Belief

[07:07:18] Haggis Margetts: We are all just passing through, in a sense.

[07:07:37] (You): o yeah, that's a lesson from MIL

[07:08:00] Haggis Margetts: Mhm

[07:08:47] (You): I changed cell phone providers and now my phone # is lost in cyberspace :)

[07:08:52] (You): job # 1 today

[07:09:15] (You): calls go straight to voice mail ...

[07:09:24] Haggis Margetts: I remember a baseball telecast from years ago...I saw a clip. A play had an injury and was playing anyway. The announcer said 'X is day-to-day' and the other guy paused and said 'Aren't we all?'

[07:10:01] (You): some people think of such things 3 or 4 times a year

[07:10:20] (You): being constantly aware of it is part of Buddhism/Zen

[07:11:02] Haggis Margetts: Humans are the only animals who know they will die. Or one of the few.

[07:11:10] (You): you  *can* make your peace with it but it takes time to shake off the happy talk of Christiaity

[07:11:41] (You): I think cows get a feeling something bad is happening as they go up the ramp ..

[07:11:51] (You): and they are as stupid as rocks

[07:12:32] (You): would you like to hang out for a bit?

[07:12:39] Haggis Margetts: I'm a Spiritualist so...not a Christian but a believer in 'after.'

[07:13:34] (You): interesting

[07:16:25] (You): do you go to seances ?

[07:16:34] (You): communicate with the dead?

[07:16:43] (You): I have never met a Spiritualist

[07:17:15] Haggis Margetts: I don't go and there are no Spiritualist churches near me. I used to go down in Boston.

[07:17:39] Haggis Margetts: And it's a long story, but like many, it was messages received through a medium that convinced me.

[07:21:15] (You): i'd love to hear the story ... my approach is not about "belief" but "experience" - especially my own

[07:21:40] (You): because of bipolar illness I need to be careful with spooky ideas

[07:21:42] Haggis Margetts: Sometime, we'll get together and I'll tell you some things.

[07:23:12] (You): (I am "weeding" in the gallery grounds - weeds are prims that have no use or applicatoin

[07:23:18] Haggis Margetts: I don't talk about it much. People think I mean I am 'spiritual' but if I explain, it gets awkward.

[07:24:20] (You): "spiritual" is a term that has lost meaning due to over-use like mindfulness and love

[07:26:32] (You): when someone says they are "spiritual" io have no idea what they are talking about

[07:27:07] (You): Spiritualist" means something - something like a religion

[07:27:31] (You): but it was popular enough in early 1900's to claim to be a science

[07:27:32] Haggis Margetts: They usually mean, I think, they believe in some form of God, but it's personal rather than an organized religion.

[07:27:49] Haggis Margetts: Spiritualism was an attempt to reconcile science with religion.

[07:28:06] (You): there is no such thing as a religion that is not organized

[07:28:15] (You): organization is the point

[07:28:24] (You): authority, ritual, community

[07:28:36] (You): without that you just have opinion

[07:28:49] (You): belief in God is not a religion

[07:29:50] Haggis Margetts: Weel, that's what I think /spiritual' means to many people. An unaffiliated believer.

[07:31:42] (You): or not ...

[07:31:59] (You): most of the time it means I think of myself as a nice person

[07:32:18] Haggis Margetts: For some, probably true.

[07:32:43] (You): that's the problem "for some" means you are dealing with a word that means nothing

[07:33:56] (You): I am a Skeptic (capital S) as well as being grounded in Zen

[07:34:20] (You): Zen requires no belief at all - it's a practice like brushing your teeth

[07:34:52] (You): Skepticism is also like that

[07:35:24] Haggis Margetts: Atheism, too, I suppose.

[07:35:27] (You): its extreme caution when taking on extraordinary claims

[07:36:13] (You): just caution - an atheist aggressively defends his belief that there is no God or anything *like* god

[07:36:55] (You): that betrays a certain ignorance of the variety of things people call God

[07:37:15] (You): Atheism would be a religion but it's not organized :)

[07:37:28] (You): except in Communist countries

[07:39:51] (You): as a Skeptic I don't even "believe" in the Big Bang

[07:39:56] (You): for example

[07:40:22] (You): it's a theory with good evidence

[07:40:35] (You): but it contradicts the law of thermodynamics

[07:40:54] (You): one of those theories needs to be fixed up

[07:41:14] (You): but of course that has zero effect on daily life

...

[07:46:07] (You): there *have* been times in my life when I felt I glimpsed the meaning of the Universe, along with something i'd call God. Problem is I can never be sure of such things - bipolar.

[07:46:37] (You): I can't really trust my *interpretation* of my experience, but I need to trust that I HAD the experience

[07:46:44] Haggis Margetts: My HB gets like that when he's high....lol

[07:46:50] (You): exactly

[07:48:16] (You): so there are a whole bunch of people who see drug influenced experience as "expanded" consciousness- somehow "better" than normal consciousness

[07:48:33] (You): I would rather liken it to "malware"

[07:48:51] (You): performance of the brain in ways it's not "designed" for

[07:49:01] (You): you just need to record the babbling to see that

[07:49:09] Haggis Margetts: Tune in, turn on, drop out....lol

[07:49:18] (You): yes

[07:49:34] (You): I invited 2 local politicians to a pot party

[07:49:54] (You): all they saw was people sleeping on the floor or listening to the white album

[07:50:11] (You): not a crazy orgy as they had imagined

[07:50:28] (You): I take dream experience very seriously

[07:50:46] (You): but dreams don't have "meaning" any more that ordinary experience has "meaning"

[07:50:57] (You): we supply the meaning

[07:51:24] (You): perhaps i'd say that about your experience with the medium or fortune teller

[07:51:55] (You): I can't impose MY meaning on YOUR experience

[07:52:13] (You): I don't even try to impose my meaning on my experience

[07:52:28] (You): but I play with them - consider them - use them...