural world is natural because it is not interfered with much; if it was frequently interfered with, it would cease to be natural.  Period.  The sacred, however, may be what blossoms naturally if one is serious and if perception beyond the distorted occurs.   Perhaps the sacred does indirectly reveal itself (somewhat), naturally, through (and “as”) the movements the wise.  Perhaps the sacred directly reveals itself to those few who are truly wise.   It does not reveal itself by way of  mere reactions of the conditioned and indoctrinated.  (Many — filled with self-delusion — may think that they are wise and may try propagandizing or selling their version of the sacred to others, but what they are distributing or selling is almost inevitably some form of conditioning, symbols, and methodology that they have absorbed from others.)  What is truly sacred cannot merely be directly told or shared in words or writing; it may visit one, and (as was suggested) one may be directly aware of it as it is visiting, but that awareness cannot merely be shared (adequately) in writing or through mere symbolic words.  The sacred is too vast and immeasurable to merely be fully shared via limited words and symbols.  The sacred, in actuality, may be of tremendous order and integrity; merely projecting images or conclusions about it from a field that consists of conditioning and disorder may have very little value.  It is never what can merely be possessed or held.  Real love is like that.  It is a passion that is like a beautiful spring rain and it dries up if one merely tries to pigeonhole it, propagandize it, or use if for the self alone.  

Conjecture has no place here; you either discover something or intelligently investigate (without forming an opinion)… or (as so many do) you “believe that God exists” or “do not believe that God exists.”  Belief and disbelief are — despite the protests of many — fundamentally the same thing; with both, opinions, conclusions, and symbolic thinking are involved.  Formation of an opinion on incomplete evidence is naive and constrained.  Direct, untainted, intelligent observation is another matter, and there are (fortunately) ways to test whether it was indeed legitimate or merely fallacious.   Most of us are symbols, measurements, and images about energy; very few of us were ever in communion with the actual, unadulterated, limitless, timeless, immeasurable energy… pure, orderly, and pristine, pouring through one’s empty vessel.   That energy has its own intrinsic intelligence beyond the superficial limitations and boundaries of time.  

Exploring. Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2016

Exploring. Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2016

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About Belief…

February 1, 2015
7 comments

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What is belief?  Is it necessary in terms of understanding the whole, or is it something that is not very intelligent?  In terms of religion, there are many who believe in their various Gods, and these beliefs — unquestionably — have a lot to do with what was handed down to them from others.  Each one has his or her own inherited beliefs.  So many (each) think that their God is best, that their country is best.  Beliefs tend to divide people.  Many wars have been fought over, and about, firm beliefs.  One wonders — when beliefs have caused so much havoc and conflict in the world — why we still desperately cling to them.

In terms of spirituality, as was suggested, there are many who believe in their own particular God.   Atheists believe that there is no God; they say that God doesn’t exist.  Please don’t go off and get overly upset about this… but if one’s images of one’s God are composed of learned concepts and if one’s ideas that there is no God are constituted of concepts… then — in a fundamental way — there really is no big difference between ardent religious believers and atheists; they are both filled with their own particular, absorbed concepts. 

To really (passionately) inquire — beyond all this vast array of disagreeing and conflicting beliefs — is something totally different.  Then handed-down concepts or absorbed abstractions and procedures don’t influence and hinder one’s perception.  Someone beyond these is truly open (and not contaminated by some process or conclusion).  If you are on a quest to really find out the true nature of the whole of everything, will you follow someone’s technique, religious process, or anti-religious process… “map” of how to get there?  If you follow their methodology, that means that you strongly suspect or “believe” that they hold the answer… the “special map.”  However, if you aren’t truly aware of the answer, how could you possibly accurately know, or believe, that they have the answer?

Simply inquiring and perceiving, without an accumulated procedure (involving time), and learning about one’s self — without belief — without dependence on anyone’s system, or tradition, or “special map”… is not merely another belief.  Belief (including following the methodology of others) takes time; it’s the residual result of an accumulated, residual process.  Immediate perception (not clouded by learned beliefs or concepts), and insight concerning the self and/or deep truth, may not be (or be part of) an accumulative process whatsoever; time essentially has nothing to do with it.  You know, when you actually see the sun, you don’t have to believe in it.   There are billions habitually walking around with (and “as”) accumulated symbols, patterns, and images… learned from others over time.  People love symbols; they are mesmerized by symbols, and most people are “thinking,” by way of mental symbols (which are what thoughts are), nearly all of the time.  But the word “sun” isn’t the sun.   Accepting symbolic beliefs, images, and concepts as the primary basis of your existence may not (unfortunately) be deeply intelligent, and it may lead to more conflict in the world; it may be like clinging to dark, cloud-like, second-hand, empty shadows (that never allow one to truly see the light).  One can be open and beyond all that; few ever do it.  

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BZZZZZZ... Photo by Thomas Peace 2015

BZZZZZZ… Photo by Thomas Peace 2015