Abyssal Mind

Paradigm Shifting

Hello again; it's been a little while since I posted, partially due to some projects I'm involved in an partially because my brain has been going through a period of upheaval. No, nothing bad or uncomfortable. It is just that from time to time I experience a time of rapid change where things I formerly believed and activities I previously engaged in get turned upside down and inside out. The former things lose their meaning and new things come to take their place. I'm kinda used to it now, and believe I must experience these paradigm shifts as part of my natural growth process.

Sometimes these paradigm shifts occur quickly and other times they are the result of a long subtle process. All of them, however are the result of what I am being programmed by. If I were to expose myself to the bar scene repeatedly, I soon would get accustomed to drinking a lot and taking on the values and ideas inherent in the subculture. If I were to read anarco-syndicalist political literature repeatedly I would soon start believing it and maybe start calling myself an anarco-syndicalist. And so on. Now I don't here mean to suggest the postmodern idea that truth is relative; just that what I think is the truth, my beliefs, are far more influenced by my context than I would sometimes wish.

So in order to have paradigm shifts, with the ultimate aim of growth into new hopefully more useful or authentic/truthful organizations of existence, I allow myself shifting contexts -- new ideas and environments. Not always dramatic changes; often just tweaks.

Of the myriad of things to shift, what does one choose? Well, I'm not sure how to answer that. Often it is a matter of intuition. If there is something that is bugging me that I don't understand but feel that it may turn out to be important for my life, I might investigate it. The investigation may turn up something so attractive that one begins to seriously program oneself with the new context, leading to important changes. Sometimes I just follow a faint hint of a desire I have, and allow it to grow, giving it room to blossom.

Of course, many times in my life I get comfortable and stagnant, or uncomfortable and in a rut, but I am slowly learning that it is exactly in these periods of stasis that it is time to allow myself the possibility of a paradigm shift by changing the ideas and contexts I am exposing myself to. Is it time for you to have a paradigm shift too?

Metaphysical Freedom

The Mystery of Metaphysical Freedom by Peter van Inwagen is an excellent summary of the problem of free will. In it, I think he correctly shows that either in deterministic or indeterministic worlds, the concept of metaphysical freedom is contradictory. But instead of tossing the concept, he argues that we all really believe in free will and so something must be wrong with his arguments that free will makes no sense.

First of all, I think he is wrong that one cannot deny free will. Many philosophers and laymen have done just that and who is van Inwagen to say they don't? He argues that our deliberations about two possible future actions betray our belief that we can indeed freely choose between the two. But we can indeed view our deliberations with not the process of freely choosing, but the very process of determinism playing itself out! Our thinking about apparent choices can certainly be seen as determined. We can view our deliberating process with the feeling "wow, I wonder what I am going to end up doing" rather than the attitude "wow, look at me, calling the shots".

Secondly, he and others suggest that the idea of metaphysical freedom may be somehow irreversibly hardwired into our brains, since it is so pervasive. But this again assumes that everyone operates under the principle of self-determination, illusion or not. This is unclear. I think there certainly may have been people who have been freed from the illusion of self-determination -- we call them Saints or Buddhas or other terms of elevation. Nevertheless, I think it is clear that most people do indeed frantically want to hold on to the idea of free will despite everything pointing to the contrary. I see that process happening in myself, but I am more and more simply seeing the root of it as pride.

What's Your Problem?

I've been quiet this month for various reasons, but tonight I decided to relay to you this tricky concept I've flirted with. It's tricky in that if I say too much or too little, the idea disappears into meaningless pseudophilosophy. But here goes anyway... Perhaps part of being human is that we each have a core ultimate "problem" with the world or ourselves. It is an issue that defines the religion or world view we take upon ourselves, and ultimately plays a role in all our behaviour. We try and rid ourselves of this thing via various practices, but no amount of cleansing ourselves of our problem seems to get rid of it. And trying to be ignorant of it seems to generate even more of the problem. Being resigned to living with it, when we are honest, is unsatisfactory. It really is quite frustrating business!

To a Hindu, this issue may be maya/illusion. To a Buddhist, the problem may be "suffering". To a nihilist, it may be "meaninglessness". To a Christian, the problem may be trying to love God and others. But the possibilities are endless for core problems to be solved: perfecting meditation, yoga, penance, or gaining selflessness or peace or gnosis etc. Common to all these things is that each person thinks "If I solve the problem, things will be made right". To everyone, their failure to solve the problem is the sin to overcome.

Now notice carefully: inherent in this sin-problem is always an overriding sense of self. Even the problem itself often, if not always, can be reduced to rampant self-focus -- indeed, illusion, suffering, lovelessness, and meaninglessness may all be rooted in a sense of me-importance. But we go further and audaciously say to ourselves that -we- can solve the sin-problem through means -we- cook up. In fact, any means of self-determination run us squarely back into our sin-problem. This is trying to solve the sin-problem with even more of the sin-problem.

So you see, we really are in a pickle. This pickle is described by the omninous sounding Christian theological term "Total Depravity". Perhaps the only escape is causeless self-transcending enlightenment or a unilateral act of God's grace of which the self has no role. What is your problem?

Enjoying God

If I were to summarize Christianity in a few words, I wouldn't talk about its amazing doctrines of grace and certainly not the idea of salvation from sin or hell. Focusing primarily on these issues, though important characteristics of Christianity, misses the whole point of the Christian life and instead self-centeredly emphasizes what we get out of the deal. So what is the starting point (other than an inkling of the existence of God) and the underlying theme of Christianity?

It is this, the starting point of the famous statements of faith (eg. The Westminster Catechism): "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever." The central idea of Christianity found throughout the bible is that we are to focus on God, not ourselves. In delighting in God, we find joy and happiness as a side product.

So what is entailed in this "glorfying God"? One of my favourite Christian writers, John Piper, answers with the brilliant statement: "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." As we focus on God, like a moth to a light bulb, finding our delight, our inspiration, and our spiritual sustenance in Him, doing everything in consciousness of the presense of Him, we are doing what we are meant to do and esteeming Him as the highest in the process. The amazing thing is that adoring his peace, love, beauty and truth, we then become conduits for God, spreading the same awe of the perfect in all our relationships and activities, thus increasing the glorification of God throughout the world.

I think many churches and churchgoers have lost this focus, instead only concerned about their salvation or their "journeys" or, God forbid, "I gotta do the right thing". But Christianity isn't at core about me, me, me. It is about God, God, God. Only with the mindset of delight in God does any of Christianity's other doctrines (sin, salvation, faith, grace, sanctification etc.) begin to make any sense or have any power.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year, Everyone!

This is the time of year that it is traditional to make plans for the coming period in what is called "new year's resolutions". Well, I'm going to tell you: just don't do it! Yep, you heard me, don't make new year's resolutions.

Not there is nothing wrong with fresh starts, except that maybe every moment can be lived freshly. Nor is there a problem with planning for the future, except that planning may be obsessive, done from a sense of anxiety and fear about tomorrow, instead of planning consciously in the now. What I take issue with is that resolutions are usually about wanting to fix something that we feel is "wrong" or "a problem" in our lives or something that we are socialized into feeling we "should" do. It is because of this non-self-accepting approach to resolutions that they most often do not work. We simply do not really, at core, want to fix ourselves or do something we "should" but normally wouldn't do.

Doesn't this imply no improvement, if we are not to force or trick ourselves into doing something we don't really want? Of course not! It could be argued that the only deep positive change comes from learning to do what we truly love -- all of our behaviours rearrange themselves to together further our missions, our purposes, our deepest desires and to reflect our core values. Surface behaviour modification by comparison is a difficult battle. Following our bliss is the easiest thing in the world: we just focus on it every moment and it suggests how to act. Funny we often with great effort "try" to do this and that with constant activity accomplishing little when we can sit back and watch our lives unfold. Reminds me of the biblical maxim: "seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you."

So this New Year, I think we shouldn't waste our time resolving silly little changes that amount to a hill of beans in the grand scheme of things. Instead, let's spend more time finding our Love or Loves, focusing on them in the moment and living the resulting fantastic creative lives we are meant to!

God's Nativity in Us

Merry Christmas!

Today we celebrate the birth of the Son of God into the world. The idea of God making an ingress into our world and history, connecting with the world in an ultimate way, is something worth musing about at this Christmas season. But taken metaphorically, we can view the incarnation as not just in the world, but in US, in the depths of our being. God can be seen as willfully birthing in us his reality.

Meister Eckhart, the great 13th Century Christian mystic, often talked about God giving birth in the soul:

Meister Eckhart says, I have been asked what God is doing in heaven. I answer; He has been giving his Son birth eternally, is giving him birth now and will go on giving him birth forever. The Father being in labor, as a woman giving birth to a child, in every virtuous soul. Blessed, three times blessed, is the person within whose soul the heavenly Father is brought to bed in this manner. All she surrenders to him here she shall enjoy from him in life eternal. God made the soul on purpose for her to bear his one-begotten Son. His birth in Mary through the Spirit was better pleasing to God than his nativity of her in flesh. When this birth happens nowadays in the good loving soul, it gives God greater pleasure than his creation of the heavens and earth.

What are we to make of this? What does it mean for God to give birth in our souls? I think the thing being born in us is a creation of God's alone, not something we create, though maybe it is something we make room for like Christ's Innkeeper, even though that inner space may be just like a humble manger. But what exactly this creation is really depends on the person -- God's work in me is different than in you.

So this Christmas season, if you believe in a God or a Higher Power, I suggest thinking a little about what God is birthing in you. How is He inserting Himself into your life? To what special purpose is your life conspiring towards, and is the time ripe for your own nativity scene?

On Procrastination

Like many people, it appears that I have problems with procrastination. On investigating this over the years, I have discovered that procrastination is not really one simple thing or one monster to battle. Nor is it a multifaceted hydra taking every opportunity to ruin our lives. In fact, I don't think there is much substance to it at all. After reading books about it, hearing all the psychological theories and explanations, and trying unsuccessfully to extricate this Thing from my life, I finally realized that "procrastination" is merely a label for a non-concept that served only to distance myself from the reality of what goes on in my life. It was just a handy explanation of the unease I felt over my choices.

You see, we always choose our next activity and put off the other possibilities for later. And there are always reasons for our choices -- one causal chain of priorities or preferences which are in turn caused by our feelings at the moment. In other words, we always do exactly what we feel like. Then, if this is so, it seems there is no procrastination at all, ever, except that which we fabricate in our own minds as pandering to imagined realities instead of seeing the reality before us.

What we are then left with is feelings to work with any which way we want. When we are about to put off an activity we can become keenly aware of those feelings we are currently having about the activity. We then have an opportunity to morph those feelings into different ones more conducive to accomplishing the task. (This morphing is again a product of watching ourselves closely and applying lessons learned -- we change feelings about things all the time.) In this way, we can become masters of our feelings and thus our choices through awareness.

There is no procrastination. There is just our attention habitually scattered over things other than our inner experience causing us unease where a simple change of view would give us an expanded behavioural repertoire.

The Disseminati

The Charlock's Shade has produced a quote by T.S. Eliot about the rapid circulation of ideas. Eliot talks about second-order minds (not second-rate) being necessary for having ideas pulse through society. Charlock's Shade points out that the internet is full of these types of minds and ideas are now more easily disseminated.

I am reminded of an excellent book I read recently, which I think is a must for anyone interested in memetics. It is The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. In it, Gladwell expounds upon the three types of people, the second-order minds, required for producing a cultural epidemic. There are "Connectors" who know lots of people or who others can get an idea out to a large number of people. There are "Mavens" who become mini-experts in particular areas -- they collect ideas and are more than willing to share them. And there are "Salespeople" who are good at getting others to engage the ideas that the salesperson believes in.

As Symphony-X and Camille Paglia suggest, blogging is about second-order minds imitating other's ideas. While this is largely the case, I think there are certainly new ideas and new combinations of ideas produced in the blogosphere all the time. Nevertheless, it is interesting to analyze one's own blogging to see where in Gladwell's three categories one often fits. Or to see if perhaps you are a person that does indeed occassionally create fresh ideas...

One Scenario

Perhaps the purpose of the web, and particularly blogging, is to share clues to the solution of the Enigma. By interbroadcasting our special clues -- our unique ideas, questions, and ways of seeing the world -- we may provide each other, and our union, with the missing pieces of the Puzzle. The more quickly, completely, honestly and directly we share these pieces, it encourages others to do the same, and the sooner we will complete what we've come here to do.

Buddhism's Secret Weapon

I recently finished an excellent book by Mark Epstein called Thoughts Without A Thinker. In it, Epstein explains some of the Buddhist psychology in terms of Western psychology (particularly Freudian) and shows how Buddhism can aid psychotherapy. Perhaps the climax of the book is the discussion about what Epstein terms "the secret weapon of Buddhism". Psychotherapy is good (particularly when coupled with meditation) at uncovering core issues and the reasons for their arising. However, knowledge of the issues is not necessarily good enough to deal with the problem. The secret weapon is a means by which problems can be effectively worked through.

Epstein talks about the core of many issues to be narcissistic injury or the feelings of unsatisfactoriness when one is confronted with the emptiness of self. Buddhism shows us to sit with those feelings and the feelings generated from them (anger, angst, grandiosity, vacuousness etc.) and to experience them fully without judgement. But the trick then is to make a shift from these feelings to the consciousness of the "I" that is having those feelings. When one focuses deeply on this "I", one begins to see the insubstantiality, the relativeness, and the impermanence of this "I". When this happens, the feelings themselves lose some of the stranglehold that they have over you -- they too become passing, and there is less investment in the production of these feelings and more interest in this fleeting "I". While applying this secret weapon may lead in cases to the elimination of the products of this sense of injury, often it does not completely eradicate them. But in those cases, this shifted consciousness often makes such issues relatively unimportant and even a source of mild amusement.

Anyway, I'm not an expert at Buddhism so I doubt I explained this all correctly. Nevertheless, I found Epstein's explanations to be very clear and understandable, particularly for someone who has been introduced to the language of psychotherapy. Perhaps Epstein's book and this little post may be useful to someone out there who could use a new weapon in their arsenal...