Updates

I just had an insight walking the beach, which has been "cooking on the back burner" for a few days. I thought about turning it into an article, but I'm not sure I want to flesh it out that thoroughly or that formally. I'm just going to make it part of the "blog" function of this "Updates" page (I don't call this a "blog" because it was started before the name was coined, I don't particularly like the name, and also it really does function for updates--should there be anything to report, that is).

My insight has to do with belief vs. skepticism. Like all insights, it's not new, it's only new for me at this particular time. We only ever rediscover ideas--nothing new has ever been discovered.

The image comes to mind of a sea of humanity walking around on an endless treasure of gold coins and nuggets and jewels, which are invisible to them. One of them, one gold coin, is revealed (deliberately) to someone, and he gets hold of it and develops the fond imagination that he has discovered something or worse yet, invented it.

Anyway, my insight is this. Both belief and skepticism have levels; they progress. And they progress hand-in-hand as two sides of the same coin. At the lower levels they are quite distinct and at war with each other, typically; at the higher levels, they merge and become aspects of the same seeing.

It also means--and this is what called my attention to it in the first place--that skeptics and believers of roughly the same level attract each other. Skeptics of one level simply don't "get" skeptics of a higher level. Believers of one level simply don't "get" believers of a higher level.

Also, skeptics of one level don't "get" believers of a higher level; and believers of one level don't "get" skeptics of a higher level.

At the highest levels, skepticism becomes discernment. At the highest levels, belief becomes intuitive, direct perception. Therefore, you will find in the writings and lectures of Swami Vivekananda (whose monastic name means, roughly, "bliss through discernment"), that he was simultaneously the greatest skeptic (of that which is false), and the greatest believer (in that which is real).

That's all. I'm not sure I need to flesh this out any more because if you are able to see this, you can do it for yourself. You can apply this to just about any clash you see out there between skeptics and believers. And you can see it in whom the skeptics choose to criticize; and also whom the believers tend to criticize. I used to chalk this up to skeptics resorting to the technique of "straw man", which is, deliberately choosing a weak example or a weak opponent, or deliberately weakening someone's stance, the more easily to tear it down.

But I think it goes deeper than this. That is certainly done, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The (lesser) skeptic not only chooses a weak believer to attack, like a bully picking on someone weak; he really only sees that believer, because that believer is the other side of his particular coin at his particular level of development.

The Escher drawing with the little white men and the little black men circling around to shake hands or to merge--I haven't seen it in awhile and can't remember it exactly--comes to mind. (See, if this was an article I would have to find that drawing before I could comment on it--but in a blog I can get away with such sloppiness.)

So the believers and the disbelievers at any given level have a kind of symbiotic relationship, if I'm seeing this correctly. They need each other, and they progress in apparent opposition to each other; because each one spurs the other on to rise in the quality of their skepticism or their belief.

This website is a top-down situation. I'm drawing, imperfectly, from very advanced sources. Those sources are sending the information through my "filter", through my "house," and out the back door to anyone who visits this site. However, I leave the door open; I don't claim it as my own knowledge. Therefore anyone who wants to, who can sense the quality of the information I'm providing, and who can also sense the degree to which I may be inadvertently degrading its quality, can bypass me and go directly through the door to my sources.

It's not that I'm trying to push anyone towards that door; it's that I must leave it open, because I dare not claim it for myself. In revealing my sources and my purpose--in leaving that door clearly marked and wide open for those who care to go through--I have almost certainly destroyed whatever career I might have had in selling to the "new age" crowd. That's okay. I would rather do that than build the karma of being a false teacher. Been there, done that, in past lives, I suspect. I can tell you one thing about that from intuition--don't do it. (Here's an intersting article I ran across. The quote at the end pretty-well sums it up.)

So this "blog" is up because my time is up and I need to go to work. I'm not sure exactly who my audience would be in sharing this insight...I often get the sense that I am preaching to the choir, and the plexiglass wall is there so that nobody except the choir can hear me, anyway, so what's the point?

I'll have to leave it there...and I think I won't edit this, just leave it as I wrote it.

*Of course, if you dare tell the truth publicly about reincarnation, and that gets associated with your name in the search engines, the ethical Christians won't do business with you, either, because they have been sold a bill of goods by people who re-edited and distorted the scriptures down through the centuries.

Music opening this page: "High Landrons," Eric Johnson (Ah Via Musicom album)
All I can say is, if you have a chance to see Eric in concert, don't pass it up...
sell the car and hitch to the concert if you have to.