“Giant asteroid causes extinction of magical thinkers”
Thursday, October 28th, 2010I’m posting this comment about my last post, and my response, as a post of its own, and as a FINAL way of dealing with the recent wave of people who don’t like my opinions about magical thinking and so forth. Take it or leave it, folks. If this doesn’t do it, I’m done with this either way.
There will not be an audio version of this post.
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I’ve been using Holosync for the past three and one-half years and have gotten a lot out of it. I’ve also found your blog posts most enligthening. However, I must respond to your comments here with regard to your negativity toward the belief in past lives. You’re certainly entitled to your opinions. I lost my brother nine years ago and shortly after that I began my own personal quest for answers initialy about why this happened. Ultimately, my search led me to trying to understand the whole concept of the after life, past lives, etc. which I had always been skeptical about. In the course of my reading (including books by MDs and PhDs), as well as interaction with a couple of “spiritualists” who were able to connect me to loved ones I had lost, I have changed my mind and now find myself very much convinced of the possibility that I have been here many times before. The idea that my body is just a temporary home for a timeless energy/consciousness has become a part of my awareness and belief system even as I continue to move through the levels of Holosync. Though I do not have scientific proof of any of this, I do think there is much more to life than is seen or known by anyone. I’ve simply gotten to the point where my mind is open to a greater range of possibilities than ever imagined. That’s what led me to Holosync in the first place.
FROM BILL: I would no more be able to get you to change your belief about this than I could get a fundamentalist Christian or someone who thinks the earth is flat to change his or her beliefs. Beliefs are wishes. The word even comes from Old English, meaning “a fervent wish.” There is no evidence that any credible scientist would accept for past lives. Many people–you included, apparently–do not need evidence, though. What they need is an ANSWER or a REASON for something, and their belief helps them fill that need, at least enough to keep it at bay.
Many people think I’m presenting my thoughts on this blog as my version of Truth, and that I’m essentially saying that you should all adopt my view as opposed to some other view. My life, however, is not about choosing between competing theories, and I’m not presenting what I say in that manner. DO NOT believe what I say. But DO find out for yourself–which you do by becoming more aware, and by investigating and learning how cause and effect really works.
One of my main messages to you is that life is not about believing the “right” thing. This may be something you’ve never considered, but finding the “right” or “true” believe/theory/dogma/explanation is not going to save you from the human condition. It isn’t going to improve your life. It isn’t going to keep you from suffering. It isn’t going to keep you from getting what you don’t want or not getting what you do want. And, it isn’t going to save you from impermanence. It seems like a reasonable thing to do, but I’m here to tell you that it’s really a dead end.
Many of you have a core assumption, completely unexamined, that if you can just find the right way to believe, the right theory, the right explanation, you’ll be fine and all things will become clear–or at least better. I’m here to tell you that many things will never be clear to you, many sources of suffering will never be solved, and you will never escape from certain things inherent in the human condition. My suggestion would be to ABANDON the search for the right theory. You’ll never find it (it doesn’t exist because life isn’t an idea or a theory). How many “right” theories have you already been through? Did they help?
This search causes many of you to accept a certain way of thinking, a certain theory, a certain dogma, or a certain explanation for one or more of the following reasons:
a) it sounds good to you,
b) it makes you feel better,
c) a lot of other people believe it,
d) it seems to provide a solution or explanation to something that is bothering you (why bad things happen, for instance, or why you have to die).
What I’m asking all of you to do is to find out about all these things for yourself, rather than accepting someone else’s ideas because they sound good to you or someone you trust believes them. DO NOT rely on my description of reality, or Ken Wilber’s, or the Pope’s, or Swami Suchabanana’s, or Heidegger’s, or Hegel’s, or anybody else’s. I’m NOT saying what I say here to convince you to think like me. I’m saying it to get you, first of all, to examine and challenge what you’ve been believing without really examining it, and to prod you to gain the necessary awareness and motivation so you can see things more clearly FOR YOURSELF.
When I see some of you believing things that clearly are at odds with what we know about how cause and effect works, I know you’re believing them blindly and without really examining them. I see gross errors in logic. I see a rush to believe something just because it offers an answer to something that bothers you or because some group of people believe it.
If that’s what you want to do, that’s fine with me. Whatever works for you. I’m here to at least try to teach you a more sophisticated way of dealing with life that goes beyond the limited world of beliefs and dogmas and theories, and is instead about real, in-the-now experience. In other words, it’s about life, not about ideas about life.
Theories are wonderful tools. A good one has predictive and other practical values. But theories should be examined much more closely and with much more care than many of you are using. In fact, many of you have done almost no examination, though I expect you would claim that you have. To believe something for the four reasons I cited above is plainly delusional. Yes, you can probably waltz through life with your favorite delusion in-tow. Most people do. You are, however, handicapped if you do. And, not only are you mistaking the map for the territory, your map has a lot of mistakes on it. No wonder you often feel lost.
There are certain people on this earth who manage to come to terms with the aspects of the human condition I’ve been describing: impermanence, cause and effect, and that much about the universe and life–where it came from; what it means, if anything; where it’s going; and why it’s happening–will never be known. To be one of these people is a worthy goal.
All three of the things I just listed freak people out, which is why they seek heavens and reincarnations and psychic powers, and believe things that make them feel better but without having evidence to back them up. If you can acknowledge and make your peace with these three things, you are FREE. You’ll stop churning away at trying to save yourself from them. You’ll certainly drop magical thinking. This will leave you free to LIVE, NOW.
This is why the person with an incurable disease who makes his peace with what-is gives everyone a contact high. He’s PEACEFUL in a situation that freaks everyone else out. This is why certain awakened humans affect people in the same way. Be one of them. Or not. It doesn’t matter to me.
My main point here is that this is not about my theory is better than your theory or my Dad can beat up your Dad. It’s about possibly ending the era of your life where you search for the “right” way of thinking, or the right theory–as if the “right” idea would provide a solution to your woes. This is about finding out what life is about, independent of maps, theories, or beliefs.
Instead of comparing what I’ve written here with what you believe, and saying, “I agree with that and that, but not with this and this,” I suggest that you sit with it, examine it, and use it to challenge your own view of life.
Are you up for it?
