Tag: philosophy

Feeling overwhelmed with what the world is throwing at you? Don’t let all the “noise” cheat you from claiming your spiritual reality.

by kendunning, posted in Spirituality, Personal Development, Law, Health, Metaphysics, Gratitude

     Due to the internet and the speed of communication we are experiencing today, the average person is exposed to information regarding scientific breakthroughs, discoveries in our natural world, and innovations in myriad technologies at an unprecedented pace.  Sounds wonderful, right?  Not necessarily.  Our brains, our nervous systems, our thought processes have evolved over millennia experiencing, for the most part, a much slower pace of new information.   For all of our recorded history, until the past century, give or take a few years, there might well be months, years or decades between the news of one major advancement in our knowledge affecting an important area of our lives and the next.  Today, depending upon the websites one visits, new bits of potentially life changing information can be coming us much faster than a human mind can begin to take it in, much less assimilate the meaning of it all.  It can be traumatic, and for many it is. 

     How do we cope with this reality?  For some the way is to ignore it. No doubt all of us have to pick and choose what we take in, or not.  Yet all of us are faced with a world in which, like it or not, changes are happening which will affect our lives.  Somewhere there are people paying attention to and working with all the information which we may choose to overlook.  Not because we’re incapable people, it’s because a person can only handle so much.  Where does that leave us? It means, ideally, we have to be able to trust that those advancing one potentially life changing area of our culture, our world, are going to be doing so in good faith with the rest of us.  Ideally those controlling all the various areas of development and change are working to be of service to human kind, not to exploit us. 

     But that is not always the case, in fact it, too often exploiting us seems to exactly be the goal.  All this at a time when corruption, lies, and exploitation of “the masses” is also happening at an unprecedented rate.  Part of what this reality reveals is that we have allowed morals and ethics, empathy, and love to fall to the wayside too often.  Exploiting others has become a culturally acceptable business model.  In terms of technology, commerce, ethics, and human wellbeing, it is something of a “perfect storm”. 

     Can we face and find solutions for this current, unhealthy reality which will not only allow us to survive it, but to nurture our humanity and our communities in the process?

     Some of the “fixes” being promoted at this time are as problematic, and as subject to exploitation, as the problems they are claiming to be remedies for.   One of the “fixes” we see some working at is censorship.  Often those engaging in it say their goal is to prevent “misinformation”.  The fact is censorship all too easily just leads to one group or another having the exclusive ability to ensure that only the “information”, truth or lies, that furthers their agenda is allowed in the media . 

     Coming to the truth of a controversial matter can be compared to grinding grain into flour.  It requires at least two opposing perspectives presenting point and counterpoint until what emerges is a hardy, vital perspective that has stood up to intense scrutiny.  Without that, what one tends to have is a single “story” which is not the complete story.  So many of the issues which breed controversial “conspiracy theories” are issues around which honest and open public debate, public scrutiny, has not been allowed to take place.  Such situations always involve the application of censorship by some people with particular some interests that are working to control the public perception of the issue.  Censorship is all too easily not a solution, just another problem.

     Another proposed “fix” that is getting more attention is the idea of neural implants.  This is what I would call the “Frankenstein solution”.  It goes something like this:  meld a computer chip into a human brain and the person will have instant access to all the information on the internet.  Where to start on everything that can go wrong with this?  To begin with, as noted above, our minds, our nervous systems, have not evolved to work in such a manner.   You know those scenes in the movie “The Matrix” where Neo sits in the chair, a cable is plugged into his brain/nervous system, and he all but instantaneously is the happy recipient of encyclopedic knowledge of something or the other?  Maybe martial arts, maybe how to fly a helicopter.

    What would happen in real life is that the subject (more the victim), if they lived, would be catatonic, zombified.  Someone would have to feed them and bathe them for decades, if not the rest of their “life”.

    To use another move metaphor, it would be something like the scene in the Indiana Jones movie “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” in which the Russian psychic wants the aliens to psychically give “it all” to her.  All the knowledge that they possess.  When the aliens comply with her wishes, after being momentarily in awe of what she is receiving, she quickly is traumatized and ultimately goes up in flames. The flames part is good theatrics, I doubt but I really don’t know, if that would happen or not.  Keep in mind that there is energy involved. 

    What is notable about both of these “solutions” regarding the increasing exposure to information which we face in the world is that both of them tend to disregard the physiological/psychological/spiritual human reality which they propose to address.  Neither of them takes into consideration the individual human reality nor the collective human reality; which is the context for every individual human reality. 

   We humans aren’t designed to be high speed data processors which then assimilate the data into our biological functioning.  I want to make clear that phrase is not intended to minimize or denigrate what we are.  We are miraculous beings with miraculous capabilities.  Capabilities which precious few, if any, national cultures, religions, or, need I mention corporations, take fully into consideration.  Before we start trying to augment or “fix” what we are, perhaps we should first be putting more time and effort into finding out what that really is? 

    Possibly the main reason we don’t know more about what we are, is that somewhere in the past few decades, or centuries, human cultures have become largely fixated on the physical, corporeal, aspects of our lives.  We have reaped some significant rewards due to that focus.  I venture every person on Earth benefits from it in some way.  However, we have paid a dear price in the process.  The price of simultaneously largely ignoring the innate spiritual/energy aspect of our lives. 

     At some point in the past two millennia human civilization has reached a critical point in development where the levels of complexity in many different disciplines require developed societies to recognize the need for  specializations.  People began creating different professional/vocational specialties and those working within these specialties began being seen as the ones who could “take care of it”, whatever “it” is.  That trend included the need for specialists in technology, medicine, education and many other areas.  In Western civilization, the established religions of the day were all too happy to don that cloak relative to our “immortal soul”.  With identifiable variations to differentiate their “brand”, the primarily Catholic and Protestant religious sects began worldwide, intensive recruitment into their respective congregations. 

     By this time however, the leaders of the religious movements knew well that what was going on involved more than the common person’s spiritual health and wellbeing.  Religious establishments were accorded a great deal of trust by the people who subscribed to their particular doctrines.  That trust often enabled the leaders of the various denominations and even individual churches, to sway people’s opinions on political issues as well.  Also people began to trust the churches to employ wise and honest stewardship with the monetary donations given to them.  Sometimes the trust (to do the right thing) members of the various congregations bestowed on their religious leaders has been honored, and good things have taken place.  Sometimes not so much. 

    Through the centuries an interesting phenomenon began to emerge in the Western religions until by the mid-twentieth century, it was pervasive throughout the United States and I believe large parts of Europe as well.  Getting to know and appreciate the fullness of one’s spiritual existence and all the miraculous aspects which it includes and involves, became greatly simplified down to what I am going to call simply “spiritual hygiene”.  I do not know if this happened by design or default, regardless, it fit in quite well with the pervasive, ongoing increase in focus on the material world. 

     It’s my understanding that in India, the “norm” is that younger men work to provide for their families, and older men have the ability to spend much time, if they desire, upon spiritual studies.  The religious traditions which exist in India can get quite in depth regarding the nature of our spiritual reality.  I know enough to know that is a true statement.  An hour or two a week singing, listening to a sermon or engaging in a group discussion could barely scratch the surface of the knowledge not just Indian, but some other Eastern religions, but Western religious traditions as well have to offer.  It is easy to lose sight of the fact that the Western religious traditions involve more than a crucifixion and a resurrection.

    I brought up the “norm” which I referenced above in an attempt to illustrate that if one chooses to enter into an in-depth exploration and study of our spiritual reality, it can be disruptive of any efforts to fit into the highly competitive, money oriented, working world which many, if not most, working people in the world fact today.  Or vice-versa.  So having a national religious model which stays relatively superficial in terms of knowledge of our spiritual reality is harmonious with people spending most of their time and energy pursuing wealth, promotions, and material acquisitions.  It provides a pacifying illusion that one is genuinely taking care of their spiritual wellbeing while freeing peoples’ minds and hands to engage in commerce.  The problem is, we in the United States have been being taught this “Readers Digest condensed version” of our spiritual reality for so long, too many have lost sight of the fact that there is anything more.  And there is a lot more.

     One dismaying reality, an obstacle really, which many people in the United States face in both wanting to move deeper into understanding our spiritual reality is that spiritual phenomena are often demonized within the narrow understanding of this reality that many in positions of influence within churches and our culture put forward.  Ghosts (unincarnated spirits), telepathy, remote viewing, astral travel, spiritually affecting events in the world, even closely sharing spiritual experiences with someone else, even energy healing, all of these things, these aspects of our natural, innate, beautiful spiritual reality have been demonized at some time or another and I venture are being demonized somewhere as I write this.  So, if you’re a person wondering about whether or not to follow an interest further in learning about our spiritual reality, not only can you run into some difficulty in finding sound guidance, you may also experience some people trying to dissuade you from doing so!

     There is a phrase used in computer programming:  “garbage in, garbage out” (GIGO).  I find this phrase can be generalized to some other areas of our lives as well.  I think the study of our spiritual reality is one of these areas.  If within yourself you are bringing garbage motives to the endeavor, motives like a lust for power, for manipulating or controlling others, for vast wealth, for self-aggrandizement, while you may have some degree of success in your search, you will ultimately be contributing to some undesired results coming your way.  If you enter into your search desiring to know more about yourself, your spiritual reality in order to be more whole, more healthy, more centered and grounded in your life, to experience your relationship with the Divine Creative Spirit, God, more fully, then I think you’ll be forever grateful that you chose this path.  Not that you may not experience setbacks, missteps, along the way, but if you persevere, stay centered in your motives and sound values, keep studying, you’ll find what you’re looking for and more.  Reason, love, honesty, and humility; not a false modesty, but a genuine perspective on who and what you are (which will grow as you move forward in your study) will all serve you well. 

     In summary, as a culture we have become way too enamored of our ability to understand, manipulate and exploit our material environment.  We have become imbalanced in our lives and in relationship with our natural environment.  The answer to solving this existential crisis does not lie in more or faster manipulation and/or exploitation of our material world.  It lies in slowing down with our material pursuits, realizing that as a culture we know precious little about what we really are, about our innate spiritual heritage.  Too frequently we have become strangers to even ourselves.  The answer isn’t more religion either.  Again, it’s to enter into a serious, benevolently motivated, exploration of our deeply intimate and shared spiritual reality.  A reality that we are a part of and that we live within.  To find harmony and satisfying wellbeing within our lives, we need to understand our place within this reality.  We need to understand the ways of this reality.  And as we move forward in our understanding we will find answers and benefits beyond what we expected at the onset.  We don’t need neural implants, we just need to access and understand the spiritual heritage which has been freely given us.    

In looking for books, sources that can help you learn about our spiritual reality, some religious texts may be useful, or may not. Finding authors that speak to you, that you can relate to and whose writing helps you feel that you know more about our spiritual reality are like finding a vein of gold. Those authors may not be the same for everyone simply due to their writing style, word usage, or some particular “wrinkle” in their style.

Some authors I have benefited from are Baird T. Spaulding, Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Lobsang Rampa, Carlos Castenada, and Dr. Charles Francis Potter. This is not an exhaustive list, but may help you find some places to start!

Liberty

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Economics, Government, Law, Oppression, Personal Development, Politics, Spirituality
Photo by Ken Dunning

I am writing again on the subject of liberty as opposed to the general concept of freedom. I feel the importance of realizing the difference between the two, and the primary, essential nature of liberty, cannot be overstated. Without the existence of liberty in our lives, any other freedom is conditional upon being allowed by the agreement of our oppressors. How can I say this? Because if we do not have liberty we are, by definition, oppressed. And if we are oppressed politically, economically, or militarily, we do not have liberty.

Some might consider this too fine a point, but it really isn’t. In fact, it is a monumental issue when we really get into the details of it. In the preambles to both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, the Founders made it clear that “liberty” was a primary value that they sought to secure in the new nation. They do not write that they were seeking “freedom”, if they had meant freedom they would have written “freedom”. They knew about freedom. But they didn’t, they wrote that they were seeking to “…secure the blessings of liberty…”

What is the difference between liberty and freedom? Liberty is a specific type of freedom. It is the freedom from unjust oppression. The type of unjust oppression which many of the Founders, or their parents, had experienced at the hands of the monarchs, the aristocracy in Britain and which was still be waged upon the colonists in the land that would become the United States of America.

There is a place where liberty and freedom become mutually exclusive. That is when someone wants to claim the freedom to infringe upon the liberty of others. In other words, they seek to exercise some sort of political, religious, military or economic power, which they have used their freedom of some sort to acquire, to oppress another’s ability to reasonably engage in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Such actions of oppressing other, vulnerable, people seem to be a very common occurrence in the world when some individual(s) or group(s) are allowed to acquire an inordinate amount of political or military power or economic wealth.

The inherent conflict with the stated intentions of the Founders can be made to appear non-existent when people are led to conflate liberty with freedom. Redefining longstanding, traditional terminology seems to be a common ploy in the efforts by special interests to unjustly impose their agendas upon others. Two other recent examples are the redefining of “pandemic” and “vaccine”.

We in the United States are fortunate that the Founders of this nation cared about liberty as a primary value. We do not honor them, or ourselves, when we allow liberty to be redefined and abused in order to allow some to pursue their overly self-serving dreams of wealth and power. All too often this is defended in the United States by the phrase “It’s a free country.”

But if we can recapture, rekindle the desire for liberty for all so clearly expressed by our nation’s Founders. If we can thoughtfully work to make it a reality, with thoughtful expression and thoughtful restraint we can achieve the great nation that the Founders dreamed of and fought for. But not if we allow a false allegiance to unbridled freedom lead us down the path of our own worst impulses.

This essay is dealing exclusively with the role that the importance of liberty played in the birth of the United States. The fact that it was a primary value within the hearts and minds of the Founders of this country, does not in any way indicate that I do not know that many other people in other countries have also dreamed of, worked and fought for, liberty in their nations. Liberty is not something that one people or nation can hold a franchise on. In fact, it is only when many people around the world can realize a fair and just existence of liberty within their lives and their nations that such liberty may be truly secure for any of us.

Do Not Conflate Liberty with Freedom

by kendunning, posted in Community, Economics, Government, Oppression, Politics, Spirituality, Sustainability

In the U.S.A. there is a great travesty taking place within our thinking and within our expressions.  That is the conflation of “liberty” with “freedom”.  They are not the same and they were not when the Founding Fathers of the United States fought for the blessings of liberty. Not freedom, liberty. 

Liberty is the freedom from oppressive restrictions upon one’s way of life.  This in no way states nor implies the freedom to do whatever one wants to do.  Oppression is the unjust infliction of hardship and constraint upon a subordinate group.

Some freedoms, including unbridled freedom in the marketplace, are what enable some to acquire an inordinate amount of wealth and power which then enables them to oppress others.

In order to preserve our liberty, We the People must predominantly agree our liberty is a precious thing to be preserved.  As Liberty is a paramount value in the United States as expressed in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, if any subgroup decides otherwise and acquires and exercises the means to subvert the value of liberty within our culture, for one citizen or the entirety of the citizenry, they are violating that paramount freedom. They have entered into actively subverting the values and principles that the United States was founded upon.  They have set upon overturning our nation, our culture, and our lives.   When this occurs it is usually being engaged in by individuals or groups who have been acquiring inordinate amounts of wealth and then using that wealth to acquire (buy) inordinate political influence.

It’s not that capitalism is inherently bad.  It’s that the men and women practicing it must recognize the implicit social compact necessary to preserve our essential liberty:  they should not take too much.  They should not “drain the economic well”.  This is important to ensure that the average citizens of the U.S.  do not become impoverished and economically enslaved.  But impoverishment and economic slavery is happening pervasively in the U.S.A. and elsewhere in the world.

Sacrificing the American peoples’ hard-won liberty for the freedom of unbridled predatory capitalism is a travesty and a grievous insult to all of the men and women who have worked and fought to establish and preserve liberty for us and future generations. 

It is time we address the underlying pandemic of our age.

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Economics, Environment, Health, Politics, Psychology, Science, Spirituality, Sustainability, War

We are in the midst of a pandemic. Not COVID nor a new viral concoction those disposed to do so may be devising. It is a pandemic of mental/spiritual origin and effect. The infectious, destructive condition I’m referring to has been with us for millennia. It is a condition, a dis-ease if you will, which leaves many of those affected languishing in the belief that the “physical” world is our primary, if not our only reality. Or, others affected often see fit to engage in overly self-centered, sometimes brutal, schemes for personal gain. Schemes which ignore the damage such thoughts and actions are doing within our underlying spiritual reality. Damage which sooner or later expresses itself within our “physical” reality.

Above I put “physical” in quotation marks because, as with light waves which we can only see a certain portion of the full spectrum of, our physical reality also extends beyond the denser forms and actions we’re all accustomed to dealing with in our day to day lives. It extends into finer, more ethereal, spiritual aspects of our reality which those who are infected with the mental condition leading to the denial of this reality apparently find beyond their perception. Or possibly they have some perception of it but for reasons having to do with their enculturation choose to ignore such perceptions. Yet inescapably we affect and are affected by the finer, more ethereal aspects of our reality.

This condition, which results in a narrow window on our world, is a mental/spiritual condition which many seem to accept as part of the price for being a “good citizen” of a materialistic, competitive culture.  I wonder how many people are receiving treatment both in outpatient and inpatient settings simply because they found themselves perceiving and finding reality and meaning within some of the forms and actions within the more ethereal aspects of our reality? How a person reacts to perceiving things outside the realm of what their culture may regard as normal is often determined by whether or not they primarily regard the world with an attitude of fear or an attitude of faith.

It is when we are able to stretch out our perceptions more fully into the finer, more ethereal/spiritual aspects of our existence, our reality, that we can discover many blessings and abilities which remain out of our reach when too many daily stressors push us into a withdrawn, shut-down state of being. When fear and anxiety are intrusive into our lives, we tend to draw in, to shut down some of the higher functioning parts of our mind, our being. This loss of so much of the potential richness of our lives is one of the cruelest of the collateral damages within a culture of competition.

We see so much cruelty, so much inhumanity resulting from people holding an attitude of fear, avarice, intolerance, that it is easy to be deceived into believing that these ways of relating to the world are the underlying, inescapable reality of our existence on Earth.  They aren’t.  Love is the underlying reality.  However, when unguided by compassion and sound reason, even love can produce perverted, destructive actions. Such as when, as I have seen it expressed, we “love things and use people instead of loving people and using things”.  Or when we love the experience of our own being yet choose to callously disregard the experiences of others.

Creating a culture of fear is relatively easy.  Engage in violence, do things which blatantly and glaringly or subtly and insidiously injure people. Engage in actions which engender distrust.  Use political/economic schemes with armed legions of enforcers to take away and control the goods and freedoms of the general population of entire nations (even your own).  Those involved in the thinking patterns and behaviors which lead to the creation of cultures of fear are following their most self-centered, self-serving impulses with little or no concern for the effects which their actions impose upon, or evoke within others.   

Creating a culture of love, compassion, and understanding is a harder task.  The desire to do so usually is preceded by the awareness that we are all interrelated. For one thing, we are all a part of the environment which all other people live within. However, when we learn more about the energy/spiritual reality of our lives we understand how we are quite literally interconnected on an energetic/spiritual level. Someday I imagine there will books written about the effects each person’s spiritual energy contributes to our spiritual environment. We now know beyond a doubt that groups of people meditating in an area can reduce the crime rate. Manifesting a culture which is an expression of the positive, life-oriented aspects of our underlying spiritual reality requires people to be willing to put the time and effort into understanding themselves and others.  It requires compassion and patience when facing difficult interpersonal situations.  It requires tolerance of different practices and worldviews as long as those practices and worldviews are not inherently harmful to others.  It requires people to have a rock-solid commitment to the well-being of others as well as one’s own.   

Right now we are living in a world in which far too many are suffering under the pestilence of a culture of fear, avarice, intolerance.  Many are reaping the bitter fruits of devoting time and energy into fear, hating and war. Many are reaping the bleak fruits resulting from the personal or cultural allotment of large amounts of human and material resources for the building and acquisition of weapons of destruction.  The more energy, time and resources we pour into these things the more we see war and destruction proliferating around the world.  After all the teachings, the warnings we have had through the ages from saints and prophets about reaping what we sow, this sorry reality should come as no surprise. 

I would rhetorically ask what we should do about it, but the answer is obvious:  we need to start consistently sowing the words and actions which are exactly those which we genuinely would like to have returning to us and our loved ones.  That’s all.