A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES
Several shifts and additions to human knowledge and culture have complicated thinking about abstract concepts which are, to be honest, constructed in the brains of people rather than being “real” and solid.
One of the most obvious when thinking about science is the HUGE difference between Newtonian science with its levers and gears versus quantum mechanics about energy particles and waves.
If one is working on psychological matters, the main task is reconciling the creative imagining of Freud in his Austrian society vs. the neuroscience studies of hundreds of advanced labs around the high tech world. There are also a set of psych perception experiments that both challenge and explain what dissections might suggest, like split brain research.
Because of learning hierarchies in the “civilized” part of the world, these advances in understanding are only available to some people. The great body of folks simply cling to the 19th century demonstrable science of the industrial revolution. I’m with them when it comes to computers: I can keyboard, move things on the screen around, and send messages. I cannot code. I do not grasp many aspects. I don’t video. There are advantages: I am never tempted to think of a person as a brain-in-a-bucket.
On the other hand, when it comes to humanities I’m extremely progressive. I see our social arrangements as plastic, negotiable, arbitrary, economic, and in dire need of amending. I see stigma as a blunt instrument that has the backside of hiding many precious things out of the necessity of secrecy as a protection. The hiddenness — sometimes a convention rather than actual — and the consequences of disclosure enable such evils as blackmail but — because they are worth money — they make things like gambling, felonies, murder, more expensive and yet more desirable. Very mixed.
Because of these orientations of mine — willing to accept high tech science like quantum mechanics as “true” and unwilling to be confined by social taboos — this discussion of how intense moments of experience happen will offend some people. Go read something else.
My stance welcomes the embodiment movement and sees emotion as the product of the body, directly connected to mind as in Porges’ ideas about the polyvagal nerves and also capable of pushing thought into visible bodily changes of breath, heartbeat, organ secretions, skin flushing and so on that we call emotion. I deny the separation between humans and everything else. We are animals ourselves. Nature embraces us all and we are interfering in all nature. There is no more “wild.”
The division between the sacred and the secular is historical and was useful, but is now too confusing and limiting. My opinion is that “sacred” is a human-generated quality rather than arriving from some supernatural source. Likewise, I’m among those who see “gender/sexual” categories as fluid and cultural rather than binary. These opinions may scandalize others.
In terms of society, I’ve been part of white middle-class groups, some of them rather elite, and basic rez or even street people. Sometimes both at the same time. I admit that I love fancy glamorous things, especially in the arts, as well as primitive unschooled arts, but I have a lot of distaste for vulgarity whether or not it is gold-plated.
Academia appeals to me as a hierarchy of value but I see the kind of education exemplified by philosophy is based on all previous thought in that “tradition” so that it is like a river made straight with cement banks. Discussion is in terms of this person or that person as a kind of shorthand. Algorithms that sort silos of interest don’t seem able to handle the difference between traditional methods and a more modern kind of thought. This makes me wary and skeptical. On the other hand, there’s a lot of snake oil out there, sometimes poison. I value sorting if it’s dependable. Universities are clearly open to transnational corporate domination, completely undermining their function.
Historical religious systems with integrity that supports people where they are can only be respected. It’s just that those of us who live on different terms because we’re in a different place on both the continents and the timelines need to have our systems explored as well.
Proving a positive is not possible if all the energy goes into a negative. Atheism is just as much controlled by the idea of a big person in the sky as theism is. Renewal comes from framing a whole new system: zero-based theology, if you like, except that if there is no theos involved it needs to be called something else.
I have yet to learn to manage very well my self-protections which include making everything into print, living a monastic solitary life, avoiding competition by accepting poverty, putting off publicity/sales. I have not come to terms with decline (aging) and a shortening future. Nor have I come to terms with the loss of people about whom I care deeply even though they stay with me psychically. I’m reluctant to get close to new people or many people. These things may or may not limit my thinking.
These declarations are both challenges and warnings, but I assume that people of intelligence and good-will are likely to accept them. I’m not a brilliant person nor am I stupid. I’ve been in jobs both humble and grand — mostly by accident. This is positive in the long run.
Most of the people who write about such personal religious phenomena have no experience serving congregations or as hospital chaplains. Since I have, that seems helpful. I’ve expressed these ideas to people who were listening while I watched their faces.
What I came down to in the end was the universal phenomenon that visits some people occasionally, an experience of such intensity that it seems worthy of being a seed of religious conviction, a clue from the universe. Mostly it comes uninvited, unexpected, and inexplicable. There are ways of arranging liturgies that invite special meaning that approach epiphany, opening a liminal space.
