Something to think about:
IF IT CAN’T BE PROVEN,
DOES THAT MAKE IT FALSE?

There has been quite a conversation ongoing here in recent days about the place of beliefs within the human experience.

There are those who say that the holding of any belief whatsoever is the problem with the human species, and is what renders us so dysfunctional. Every conclusion human beings come to should be based on observable and hopefully replicable evidence, they suggest, or should be rejected out of hand as inadmissible in any serious discussion or decision.

I find this a fascinating point of view — and I see much merit in personally and privately insisting within ourselves that some form of evidence be present with regard to the things we that say are so before we make a definite assertion about it.

On the other hand, I sincerely wonder if taking such a position with dogmatic rigidity and without exception eliminates from genuine consideration in our lives a good deal of what could turn out to be highly useful and extremely beneficial information — to say nothing of greatly reducing the possibility of wondrous experiences.

I think of First Love, for example. When someone says “I love you” to us, I assume that in most cases we have at least a little background and/or evidence upon which to make a judgment as to whether it is true. But what about the person who says it to us for the first time? Do we respond by saying: “Prove it”— ? Or do we accept it on face value because we “believe” it to be true?

Yet on what basis do we foundation our belief? Could it be, heaven forbid, that we “have faith” in what we’ve heard, and accept it without a shred of evidence? I want to suggest that more than a few wonderful life partnerships have been inspired and initiated by such a “belief.”

So I wonder: Is it possible that we can “know” things that we have no evidence to support, and that we can actually turn out to be “right” about that? Can we intuit things? Can we simply “feel” that something is true — and can that feeling reveal a validity that only later is found to be supported by “evidence”? Or, for that matter, that is never supported by any evidence, save one’s internal experience?

Is there any value at all in taking anything on faith? I ask this question sincerely, not as a smarmy inquiry meant to presuppose a “right” answer. I ask sincerely: Where does Evidence-Free Internal Experience fit into the Protocol or Convention of those who say that Only That Which is Factually Supported and Physically Provable is a Legitimate Entry into the ledger of Beneficial Human Encounter?

Comments

94 responses to “Something to think about:
IF IT CAN’T BE PROVEN,
DOES THAT MAKE IT FALSE?”

  1. mewabe Avatar
    mewabe

    The ultimate materialist viewpoint is that human consciousness is or could exclusively be the product of electrical and chemical interactions within the physical brain. In other words we may be nothing more than sophisticated computers, soon to be replaced and perhaps dominated and controlled by own own future creations, more sophisticated and more intelligent machines.

    If this worldview pleases those who already embrace it, and it works for them, then it’s all good, as long as they do not attempt to impose it on others, or to make the world into a reflection of this view.

    Between this extreme and the other extreme, the religious view that sates that life must be rigidly directed according to our God of choice stern dictates, there is a middle ground, which is usually found in spirituality, in inner growth and in a direct relationship with life, cleared of any preconception, unnecessary belief and false expectations.

    Without subjective experience (love, imagination, dreams, feelings, intuition, insights) life would be but a skeleton, cold and bare, desolate and sterile. To think that all experience and consciousness itself are the product of chemical interactions would be to ultimately deny their validity…and to place humanity in a position of slavery to physical matter.

    Anything that enslaves the mind, whether it is dogmatic religion or an inflexible adherence to a scientific theory, must be questioned by the spiritually inclined, as spiritually is about liberation, not enslavement. The ultimate question is the nature of life, and the reality of the Self..not the limited person but the being part of existence, as in I Am, which is why I use capital letters.

    What is being? This cannot be grasped by the mind only, as it is a totality of experience that is found in the unity, the oneness of all life. Actual being is found when the limited self, the “person” dissolves, as a butterfly emerges from a cocoon.

    The personality is indeed a fictional character each of us has created…but life, or being, is very real, and beyond time and space.

    1. Kirsten Avatar
      Kirsten

      Hey there!
      Religion is a myth….mmmm??
      I don’t think it is. The biblical God Jehovah/YWHW is very tough, and very real. As an Isrealite but not religious, its in my blood. Even without religion, I obey His orders for no reason other than its almost impossible for me to go against those orders, its how Im made.
      I can’t steal, lie, blasphme, get drunk, acknowledge other dieties or gods, have ornaments, colour photos or other graven images etc, boss children around, be lazy instead or working or studying, overcharge people or be overcharged, wear cheap clothes from synthetics, dress masculine, be greedy etc. All the things forbidden by God in scripture.
      For me, this proves its not all a myth, merely that until God found a way to make people/souls how he wanted them to be, He had to give orders, which was then religion! This also dispels my view on beliefs, if these things and God were merely my beliefs, then I musnt be real since I was born this way and was ‘obedient’ forever, not knowing why I was a bit ‘different’ until I read scripture in my mid 30s. If a guy I would not be capable of shaving, having long hair, being a crappy husband, not financially supporting my family or the male things God forbids as well.
      You are right, we are incredibly limited with all these inbuild rules and laws, there are sooooo many things others freely do that I would find impossible like a personal barrier or brain block I wouldnt be able to get past, but that opens up a whole new world and new doors, so I think you are right and wrong in your last sentence too…limitations allow vastness. Just a different vastness.
      Take care Mewbobstein.

      Kirski

      1. mewabe Avatar
        mewabe

        Greetings FriskyKirski!

        I have the same universal-spiritual laws “written” in my heart/soul as you do (“I can’t steal etc…” I am not sure what you mean by color photographs). I was born with these laws. But my interpretation of this is a little different according to different personalities (I am a follower of nature, which in China was called the Tao, or perfect spontaneity in perfect harmony with a perfect universe).

        What best describes how I understand spiritual law is the following:
        “Virtue is light as a father which follows every wind, It is on every occasion delicate and exquisite. But it is still accomplished by a trace of contrivance, just as a feather still has some weight however imperceptible. Tao, the unique law, has no weight, no sound. It embraces and direct the entire universe.”
        Yes, as you already knew, Confucius said this when he reached the Tao after long years of study of the I-Ching. In this comment “virtue” would be religion and all moral codes, with their contrivances. The Tao is pure unwritten law.

        Lao-tse said the following:
        “When the Tao was lost, it was replaced by justice (or virtue or morality). When justice was lost, it was replaced by ceremony (superficial religion and all codified behaviors whose meaning are not understood by followers). Ceremony is the last degeneration of the Tao and the principle of disorder.”

        God’s laws are easily seen within the natural creation, if one observes it with spiritual insight. That’s also the Native American way…these ways are similar.

        We come to the same understanding through different paths, when we follow the inner spiritual law (not the mind, not imagination, not our own fantasies and temporary wants, but universal spiritual laws).

        Most people in the western world would call a spontaneous adherence to some of these laws “having a conscience”. however many do not have an awakened conscience, or they put it to sleep, thinking “everyone else does it”, so they follow sheep to the slaughter.

        Being a following of nature I also have a very strong dislike towards all that is artificial, which to me feels out of sink with natural laws, which are an expression of greater spiritual laws, such as that of unity and balance, found in nature. That means, for me, no artificial foods and no artificial fabrics or materials, as much as possible anyway in this artificial civilization…not because God wrote it in a scripture, but because God wrote it in the creation itself, and apparently in my DNA.

        These laws, I do not follow or “obey” out of a fear of consequences or karma, but because that is who I am…I cannot not follow them anymore than water can avoid following the path of least resistance.

        Take care,
        Megabob

        1. Kirsten Avatar
          Kirsten

          Nice edit…….so you’re my stalker based on the name. Haha.
          Too tired to read any of that so Ill just agree and disagree…balance through neutrality emergance!
          Supplies of fried bread in the freezer are getting a bit low btw.
          Huge trauma at the mo and sleepless nights…..do I re-sign my shop lease and continue with a boring job on average pay for another 3 years or be a rebel and take a risk, move on to goodness knows what altho my play job pays almost full wages anyway. Grrrrrrrr, can’t do decisions!!!! Inbuild laws about tough decisions would be great.
          Later, and take care Uberbob

          Bob,, just common old bob!!!!

          1. mewabe Avatar
            mewabe

            Bobsky, sorry to hear you have to make a tough decision. What does your gut tell you? Intuition? Is there a conflict between what your mind tells you and what your heart wants? Can you temporarily compromise or do you need to go one way or the other? As you know life is very short, be careful about letting a boring job rule it.

            Can you spend a couple of hours or a day removed from your familiar environment, in a quiet place, and let the answer come to you? Nature is a good place to restore inner balance…take your shoes off, sit on the ground, connect with the earth…that’s what I would do. You already have the answer within you…you need to trust what you already know. Don’t chase the answer with your mind, let it come to you (or rather out of you), that’s how intuition works best!

            An alternative way is to write things down…the pluses and minuses of each decision, to sort out and cut through the mental confusion, until the answer pops up..

            More fired bread is on the way to help!

          2. Kirsten Avatar
            Kirsten

            Thanks.
            Done all that, know what my gut tells me and that is to combine both jobs and do it from the one place using half my shop as storage for online job and stop selling shop lines that are slow sellers BUT our economy is nuts, sales get lower and lower per head cos rents and mortgages are too high. So it could be a gamble to end up in a lease agreement if the bubble burst. Our economy is now stacked on top of credit cards and debt..a false economy. We all go to work to get paid…I can do plan b from home although it takes up a lot of space and ends up 24/7 which I juggle now. But dont want plan b to subsidise shop rent, but also want to ditch the profitable cake decorating side of my business…boring and too messy. Too old for mess now!!
            I need God to tell me what to do!!!! I have another week to decide.
            Huuuuuge decision after the same job for 14 years.
            Oh well, at least I have a job and options, lots of people dont even have a plan A for income, I have an A B and C. Plan D…get a job for someone else..now that would be wierd!!
            Take care Bobstein

            Xx

          3. mewabe Avatar
            mewabe

            I am sorry Kirsten but I have to admit that I do not understand what you are talking about…if I pretended to I would be full of a smelly substance, and we don’t want that. Words have different meaning for different people, and I am not familiar with certain of your concepts or interpretations of symbols.
            In my own life I look for integration, synthesis, clarity and simplicity. So I have a different path…my intuition is still totally in sync (with what you call the Source?)

            There is a lot of chaos on the near horizon, but you don’t have to be a part of it…
            Take care,
            Mewablob

          4. Kirsten Avatar
            Kirsten

            Hi Mewablob…packing on the weight in preparation for a trip to Walmart are ya? Do sent a pic or will see you on peolle of Walmart…wear a Native American warrior headdress if you have one so I recognise you. With other clothes too please!

            Its ok, I know what Im talking about, someone has to around here! I read things physically, the meaning of everything I see rather than using the internal. I prefer God externally, personal choice and how God works with me cos he knows I will listen and see the answers, He guides me, not guides or my soul now as Im on a God path, unknown to me. Remember Im not reincarnated to have no clear path to follow, God makes it up as I go.
            Ive realised all the changes have already happened, just need to move home business to the shop, and ditch the labour intensive aspects of work. Duh, it was underway and I was too busy trying to make decisions that were already made for me. Double duh!!!
            Im escaping chaos forever, done my time, its cruise mode now!!
            Yes intuition will generally be to your soul from The Source, maybe with guides helping. The old world for the sun means soul, The Source transmits via the sun hence feeling good when its sunny.
            Take care Mewablob.
            Kirsteinbobinski (Jewish today)

          5. mewabe Avatar
            mewabe

            I wish I could put on some weight…I am the exact same weight as I was when I was 19…that of a long distance runner. In America I feel like a horse living among elephants…I am of a different specie, thinking and moving faster than most.

            I use the internal (insight) even when I look at things, I see within. I do that with people as well, and it often makes them uncomfortable. I think some Native American associates that with the owl (seeing through the darkness).

            Yes, the closer we are to an answer the less we see it, often…like not seeing our own nose.

            I am very glad to hear you are cruising…time to enjoy your life! I have done my time too, learnt my lessons. There is probably one or two lessons left, but I am no longer resisting, so it won’t be so difficult. I think the time has come for the harvest, this is my last time here.

            Take care Kirsteinovitch!
            Fried bread from China via Walmart is coming soon (but don’t eat it it’s probably very toxic!)
            Mewablobisozinskanovitchstein

          6. Kirsten Avatar
            Kirsten

            Wow…..that sure is one name!!
            Yes, tricksters stand out like a skinny guys body parts….or maybe a Ninja Turtles head!! If my psychic insight serves me correctly of course. Cool majic power to have.
            You made me smile about weight, I just cant keep it on anymore, and never think about food which doesnt help. Down to probably 52 kg at the moment, not good on a 5’8″ frame, a US size 2 or even a 0. Does Walmart even stock a size 2?? And yip, people look at slim people like you are an alien. Which of course YOU are. Lucky Im in a 70s clothes phase at the moment with long skirts and layers, nothing fits and a winter with no jeans is a bit wierd but sticking out bones is not cool at all, nor is jeans round my knees. Yip, same size my entire life although usually 55/57kg.
            Completely agree about gifted people, there is a really good book called The Da Vinci Gene. Thats me to a T. Or a Q. Who the fork knows or cares.
            Very handy if your nose precedes you! And yip hopefully its harvest time. Im due some fruits of my labours…I hope. Damn well better be or I quit. Can you actually quit being yourself???? You’d know.
            Anyway, take care. Im sitting here stock taking, surrounded by hundreds of rolls of pretty ribbons with a mangey old cat trying to help, and knees so arthritic and sore from kneeling that I do believe Im actually stuck!!! Ill die here stuck on the floor. Thank goodness I had a coffee and yuck subway earlier. Yoga or prayer pose, who knows?. Wont really matter after rigor mortis I guess. I’ll squash in a enviro friendly square box!!
            Catch you later, if you and I pass thru at the same time again.
            Kirsty (no its not cursed sty!)
            Xx

  2. Marko Avatar

    “You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks” -Dorothy Parker

    With few & rare exceptions, rigidity is often the dam that stops the flow of the river of imagination, wonder & solutions.

    Rare cases might be life & death where you rigidly hold onto a strawberry bush so you don’t fall off the cliff & hopefully you don’t fall but get help or climb back uP. Or medical emergency & you bee line it to the emergency room.

    Occasionally I hold fast to certain things that I truly feel will benefit me. Like spending alone time during the holiday as others go to church. My wife loves to dance & we take ballroom lessons, which I enjoy. Sometimes she wants to go out dancing when I don’t & so now a bit of a power struggle happens. Often, even if I don’t feel like it, I go anyways simply to make her happy & almost all the time I have a very good time & I’m glad I went.

    Point being, I’m very aware of the balance of being rigid & flexible & flexible is almost always the better path.

  3. AKA Patrick Avatar
    AKA Patrick

    Not to take away from NDW or anything he’s written or says, but I go back to “A Course in Miracles” as well. In addition, I just viewed a 20 minute video from Dr. Wayne Dyer on a wonderful little book written in 1914 by a man named Joseph Benner, entitled “The Impersonal Life” in which he speaks of the Spirit within each of us and how it often impels us to do and say things to help others. (More empaths in the world right now would be extremely helpful). There are many writers and thinkers (another is Gregg Braden) in the world today who have “wised up” to the misuses of power in the world today and expressing ideas which help to show us what we individually can do to help the global consciousness to reach that “critical mass’ necessary to make constructive changes. Lower animals follow that “critical mass consciousness” principle to learn new behaviors without even thinking about it Why not humans?

  4. Paul Doyle Avatar

    Based on my answers to the seven questions (and they evolve regularly) I have a knowing, despite all the seeming evidence to the contrary. I don’t love you because of something I or you do, I love you because that’s who we are. And when I act accordingly, I feel it. If I’m going to base my life on anything it has to be on what I currently know. I know if I lean to far over I’ll fall, because, in my experience gravity never fails. Is there a higher principle than gravity? I”m sure there is but it’s not available to me right now and I have to ‘be’ where I’m at. In this way I co-operate with creation.

    I want to thank you Neale, for showing me I need to ask better questions. It’s only from my inquiry of the Presence in me and my actions from the answers I receive that I build the one essential relationship. I had a wise ex-wife that told me many years ago:
    All my relationships are the same and they all reflect my relationship with God.

    As for the faith business. Here’s my criteria: Is it line with what I know my Self to be? Is it going to harm anyone? If it costs, can I afford it if it’s not what it seems? I take it to my creator in the silence and get my answer, only for me, and only for this moment, it’s the only ‘time’ there is. Even if apparently it doesn’t turn out, I still grow from the experience. No more ‘bad events’.

  5. Charles Avatar
    Charles

    “Belief” is a word used to describe individual truth. When an individual has a belief, they also “believe” they have proof of their truth. This is true especially when a group of people come together in the same belief. I have tried many times to understand the “faith based truth” of many people over the years. I have questioned my own beliefs based on the fact that there is absolutely no physical proof of my spiritual beliefs. But there is! With my experience, combined with things I know to be fact (understanding that the facts may not be completely fact) I form the beliefs that are mine. To make my beliefs valid I merely need to find others who “validate” those beliefs by admitting that they also believe the same thing. So… without proof, can it be true? Yes! Belief makes it true to the believer. Yet, if I were told the Statue of Liberty had been moved to San Francisco bay, I would need proof to believe it. Concerning the state of our world, any person I talk to, regardless of religious background, will say quickly, loudly, and openly… the world is in trouble. I think that enough people “believe” the world is in trouble that I “believe” it also to be true. Not that there is not evidence though. We have proof. We have enough people believing that the world and humanity is in trouble that at the very least the idea that trouble exists makes it truth. So the only question is “how many people “believe” the world is NOT in trouble?” Lets just split the world in half with two separate beliefs, both sides would ultimately want you to prove it. We know the outcome of the argument already. The religions of our world have shown us daily how the argument ends by letting us know… it never ends. There’s not enough proof.

    The value of faith is personal inner peace.

  6. Theresa Weaver Avatar
    Theresa Weaver

    I know we’re not talking about taxes, but I keep having the scripture where Jesus told those questioning him to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” In that statement, Jesus is clearly alluding to two different “realities.”

    There is the physical reality or materialistic life, and there is the spiritual reality. In the physical reality, tangible evidence is often needed for decision making. If a claim is made about success or failure on purely a materialistic area, then it makes sense to want to see evidence to back up that claim. Our need for data and proof works very well within the physical.

    Then there is the spiritual reality that is often seen as intangible. If people seek to look at this through the ideas we use to measure physical reality, then it’s very easy for people to state that more than the physical doesn’t exist. What I think is funny is I don’t believe we are born denying this reality, but people who attempt to measure it like physical reality teach people to deny it. There are far too many people from so many diverse backgrounds pointing people to the spiritual reality. Often in spiritual reality, we are left with no more than experiences, opinions, metaphors, and small signposts along the way.

    The thing that probably is most confusing is that the physical and spiritual overlap so much. I think for some there is a degree of discomfort with the idea that something intangible could be involved in their tangible lives…they have a hard time seeing how something infinite can fit into something that is perceived as having a finite set of space or time. How can this God/Creator/All-That-Is fit in human me? How can eternity fit into a single second?

    I tend to use mathematics as a metaphor when looking at tangible vs. intangible ideas. If you look at the numbers 1-2, it’s easy to see those two numbers as being a finite set.. there are definite borders to that set. Yet, between those two numbers, there are infinite options of numbers you can choose from…. no matter how tiny the differences are (1.1, 1.99999, 1.34823, 1.5…) For me, the physical life (the one that needs hard evidence) is the one that sees the limitations of 1-2. It sees the set and nothing else. The spiritual reality is the one that acknowledges infinite possibility within the set but also acknowledges what is beyond that set. Seeing the concrete numbers is seeing evidence. Seeing the infinite present is akin to faith or belief. They are two different things but both present at once.

  7. Inae Park Avatar
    Inae Park

    One thing I’ve “intuited” finally is, brevity IS the life of the sentence, words ARE the least effective communication medium and silence IS GOLDEN. The more you dig into it with logic, the linear, egotistical mind, the more muddied it gets. While staying away from forums, blogs, and social media I felt my vital energy restoring and the dreadful mind chatter lessning. You know, format is as important as content. Young people abhor long rants from pulpits as well as online, not because they are addicted to 15 second sound bites and instant gratification, but verbiage is such an energy sucker, and they intuitively know this and are actively avoiding it. There’s a Korean saying, “As you get older, shut your mouth and open your wallet.” As people get older they tend to get wiser, but also very verbal. This is as much a pollution as any, and it would benefit to reflect on if we’re actually contributing to what we wish to see discontinued, i.e., the ego-left brains-male hormone dominance by too much inellectualizing on this all too serious business of consciousness and spirituality.

    If you have a burning question, don’t compulsively sit at the computer and type away, go walking, hiking, sing a song, paint a picture, tend to a garden, play the guitar, cook a meal. You might find that you have been given a very satisfying answer in addition to feeling good.

  8. Charles Avatar
    Charles

    Is there a valuable place for ‘belief’ in the human experience? I have been coming back to this question over and over in the past couple of days. Machines move about without belief. Without belief we would be having a machine experience… or we may have infinite knowing, in which case we would not need beliefs. We would simply know everything to be fact or not fact. That would most certainly make a conversation about anything short.. actually there would be no need to talk or share any information, all information would be had. “Hey, did you know…. yes i did, and you know that!”. How could we be human at all without beliefs? We enjoy each other not knowing the facts for sure. Beliefs bring us together, it pushes us apart, it brings us together again. We enjoy that fluctuation. Beliefs create individuality. The study of beliefs is what keeps us communicating. Not being able to prove or disprove keeps it interesting. How could… how would we figure out who we are without someone else being who we are not. Maybe the human experience would be safer without “curiosity”! Sounds boring quite honestly….

  9. Blake Avatar
    Blake

    Maturity!

    Hope is the begining or childhood, Belief is the teenager, knowing is the adult phase.

    Belief has it’s basis in myth, all myths have some truth. Myths are stories past from the Elder for men and the Crone for women to the children and young adults to build hopes and beliefs.

    Knowing is pure experience! The Elder tells Myths from our experiences to give direction on a boy and girls path to maturity. Without out myths the story would die and end up in a pile of dung rotting away. We all love a good story! We forget the stories that don’t touch us. The best stories have been around for thousands if not millions of years.

    Star Wars is the perfect example of good over evil with a minion of the Dark Lord (Darth Vador) battling the young Prince (Luke Skywalker). Both individuals are secretly intertwined together in the fight of a boy into manhood from his father who lost his innocents from growing old.

    Another, Iron John, About a hero saving the kingdom from the wildman who escapes from the little Prince after he steals the key under his mothers pillow.

    Beliefs are wrapped in meaning in a meaning, a story in a story of mystery and intrigue always with a message of hope for the young boys and overcoming great odds by the young men and women.

    I know that all there is is love! I cannot prove it without a love story, and my stories come from my personal experiences.

    All the worlds players are experiencing stories that have been replayed over and over again for Eons. CWG Book Series in its esscence is a story, we believe the stories because in my heart I feel as though I wrote the same words that Neale wrote just in a different language and from different experiences.

    Now, I don’t believe in god! Thanks to the stories in the CWG series I know and have a different experience to share with my Grandchildren stories that will move them and delight them, and push them to dream and create whatever they choose.

    Blessings to you Neale Donald Walsch

  10. Inae Park (aka Gina) Avatar
    Inae Park (aka Gina)

    We have thoughts, we have feelings. Things come into focus through concentrating thought. Beliefs are a more concentrated form of thought.We all experience subjective reality. You see, the problem with this kind of discussion is you cannot solve a problem at the same level it exists. And calling feelings, thoughts, dreams, and stuff like that ‘evidence free internal experience’ and delving into the subject with the logic and language is futile and vain. It’s like trying to see your own eyeball. This kind of approach has brought me so much grief, and my own misguided use of it has manifested unnecessary complications and crises in my life.

    New age spiritual rants are a thing to beware of, really. Nothing gets better from reading a lot of logical, intelligent conversations about all this, at least for me. Words are only helpful when they share your experiences and when they closely match meaning in what you are FEELING. I’m just now beginning to experience all this, and obviously still got much more healing to do. I still judge and lash out in negativity too much. I realized that all through the years that preached at people preach at people, screamed at children scream at their children. I think I’ve expressed this sentiment here before that I feel preached at not only by religious people around me, but also by spiritual teachers everywhere. I wish they could add something more palpable and effective than words that sound really good.

  11. Spiritual_Annie Avatar
    Spiritual_Annie

    In my experience, individual participation in an event can provide information in ways that the sciences have not yet discovered, been able to explain, have not prioritized, or which cannot be “proven” because of the nature of the event. I don’t consider this to be “belief” at all, but knowledge.

    It doesn’t require scientific proof for me to know the moment my mother passed over because she said goodbye to me, not by standard means of communication (which she was beyond, at that point) but by my feeling her energy and understanding her message for me while I was 2000 miles away. I’ve had similar events my entire life: I can feel the energy of people, animals, plants and what we call “inanimate” objects; I receive messages about those I love, especially when it involves a llife-changing event; I have sent messages to those I love that they have sometimes received, based more on their openness and ability to receive than mine to send; I have looked into the eyes of preverbal children, and animals, that I’ve lived with and felt their emotions; I’ve had both out-of-body and near-death events. Those are just a few examples.

    For myself, this is knowledge obtained through avenues not yet discovered by science, and possibly undiscoverable by science. Sometimes it’s affirmed by others and sometimes it’s not. Because science hasn’t, for whatever reason, discovered them doesn’t change the event. Regardless of whether something may be proven by the scientific method, what’s important in my life is the meaning I assign to any person, place, thing or event. Science could discover tomorrow that electrical impulses are what create, for example, the energy I feel emitted from others and recognize as their emotions. That won’t negate the meaning for me, which is knowing the other’s emotion and responding to it regardless of the words spoken.

    I do have beliefs, but they aren’t written in stone. When new information presents itself, I determine its significance to me and incorporate it where appropriate. (I don’t necessarily form a belief about every new piece of information as it may not pertain to me.) My definition of God, for example, has evolved over time. When I was young, I personified God in order to better relate to God. As I had new information, some of which has been from personal internal experiences, my definition and relationship with what I call God has changed. For me, it’s a natural process because I grow and change. As a mature adult with more experiences of events, I found I no longer needed to personify God, so I don’t. I made a personal decision to continue to use the term “God” so others could relate to my experiences, and to rehabilitate the term.

    Are beliefs detrimental to our well being? Not in my experience, but I’ve seen how righteousness in rigid belief systems can cause harm when one attempts to impose those beliefs on others. I see the problem not as having beliefs, but in their rigidity and in the righteousness of the people involved as well as their attempt to force their belief system on others. If I experience events around which I form a belief that I don’t impose on others, I see no harm in it. In fact, I see benefit from my beliefs. They form the framework in which I experience reality, including my morals and values. They color my experience based on that framework, which I’m free to change. I may believe in a negative world based on my knowledge, and the world then affirms my negativity because of the focus of my framework. I can also choose to see a changing world that gives me hope, and that will also be affirmed. It’s the same world, but I have chosen to change my perspective, which then changes my perception, and so on.

    An obvious example: When you read the word “chair” that I’ve typed here, each of us will have a different idea or “picture” of what “chair” means. Some will think of recliners while others will think of a wooden kitchen chair and still others will see an office chair. Each is right and no one is wrong. No one is deluding themselves or causing harm. I don’t tell people that when I say “chair” they must think of a recliner any more than I tell them they must define God the same way I do. I also don’t rely on science to define “chair” (or, for that matter, God or my experience of It) for me but rely on myself and my experiences with chairs.

    Those are my thoughts at the moment, with a keyboard that keeps creating typos. If I missed any, I apologize.

    Love and Blessings Always,
    ~Annie

  12. Inae Park (aka Gina) Avatar
    Inae Park (aka Gina)

    A lot of people who were evangelical about CwG come to feel abused by it, like me–would the clearer way to express it. Maybe in different ways but a lot of people would feel the same way. That’s why only a handful of people participate in this forum and monopolize all the talk and Patrick Gannon raises this issue of belief and proof. After almost 20 years the material didn’t do much to heal me emotionally. I didn’t even feel that I needed healing. Only recently extreme psychological pain made me heed those messages that strongly point away from theories, rhetoric, concepts and to feelings, experiences, and this moment. CWG books are good, alright, they are clear and lucid explanations of alternate cosmology, but what they did in my personal experience is make me feel I had to be concerned with the world that was on the brink of annihilation and religion is the enemy, when, before I wasn’t abused by any dogma whatsoever or concerned with the world that needing saving. I know this was not anybody’s intention, but if the emphasis should be more on the internal experience than the world out there. In regards to the topic, yes, definitely internal experience IS not only real but only what you feel inside is real and it’s the stuff that materialize. Today’s spiritual literature clouds this truth with too much verbiage and psycho-babble and is becoming dogmatic and abusive.

  13. mewabe Avatar
    mewabe

    To get back to another topic often discussed here, why can’t humanity find happiness, peace and prosperity?

    The question itself is inaccurate. Humanity found pockets of peace, happiness and prosperity in places like Spain before the fascist Franco seized power supported by powerful western interests, in Northern Italy after WW2 where the population was managing its own affairs before US forces reestablished some fascist control, in Greece after WW2 before England attacked to reestablish the repressive kingdom, in Iran before the CIA supported Shah seized power, in Nicaragua before the US trained, armed and financed the brutal and psychopathic Contras to restore oppression…among many others (Chile, etc).

    Some of these pockets of happiness were based on very democratic and in some cases anarchist forms of government, that is to say on the actual participation and control of ordinary people in their own affairs, in other words in true empowerment and freedom. Nicaragua in particular was achieving much progress in improving the daily lives of the people in education, health and employment.

    But the masters of the world would not have it. They cannot allow any population to have actual power in any form anywhere, that’s a very dangerous example…not to mention that they cannot allow certain nations to nationalize their own industries and use the money to benefit the people with free health care, free education, etc.

    The question of national sovereignty does not apply to foreign governments that serve their own people rather than serving the west military-industrial-banking mafia, which is more powerful than ever today.

    It is very naive to therefore state such a question about happiness, and it is ignoring relatively recent events in history. The people themselves are usually perfectly capable of organizing themselves, to find practical solutions and live what could be called a utopian life…but a cabal of extremely powerful and rather sociopathic and psychopathic industrial, banking and corporate interests, backed by the most powerful military forces, and unleashing methods of terrors on the people that make ISIS members look like choir boys (remember the School of the Americas?), will not let them have control and power over their own lives, for the simple reason that these predatory elements would loose access to very large sources of exploitable commodities.

    If you think these are extreme statements, read “War is a Racket”, which is today truer than ever.

    Have you ever seem a hyena easily give up its prey, or a spider release a fly whose fluids it slowly sucks? That’s why humanity cannot find happiness, because every time it finds a semblance of it, the predators step on it as one would step on an ant, killing/torturing/raping hundreds of thousands as a warning to others to bow their heads and walk the line.

    Information is power…without information we are in the dark, not knowing where we come from, where we have been, and why. That’s why we now have a corporate propaganda machine called the mainstream media, and a form of education that is also little more than propaganda…knowledge is power, and power in the hands of ordinary people is unacceptable.

    1. Spiritual_Annie Avatar
      Spiritual_Annie

      mewabe, my friend,

      I’m in agreement with much of what you have said. I believe that humanity is much more capable of self-governance by establishing relationships that are mutually beneficial for all involved, with no damage to the environment and no looming power structure peering over our shoulders to keep us “safe” (when did that become the primary motivation for having a government?), brainwashed by our public education to be good little sheeple, and feeding the very power structure that enslaves us.

      It amazes me that so many Americans in particular are kept ignorant of their own power. All we need do for the system to fail is to simply stop participating in it, or use their own system against the power structure. There are a few hopeful signs. There is a massive petition for the overturning of Citizens United, which designates corporations as people who can contribute to political campaigns. This movement would address the issue at the state legislative level, calling for a special convention by a majority of the states. This is one way to return some of the power to a level that’s at least closer to the people by getting corporate money out of our elections from this particular avenue. The NoDAPL water protectors are another sign that not all of the people will simply accept corporate and government plans. The BLM movement is another as it grows to address police accountability for shooting any unarmed person, not just young black men.

      I also see hope in the direction some of the spiritual organizations are moving. There are now courses on, and connections being made through, a conscious business model. Jane Houston has addressed the United Nations about the evolution of humanity and how to develop governmental organizations that build relationships with the grass roots movements like Ubuntu. We’re moving into a time of more focused action in our spheres of influence rather than simply personal awakening and evolution.

      I have only a modest sphere myself, but even I have been called to speak out about the current presidential election, which is an embarrassment for the American people. Neither of the candidates of the two party system are near ideal, and the system will not allow for a third party candidate to win. We are stuck with the lesser of two evils once again, both of whom are indebted to corporations for their campaigns. Both believe in the industrial military and fossil fuel power structures. Trump is accused of rape and sexual assault while Clinton is accused of having revictimized the women who her husband has faced charges against. But for a man to minimize the abusive and demeaning attitude Trump has as “locker room talk” went too far. He can’t see where the line is when it comes to abuse and force, and if he can’t see it on a personal level, I can’t trust him to see it on a national or global one.

      “Happiness is an inside job” has never been more true than it is now. It’s a way to maintain a semblance of personal balance in a chaotic world. And it still spreads from person to person in ripple effects that go beyond what we normally imagine. We’ve had a time of changing our selves and our thoughts. I believe we’re moving through a time of speaking our truths to all who will listen, and into acting on our thoughts and words. Whether or not change happens isn’t in question. The outcome, however, most certainly is.

      Love and Blessings Always,
      ~Annie

      1. mewabe Avatar
        mewabe

        I agree very much with what you have expressed Annie! About the petition, are you referring to wolf-pac?
        Politicians are puppets ( Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein are rare exceptions) that are dangled in front of the public to give us the illusion that we have a choice of leadership. We don’t…other forces are in charge, and studying history clearly shows us how much it repeats itself.

        Governments do not represent us…they lord over us and keep us corralled as is cattle on a ranch. Their role is to represent and protect the interests of the elite and keep us down. One of the main reasons is that the elite thinks of the populace as the “bewildered herds”…incapable of thinking properly and not qualified to control and manage their own lives. This perspective taints all that is done at the very top of society, it motivates all decisions. This alone is of course the central problem.

        Unfortunately, a public that is undereducated, entertained with mind numbing and addictive distractions and kept uninformed seems to validate this elitist perspective…to the point that today the elite, inflated with more power and wealth than ever before in history, barely hides its age-old contempt.

        1. Spiritual_Annie Avatar
          Spiritual_Annie

          Yes, mewabe, Wolf-Pac is one of the organizations I’ve been looking into about the Citizens United issue. I must say I was surprised to hear Clinton say she was for repealing it at the debate. There’s also an investigation into what was the original (I think) 13th Amendment that was expected to be ratified (and the evidence appears to show it was) banning lawyers from holding public office because it was well-known that the “esquires” of the day were often connected with the banks, especially the Bank of England.

          Governments that may have started with lofty goals can still lose their way. If this election does nothing else, I’m hoping it will open many up to the fact that America isn’t the land of milk and honey, the new Jerusalem, or filled with streets paved with gold. We can’t change what we don’t acknowledge isn’t working well. I think our founding fathers would find The Patriot Act appalling because they (supposedly) wanted the King out of their private lives as well as their pockets.

          I’ll keep hoping because to do anything else is to tap out. I’m not one for admitting I’m on my back and pinned to the floor, immobile and helpless.

          Love and Blessings Always,
          ~Annie

    2. Stephen mills Avatar
      Stephen mills

      Like the Rothschild wealth that some say is $ 500 Trillion .And that they are part of a small number of families that own the Fed ,Bank of International Settlements and European Central Bank .And trying to change this has cost the lives of two U S presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy .As governments have to be allowed to issue there own currency .Stop us all being indebted and slaves to the created money as debt system .

      Sorry to take you down this road but it’s not so far off what you were saying about power being in the hands of the people .A people’s bank is so far from what we have ,we are all being hoodwinked by forces unseen.We could do with some truth and Tranparency in our money system .Shine the light of truth and it will set us free.

      Freedom is what we seek to be able to have a life of dignity without the worry and misery that billions have to endure .

      Do you believe that the Rothschilds hold this unbelievable amount of wealth and more to the point what’s their agenda .Are they the masters of the world ?

      1. mewabe Avatar
        mewabe

        I am not sure who is in charge specifically, but I think that the very top elite, among which we find banking interests who do control international finances and central banks and apparently keep most nations in perpetual debt, and large industries, are indeed in control.
        The military-industrial complex is not a fiction, and it is mostly the military-oil industry complex, along with banks and top corporations. Politicians are common whores who service these masters, except for amazing individuals like Bernie Sanders of Jill Stein, who are ridiculed by these other whores in the mainstream media.

        The American myth revolves around the idea that we live in a classless society. The truth however is that in America as well as anywhere else, the populace is meant to be kept down, controlled, manipulated and to a large degree exploited by the puppet masters, the predators. Try to organize to take charge of your own destiny as a large segment of the population, to create a new society from the ground up and you will quickly face the fury of the state, even when not breaking any law, although that is also a challenge as for example January1st 2010 saw 40,627 new laws on the books in the USA (I am nor certain how this can be reconciled with the idea that America is a free country).

        To find happiness in these conditions, one has to mentally and if possibly physically extract himself from society and live in a highly personal, alternate reality, on an island, in a cave or on a mountain top. Any collective pursuit of freedom and empowerment is sooner or later brutally crushed by the so-called authorities, by those who assume to be above us and to have power over us as a parent has over a child.

        The solution to all of this will be found in nature…in global environmental disasters that will set things straight and act as the ultimate revolutionary agents, and cause a complete subversion of this unnatural order we call civilization. Thank God (literally), this civilization will never be able to subdue, master and control nature, no matter how much it tries…whatever happens, nature will have the last word, and this word will be: enough!

        1. Stephen mills Avatar
          Stephen mills

          Thanks Mewabe I have an idea to test your thesis out .Its an idea from Neales book Tomorrow’s God ,it actually comes from a community activist called Jack Reed .

          His suggestions are as you say are for the highest good of all and collective empowerment . We have to move to a new model moving the power from the few (takers) to the hands of the many (sharers) !

          With the tools of transparency and understanding our oneness, with the thought that there is enough to go around for all .

          As a recent member of the Scottish Green Party their manifesto is very similar to a progressive people based democracy ,sharing the resources and sustaining the Earth for future generations .

          However they could do with some new ideas ,so I will test your theory to see if we can start to change from a power and possession economy to one of Use and Cooperation .Humans having Access to all that they think they need to be happy .This means sharing the wealth of life ,localising the economy basically dezentralizing it .Moving away from one huge globalising gobble up the world for a few economy to creating hundreds of little economies all over the place .

          These ideas have to start at the grass roots in out towns and villages so we start working as a collective moving away from bigger better more stuff culture that keeps people in perpetual debt and dependence to the Corporations and political system.Time to stand together for the common good and take responsibility for the future .

        2. inae park Avatar
          inae park

          Having read your writing for a long time, I found resonace a lot of the time, especially on nature being the final judge and justice. What I came up with through my observations and life experiences is that teaching about this through words can help, but being it is infinitely more powerful.

          For example, people who are not the intellectual type, but physically healthy and beautiful, who exude that vital life energy of a biologically healthy organism who are unsophisticated, have a childlike purity , they behave more like the beasts of the planet, like part of nature itself. Know anyone like that? You temporarily drop or suspend your mental clutter and intellectual vanity in the presence of those people. I think it’s much more important to be natural and flow with life than to teach conspiracy theories about the reality of a military-banking-inustrial complex and how it is destroying the planet. Mind dominance is mind dominance no matter what your position is in it.

    3. Victor Avatar
      Victor

      Hi Mewabe!

      It has been a long time! Blessings to you.

      I almost always admire and agree with what you write. This is the case.

      I just wrote in my facebook page some reflections that could be written in short: What’s really going on here? Who’s in charge?

      Who are behind the military-industrial-banking system? The Rothchilds? The Rockefellers? The Trilateral Commision? The Illuminatti?

      Some say that behind the Bilderbergs, the Illuminatti, etc. there are aliens: the annunanki, reptilians beings, grey ones, etc.; the ancient sumerian ‘gods’.

      Will we know sometime the REAL story of our world? Who are we? A genetic experiment of extraterrestrial forces? Were we ‘created’ by ‘angels’, or interdimensional beings 500.000 years back. 1 million? 2 billion?

      Who were the ancient cultures that Neale mentioned in CWG3 destroyed themselves with massive destruction weapons?

      How is it possible that belief systems that created deities full of anger, needy of blood sacrifices, wars, crimes, and all sort of ‘evilness’ are still our ‘gods’ today? Whatever name you give them, Jehovah, Alah, Christ, whatever? That a set of beliefs that is clearly dysfucntional, and capable of generating so much suffering, disasters, and trauma of all kinds, is after thousands of years the ‘moral’ standard of our cultures, and the most ‘sacred’ reference for holiness and ‘spirituality’?

      Those belief systems and their institutions based in fear, dominion, coercitive power and delusion for the greater benefit of the few and the slavery of the most, inform political, economical, social, educational, legal, etc. structures around the world?

      Science often is in this very same tendency of behavior: delusional, incomplete, authoritarian, oriented to power. (not always, of course),

      There are some movements that are aware of many of this:

      – The Venus Project, by Jacque Fresco
      – Zeitgeist Movement, by Peter Joseph
      – Emergence and Conscious Evolution, by Barbara Marx Hubbard
      – Humanity’s Team and Evolution Revolution, by Neale Donald Walsch
      – Thrive Movement, Foster Gamble.

      (I just named a few, well known)

      And many others. What do you think about them?

      Will we be able of go ahead of “New-Age by-pass and other forms of negation and delusion, and as Spiritual Annie said: to aknowledge what it is so, in order to change it, and getting focused action in our spheres of influence rather than simply personal awakening and evolution?

      Yes, I know, many questions… 😉

      In the middle of all this, we can focus also in our inner and shared Love, Joy, Prosperity, Benevolence, and spiritual growth, but someday we’ll have to have answers to these questions. Answers in which we can majoritily agree, for creating a totally different way of life.

      Hugs and blessings

      1. inae park Avatar
        inae park

        Hello, Victor.
        I know you are asking Mewabe, but whenever this kind of conspiracy theory comes up, I can’t believe some of the of the most enlightened seeming people still buy into it. If it’s true that we create our own reality, no amount of people are controlled by none of the population. This is just the collective reality we are creating collectively, and there are unconscious people.

      2. mewabe Avatar
        mewabe

        Thanks Victor, good questions!

        I do not know who is specifically in charge (within the military-industrial-banking-corporate complex), and I think it might be the wrong question, one that causes many people to get lost in “conspiracy theories” and loose credibility. The most important thing to question is the system itself, something that is very taboo in America by the way.

        The system is extreme…for example, as Amy Goodman brilliantly said in her speech on the failure of the fourth estate, we do not have a mainstream media here, we have an extreme media. Yet to question this extreme system makes you an “extremist” in America…to question the actions of the government makes you an extremist…to question war makes you an extremist…to even ask a police officer why you are being arrested at a peaceful protest causes you to be charged with “interfering with a police investigation” or “resisting arrest”…and the list goes on.

        If you want to understand what is wrong in the world look at what is wrong in America. This is where the power is. This power is becoming ever more authoritarian, it is a form of power that seeks to control the world absolutely (ultimately with weapons in space around the entire planet and a Pentagon explicitly stated goal of achieving total command over land, sea, air and space over the whole world), it is a hierarchical power, and it is also patriarchal. It is indeed more extreme than anything that has ever existed before.

        This power is a typical mad man dream…yet it is a “dream” that many share in America at the highest levels, and that is supported by the mindless hordes who cheer “USA!” when the nation crushes defenseless and poor countries and bombs them back to the stone age. Indeed that’s something to be proud of…

        America used to have a system of checks and balances between the 3 branches of government, with the press keeping things real and “speaking truth to power” (amy Goodman). It is no longer the case. If an elected President wanted to act as a dictator, with powers of life and death over any citizen, powers of indefinite imprisonment without trial, of preemptive war against any nation, of declaring martial law and using the military to restore order, he could today legally do it, as all the safeguards that were in place to protect the population from government abuse have been lifted in the name of “fighting terrorism”, and as the “battlefield” has been extended to include the “homeland”.

        So we are living in a battlefield, and the world has become a battlefield.

        It was predictable. Power is never satisfied…like an addict, it craves more. What is happening in America sets the tone for the rest of the world. We have an extremely militarized culture…militarily aggressive to the point of breaking international law, such was established in Nuremberg to prevent aggression. Other nations respond to this with saber rattling of their own. Today in America Russia is demonized by the extreme media, which is little more than a cheerleader for the Pentagon and representing such war profiting corporations as Boeing and Lockheed Martin among others. The stage will be set to eventually attack Iran and possibly fight against Russia…for absolutely no good reason but for imperialism, as well as protecting the interests and fulfilling the agenda of another extreme right wing government in the Middle East (Israel).

        The American middle class buys stock in these war profiteering companies and makes a killing, so all anti war talk is unwelcome in polite conversation.

        But there is no need to get lost in such trivial details. The main point is that the system was flawed from the start, being modeled after the pyramid (hierarchy) and having as its goal dominant power. Such a model is primitive, oppressive, and inevitably leads to inequity, injustice, exploitation, poverty for most and wealth for a very few, war, and other atrocities.

        This abhorrent patriarchal system based on dominance, hierarchy, authority and control and modeled after the structure of a pyramid needs to be replaced with a cooperative, egalitarian, peaceful system modeled after the structure of the circle, where the people have the power, and there are no leaders above us, only counsellors among us.

        That’s revolutionary talk as far as most people are concerned, especially in America, so conditioned are they to live under social orders that are close to those of primates.

        I do not think most of humanity will evolve in time to avoid certain difficulties. But even if it did, those who hold power are so inflated with extreme wealth and extreme tools of surveillance, coercion, repression as well as in possession of such extreme military might that there is no way they will ever relinquish such control, or be defeated in any way.

        No, I think nature will save us…through massive global disasters that will bankrupt every nation and bring this global dominant civilization down to its knees. I trust in the power of nature to restore order, and if I am here when it happens I will actually welcome it with joy and gratitude, for the power of nature is the creative power of the universe, it is the same power that causes a flower to emerge from the ground, the same power by which we have our being!

        This power will not be defeated, not even by a mad civilization whose extremely pathological wet dream is to subdue, dominate, master and control all life forms without exceptions.

        1. Victor Avatar
          Victor

          Wow! Very lucid assertions. I agree.

          Just one kind correction. Your country is not “America”. It is United States. I know it is a common use term, but it is really misused.

          I live in Venezuela. Venezuela is in America. Venezuela is America.

          Brazil, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, Panama, etc., are all America. We are all americans.

          United States is in reality the country ‘without a name’, he,he…

          Perhaps it means something.

          Hugs and blessings.

          1. mewabe Avatar
            mewabe

            In Canada the US is referred to as the “Excited States”…for good reasons.
            Hugs & blessings to you too!

          2. Victor Avatar
            Victor

            Ok,

            I’ll give it a check.

            I’ve also read the Noam Chomsky book “Failed States”, that shows all this in great detail.

            Thank you Mewabe!

  14. Charles Avatar
    Charles

    Happiness will create success, success will not create happiness. Success creates satisfaction at best. Some humans are happy being oppressed, ruled with an iron fist, being told what to do… how to start the day, fill the day, and finish the day. It removes responsibility. It is something I don’t understand but those humans exist. A pet will appear loyal and happy as long as you feed it and show kindness. You can even be abusive on a certain level and the pet will remain “loyal”. Finding happiness belongs to the individual.

    When a person is born to a way of life, it’s acceptable until they figure out that there is another way. It will remain acceptable if that person has found happiness in their current life. When they begin to desire something other than what they have, the happiness will fade. acceptance fades… then accusations begin. It becomes someone else’s fault that they cannot have what they desire.

    So the question remains, what does humanity want that it feels it can’t have… “Why can’t humanity find happiness?”

    “Change” constant change! I have been told over and over that I need to accept change. Expect it and embrace it. NO! Constant change is making me unhappy. I have asked a lot of people, as I do to make sure I’m sane, how they feel about “the changes” and not one person has answered that they are happy about “the changes”. If it’s not broke, quit fixing it. Broke or in need of fixing, a constant seems to be the desire where I live.

  15. mordo altaras Avatar
    mordo altaras

    The moment a belief has arised within us,intuitionally;that must be a result of “this something” had already been decided on;in a higher realm and has been passed to us in a form of intuition .

  16. mordo altaras Avatar
    mordo altaras

    Quantum physics is a good example to things unseen but accepted without proof….

  17. A true friend Avatar
    A true friend

    Oh, boy this reminds me of a girl I had a crush on since I was in my first school grade . I though she was “the one” for me. Was I wrong. To make a long story short I no longer believe in love except self love or how CwG would put it localized self love. I don’t even care about my soul if what CwG said is true that my soul out of all unlimited universes choose this one. Right now a similar timeline is out there that is much more in tune to my preferences. I don’t care about my soul’s agenda. I plan to overwrite him completely with myself. As for God I’ll leave Here for you a message send me a time machine customized to my preferences. Its time I went to the timeline that I’ve choose.

    1. Charles Avatar
      Charles

      How do you define love? Sounds like you’ve given up on happiness in this life due to being born in the wrong time and place? You still have the ability to live the way you wish, unless of course it involves something like hunting dinosaurs.

      1. A true friend Avatar
        A true friend

        “How do you define love?”
        Who cares about love? I don’t care I’m looking for tangible results.

        “Sounds like you’ve given up on happiness in this life due to being born in the wrong time and place?”
        You clearly lack understanding. First a excerpt from Neale
        “I have learned in my dialogue with God that happiness is not something to be sought-after it is something that we are. It is our inherent nature. It is our deep identity. Is a word we have given to an energy that we feel in a certain way.” Bulletin #684 – Neale Donald Walsch
        I don’t seek or desire to be happiness. I choose satisfaction over happiness in any place, time or event. Satisfaction differs from happiness.

        “You still have the ability to live the way you wish, unless of course it involves something like hunting dinosaurs.”
        CwG says that anything is possible, what other God would you rather have, so time and space are the only limitation although hunting dinosaurs sounds barbaric and pathetic.
        I rather live in AR(alternate reality) where people run 100% on renewable resources.

        1. Charles Avatar
          Charles

          Yes, I lack understanding for sure. I feel that I care about love. I recognize love from others. Love may be just a word used to describe something but isn’t that what words are for? What are the tangible results you are looking for?

          What I call happiness is the satisfaction I feel when I know I’ve been true to myself and true to others in such a way that I have created a recognizable happiness in others. So maybe it is merely satisfaction and not happiness. Once again happiness is just a word used to describe something. I am open to alternate definitions please, I love to learn new things.

          Anything IS possible! Within a system of belief. Hunting a Tyrannosaurus rex is not possible, or is it? If you believe the cow is a Tyrannosaurus rex then you will be hunting one. Paleontologists hunt dinosaurs all the time. Nothing barbaric about it. Although alligators are considered living dinosaurs. The killing of anything could be considered barbaric for sure! Plants are alive but is the killing of a plant considered barbaric? If the need for sustenance is great enough for human life to be sustained, is it truly pathetic or even barbaric?

          But the question remains. I know I didn’t ask the question. But I do now, Why not create a life of your choice now? Where you are, Without alternate realities or time machines? What keeps you so trapped that you wish to be in another timeline? You can create a world in which you, run, 100% on renewable resources. To live your belief. To set an example.

          1. A true friend Avatar
            A true friend

            ” What are the tangible results you are looking for?”
            I could list them all here for you however they are irrelevant to you and incomprehensible since you would have to be me in order to understand my choices.

            “Love may be just a word used to describe something but isn’t that what words are for?”
            You clearly haven’t read the CwG cosmology to understand that I’m referring to life from this point of view. From the CwG point of view happiness and love are the essence of the soul. It isn’t something you give or receive it’s something that you are. In relationship to this I consciously choose to overwrite my identity with satisfaction. The difference between happiness and satisfaction is that happiness allows freedom while satisfaction oppresses any result that isn’t desired.

            “Anything IS possible! Within a system of belief.”
            How do you support this statement with proof. Even if you had proof how can you know that reality is real? If your life was just a dream and in your dream you had proof that there is no God it wouldn’t matter because it was just a dream. How can you be certain that other beings you interact with aren’t just a illusion? If you had dreams where you interacted with other people I bet you though that they were real only to realize when you waked up that they were just make believed.

            “If the need for sustenance is great enough for human life to be sustained, is it truly pathetic or even barbaric?”
            You trying to talk about morality which is a relative system. Your question also comes attached with a belief that human life is more valuable than any other lifeform.

            “Why not create a life of your choice now?”
            Your clearly don’t understand that I express a choice. I don’t choose to experience myself as a creator of certain events. I choose to navigate the time-space continuum where certain events have already taken place. From the CwG point of view the soul chooses it’s time of birth and place. Read Neale’s books so that you might have a complete understanding.

          2. Charles Avatar
            Charles

            Someone’s truth is never irrelevant, Incomprehensible sometimes, but not irrelevant.

          3. A true friend Avatar
            A true friend

            “Someone’s truth is never irrelevant”.
            I enjoy reading tvtropes on my favorite tropes and learning Japanese (日本語). Tell me how relevant is my truth to you? Unless your some kinda of crazy stalker my truth is irrelevant to you.

          4. Charles Avatar
            Charles

            I am talking about Spiritual truth… this is an ongoing spiritual discussion started by Neale. I was curious about your desire for a time machine. Key word WAS. It appears some of my humor was insulting to you. Turns out your quite a bit more intelegent than I am. I don’t understand your answers. Thank you for trying to explain. I have read CWG 1,2, & 3, and new revelations. I understood what Neale wrote based on my life experiences. I didn’t understand what you wrote hence the use of “incomprehensible sometimes”. I don’t believe anyone is irrelevant, but any further conversation between us would be irrelevant. Best wishes

    2. HomoSapiensSapiens Avatar
      HomoSapiensSapiens

      You should absolutely believe in love. Love is real and Love works.
      But you have to take out any naive, ancient believe in our “loving soul”…that isn’t!
      There is none.
      However, hen and once “biochemistry” matches between 2 persons, then “love” is easy and real and effective!
      Biochemistry is given by birth and nurtured and furthered by our life experiences.
      It works really and powerfully.

      1. A true friend Avatar
        A true friend

        Irrelevant to my new objectives.

  18. Mary Upshaw Hendricks Avatar
    Mary Upshaw Hendricks

    Just got on. Read Neale’s “Headline”. I do accept on faith, more often than not. I have been called naive and gullible. So it is hard for me to speak to those who require proof and surround themselves on all sides with negativity.

    1. Marko Avatar

      So now you surround yourselves with those of like mind & that express positivity.

      When people require proof of your faith, you could say “I’m my own authority.” You can’t explain the psychic or spiritual experiences/concepts to those who don’t believe them, so don’t waste time arguing with them.

      You could say “I can underhand how you could feel that way.” Leave it at that. That doesn’t mean you agree, but acknowledge them without agreeing.

      1. Mary Upshaw Hendricks Avatar
        Mary Upshaw Hendricks

        This is helpful. Thanks.

  19. Charles Avatar
    Charles

    The views of “A true friend” are beyond my understanding. I understand how this person could believe that many things could be considered irrelevant between two people that do not know each other. I personally felt that the conversation was going in a strange direction. But can I say that this persons thoughts and beliefs are false? No. first, of course, I would need to understand and I don’t. Second, who am I to decide that The beliefs are or are not true to this person. We read the same books and came to different conclusions probably based on prior beliefs and/or cultural differences. Without being a crazy stalker I care about another persons interests and wish them well in their indevers. Unless your interested in being a “crazy stalker” or the like.

    We base the sanity/insanity of a person solely upon comparison to the rest of society. We have no other way to prove or disprove sanity. We can decide that a person is insane but we can’t prove it! The only thing we can use to prove the insane wrong is the lack of others who believe the same thing, which is not proof of being wrong. Its a lack of people saying they are right. Given the population of our earth I’m positive that there is no “one person” who does not share a belief with another person on earth regardless of their sanity.

  20. mewabe Avatar
    mewabe

    Just a short comment to return to the topic:

    Many people say:
    “Seeing is believing”.

    Native Americans say:
    “Believe and you will see”.

    I say love and you will know, as in my way of seeing, love is true knowledge.

    1. Spiritual_Annie Avatar
      Spiritual_Annie

      Unlike the old adage that “Love is blind,” it’s been my experience that Unconditional Love both removes the shackles and causes the scales to fall from one’s eyes. To be loved without condition is freeing because acceptance is assured, even for those thoughts we don’t share for fear of being just a bit too different. In being free to express our truest self, we offer another an unrestricted view of us and encourage others to do the same.

      So, I believe you are right, my friend. Loving is knowing (and accepting) because it means gaining knowledge of things as they are, not as we wish them to be.

      Love and Many Blessings,
      ~Annie

  21. Patrick Gannon Avatar
    Patrick Gannon

    Sorry, I’ve been away for a bit – my free time runs in waves and troughs. I, of course, am the object of this column, and I’m delighted that Neale chose to address this issue. I have frequently noted that Neale wants us, like every religion that came before, to change our beliefs to his beliefs, when the core problem might be the beliefs themselves. I’ve read through most of the comments below that were at least partially applicable to the original post.

    Please note that Neale wrote in some ‘absolutes’ that I strive to avoid: “There are those who say that the holding of any belief whatsoever is the problem with the human species, and is what renders us so dysfunctional.” Those are not the words I would use. I have proposed here many times that our beliefs ‘may’ contribute to many of the problems of the human species. It is likely impossible for us to hold no beliefs whatsoever, but I would suggest that the goal should be to hold as few beliefs as possible, and to always question the ones we do hold, by not surrounding ourselves with people who only believe what we believe. That whole bit about unfriending people who don’t believe what you believe… that is surely harmful to ongoing personal development.

    I don’t understand how Neale arrives at the conclusion that a lack of beliefs will result in “greatly reducing the possibility of wondrous experiences.” The most ardent atheists still have wondrous experiences. See Carl Sagan. This is a false flag, in my view.

    How do we respond the first time we hear “I love you?” I would imagine that for many people it’s a crazy, mixed up, anxious, wonderful, scary, joyous, all tumbled into one, sort of feeling. But what is it? Certainly much of it is electrochemical reactions. The problem with believing that someone loves us, is that we’re admitting we don’t know. If we knew, we wouldn’t have to believe it. Believing you are in love is easy. Knowing it is perhaps much more difficult. While Neale mentions relationships that have been formed by such instant faith or belief, I can personally attest to others that started that way and turned out not to be so…. evidence for love found to be lacking, complete interpersonal incompatibility, and yet very strong electrochemical signals normally interpreted as being in love.

    Neale concludes, “Where does Evidence-Free Internal Experience fit into the Protocol or Convention of those who say that Only That Which is Factually Supported and Physically Provable is a Legitimate Entry into the ledger of Beneficial Human Encounter?” Aside from Neale’s compulsive need to capitalize words that aren’t intended to be capitalized, and which drives me nuts (grin), I think this is a good question. Let’s look at it..

    One thing his column did not discuss is the potential harm beliefs may cause us. By way of example, I think this explains a great deal of the “hostility to the other” that describes so many Christians today – and we all know which ones I mean. As we have learned more and more, we have undercut the foundation upon which that faith lies. We know with almost universal acceptance by non-religious scholars today that there was no six day creation, no 2-person DNA bottleneck (Adam and Eve), no global flood, no mass Exodus from Egypt and no conquest of Canaan by Israelites – though the Persians tore the place up a time or two). Now picture this brain which is being exposed to and learning this new information that directly undercuts and contradicts his or her indoctrinated belief that came from other people. Let’s face it, without these events, there is no foundation left for the Abrahamic gods. When the believer’s brain knows that it has no evidence for Yahweh and that the available evidence points the other way, yet the believer insists on believing – he or she is lying to his or her brain, aren’t they? They are telling their brain to believe something the brain knows it has no evidence for, and in fact has evidence to the contrary. How can this cognitive conflict be healthy for us? Is this internal conflict manifested individually and societally as the hostility I spoke of? Think about how many religious believers are involved in hostility right now, and correlate it with the growing evidence that their beliefs are founded on pillars of salt and sand. Yes, it’s a matter of scale, but if we agree that cognitive conflict might be bad for us, where do we go from there? Neale’s suggestion is the same as every religionist who came before him – change your beliefs to what he believes and all will be well. I’m not convinced that this will solve the problem as it never has before.

    With regard to subjective experiences that people have, I think we have to exercise extreme caution. If you do any research on the subject, you will find that we cannot trust our brains. They fill in holes with information that may or may not be accurate, and usually isn’t. Look to see if you can get the show “Brain Games” and learn from real experiments you do yourself with the people on TV, how your brain works – or fails to! Scientific experiments have illustrated how some patients who hallucinate, are basically multiplexing internal memories and emotions into the real-time flow of external stimulus from our senses. Normally the brain suppresses such things, but from time to time it creates experiences that are completely real to the patient – but they are hallucinating. We know that 10 people asked to describe a crime or a crash will have 10 different responses. We know we can’t trust our brains…. so we have to be careful. We have to be skeptical. We have to look for other reasons certain experiences might have taken place.

    At the same time, those of us who think beliefs are not healthy for us, also have to maintain a skeptical open mind regarding the potential scientific discoveries that may one day confirm some other force not yet known to us that does in fact act on people in ways that appear to break the rules of the physical matter reality we live in. When and if that happens, we will find that we no longer need to believe, we will know. This force, if it exists, won’t be supernatural any longer and we will be able to directly or indirectly learn about it by the way it interacts with our space-time universe, and perhaps leverage it to do good. Note that at this time – the outlook for this possibility is not very bright. Consciousness appears to be an illusion created by processes in the brain. Given that it’s an area of current research and study, patience seems to be the order of the day.

    Just be honest with your brain. Admit that we don’t know if there are gods or afterlives or psi effects given that there is no objective evidence for these things. The James Randi $million dollar reward for someone who can prove psi effects has gone unclaimed for two decades now…. If there was a consciousness that we could manipulate, we should know it by now. Mass prayer experiments should have proven it, but all those that I’m aware of, have failed to produce useful positive results. Some time back, I proposed that Neale and his New Age buddies organize the biggest mind experiment ever, by putting up a video on the internet for hundreds of thousands, or more – that at a prescheduled time put participants into a meditative state where all would try to stop a clock or affect a random number generator, or something like that, under carefully controlled scientific scrutiny. I think the reluctance to try such experiments comes from a lack of faith that it will work, and that would not be good for New Age business!

    As I’ve said here many times. I think Neale has some wonderful advice, and I use pieces of his material in discussions with others, and in my own life all the time – but I don’t think belief is necessary or helpful towards becoming mentally healthy human beings, and I think our actions are affected by our mental health. I think the healthy mind is the one that treats life with a skeptical open mind, always in search of verifiable truth.

    1. Spiritual_Annie Avatar
      Spiritual_Annie

      First, Patrick, thank you for posting in such a clear manner. It was easy to follow your thought processes.

      I have a difficult time with your statement that “Neale wants us, like every religion that came before, to change our beliefs to his beliefs” when the two ideas he promotes as most important are “We are all one” and “Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.” Not many would argue that we are an interdependent species in regards to others of our species, and in relation to all other species and the environment as a whole. “We are all one” can be seen in this light. In scientific terms, it could simply mean that the sub quantum particles and energy which all of existence share make that connection as one. I personally have a different take on it, but I do not force my understanding on anyone else even though I have, through my own personal internal experiences, discovered this to be true on a different level. Neale almost always (at least in my reading and listening) includes the second statement after the first, which makes it clear that he is not asking anyone to replace their beliefs with his. I liken it more to a tree that has many branches but which all come from the same trunk. Neale’s “branch” is merely one on a tree that has been flourishing for millennia.

      In the same light, I do not believe that Neale himself, or the Conversations With God materials, state that we should never question the beliefs we hold but instead promotes the idea that we base our beliefs on our own personal experiences. Further, he suggests we live our lives based on our own understandings of who we are, where we are, why we are where we are, and who we choose to be in relation to that. I have not heard him suggesting “surrounding ourselves with people who only believe what we believe,” either. He suggests that we might change our understanding while continuing to live in this physical realm, and I haven’t heard him suggest that we ever stop changing. In fact, he says that change is inevitable. He does not promote our separating ourselves from the rest of society as some religions and cults do, either.

      You have a tendency to use the Abrahamic religions as your example of people who hold beliefs, which I see as a fully developed set of fixed beliefs started millennia ago, to make your point. This is patently misleading as people everywhere hold beliefs, not just religious people. Some believe they live in the greatest country on the planet. Some believe that we are not the only intelligent life in the universe. Some believe eating meat is immoral. Some believe in the Loch Ness Monster. So long as those beliefs are not being forced on anyone else, I don’t see a problem. Some people may very well have an open mind about their beliefs, willing to take in new information as it becomes available, myself included. My spiritual beliefs are more of a process than they are set-in-concrete beliefs I was taught or which I came upon that never change. Others may hold their beliefs more rigidly. There is a wonderful variety amongst the human species, and I think we fall anywhere on the spectrum between few beliefs and many beliefs, as well as being open to change and being so invested in our beliefs that we will not change them. Having beliefs, however, doesn’t necessarily cause cognitive dissonance, hostility or mental health issues.

      Some atheists, like Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein, held that there may well be an undiscovered intelligence behind the ordered creation of the universe. They may not use the term “God,” but I would call that creative intelligence God. It all depends on the definition of God one uses, and the term has a wide variety of meanings. Albert Einstein likened his work to discovering a library of books that explain the universe, but not what may have been behind it or how the library itself was developed or why.

      I’m not sure that you really addressed Neale’s last paragraph by referring to what he did not include, which is your opinion that there is “potential harm beliefs may cause us,” again referring to the Abrahamic religions. I’m not sure that your use of religions is appropriate when discussing the beliefs of an individual. Most religions have mass followings that purposely intend to force their beliefs on others. That is entirely different from an individual who holds a belief which is not forced on others. As I stated, most people have beliefs, not just religionists. Not all beliefs affect other people. I can believe that the world is a wonderful place for me to be experiencing this life. Holding that belief will allow me to see the things that can be gained by living in this time and place. I see no harm in that, so long as I don’t expect others to hold the same belief. What you call “cognitive dissonance,” I call my own unique perspective on the world. That’s individuality, not a mental health issue.

      When you talk about subjective experiences, you refer to the brain’s ability to hallucinate. While science has shown that, yes, we are capable of hallucinations, it does not necessarily follow that all subjective experiences are hallucinations. Is the inspiration of a new idea by a scientist a hallucination, or merely our ability to be creative? I also do not see the relevance of your 10 witnesses to an accident or crime, the trauma alone of which can cause distortions in memory. A whole stadium full of people can witness a home run and describe it as the same event because they are not under the duress of witnessing a traumatic event or the reporting of such to authorities with the possibility they may be called upon to sign a sworn statement and/or testify in court. In other words, our emotions affect our memories, especially when we are under duress or in shock. That is entirely different from ascribing a meaning to an event, such as the fan who says he just saw the best home run ever played out. There may be no distortion of his witnessing of the event (he did not hallucinate it, nor was he under duress or in shock), but his belief may be different from another fan who believes he simply saw a good athlete doing his job. Neither one necessarily causes harm to either individual unless they attempt to convince others that the personal meaning they have attached to the event is the “right” one.

      For me, this baseball analogy is more appropriate to people who have what they describe as extraordinary experiences, or those that are beyond the five physical senses. If they have such experiences while not under duress or in shock, their experience is not clouded or forced. It merely is. The meaning they choose to assign to it may vary from person to person, but that does not change the fact that they had the experience. Using an example from my own life, I knew the precise time and circumstances under which my mother passed over even though she was unable to communicate and was 2,000 miles away. It was confirmed when I called my oldest sister. I even knew that she was visiting with her closest friend, who was a Monsignor, who had just given her last rites, followed by her suddenly beginning to sing “Amazing Grace” before she slipped back into incoherence. All that knowledge came to me psychically across the miles and was confirmed after the fact by those who witnessed it. I did not even have the expectation that she would pass away that day as I was informed she was merely in the hospital for another chemotherapy and radiation treatment, not because her liver was failing. The same goes for knowing one of my sisters was in three rear-end accidents while sitting in left turn lanes within a month. I called her after each accident to check on her condition and, being used to my having such experiences of sudden knowledge, she merely answered my questions about any injuries.

      Spiritual experiences, or those that we assign spiritual meanings to, can be seen the same way. The experience itself simply is. The meaning we choose to assign to it is what makes it spiritual in nature. These experiences are difficult to examine as normal human words often cannot describe what we have seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled, and come to know during such an experience. Another example from my own life is my near death experience a little over a year ago. I have a difficult time describing it in 3D physical terms as it was beyond my normal human experience. What I usually say is that my consciousness expanded into a vastness that appeared to have no boundaries, and I lost my sense of “I” as an individual. Those words hardly describe it, though. I was immersed in the experience in ways I have no words for. Were these simply the chemicals in my brain causing neurons to fire so that I experienced a hallucination? For me, it’s moot because what’s important is the meaning I assign to the experience, as with any other. If I form a belief around that experience that we are all one and I do not force that belief on any other, again I see no harm in it, even to myself. It causes me to treat others with compassion because I believe that I am, in literal terms, my neighbor

      As for our brain “filling in the blanks,” this is our normal human state. Our eyes, for example, see the reflection of light off of objects, not the objects themselves. This reflection, which is turned on its head by the way, is then inputted into our brains, which interpret the incoming data based on prior experiences. As the light moving from the object to our eyes, our eyes transmitting the data to our brain, and our brains interpreting the data all take time (even if it’s nanoseconds), we are always experiencing the past rather than the present. Therefore, all of the things that we see are reflections of objects in the past. Since it’s difficult to operate from the past, we delude ourselves into believing it is the present we are seeing. The same could be said for all five of the physical senses in that our brain is always interpreting the data we take in through them. Therefore, we are all delusional about what “the present moment” is if we base it on our physical senses alone. This delusion allows us to function and maintain a healthy mental balance rather than causing discord or dissonance.

      I have not heard of James Randi or his award. And I believe that you show a good amount of hubris in believing that, just because you expressed that “Neale and his New Age buddies” perform an experiment, their failing to do so is due to a lack of faith. Maybe it’s due to their being busy people, or it not having been brought to the attention of the scientific observers I’m sure you would want recording whatever outcomes would occur, or because it was suggested by a single person on a single blog. There have been not studies but observations that mass meditations on peace have coincided with a reduction in fighting in some of the world’s wars, but I’m certain that they don’t meet the criteria for the scientific method even though the observation has occurred on more than one occasion.

      You use an extremely narrow definition of what you consider “verifiable truth.” It would, of necessity due to a lack of controls and observers, dismiss out of hand any individual experience. Your “verifiable truth” would also dismiss out of hand any event between two people who differ in their experiences of the same event, much less one who denies it even happened at all. Group experiences would also fall outside of your “verifiable truth” if no scientific controls were in place. That’s a whole lot of human experience that falls outside of what you consider to be truth. I would find that an extremely limiting way to live, but to each their own.

      Since there are some of Neale’s questions that you haven’t directly answered (and I’d like to hear your answers), I’ll ask them here again:

      1. Is it possible that we can “know” things that we have no evidence to support, and that we can actually turn out to be “right about that?

      2. Can we intuit things?

      3. Can we simply “feel” that something is true—and can that feeling reveal a validity that only later is found to be supported by “evidence”? Or, for that matter, that is never supported by any evidence, save one’s internal experience?

      4. Where does evidence-free internal experience fit into the protocol or convention of those who say that only that which is factually supported and physically provable is a legitimate entry into the ledger of beneficial human encounter? (I removed the caps for your convenience.)

      ~Annie

      1. Patrick Gannon Avatar
        Patrick Gannon

        Hi Annie. You thanked me for posting in a clear manner, but seemed not to understand much of it. I’m not going to address all your points, and will skip your CwG refresher, but will hit some of them briefly.

        Neale has referred to the need to change our beliefs many, many times. Anyone who gets his newsletters or reads his articles here knows that he believes we need to change what we believe in order to fix the world’s problems. He’s said this many times. That we are all ONE, is a belief, because this ONEness as described by Neale, is about being part of a god, a divinity, a deity who talks to mere mortals through the process of revelation. I think it is highly improbable that a deity spoke with Neale – he had a chat with his own consciousness, which in all probability does not expand beyond his physical person, but was influenced by all that he read, thought, lived and experienced. I’ve been reading some old Gnostic gospels and I’m wondering if Neale also read them… Whether Neale’s god exists is an unknown, hence to assume it true is to believe something our brains know they don’t know. I can accept “we are all ONE” in the kind of terms Sagan and De Grasse Tyson would use – that we are stardust, we are all made of the same “stuff.” But that’s not what Neale means – he’s talking about how he conceives of god. The book is called, “A Conversation with God” not a “Conversation with Stardust.” We all know “gods” are based on belief, given the complete lack of objective evidence for any of them.

        I DID NOT SAY that Neale says we shouldn’t question our beliefs – in fact, he says it repeatedly, and he offers up his own beliefs in exchange for the ones he says we should question. He has spent many a column here denigrating other religions and questioning and criticizing their Bronze and Iron Age beliefs. Much of this material is in his books. Yes, the discussion about beliefs applies to all beliefs, but this is a CwG site, so I’m keeping the discussion about beliefs to what the forum is about. Yes, there are scientists who hold beliefs in things that they don’t objectively know to be true. This is not a failure of science, this is a failure of the scientist; and I would suggest that holding this belief which the scientist’s brain can’t confirm, is probably unhealthy for the scientist, and in some small way affects the lives of the scientist and those around him or her. Maybe he kicks the dog when he gets home because his brain is agitated by this internal cognitive conflict that arises from believing something she has no evidence for. It would be foolish, for example to “believe in” string theory. Scientists might use the term on occasion, (I’ll mention semantics later), but they usually mean they think such and such with a certain degree of probability based on available evidence; and as such, they don’t really “believe” it.

        I DID NOT SAY that Neale suggested we should surround ourselves with people who believe what we believe; that was some simple advice from a guy with a lot of years under his belt who knows you don’t learn anything new if you only stick with what you believe, and only converse with people who believe what you do. You have to seek out those who disagree with you, if you are to learn anything new. That’s one reason I’m here, and in this sense, we are good for each other, if we make each other think.

        You criticize me for using the Abrahamic religions as examples for my points – but so does Neale. He has spent a lot of time denigrating the Abrahamic religions in one way or the other. I could be wrong, but I assume most of the participants here are more familiar with the Abrahamic religions. You may not have noticed that I said, “By way of example,” prior to launching into my discussion. I venture to say that most of the participants here have more in common with Abrahamic religions than Hindu or Buddhism (which isn’t really a religion), and certainly I have more familiarity with the Abrahamic religions, so it makes sense to use examples I can more easily relate to others. Much of the strife in the world today is centered around the Abrahamic religions, so pardon me if I use them as an excellent example to make my points. Neale, after all, does the same thing.

        You accuse me of being patently misleading by using the religious example in spite of the fact that this is a forum that discusses ideas about God. OK, let’s expand on that. Yes, some people believe we live on the greatest country on earth. I think these people should constantly question those beliefs and work to see if these beliefs are justified. I once held that belief, but am far less sure of it today. Some believe in intelligent life elsewhere and for many this is based on statistical probability given the number of galaxies with stars that have planets in a habitable zone. The question isn’t whether there is intelligent life – the more reasonable question is, why haven’t we seen it yet. A popular hypothesis suggests that other civilizations kill themselves off, just like we will. It’s quite possible to “think that” rather than “believe in” the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence based on scientific principles and statistical probability. Some people believe that eating meat is immoral because they were convinced by horrid memes to do so, and some think that it may be immoral because of X, Y or Z. The difference is in how you support the belief – with subjective evidence or real objective evidence based perhaps on the fact that we are all genetic cousins on this planet, and some other species may have sentience and consciousness that some would argue makes using them as food immoral. If you believe eating meat is immoral, then you’re done. You’ve made your decision and stopped the search for truth. If you think it’s immoral, then you continue to seek out evidence to affirm or deny what you think to be true. Yes, some believe in the Loch Ness monster, but I doubt there are many who “think that” the Loch Ness monster is real. This is another example where believing something your brain has no evidence for may be marginally harmful due to internal cognitive conflict. Every little bit adds up. We all may have these little bits of agitation in our brains as a result of our unsupported beliefs, and when combined, the negative effects may expand to affect our entire society.

        I DID NOT SAY or suggest it follows that all subjective experiences are hallucinations. I know you struggle mightily to straw-man me, Annie, but come on. You know I’m going to call you on it, so why do you keep doing it? I’m sorry you didn’t understand my point – which put simply, is that we cannot trust what our brains produce. Given that, I think we should treat all our subjective experiences with caution and skepticism. It’s actually a lot of work. I constantly stop and ask myself – “Is that what you really think? Why do you think that? Could it be wrong? Where’s the evidence?” It’s not particularly easy, but I think it’s better for one’s mental health.

        As for your subjective experiences, I have had some that are somewhat similar, but I think with a high degree of probability that they were electrochemical in nature and brought about by emotion or other sensory input. I think life has many coincidences, but we only notice the ones we want to. There’s that one time you happen to be thinking about Joe and the phone rings and it’s Joe. But there were also lots of times you thought of Joe and it wasn’t him, or you didn’t think of Joe and it was him – but what we remember is the time we did think of Joe, the phone rang, and it was him. This is a well-known phenomenon, neurologist Sam Harris speaks of from time to time.

        What you call hubris, I call humor, but that’s OK. I can take that criticism, but I still think I’m right. There used to be groups that did these prayer experiments and world peace experiments and so forth, but the results have been universally unimpressive – or we’d surely know about it. I think most people have stopped doing them, because they simply do not work. In one Templeton prayer study, people told that they were being prayed for got worse. There probably is no universal consciousness we can manipulate, or surely we’d know it more objectively, by now. I hear the excuses for why such experiments wouldn’t work if we bring in scientific controls – but I lack sympathy for those excuses. Google James Randi. Maybe he has $1M for you!

        1. Is it possible that we can “know” things that we have no evidence to support, and that we can actually turn out to be “right about that?

        I would say, no, it is not possible to “know” things that we have no evidence for. Yes, of course we can turn out to be right about what we “believe” through sheer statistical chance if nothing else.

        2. Can we intuit things?

        I’m not sure what this has to do with beliefs. Intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. I can intuit that an apple if released from 5 feet up will fall, without having to consciously reason the intricacies of gravity theory. The question is – should we believe the things we intuit? How do we know if they are correct or not?

        3. Can we simply “feel” that something is true—and can that feeling reveal a validity that only later is found to be supported by “evidence”? Or, for that matter, that is never supported by any evidence, save one’s internal experience?

        The answer of course, is yes to both. Yes we can feel something is true. As a child I certainly “felt” that Santa Claus was true, and until I got quite a bit older, I “felt” that Yahweh was true. Can something that I felt to be true actually turn out to be true? Of course. However, if what I “felt” was true, was not supported by anything but my internal experience, I would have to label it as a belief and make its veracity subject to future evidence.

        4. Where does evidence-free internal experience fit into the protocol or convention of those who say that only that which is factually supported and physically provable is a legitimate entry into the ledger of beneficial human encounter? (I removed the caps for your convenience.)

        Thanks for removing the caps. It actually makes it easier to read and comprehend for me. As I said, this is a good question, and I did my best to answer it by pointing out the potential harm to mental health that may come from unsupported beliefs. Obviously I didn’t convince you, but my answer remains the same. It would be easy to say that people can have beliefs that bring them peace, solace and comfort, but I would like to see scientific studies that weigh this against the cognitive conflicts that may be in their brains that are causing them to need peace, solace, and comfort in the first place. It basically raises the question – is it ever beneficial to lie to ourselves? Is lying to ourselves a beneficial human encounter? I think the answer is no, but that’s just my opinion, based on my own personal experience in which my mind was greatly broadened by working to eliminate unsupported beliefs.

        It must be noted that part of the problem is semantic. People sometimes use the term “believe” when they mean “think” and vice-versa. I think we need to bring a little more “truthiness” to these words, and define “knowing” as beliefs that are strongly supported by objective evidence, or better yet, not use that word at all, when discussing things we know with a high degree of probability, as a result of having objective evidence.

        Annie, when you respond, as I know you must, will you try an experiment? Will you try to reduce some of the “you this” and “you that” comments, which attempt to move the topic of discussion from Neale’s column and the topic at hand, instead to discussion about me as a person? And let’s see if you can write an entire post without putting words in my mouth that I never said.

        1. Gross Prophet Avatar
          Gross Prophet

          You speak of the ‘cognitive conflict’ of holding ‘beliefs’, and the mental harm that MIGHT accrue as a result, and the typical neurological response triggered when someone feels those ‘beliefs’ threatened. You try to come across as some sort of live-human Spock character, weighing everything completely dispassionately, ‘objectively’ (a virtual impossibility, given the subject matter discussed here), and logically — yet, most of the time, it is you who so quickly becomes defensive about your assertions, and begins attacking others.

          But then, that is your entire purpose here, isn’t it? That’s all you ever do, is attack the ‘beliefs’ of others. No matter how many different ways those beliefs are expressed, no matter how many times you are assured that they are either benign or benevolent, you simply can not rest until you attempt to deny, disparage or disavow these other people’s SUBJECTIVE experiences (by an appeal to OBJECTIVE reality – how silly).

          I suggest that you are the one experiencing ‘cognitive conflict’, and it compels you to constantly be so condescending and rude to all those here, by adamantly refusing to grant them and their experiences any validity whatsoever. The fact that some here still treat you as ‘an honest individual in search of understanding’ speaks much more of their character, and the POSITIVE impact of their ‘beliefs’ on their interaction with the world around them.

          You say, ‘…perhaps I can be convinced…’, when anyone who reads a number of your posts can tell that you don’t truly believe this, as you have closed off your options, as you spoke of those with immutable ‘beliefs’. You BELIEVE that you have arrived at the most ‘rational’ position already (I would go further and say that you carefully chose this, as you BELIEVE it to be the most DEFENSIBLE position).

          You REALLY need to read mewabe’s post, just below, and THINK about what it actually means. I BELIEVE he is trying to open you up to a whole new range of experience and understanding, which you have deliberately decided to exclude from your life, probably as a result of some really bad experience surrounding religion, since you CONSTANTLY invoke ‘the Abrahamic religions’, no matter how many times people try to tell you that they have moved beyond those narrow confines of understanding.

          What you fail to comprehend, in all your dispassionate, OBJECTIVE ‘glory’, is that all of the people here have had a DIRECT experience of the divine, to whatever degree they are capable, and could no more deny the validity of that experience than you could change your hair color just by willing it.
          The fact that this bothers you so much that you are actually compulsive about attacking that SHOULD give you pause to reflect.

          As to your hypothetical thought/psi experiments… Do you really think, or, more accurately, BELIEVE, that humanity, at its current state of development, could responsibly handle KNOWING the true power we possess? We are once again approaching the precipice of a potential nuclear war, crime, violence and hostility are increasing globally. Those things haven’t worked so far because humanity is not yet ready — and the only way we’ll ever GET ready is to realize the profound truth behind such BELIEF systems as Neale has postulated/delineated and expounded upon.

          There is a truth behind ALL religious experience. You will never find it, because you deny the validity of ALL religious experience. You throw out the baby with the bath water, just because of some perceived, SUBJECTIVE experience you had long ago. Until you open your heart (NOT YOUR MIND), you will never come to ‘know’. I have my suspicions that it this truth that causes such an aggressive response from you. All I can tell you, as I have before, it is all up to you.

          ‘Knock, and it shall be opened…’. ‘Seek, and ye shall find…’. Most noted scientists, mathematicians and thinkers throughout history have described that their greatest insights came to them from somewhere else, like a flash of infused knowledge. This is simply how it works, while we are here. If you truly want to understand, all you have to do is try.

          1. Patrick Gannon Avatar
            Patrick Gannon

            Thank you for that in depth and highly spiritual analysis of my personal character. Much appreciated. Just a couple quick points in response…

            I try to “question” the beliefs of others, as opposed to “attack” them, and I try very hard to avoid “attacking” anyone personally – though I’m not a doormat. I will respond when maligned and will attempt to correct any inaccuracies and false arguments (straw man for example). If one feels that they are being “attacked” when their beliefs are questioned, I think this supports my contention regarding internal conflict and the angst and agitation it apparently creates. Thank you for confirming this yet again.

            One phrase was quoted without the complete sentence: “..perhaps I can be convinced…’ I said that perhaps I could be convinced that it was OK to lie to ourselves. You’re right, that it will be difficult to convince me that it’s healthy for us to lie to ourselves.

            Aside from this, I see little in your delightful analysis of me that pertains to the subject at hand, or lends itself to meaningful conversation without all the acrimony.

            Neale Donald Walsch – isn’t there evidence from the reactions of people on this blog to having their beliefs questioned, to provide at least some support for my contention? Look at the lack of spirituality in the responses of a couple of these individuals who want to go after me personally for having the audacity to suggest that you might be wrong. They certainly didn’t get any of your messages, either that, or their highest version/highest vision thing isn’t very high! Look at the agitation and hostility to those who would dare to question beliefs, especially your “nice” beliefs. Jesus, or those who invented him, gave us “nice” beliefs too, and what did they morph into? Can you admit that it’s just possible that beliefs themselves, rather than the “wrong beliefs” as always determined by someone else with differing beliefs, might be the real problem? If not, why not? Perhaps you might address this in your next column. I appreciate that you wrote this column based on issues I brought to the table. I think the reactions of some bloggers here strongly support my hypothesis. What say you?

          2. Gross Prophet Avatar
            Gross Prophet

            Thereby entirely proving my point. Thank you.

            Now think about it for awhile.

  22. HomoSapiensSapiens Avatar
    HomoSapiensSapiens

    If any religion, ideology, or other dogma makes claims to be true and is based on alleged veracity and historicity that eventually are / have been proven to be bogus, untrue, then tautologically such dogma, religion or any other ideology, judged on and by its own criteria and claims, is and can only be considered as false!
    And this is refreshingly true!

  23. Spiritual_Annie Avatar
    Spiritual_Annie

    Where to start? I know! I’ll start where I feel like it and address only that which I feel like addressing, in the context in which I feel like addressing it, even though it may not pertain to the subject at hand. I have, in my opinion, seen a recent example of that very thing posted in this particular column, so I feel it’s safe to do so.

    I’ve been called to task for making my reply to A SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL all about THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL’S comments. Oh, woe be me! I guess I should never have assumed that a reply to someone’s comments should be about… well, THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL’S comments. My mistake. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I would note, however, that THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL apparently thinks “I, of course, am the object of this column,” thereby making Neale’s subject matter, and all of our comments, about THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL even though many of us have participated in the previous conversations Neale refers to in his column.

    As a point of fact, I mentioned THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL by name in my opening, I thought making it perfectly clear that I was, in fact, replying to THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL by hitting the “reply” button. Another mistake on my part. Act of contrition completed. (I also note that I commented directly on Neale’s column in an entirely separate post.)

    Throughout the rest of my reply, I made direct quotes and references to statements made by THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL where I felt it was appropriate, especially as I was speaking directly to those quotes and statements. However, a good deal of my reply directed to THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL went far beyond those quotes and statements to include my own personal experiences and viewpoints. But, THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL has indicated that I made my reply all about THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL’S comments, even implying, as THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL put it, I “seemed not to understand much of it.”

    It was not my intention, when I made my original reply to THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL, that it be construed as some kind of personal attack that required a sarcastic, negative reply. In fact, I made a point of carefully drafting my post in Word and revising it time and again as THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL regularly states I “straw man” THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL or purposely misconstrue what THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL says. I tried to frame my comments from my own point of view as contrasts to or expansions of those shared by THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL, which is what I believe conversation is all about. Apparently, my efforts were to no avail. No Hail Mary’s required.

    Or… is it possible… maybe even probable… that THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL reads all of my replies with a negative bias, seeing a conspiracy to “straw man” where none exists? In the past, THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL has inferred a personal attack by me and others when none was intended, on more than one occasion. (I freely admit that some were intentional, and obviously so, as my patience recently wore thin when a repetition of statements and continued efforts at controlling the conversation got on my nerves. I’m human.) THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL appears to believe that the opinions THEY share are so clearly stated that they could not possibly be misunderstood.

    By way of example of the contention between us, when I stated in my reply that we were discussing beliefs, not all of which are religious in nature, THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL decided to advise me that “this is a forum that discusses ideas about God,” failing to recognize that religion and God are two separate subjects. There was also a failure to recognize that we discuss many, many topics, one of which has recently been beliefs based on an individual’s experiences v. the scientific method’s objective proofs that were not specifically limited to the subject of God, even by THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL.

    I could go on, but I choose otherwise. I will simply state that I will no longer be replying to THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL as it appears anything I might say in reply is taken personally, and I am either insulted or accused of motives I don’t have, or both. I no longer choose to spend such considerable time drafting, revising and re-revising my replies to THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL anymore.

    As for the rest of y’all, I am sorry to have to even make such a harsh statement here, but I’m not certain it would be understood any other way. I am more than happy to continue to hold conversations with the rest of y’all, and enjoy doing so. Please understand that I am as human as anyone else. If you feel that I am misunderstanding something that you have said, or that I am attacking you in any way, please let me know with kindness as it is neither purposeful nor intentional.

    Love and Blessings Always,
    ~Annie

    1. Jethro Avatar
      Jethro

      Nothing harsh stated here that I found! You can bet that if it’s been typed here, it was human interaction. Be it you, myself, THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL, its an human interaction. I have read several of your posts and find a kind and educated individual. Sometimes we must draw a line in the sand. I say that, knowing we may move that line in the sand and wonder what we could have changed. If and when you find that change, be the human that you are and state your thoughts! I personally find value in your words and look forward to the next post.

      Love and blessing to you,
      Jethro

      1. Spiritual_Annie Avatar
        Spiritual_Annie

        Thank you, Jethro. I appreciate your understanding. It’s not often that I draw a line, and I’ve been known to move them when reconsidering in light of new information. I tend to err on the side of forgiveness, often to my own detriment, though not as often as when i was younger. With age comes the wisdom to think before speaking, and to consider the consequences of drawing lines.

        Love and Blessings Always,
        ~Annie

        1. Jethro Avatar
          Jethro

          Love and caring is also required of self. In no way is that selfish. to err on the side of forgiveness… did you know there is an entire religion based on forgiveness? Of course you did. Carry on, no guilt!

    2. Patrick Gannon Avatar
      Patrick Gannon

      “I will no longer be replying to THAT SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL”

      Works for me! Whoop, whoop, whoop!!!

      However I need to share something with the rest of you. The post below which got Annie’s panties in a wad included a final paragraph in which I called her to task for her continuing efforts to misrepresent my words with straw man arguments, and I asked her to stick with the topic. This straw man technique happens in most of her interactions with me, as regular participants will know. Perhaps that paragraph could have been worded better…

      As I have indicated here, I am still greatly affected by some of Neale’s work, and it is a constant exercise to ask myself that highest version/highest vision question, and after a short period of reflection, five or ten minutes, I deleted that last paragraph, but apparently not before Annie read it – so that’s probably why she went postal on me. I’m sorry I didn’t delete it before she read it, as it really served no good purpose to scold her, given that it seems to be an ingrained habit, and it’s probably best to just continue to highlight it when she does this, to keep my name and words clear – but it wastes time and effort that could be spent on more important subjects. In any event, if she’s finished responding to me, the problem takes care of itself.

      And that’s the rest of that story.

      But what of my point? It interested Neale enough that he wrote a column, though he’s clearly got his own agenda, asking silly questions like “If it can’t be proven, does that make it false?” Of course something unproven is not necessarily false – it’s just unproven. Just because it can’t be proven that there are no unicorns, does not mean there are no unicorns. If it’s unproven that the core of the moon is made of green cheese, does that make it false? It’s the same thing apologists for the Exodus say. Just because there is absolutely no evidence that this event took place, does not mean it did not take place, they say. But that’s an extremely weak and ultimately useless argument.

      Break down my argument. Tell me why it’s wrong. Tell me why believing things that our brains know they have no evidence for will not set up an internal cognitive conflict. Tell me why lying to ourselves is a good thing to do. It might be. I don’t think so, but perhaps I can be convinced. How possible is it that this cognitive conflict affects us emotionally? What do you feel inside when someone questions your beliefs, particularly with evidence you don’t want to see or hear? Do you get that tightness in your chest, that shortness of breath, that flow of adrenalin, that rush of blood to the head, that quick decision to open the mind to the evidence or alternatively to shut your mind off quick before it gets in there and creates more conflict? And if it gets in there, is it slowly cooking away, creating minor mental aggravation that slowly builds till you yell at the kids and kick the dog, or fly an airplane into a building? Those were smart, educated young men who had surely been exposed to evidence disputing their religion. Instead of researching it, they closed their minds to it and became rather hostile in response to their internal cognitive conflicts – or so I propose. I think this issue with beliefs might be worse for those who are intelligent and educated and thus have created more cognitive conflict in their brains. Why might this idea be right or wrong?

      How would our lives differ if we worked as hard as we could to avoid beliefs and based our lives on what we can objectively know to be true? How would it be to live our lives in complete honesty? It won’t be easy, so I admit that there may be an advantage in lying to ourselves. Doing away with our beliefs puts us in the situation of having to admit that there’s a very decent probability that there are no gods and no afterlives… There might be – but if we base our lives on truth, we will have to admit that we don’t know and that this might be all we get. Would we live better lives if we knew this was all we would get, or would we revert to chaos because there are no penalties to pay after we die?

      And to be fair, what of “nice” beliefs. Let’s face it, Neale’s beliefs are “nice” compared with what came before. But Jesus’ beliefs were “nice” too, and look what came of that!

  24. A1 Avatar
    A1

    So I have a new thought to add here, not all t67th7hings are of ourselves. But all things are of God and Gods’, as we are truly a new life here in this world and on earth. This thought is a new way to see the true way of living here as the new creation of all things God, and all things are all ways to be here in this life of living in a form of ourselves with God. This being said is always a new way now to see how our lives are more than ours to live, laugh and love for and with all things of God. As we are all each individually a thing of God’s, and all things are exactly that, just things. We come in and go out, like every thing that exists here and now will go out, just as every thing that came before has been here then and is here now. This is always going to be a place of life here and there is always going to be a place at home of all things God, in and out of this very place, on earth and in the world of every single thing that is here. As it was not this thought before, it is this thought now and will be a thought to come, things are what God wants and says will be. This is all the proof we need to see, is that God is God and we are all things of God, it is all here now.

  25. mewabe Avatar
    mewabe

    Another topic…
    I know, I am setting a terrible example. But I think the debate about beliefs versus scientific evidence has been thoroughly explored. I have nothing to add to it, there are things which I truly know, things that I sense by intuition, and things that I do not know, and admit that I do not know. I have always questioned not only all beliefs, past or present, but all perceptions and expectations, individual or collective, and all that human societies and cultures assume to be true. I can see some truth in all things, in the right side up and in the upside down version of reality.

    I haven’t seen this discussed here yet. In my view, people who speak about love, that is to say most spiritual as well as some religious people, cannot ignore this.

    The topic is meat eating. I will try to be brief, I see you yawning…Yes, it is an uncomfortable topic.

    In spiritual practices such as in Yoga, it is stated that meat eating is bad because it cause us to absorb “lower” animal vibrations. This is true and false. Most animals do not have “lower vibrations”…in some ways their faculties and senses are more highly developed than ours, and they are more in tune with life itself, with the natural world and natural law which, it could be argued, are in sync with what we could call the Divine nature. How could such unity cause “low vibrations”?

    But an animal that is killed suffers fear and physical pain, and this fear and stress are what is experienced as a “lower vibration” by the meat eater. Furthermore, dead flesh has, by definition, a low vibration…you cannot get much lower, in terms of energy or vibration, than a corpse. A potato that is taken from the ground will still germinate, as will most vegetables, a seed or beans will sprout, because there is still life in them. But an animal corpse will not sprout but quickly emit a foul smell, and that should tell us something, if we paid attention to reality.

    To get back to love…here is the most unsettling question: how can anyone who claim to have kindness and love in his or her heart be comfortable with eating an animal? Have you ever heard a child come to a petting zoo, connect with a calf, a lamb, a rabbit or some other cute animal and tell his mother: “Mom, I am hungry, can you roast a piece of this for me after I am finished petting it?” Not likely, because once you have truly connected with an animal, you cannot kill it, anymore than you could kill your dog or cat and eat it.

    So the process by which one can rationalize eating meat is one of disconnection. We can kill that from which we feel removed. Does this ring a bell? Isn’t this the exact same process that allows us to kill other humans, especially those who are different from us, without remorse or regret, in war? Please, explain to me where the love is in such processes of separation and disconnection…not to mention empathy and compassion.

    As far as “animal communicators” who tell us that animals willingly give their lives to us, I would say, nice try. Have they ever visited a slaughterhouse? Most likely, not. They would not see a single animal there or anywhere else on the earth willingly come to be slaughtered. Animals have strong survival instincts, as we do. There is nothing more damaging, in spiritual terms, than denial and rationalizations. An honest killer is much better off, spiritually, than one who kills in the name of love.

    These comments are not meant to upset anyone or convert anyone to vegetarianism…only to make you question your beliefs and assumptions, and to encourage you to do research to explore this topic further, to make an informed decision rather than one that was not born of conscious choice but inherited habit.

    1. Patrick Gannon Avatar
      Patrick Gannon

      Why is it OK for animals to eat other animals, but not OK for humans to eat other animals? We are animals too. For that reason, why do we waste so much meat? Why don’t we eat humans? After we die, we’re just meat. I would gladly donate my body to the butcher to feed poor people when I die.

      1. mewabe Avatar
        mewabe

        There is actually no rational justification for not eating humans, if we choose to eat flesh. Humans choose to believe they are at the top of the food chain and masters of the natural world…they are not, as sharks, grizzly bears, bacterias and viruses can quickly demonstrate. We don’t eat humans for the same reason we don’t eat cats or dogs: we feel too close to them.

        I personally choose not to eat flesh, because among many other reasons I am not a predator. I might be an animal and some people might attest to that, but I don’t have fangs, claws, or the speed to outrun a deer, and this tells me flesh should not be my natural food source.

        Not all animals are carnivores.

        The practice of eating flesh most probably began during periods of glaciation, during which little else but animal flesh was available to eat. This unfortunately stuck and became a habit.

        1. Patrick Gannon Avatar
          Patrick Gannon

          Some countries do eat cats and dogs. These tend to be countries with eastern religions and philosophies, interestingly enough; and early humans certainly ate each other, and still do in a couple places, I suppose.

          You might define yourself as not being a predator, but there’s no mistaking the fact that humans evolved from predators. Some animals evolved speed (Cheetah), others evolved power (Lion). At the same time their prey evolved defenses – greater speed, camouflage, protection in numbers, etc. We evolved in a different way, learning to use our brains to fashion tools with which to acquire our prey. We are what we evolved to be, and there’s nothing we can do about that except continue to evolve, or die out, as do other organisms that fail to evolve for one reason or other. What you call a “habit” is an evolved trait that enabled us to survive. It could be that a diet high in meat protein contributed to our rapid intellectual evolution. We’ve recovered animal bones with knife (sharp tool) marks indicating they were butchered, long before our last ice age. Google (scientific american ancient-cutmarks-reveal-butchery). I think we’ve always eaten whatever couldn’t get out of our way, insect, plant, fish or animal.

          We also evolved a very strong sex drive, as most babies died before reproducing until just very recently and it was important for our survival that we were driven to reproduce. Fortunately we evolved the brains to come up with solutions to this evolved trait that now puts us at an extreme evolutionary disadvantage, as we, like a virus, consume all the nutrients in our petri dish, and will eventually drown in our own poisons, if we don’t reduce our out of control population growth. Sometimes evolutionary progress backfires as conditions change – which they have for us. When I was born, it had taken the world millions of years to grow the global population to 2.5 billion people, but today, in my lifetime alone, it has grown to over 7 billion. How can that be sustainable? Practically every problem we face, pollution, climate change, poverty, disease, etc. tracks side by side with that population growth chart. We evolved a survival advantage that is now the potential source of our extinction. Fortunately we also evolved the means to address it – if we will. Neale sees this effort being based on some sort of spiritual come to jeebus meeting of minds, while I see our best hope in rational scientific exploration of the problems, based on objective evidence and results.

          I see the eating animal issue sort of like the abortion issue. If you want fewer abortions, then support readily available contraception – even free of charge – for everyone. If you want to reduce the number of animals being eaten, reduce the number of humans being born. There are powerful religious organizations working against both of these things however, preferring the apocalyptic message of their so-called holy texts. Which brings us back to why beliefs may be bad for us… (grin).

          Another potential solution is for science to develop cultured meat products that are as flavorful, visually appealing, and nutritious (or more so) than the real thing, and make it available at a price that puts real meat out of the reach of most people. Which brings us back to why we should trust science before beliefs! (grin)

    2. Spiritual_Annie Avatar
      Spiritual_Annie

      mewabe, my friend,

      I hear such wisdom in your words. I personally eat as little flesh as possible, but my diet mainly consists of that which is given out at food pantries, not having land for a garden and limited finances. I can’t remember the last time I bought meat or fish, and the pantries usually only give out canned tuna and soups with (very little) meat. I could refuse to eat it, but would go hungry enough that it would be harmful to my health. (Or more harmful than such a “pantry” diet already is.)

      I agree with you that many of us separate ourselves from the rest of the “animal kingdom,” even placing ourselves in a “higher” position, as if there is a hierarchy rather than a circle. I have connected with too many animals to believe they do not think or feel, and because of my own personal internal experiences, believe they have souls. In fact, it was gifted to me that what we call “souls” is the creative energy that is the building block of all material in this physical realm, in a kind of “reverse” of Einstein’s famous equation in that energy creates matter through the same formula. (This is actually a simple mathematical principle that seemed so obvious when it was gifted to me. One of those “duh” moments.) It is through this creative energy that we are all one with all of that which has materialized and that which has not. It is this creative energy that I call Divinity or God.

      I have a story to share with you about plants. There is no moral or judgement in it, just the facts as i remember reading them. My father, as an administrator of a community college district, liked to step out of his office and “keep his hands in the classrooms.” On one occasion, he volunteered to be part of an experiment involving plants. Two similar potted plants of the same age and type were grown in the classroom by the same student who treated them no differently. They were raised from seed to plant, side by side. Two weeks before the experiment, each plant was hooked up to something similar to an EEG, which could read different types of energetic vibrations. This was done in advance in order that the plants would have time to adjust to having the equipment attached and for baseline data.

      On the day of the experiment, the class assembled and carried on as normal. My father entered the classroom without warning, walked directly over to the two plants, and mangled one as thoroughly as possible while avoiding the equipment. He then left the room. The plants were left as they were. The next day, my father entered the classroom, purposely wearing a completely different set of clothing and even different cologne, and walked over to stand by the two plants for the remainder of the class, at which time he left with the students.

      By whatever means they were able to record the energetic vibrations of the plants, there were more results than anticipated. First, both plants “reacted” to my father simply walking over to them before he mangled the one, for whatever reason. The plant he mangled had extreme variations in the readings during the mangling. So did its partner plant, in the same pattern. When my father returned the next day, both of the plants “reacted” to his presence in a different way than when he approached them before the mangling. And they both “reacted” with extreme variations, again in matching patterns. In other words, the plant that was untouched had matching patterns with its partner plant before, during and after the mangling in the presence of my father.

      As this was back in the late 70’s, I would think that more has been investigated on the subject. That is, if the power and money brokers considered it worth studying. My “takeaway” from it was an affirmation of the energies I have always felt from plants. (I also feel energies from animals, including humans, as well as rocks and earth–pretty much everything in its natural state.)

      I don’t mention it here to either condemn or endorse the use of plants as a food source for humans. I simply find it a curiosity and thought I’d share it with you.

      Love and Blessings Always,
      ~Annie

      1. mewabe Avatar
        mewabe

        Thank you Annie!
        I totally relate to how you describe this creative energy, this consciousness that is within all things and within which we all (all things) have our being. In Hermetic terms, they describe it as “The All is in all, and all is in the All”. The “All” means the Divine, “all” means all life. Native Americans had the exact same understanding…no separation, no spiritual hierarchy, an infinite circle of life, actually symbolizing a sphere, but without external boundaries. That’s when all concepts and symbols fail…and we must understand with the non logical, non linear part of the mind.
        Yes I have experienced a responsive energy in all things…plants, rocks, the soil itself, all life…and have even received messages from different things as well as animals. A butterfly once landed on my left shoulder one morning and gave me a clear message about finding a job that afternoon (I was desperate for work, having looked for 6 months without any success). I also got a message from a red tailed hawk that landed right next to me on the ground, on a hill. It looked at me and communicated something to me, then took off. I even got messages from my cat!

        When taking something from the earth (an herb, anything), I always ask permission and then give thanks. And I can assure you that there is a response…it’s hard to describe, but it’s there. The soil itself response to your steps, if they are loving. A tree responds to your loving touch.

        We live in beauty. This reminds me of the Navajo beauty way…all things are alive and respond to us. Native people know this…I feel sorry for people who are blind to this, who do not see, hear or feel. Because of this, they hurt everything…

        I am so glad your are sensitive to these things…you are blessed.

        1. Patrick Gannon Avatar
          Patrick Gannon

          And how do we know that these experiences aren’t illusory – creations of our brains based on external and internal sensory inputs, creating an “experience” that feels real, but really is just a machination of our brains? I must question the insinuation that because one questions the things that come out of his or her brain, that he or she “hurt(s) everything.” Show me how atheists and agnostics are doing more to hurt the world than believers, for example.

          1. mewabe Avatar
            mewabe

            The question as to whether these experiences are illusory is irrelevant to me as long as these experiences are not used to form a new “religion” or theology or to claim some form of authority over others, or used as a basis to make decisions that affect other people. When you use these experiences as a personal tool strictly for yourself, and when they work for you, it doesn’t matter where they come from…they could come from my right big toe, it would all be the same to me, honestly. I have been truly helped by these experiences in ways that challenge “rational thinking”, and that’s what is important to me (the help)…they are just another tool that works, and I need no proofs because I can rely on these abilities in very practical ways. But I do not use these abilities to help other people make serious decisions, even when they ask me…that would be irresponsible.

            At this point everything regarding this topic is just rhetoric. The problem with science is that there is a stigma for scientists who dare study these fields…they are regarded the same way a scientist would be looked at who would try to prove the existence of big foot, So there is not a truly open minded approach here, but a bias that seems to originate in what could be perceived to be a rather arrogant, “superior”, and narrow-minded attitude.

            What I meant by people who hurt everything is that, as an example, people who do not think that animals experience a form of consciousness, or who think that they do not feel pain, tend to more easily justify torturing these animals in lab experiments, in the military, and of course in factory farms and slaughterhouses.
            People who think that the natural world is just made of “stuff” that has neither meaning not purpose tend to see no problem in destroying it, But then neither do religious fundamentalists, who think destroying the earth will speed up the “second coming”.

            What can I say? Most of humanity is blind, deaf, numb, and relatively insane.

          2. Patrick Gannon Avatar
            Patrick Gannon

            Thank you for your reasoned (and polite) response, Mewabe. In your case, you seem not to react as most people do when their beliefs are challenged. You maintain your temper and demeanor and refrain from personal attacks. I wonder if this is because you are aware of the intentions of others to use beliefs to force or persuade others to follow them, and you exercise caution against this. You seem to have a distrust of belief systems, whether legacy religion or New Age. You have been an interesting person to talk to because you maintain that you “know” things as a result of your subjective experiences, but you don’t lose your temper when I question them, as do some (most) others, here and in other forums. It’s kind of like a lucky hat or rabbit’s foot. If it works, use it.

            Personally, I think you probably have a deeper sensitivity to others and know how to respond to them, not because of any inner psychic ability, but because you’re smart and empathetic.

            The reason that there’s a stigma associated with scientists who research this stuff is because those who do perform experiments fail to produce any reliable and compelling results. There are articles that come out from time to time that provide a list of links to experiments that supposedly prove psi effects, but I doubt many people actually click on them and read them. I have read several of them, and the results are always “in the noise.” That is, the effects are so small that they can’t be deciphered from random noise, fluctuations, coincidence, statistical probability, etc. The last one I read was based on an experiment in which the output of a dual-slit experiment was performed; the idea being to influence which slit a photon used, given that some people think “observation” means psi effects, rather than “measurement.” In any event, the results were useless. While they claimed some small success, the results were well within the margin of error (the noise), and were useless in affirming that consciousness can direct the path of a photon or other particle. What’s more, this same list of experiments gets sent out in articles by the same woo woo publications, a couple times a year, without anything new being added. There are research centers doing these experiments, and if they were having success, I’m sure we’d hear about it. When someone can show clear, measurable and repeatable results supporting the existence of psi or a greater consciousness, then the scientific world will become far more interested – just as they will become more interested when someone bags a Big Foot, or captures a UFO.

            One word of support for the scientists who create all these chemicals you dislike… These things are developed with regard to solving a particular problem. Would it have been better to hold off on curing polio with a vaccine, until we could see what it was like to combine the polio vaccine with the HPV vaccine? I don’t think so. Just as these things were developed in response to a problem, so too we will try to respond to problems that are inadvertently created when multiple chemicals are mixed. We’ll just keep working through the problems. Only 200 years ago, I’d probably be dead already, because people didn’t live as long then as they do now, thanks to scientific discoveries that include chemicals.

            I have a friend with several health issues. Medicines developed for an issue with seizures, high blood pressure, diabetes, and so forth, may all react differently than expected not only with each other, but within individually different humans. Does that mean we don’t develop any of them? Of course not.

            I’m inclined to put my trust (not faith) in science. I just read that in the last 10 years we have learned more than in all of human history prior to that. If there are answers to our problems, I don’t think they lie in beliefs, I think they lie in the scientific process helping us solve those problems – some of which, like overpopulation, are directly supported by beliefs. I see beliefs creating problems all over the world, while I see science as trying to fix problems and find truth. (And don’t confuse “science” with “scientists” who are humans prone to error).

            Thanks again for your response.

          3. mewabe Avatar
            mewabe

            Thanks Patrick for your nice response…I always appreciate your comments even and especially if we disagree. To me disagreement always represents an opportunity to learn something. You are right I do not trust beliefs or believers…have you noticed the word belief has the two words BE LIE (F)? I would rather think than believe…belief seems to imply the end of thinking.

            You are right about distinguishing between science and scientists…scientists are humans, and like anyone else can place their career and personal interests before science, like politicians, judges, etc…scientists do not always foresee the ramifications of releasing so many new chemicals or technologies in the hands of commercial (corporate) interests that occasionally abuse these new products or technologies for faster profits regardless of consequences, and thanks to a rather corrupt political system and inadequates regulations, understaffed regulatory agencies, regulatory agencies that are headed by people who have a connection to industry (revolving doors), etc.

            I will let you know when I capture a UFO manned by Big Foot!
            Take care.

    3. Jethro Avatar
      Jethro

      I wouldn’t worry about setting any examples good or bad. Too few people responding to the same subject/topic for too long a period of time.
      Your right, uncomfortable topic! Meat eaters and vegetarians have strong beliefs that support their belief and backed up by many facts. I’ve never heard of the lower vibrations but hey, makes enough sense when given some deep thought. The negative energy created by the realization of how meat came to the table is powerful for those sensitive to it, as my wife is sensitive to that. I think she just blocks it out. As for me, I must have been desensitized very young. But, don’t think for a second that I agree with how animals are treated in a commercial… anything.

      How to have love and kindness in the heart and eat an animal. Doesn’t make much sense does it? You won’t find love and caring at a dairy or the other money hungry animal farmers. The love and kindness is shown to the animals by people who raise their animals at home. There is a lot of caring and attention to make animals comfortable. The end of the story is still the same unfortunately I’m afraid. The dispatching of a life does not come easily and shouldn’t! Not killing an animal or cutting down a tree. Not even the breaking of a rock. Killing and destruction should be thought about, carefully. Killing in war on the other hand, the killing is ordered by people who don’t have to do the killing, those who do the killing leave the military with PTSD and/or other mental or social disorders because they were put into situations that Do go against the child inside. Causes madness? Yes. Pertaining to those not in the military, I’d say started out mad.

      Does an animal give itself up willingly for food? I choke on that one too! Instead of hunting we would step out into the woods, wait for an animal to notice we are hungry, walk up and will itself to die for the cause. Should we be thankful or give thanks for the life of the animal? Yes. We should give thanks for everything we receive. If for no other reason than to remain humble. If we should ever lose the ability to receive our year round vegetables from California and Mexico, which could happen with the water crises, meat will again become a winter meal when vegetables are hard to come by.

      I do wish the businesses that raise cattle or chickens or what have you, would be shut down. I have witnessed cattle farmers who genuinely care for there cattle, with the exception, they will go to slaughter. People are spoiled by grocery stores. Too much waste is occurring especially when so many people are hungry.

      I have recently watched several documentaries on this very subject. I will still be eating as I always have but we have started purchasing meat products locally from the small farms where there’s no visible abuse. I know this still goes against the vegetarian/vegan views but it’s as close as I’m going to get at this time.

  26. A1 Avatar
    A1

    This is a new way to see ourselves in a new way for being here. There are always going to be animals and creatures of all kinds and like ourselves are a kind of creature as a human “being”. A being is a natural born state of life’s choices in and around life’s anger and being here is all ways of being like a new creature of all kinds in a body of one being now. More than most of us are all things of many millions of kinds of beings all in one body of hope to be a new kind of species. There are many new ways to see things as they are in all things of all things God, but there are also many new things here now to see that God is always talking to and through all of us. So be well with all things of God in all ways to see how ourselves are being talked to by God. And it’s always going to be a new way to hear the voice of God in and around all things here. For all things are all things thinking here and there to find a new way to hear a voice for and of God. As it was here and all things are all ways of how God speaks. To know how it is and is going to be, is to be well and good with God for all things to be here and here and here. That’s all going to be a new way of being here with all things of God.

    1. Jethro Avatar
      Jethro

      Very interesting perspective! Would you care to elaborate?

      1. A1 Avatar
        A1

        This is a new one to discuss, it’s a new way to feel or a new thing to understand. I have a new way of talking to God, and its a way to hear what is being said. But all things are exactly that, all things God of all things love and all things are love of all things here. So being here is a new way to be here and here, not here as in a lot of here’s, but as God speaks, God hears and says as God does. Being here is to hear the voice of God of all things here in earth, in heaven on earth and in the world of all things clean and good. As it was not before now, it is now and will be here forevermore on earth, as in “heaven on earth”. And it is not a game of chance, it is a life of all things God, as it is Gods’ to live and not our own. As it was not before, it is now a life of God and with God to do as God says here. To hear God is to know the truth of all things here and here. So please let us all hear God so that all things are as they should and will become. Have you heard how God speaks to yourselves? It’s a new way to listen as you hear the many words of ourselves in and on a phone, in and on a line of all things God. The way to listen is to hear how ourselves speak, but do not let yourselves get in the way by thinking of anything at all. Let us hear as we call out to God in our times of rest to ask God to let us remember how it is that God will speak to us in our state of rest. Be asking God to let yourselves think of only God and only how God will speak to and through you. For all ways to be, are all ways to hear and all ways to see how God will use yourselves too. Thank God for all things here and hear how God will use yourselves either in and on earth, as in heaven on earth. So be well and good to God and God will be well and good to all things here. For all things are all things of God, as Mr. Neale will be all things of God too.

        1. Jethro Avatar
          Jethro

          Thank you A1. things have changed on this earth as they have changed within us as individuals, as they will continue to change. A new wisdom has been found if we choose to listen and answer in the way in which we have heard. We should listen to others with a better definition as we have learned to listen to ourselves with better understanding. To listen to our own conversation with God as it comes not only through our thoughts but through everything we experience, to act on those thoughts and ideas with God in creating actions of God.

          Your words here A1 are wonderful! You’ve given me something to think about today.

          1. A1 Avatar
            A1

            Thank God for all things. Thank God in all things for being a love of all things God for being a new way in is a new way here. To be here with God is to be everywhere with God and in this life. Thank you for being so kind and caring to all things.

          2. Patrick Gannon Avatar
            Patrick Gannon

            Thank which god? Thank Allah? Jesus? Yahweh? Zeus? Osirus? New Age God? Which god and how do you know it’s the right god? How do you know there is any god at all?

            “Kind and caring to all things?” Like starving children, tsunami and earthquake victims? Diseased and dying kids? Kind and caring to the animals that Mewabe has some concerns about eating? What kindness and caring do you refer to? Why do we thank gods for kind and caring things, instead of cursing them for evil, destruction, pain, starvation, disease and death? Surely if the gods get credit for the one, they deserve blame for the other…

            Our brains knows that they have no evidence for any of the gods I listed, or any of the other thousands of gods that have existed throughout history; yet we tell our brains we believe in some god, despite having no objective evidence for this god. How can lying to our brains be good for our mental health?

        2. Patrick Gannon Avatar
          Patrick Gannon

          How do you know this god of yours exists? What evidence is there for your god? How do you know you aren’t just talking to yourself or deluding yourself?

  27. Jethro Avatar
    Jethro

    Spiritual belief is the mortar that holds us bricks together. The beliefs of a community can keep a community united in harsh times. Friendly in good times. There’s always something spiritual to talk about when the conversation about weather has died fairly quick. But this only applies if your not worried about offending someone with different beliefs. If your wondering what happens without that mortar, look around you! We’re falling apart. Humanity is falling apart. So we either need the same belief or an acceptance of all beliefs. I’m pretty sure neither will happen anytime soon.

    1. Patrick Gannon Avatar
      Patrick Gannon

      But, Jethro, isn’t it beliefs that are driving us apart? Jews vs Muslims vs Christians vs Catholics vs Lutherans vs Jehovah Witnesses, vs New Age God and so on. There are literally thousands of Christian denominations all with slightly different beliefs, all who say they and only they are right. Now we add New Age God into the mix, proclaiming all the prior beliefs were wrong, and now THESE are the right beliefs – but of course there is nothing objective on which to base ANY of those beliefs, is there?

      You suggest that beliefs are the mortar which hold us together. I would say it is the objective truth that holds us together and beliefs are the mold, mildew and rot that destroys the mortar of truth, over time.

      You suggested that we need to all adopt the same belief, or accept all beliefs. Might I propose an alternative – let’s question the very concept of beliefs and look at how bad they have been for us historically, and explore whether we might be better off without them.

      1. Jethro Avatar
        Jethro

        From a worldly perspective yes. Country to country, state to state, or across any border. Some believe we need to convert the world. Why? I’m referring to “communities”. I may be reaching back farther than some remember and those days may be long gone, never to return. It was a common belief that kept everyone together. Even with the different churches it was a Christian theme and people related. That relationship is gone. Something common to tie the community together brings the community closer. Doesn’t even have to be religion, just something that helps each person relate. If it can’t be proven right or wrong then it becomes a conversation. I’ve rarely heard heated arguments between self proclaimed christians discussing Christ.

        I suggest that “common” beliefs are the mortar. I realize I didn’t state “common” in the above post but it was the idea. My apologies. I have found a few common beliefs in my community. I should treat people as I wish to be treated, I should go out of my way to help those who really need it, I should respect things related to nature, I should be humane to animals, and other ideas. After all, are these not merely beliefs? With these beliefs we can expect a positive outcome. We shouldn’t expect anything but we do, and some are angry when they don’t get those positive results. We cannot prove that the positive result will always occur but we still believe it will be the outcome.

        I stated that I believe I should treat animals humanely, yet I enjoy eating meat. Butchered two hogs two months ago. Some would believe that contradictory. I believe they felt no pain when I dispatched them. They were not mistreated by the couple that raised them. But I type this knowing I may get a “how dare you” note. Both sides, myself and the vegan, may claim a spiritual belief to either rebuttal but I won’t argue about it. Which belief is most harmful and which belief do we do without? I agree a vegan should be a vegan because it works for that person. I accept that belief. I still care for that person. I have complete respect for my wife’s beliefs which differ from mine.

        I look forward to your thoughts of questioning the very concept of beliefs. Thank you Patrick for the reply.

        1. Patrick Gannon Avatar
          Patrick Gannon

          Jethro, I agree that common beliefs can cement communities together, and this phenomenon may be part of what caused the creation of religion in the first place. Communities defined themselves by their closely held beliefs, and these beliefs identified and separated them from other communities with different beliefs. That worked fine when these communities were largely held in place, and incapable of communicating with each other in any meaningful way.

          Once we began to establish means of travel and communication that introduced communities to each other, then these beliefs almost always ended up in creating conflicts between those holding differing beliefs. You said that, “I’ve rarely heard heated arguments between self proclaimed christians discussing Christ.” I don’t mean to be condescending, but this implies that you’ve never studied Church history. There were brutally heated arguments between those holding different beliefs such as the Marcionites, the Ebionites, the Gnostics and the Proto-orthodox, and once the Proto-orthodox came out on top, with the help of Rome, they literally destroyed those with different beliefs. If not for finds like Nag Hammadi, Dead Sea Scrolls and new documents that show up from time to time, we would have little information about these early beliefs and the heated debates between them, because the winning team destroyed all the evidence. What we have left is very heated condemnation of what the winners called “heresies” by authors such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others. Until recently when occasional documents began to show up that were not destroyed by the Church, we had little information about the ‘other sides’ in this heated battle. Now we are learning much more about what they believed, how they practiced and how the proto-orthodox defeated them and claimed the “right belief” for themselves; and then having gained Rome’s favor, imposed their belief on the losers at the point of a sword, if necessary.

          In the early days of Christendom, there was great debate about the divinity of Jesus. Was he one god or two? Was he a historical person or a celestial being such as Paul describes? Was he a divine in a human body? Was he human then became divine? Was he here to save us from original sin or here to save us from Yahweh. Was the Jewish law still in effect or not? Was creation a good thing or an evil mistake? These debates raged on and on until what became the Catholic Church established the orthodoxy and wiped out all other contenders and destroyed their writings. Christianity has always been embroiled in heated arguments. After the Reformation we saw not just heated discussion, but centuries of killing, torture, forced conversion, etc.

          I participate on a number of blogs and the discussions between Catholics and Fundagelicals, for example, can be very heated and ugly, so I can’t accept your point the religious discussions are just a conversation. Beliefs are not common today and I see no way that we will all share a common belief, such as Neale’s New Age God; not without evidence. The “community” is now global, and the means for exchanging differences of opinion are becoming globally available. The whole paradigm has changed, and we can see that competing beliefs have not made us more harmonious. That is why I would propose that we look at the issue of beliefs themselves.

          Our powerful sex drive once gave us an evolutionary advantage – now, because of out-of-control population growth as a result of advanced science that significantly reduced child mortality, we face potential extinction, as we consume all our resources and drown in our own poisons. Our ability to arrive at shared beliefs, which once drew us together as communities, and kept people from straying and kept them contributing to the community, was once an evolutionary advantage – but now, these beliefs butt up with others and as we can see looking back through history, beliefs have not been advantageous to human harmony. Just as we need to look at how to control the product of our evolutionary sex drive by providing contraceptive technology, so too, I think, we need to look at whether beliefs serve a positive or negative purpose in our ongoing evolution…

          No problem with your views on eating animals. I think we need to insist on humane conditions and be “aware” of how we get our food, but I was a bow-hunter for years, and always respected the animals I harvested, butchered and consumed. Alas, as I aged, the mornings started coming darker and colder and the land I once had access to is now full of houses. I dare say the animals in the area probably would have preferred having me hunt them, to losing all their habitat!

          1. Jethro Avatar
            Jethro

            We agree now that small communities were once held together with common beliefs. My thought behind my post was the memories I have of small town caring and how I wish it would return. It was poorly written for discussion. So, I agree it’s gone and not coming back, unless, some kind gentleman should point a few mistles and destroy a few satellites.

            When I stated “I’ve rarely heard two christians have a heated discussion about Christ” I was being literal. With my own ears, I’ve rarely heard argument between to Christians about Christ.

            The entire reason I’m typing hear today is, I’ve read Neales books and enjoyed some of his thoughts on “God”. “What if?” What if we could drop what I call the “dark side” of religion. The part where one is wrong and the other is right? What if we could accept each other having different beliefs? I know that my beliefs are embedded in my system of beliefs deeper than I even thought. I was raised from birth with beliefs of a Christian God sometime pounded into my head. I am the one looking for a better truth and I have a hard time believing my own better thoughts on the subject. Hear having “a global conversation” we are now talking about changing the way someone believes who feels no need to change.

            You and I also agree that too much communication and ease of travel at long distances are the cause of the current belief disorder of our world. Probably always has been. There is not a holy war going on in my backyard, if not for media I would know nothing of it. Nobody in my area is talking openly about it anymore. The rest of your reply matches my thoughts exactly. I could not have said it as well as you did.

            Neales new age God, Neales God is that thought within you as an individual that the majority would say is the best of your thoughts, or the “grandest version” of your thoughts then he expands this idea of God to include the grandest thoughts of all humans on earth combined and calls that god, and ultimately the collective, then expands the idea to all of the energy of the universe calling that energy god while even referring to this energy as heaven. The space in which our energy/spirit returns. It is believed energy cannot be lost, only changed. I can understand that view. I even think this might be the origin of the idea of God. Then, they started trying to explain and give analogies. Whoops! I was counseling a group of addicts a few years ago and one spoke up saying “the Bible says it’s our nature to be bad, why fight it?” I let him know it’s our nature to make mistakes, it’s our duty to change when we have realized we’re making mistakes. If we raise our children better and teach them the best of our thoughts, you will see a change in world.

            Well my friend, getting older has a way of messing with the weather and the crisp horizon that once had fewer blurred lines. Yes we as humans will rob them of their place to live and then moan and groan about abusing them.

          2. Patrick Gannon Avatar
            Patrick Gannon

            Thanks for your comments, Jethro. Much appreciated.

            I have to take exception to your suggestion that someone target a few satellites (grin). I provide broadband internet access over satellite around the world in places where you can’t get anything else. I’m one of those people tearing down the walls that separate us, by delivering internet access around the globe. This enables a lot of good things for people, but it does indeed take down the walls of communal beliefs. I think that in the long run, this is a good thing.

            “Well my friend, getting older has a way of messing with the weather and the crisp horizon that once had fewer blurred lines. ” I could not have said that better!!!

          3. Jethro Avatar
            Jethro

            My son was a dish installer before I talked him into construction, I use a local satellite/internet provider that’s also a customer of mine. I’ve been a plumber for thirty years but my wife and I work together also doing home repair/remodeling for about 10 small towns around ours and the farms in between. All great people! I wish you well in your profession. It’ll take a while to find someone with the missles and when I do… they’ll hit the wrong satellites anyway.

            Been a pleasure!

  28. A1 Avatar
    A1

    This is a new way to know the voice of God , by doing as God says and all things are all for God and with God. To know ourselves is to know how God is inside and outside of all things here and all things are all ways to see how God speaks in and out of all things. God is a new love of all things here and a new inner being is being made by God in all things here. So I know that is it inside out of myself of all things clean and good of all things God. For a new way to be made in this life of all things clean and good are all things of God to do all things just as God wants to do. Find a way in and out of yourself to find a new way in and out of ourselves, for all things to be well with yourself. In and out of all things is the very word or God that makes things well or makes things in a well thinking state. Of inner being is inner thinking and inner thinking is a new way to live here. To stop the thinking of all thinking in ways of the top of the line thinking state, to stop all thinking is to be here and here with God. To stop all thinking of all things negative is to be here with God and to stop all thinking of all kinds of mess of all thoughts of ways to find God, is to be free of mess inside and outside of yourself. So ask God to free up the space of darkness to light up inside out of yourself in and out of your body and mind and soul being. Think of it as a new way to hear the voice of God, by asking God to show yourself how this works.

    1. Patrick Gannon Avatar
      Patrick Gannon

      “…by doing as God says…” As I asked below, which god are we supposed to follow? Zeus? Poseidon, Yahweh? Osiris, Thor? You say we can know the voice of God by doing as this god says, but which god? Which rules do we follow? The 613 laws of the Old Testament? That god says not to eat pork (sorry Jethro!). Which rules of which god are we supposed to obey?

      You speak of quieting the mind, but that’s a specific procedure that has no need for gods. Sam Harris in his book, “Spirituality without Religion” illustrates how this is possible. Putting our minds at rest in order to expand consciousness (whether that concept is illusory or not), can be beneficial to our mental health. The critical point about it, is that no beliefs about any god, are necessary for it to work.

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