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.