For me, spirituality is about being consciously aligned with reality, and deepen in clarifying and living from it.
That means that intellectual honesty is an important component. So how does that look? At least for me?
Here are some examples:
In immediacy, content of experience – input from all the sense fields including thought – happens within and as what I am. I can say that it’s all happening within and as consciousness, or awake space. The whole universe appears as happening within and as what I am.
It appears as consciousness (aka love, wisdom, the divine, Spirit, God). And I can go one step further and tell myself the whole universe and all of existence is consciousness. That fits how it all appears to me, but I also know it’s an assumption. It’s going one step further than what I can be more certain about.
And the same goes for a whole range of other things. I may have direct experiences of something. Someone – great spiritual masters – tells me it is a certain way. It may fit some research. It may make complete sense to me. I may wish it to be true. All of these may align. And yet, I don’t know for certain. All I know is that some stories, some overlays of thoughts, make sense and seem helpful to me in orienting and functioning in the world. They are not the final word, and there is no absolute truth to them.
That’s how it is with ideas about God, life beyond death, reincarnation, divine beings, angels, distance healing, awakening, ESP, and anything else. At best, they are ideas that seem to fit the data, make sense, and help us orient and function in the world. And that’s about it. That’s all I can say about it.
This is as honest as I can be about these things now. It’s as aligned with reality as I can make it for now. It’s as aligned with the divine – if I see reality as the divine – as I can make it. And there is a great freedom here. I don’t need to defend anything.
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Initial notes….
- Intellectual honesty on the spiritual path
- immediacy – all as consciousness + project out to
universe itself as consciousness (love, wisdom, divine, God etc.)
- immediacy – all as consciousness + project out to
- any number of reasons to think….
- all is God, life beyond death, divine beings, angels, ESP etc
- but all of it comes from an overlay of thought, maps, interpretations, assumptions
- don’t really know, don’t know for certain
- just assumptions of temporary value, as a guide, nothing final about it
- important for me
- bc keeps me aligned with reality, keeping myself as honest as I can (with myself)
- …..