Theme: Agency

CONTEMPLATING RELIGION AND METHODS

Once you comprehend a god, a demigod, a hero, or a saint, you can pray to him, or her and be surprised at the result. The technique works if you practice it whether you necessarily believe these gods exist as other than literary, social, and psychological constructs. There are evolutionary reasons for the success of physical rituals, mental rituals, unanswered prayer, and contemplation of conversations with gods, demigods, heroes and saints who you cannot lie to. It is precisely this inability to lie to them that performs the necessary function.

Whether there is some extra-physical consequence is something else – my perception of these matters is that synchronicity is not rare, but the rule. But whether this is the result of exposure to similar stimuli or the result of consequences of another’s excitement of some unknown fabric of the universe is something I do not know but do not need to.

The net result is whether gods, demigods, heroes and saits exists as literature, norm, and memory, and that events that seem supernatural are the result of patterns in wishful thinking, or synchronicity due to social similarity, or the result of excitement of some subatomic structure of the universe, does not matter.

The reason being that the the value of reading about heroies and literary figures, talking to gods demigods, heroes and saints in mental-voice, talking to ancestors in mental voice, imagining talking to people we know or have known in mental voice, and talking to people in fact with both mental and spoken voice, all serve similar purposes, with the interesting benefit that w can only lie to real people and ourselves. It is in talking to the gods that we cannot lie to them, and in doing so cannot lie to one another.

Moreover, this discourse, these rituals, are extremely effective at helping us both work through the problems of life using the knowledge of people we know, respect, admire, or ‘worship’.

We know that the submission response provides a chemical reward to the mind by activating the ‘surrender to the pack’ response, that allows us to abandon our reason, and return to the experience of our middle, animal, brain.

We know that the combination of practicing such spirituality (submission to the trust of the pack) and ‘letting go’ or “surrender it up to god’ provides relief for active minds unable or lacking the information to find solutions, or lacking the control to do so.

I prefer that we all practice the stoic method, rather than the ritual method, rather than the buddhist method, rather than the prayer method, rather than the drug induced or dream state methods. The stoic acts us to ACT and THINK with discipline in daily life, rather than imaginary or supernatural, or by withdrawing from life.

But it may in fact be that the stoic method is beyond the lesser able – Although, I do not see how it’s just harder to learn than the alternatives. BUt we teach reading, grammar, and math and that’s harder than stoicism.

It may be that recitational prayer is the ‘dumbest and most effective’ method of producing rituals at the lowest cost with the least effort, in the shortest time. Other rituals are more expensive and harder to learn. recitation produces the resulting mental state without much demand of the individual.

But even if we emphasize the stoic method, and gain the mindfulness we all require in a world far more complex than the pack, literary, mythical, supernormal, heroic, saintly characters whom we can conduct imaginary conversations will do perform the near equivalent of providing us with answers if we know enough about the minds of the characters. The reasons for this is that these characters evolve precisely because they provide this effect.

For these reasons I have become less concerned with the method of achieving this state than the externalities caused by a large number of people making use of this state. And so far as I can tell, we can combine these different disciplines into a single religoin as the abrahamists have done by various forms of conflation and deceit.

Or we can adopt the scientific ones of the stoics, heroic and saintly literature, and temples to various ‘characters’ the conversation and ‘sacrifice’ or ‘exchange’ to which, the discipline, synchronicity, or as yet undiscovered vibrations of the fabric of the universe, produce rather impressive results.

Personally If I could visit temples around the world as I have visited churches, and say prayers to many gods for my children, wife, sisters, mother and my grandmother as I have, I would find it personally rewarding, and personally enlightening. Not because I believe these gods ‘exist’ in any particular way that is meaningful. But because of the actions that are required of me to perform those ritual, change ME, change my people, and change the world as a consequence, all of which are changed for the better.

There is a a problem with the superficial Island 120 population (the church of ted) that must be defeated. Whether we defeat them through the form of literary contemplation I am recommending, or through the form of natural law that I am contemplating, or through the form of restoring the teachingn of virtues, vocabulary, grammar, logic, testimony, and rhetoric, or whehter we do some alternative, I do not much care.

What I care about is ending the system of lies and conflation invented by Zoroaster and weaponized by the abrahamists of jewish, christian, and islamic and all variations thereof.

It is a cancer upon this earth.