Religion and 'Mind', Part 1

In wrapping up my last two topics that I mentioned I would discuss I'm going to examine the idea of creating one's own Religion and as well as contrast between the notion of the Spirit and that of the 'Mind'.

So, let me start off with religion. Throughout my life religion has been a fascinating topic for myself. I recall the days of high school where I would be constantly redefining what religion I followed, spending time examining a multitude of beliefs and cults by reading religion dictionaries. I never became an expert on any religion per se, at least in the sense of what one would be like had they devoted a more substantial amount of time to it, but it was nonetheless an important experience for myself.

Today I still find myself constantly redefining my beliefs. I find myself at a loss when trying to find a religion that addresses all the questions that I have and presents a model of beliefs that are consistent and in harmony with my world view. My latest foray is into Buddhism, and I must say that my relation with Buddhism is amongst the strongest I had with any religion. I belief that at last I've found a set of teachings, a model of wisdom, that is held in consistancy with the world view I had a priori.

Nevertheless, I'm not sure if Buddhism will have all the answers. I don't know if any religion has all the answers. Nor do I know if I can completely dismiss the teachings of one religion if I find that another religion better suits me. And I've come to the realization, that one of the ultimate acts of self-expression is the defining of our own Religion, the expression of our own beliefs made manifest into a set of principles that anyone can adhere to. I don't mean to see that we should use the exercise of creating Religion as a means to bolster one's ego, quite the contrary. It should be seen as a means to help people on their own path of creating their own religion. And its not to say that this act of creation has to be based entirely on one's own, formulated worldview. There is no reason to re-invent the wheel. The amount of wisdom present in the existing world's religions is immeasurable. But to deny the teachings and wisdom of one religion because it conflicts with the doctrines of another belief you currently have is erroneous. One should not deny him/herself of a body of wisdom simply because it doesn't conform 100% to your already established beliefs.

So, the act of integration and the act of acceptance is extremely important, both in the formulation of ones own religion or the expression of ones pre-existing belief set. The force of religion is one of the most, if not the most, domineering aspects to human society. The fact that a person is willing to lay down their very lives in the name of, at often times, an insubstantial truth is phenomenal. It goes to great lengths in presenting what I believe is the beauty of the human condition. Not the fact that humanity is so predisposed to violence, but rather that we cry so much for that transcendence, some relation to God, that even in the face of rationalism, logic, and the forcing of the acceptance of our intuition, that we go to such great lengths to preserve our beliefs.

The act of creation of one's Religion could simply be the statement that I follow the teachings of Christ, or the Koran, or that I simply affirm I have no beliefs. Or one could go so far as to compile the entire volume of their beliefs and adhere to the ones you set for yourself. But the important thing is that we recognize that we can, and should, create our religions for ourselves and acknowledge our beliefs, our religion, as our own.

I'll touch on the issue of the 'Mind' in contrast with Spirit tomorrow. Its getting rather late and I want to try to get a good night's rest for once. I'm not sure if todaqy's topic or tomorrows will go exactly like I had hoped and planned for it to go when I first constructed the list, but I think it still went in an interesting direction. I'd appreciate comments, insights, or suggestions for elaboration.

Ego Dissolution

I had mentioned in my last post about discussing the ego in context of a book I'm reading entitled Beyond Ego. I do not recall if what I've written below is in the same context as my thoughts regarding the book, however, it is an issue I'd like to delve into. This topic is, as the title suggests, about Ego Dissolution.

One of the most confronting issues I have to deal with, and I think that any of us have to deal with, is the idea of the ego. The powerful force of the ego manifests itself, in my opinion, as a psychological tool for the biological need for self-preservation. The ego forces us to be most ultimately dependent on ourselves, which in the context of evolution, is no surprise. Sadly I do not believe that many times the altruistic individual (whether it be homo sapien, some other primate, or of an entirely different family altogether) would be at much of a disadvantage in terms of survival then an individual who seeks to only benefit itself.

If you subscribe to Freud's structural theory, then of course the Ego must exist if to balance the urge to survive (via the 'id'), and the moral constructs we create (perpetuated by the super-ego). The ego is our very sense of self, whether in regards to our physical state of self or our mental state of self.

In the context of the interactions between ego-possesing organisms (humans), we experience the clash of ego's. We currently perceive social situations from the viewpoint held by our ego as mediator. Our sense of self is primarily the governing factor in social encounters. Now our sense of self can be heavily influenced by social values. Avoidance of conflict between egos is an extremely important goal, especially when considered the evolutionary implications of a person who refuses to alter his or her ego to comply with the majority view. However, I believe that even at the social level that the values perpetuated by the mass is still the result of one dominate ego.

What I'm getting at with all of this are experiences in which we lose all sense of self. What is termed Ego Dissolution. I've yet to experience ego dissolution, or alternatively, experience ego death and rebirth. Many religious traditions in some form or another seek to shed the ego and the sense of self, to reunite with the collective consciousness or to free oneself from the confines of samsara (or take your pick of religious goal.) Many individuals who've been under the influence of mind-altering substances have claimed to undergo this ego dissolution.

When I think about ego dissolution from the vantage point of my experiences and understanding, I can feel my ego imploring to ignore it. Our experiences shape us, our understanding and our beliefs. We develop a sense of self and we come to value who we are as individuals and by dissolving our sense of self we in some way devalue the person we are. Realization that we are potentially connected with one another is an extremely disheartening force for the ego. Often times ego dissolution (or ego death) is a very turbulent experience for an individual, from the brief reading I've done of people who claimed to have this experience.

Commitment, Mind, Religion, and The Ego: Part 1

No, these three things aren't going to be somehow related in this post. While each does have correspondances that are shared amongst one another, that would be the focus of this post. In keeping with my vision of Astral Mindscapes I'm posting on some of the materials I've been reading and working with over the past view days.

I'm not sure if I mentioned in one of the last couple posts about a book I am reading, Cialdini's Influence. The author, Robert Cialdini, describes a list of six "weapons of influence", a product of the mental short-cuts we make in order to deal with the barrage of social information we must sort through on a day to day basis. Amongst these weapons is the idea of the commitment we make to both others and ourselves. We often stand by our nonsensical decisions even after the fact of learning of the absurdity to do so because of our desire to remain consistent with our decisions, and to appear committed to our beliefs. Often times this idea is exploited by individuals, corporations, or dare I say, governments, in order to solicit a desirable response from us. The very tool that we have evolved to deal with social situations is now being used against us.

I bring up this idea of commitment because of my own dealings with the idea. To those who know me well I can appear to be a bit indecisive at times, flipping and flopping from one idea to the next, one extreme to the other, and one course of study to another. Some may say I have a problem with commitment. But this idea of commitment also presents itself in other areas of my life. For example, I've adopted the vegetarian life-style over the summer. For me, it has been due to moral reasons and health reasons. Now, I remain open to those who chose to remain omniverous or carniverous because its not my place to pass judgment on them. As well I remain open behind the philosophy of why one should choose to adhere to a certain regiment of eating. Over the time I've questioned my reasons in for the moral implication of my vegetarian lifestyle. And I'm dealing with the fact, that after reading Cialdini's book, of whether or not I'm choosing to remain vegetarian because I truly believe its the right thing to do, or because of my desire to remain socially viewed upon as someone who is committed to their belief. Now, upon presenting this issue I must say I've addressed it and I do still believe that what I am doing is a morally justified and right thing, at least in correspondance to my personal set of ethics. But, I am curious about others who've had to deal with internal conflict when it comes to staying committed.

Cialdini delves far more into the idea of commitment in his book, which I won't touch upon all of here. I highly suggest you read the book if you've ever felt like you've been tricked or cheated by someone trying to take advantage of you.

Because of the length of this post I'm going to split up the rest of these topics and spend time with each in a separate post. To give you an idea of what I'll write about, here is an explanation of each topic.

• Mind: Contrasting the idea of the "Mind" with the notion of Spirit
• Religion: Creating a Religion consisting of a mixture of doctrines from already established religions
• The Ego: Discussing the field of Transpersonal Psychology, a topic that is the focus of a book I'm currently reading entitled, Beyond Ego.
  

Updated Vision of Astral Mindscapes

As the semester progresses I find myself limited in time to write to this blog. I'm still toying as to what direction I want to take with this blog, and I may have stumbled upon something that will provide what I believe will be interesting content while adhereing to at least a semi-coherent pattern of topics.

I came across a book in the library the other day entitled The Journals of A. H. Maslow, the subject of which I believe is pretty apparent in the title. Essentially Abraham Maslow kept journals for the last 10 or so years of his life, an attempt to better organize the multitude of ideas and thoughts that he was pursuing. He would periodically write in his journals, discussing various topics of interest as it occured to him. He managed, according to this compilation of his journals, to write thousand(s) of pages worth of notes.

I find his work and its vision to be quite fascinating, and an inspiration of what I want to accomplish. I hope to have that sort of encyclopedia, if you will, of material that I have composed over the course of my life. So in an attempt to adhere to the foundation that Maslow layed down in terms of journal-keeping, I'm going to try and pursue the same course of action. I will use this journal primarily as a means of discourse for the various topics I stumble across and pursue over the semester, largely influenced as well by the courses I am taking. I hope that once I have a more solid foundation of information compiled here that I can influence my professors to either take a look at it, or at the very least encourage the use of blogs as a serious tool for class-room discussion and assignments.

Update, and World War III

So, foremost let me update everyone on whats been going on. Foremost let me apologize for the careless disregard for updates over the past week. I'm tempted to use the excuse that time has been something of a precious commodity, though I believe that would be a partial lie.

The semester is in full swing here at RPI and it looks to be quite an interesting albeit demanding time. Over the past weekend I've engaged in several trips involving the campus Outing club, and if I can manage I'll post pictures of the trip. The trips involved exploring two nearby caves in the Capital region of New York state. For my first time caving I must say it was a rather exciting time. I look forward to doing it again. This weekend I shall (hopefully) be attending a nice hike in the Catskills region, and then towards the end of the month going on a weekend excursion to Lake George.

However, I digress. I do not want to sit here prattling on about the going-ons of my life. I'll keep you updated slightly on the progress of my courses and research this semester if time allows and seems relevant to share.

So I'm still looking for a direction for Astral Mindscapes. While it would probably be wiser for me to focus my discussion on a narrow subject field, for those of you who know me personally should know, I do not like the restrictions imposed of subjecting my writings to a single subject field. At the current time I have nothing to write of involving what one may associate with a title such as "Astral Mindscapes", however, my delvings into Eastern Philosophies might change that shortly.

Today I want to discuss the current state of affairs of our political machine. Now, I realize how touchy of a subject politics is, not to mention how widely discussed it is. I came across an interesting article entitled Election 2006 & World War III which discusses some of the implications of the current conflict in the Middle East, specifically the US involvement in Iraq. Make no mistake, its clear that the invasion of Iraq is a blunder. The current administration lied to the American people, mislead them with malicious intentions, and have now placed them in a compromising situation which has only escalated the current hostilities expressed against Americans. Where once Americans were viewed in many places with a certain degree of high regard, we find ourselves descending into a chasm of dichotomy with the rest of the world.

According to Robert Parry's article, Bush seems not only content on eliminating the terrorist presence in Iraq and the Middle East, targetting organizations such as Hezbollah in addition to al-Qaeda, but also addressing the issue of extremist Shiites. Both of these extremism mentalities, according to Bush, pose a grave threat to the stability of our country. The underlying issue as suggested by Parry is that Bush is ultimately declaring war against Islam. Yes folks, as we progress further and further on what I can only deem to be a path of further isolation from the rest of the world, we are pushing ourselves into yet another Crusade. It seems we are on the edge of the third World War. Quite frankly, the odds don't seem in our favor.

I find it insulting, at times, to be labeled as an American when such ignorance is present towards our Arab brethren. Because, at the very core of it, I believe that we each our but siblings to one another. Perpetuating this stereotypical fundamentalist Christian viewpoint and making America appear as some rightous tool of "God" completely undermines what the ultimate goal of this country should be. Is it the case that when the right view and the right system comes along, people will flock and naturally accept it? If this is the case, we're far from even remotely achieving that.

I urge you to read this article, it does have some interesting features to it. And if time permits I'll discuss more related issues, but as it stands I have to stop here for now.