My ethos - for now anyway
My guiding values are love, courage, inquiry. All are interrelated, as universal love requires courage and inquiry, while for courage to be meaningful requires universal love and knowledge, and for inquiry to be deep, requires the courage to explore our own assumptions and with an intention arising from universal love.
But then, after a period of being a bit down, I realized that I have other values, which I did not previously see as being worthwhile in a universal sense, but which make up who I am. These are beauty, creativity and humour. I think that within them there might be a universality. Beauty and creativity may reflect on the spiritual dimension of life itself, while humour reflects both the lightness of being in this existence that is continually flowing, and the fallibility of the human mind with its tools of language.
What is my belief system? I don't think I have one. I see beliefs as those things we say are so, despite evidence to the contrary. Instead, my ethos arises, in part, from experiences of consciousness, combined with reason.
I take inspiration from peak experiences, momentary states of consciousness which can be called 'universal love' consciousness or spiritual consciousness, where the sense of separateness of oneself from everything else melts away. For me these are important in 3 respects.
Insight into reality. This consciousness suggests that there is a reality that is non-separate. That there is some unity of being that we do not always perceive in daily living. This consciousness happens within my brain-and-body, and so could be either entirely bounded within that, or could involve my mind connecting with something outside it. I do not know. Anyone who says they do know are probably just speculating in ways that reflect their emotional needs, social conditioning etc.
Experience of the experiencer. This consciousness can release a great sense of joy. That joy comes, I think, from all the fears we have that arise from our separateness and fixation on forms not flows e.g. how we fit in, whether we are good, that we will die, that things or people we like or love will change, disappear, suffer. Joy itself has value.
The effect on interpersonal relations. This consciousness CAN, but not necessarily WILL, create mutually supportive interaction between people, leading to more people self-actualizing in harmony.
None of these interpretations of the meaning, importance and implications of peak experiences or higher states of consciousness are complete: we should not just focus on one aspect.
The memory of these peak experiences can motivate people to act in ways that are
self-expressing in ways that correspond with a greater more connected self and
self-effacing (and even self-harming) in the sense that the acting or ways of thinking involve subsuming the self to the other.
Some people think that ii is of higher worth in terms of transcending self-interest, whereas some think that ii is a pathology, not a spiritual quality. I believe that both self-expression and self-effacing are essential aspects of a life arising out of the knowledge and experience of higher consciousness, and that one and not the other is not complete.
From realizing that in a night club, in a church and by a lake I have had these moments of higher consciousness and I do not see this consciousness as purely material, purely supernatural and religious, or purely natural and ecological. I will probably be sharing more on these ideas, to support co-inquiry, on my blog.
| What deep things need to happen? |
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Courage of the body, inquiry of the mind, love of the spirit. Body: We need to transform property rights, so that the enjoyment of such rights depends on how well rights bearers conduct their responsibilities to those affected by their property. This would mean a different system of economics, which would involve capital but not its -ism. This is developed in Barricades and Boardrooms Mind: The approach to knowing since the western enlightenment has been powerful and useful, but it denies whole ways of knowing about complex adaptive living systems. The fundamental basis of modern knowing needs to transform. Soul: The power of universal love, arising from a sense of a greater self, and/or a feeling of right and wrong, often coming from a spiritual experience, needs reclaiming from mythic religion or secular conformity and those whose insecurities have created antiquated assumptions, beliefs and rules. |
