assorted pseudo-spiritual questioning nonsense

[rivendellrose]

So, I was thinking last night about ritual, religion, spirituality, skepticism, and pantheism. A weird mix, I know. I'll try to be as sensible as I can, and not just fall into flaily "I don't know how to explain what I'm thinking" territory. Unedited, free-form, and largely, I expect, utterly incomprehensible. I thought about making this private, but then decided that if there was feedback to be had, I'm at the point where I could probably use it.



I identify as anything from atheist to pagan depending largely on my mood and how much I feel like really explaining what I think about spiritual things (and where I am in those feelings, since I tend to wobble around a center of "vaguely agnostic pantheism" to several sides around that. I don't accept the answers offered by any organized religion, I don't accept the answers offered by any particular wedge of the neo-pagan movement, and I am all for keeping religion the hell out of government on the basis that that's what the constitution says and I think it is right to say so. Religion and politics make very unpleasant bed-mates for everyone not of the particular stripe of religion in question, and for everyone outside that government, as far as I'm concerned.

I have ultimate trust in science, the universe, and history.

What I mean by ultimate trust in science is that I firmly believe that the only way to really find out about the universe is to look for facts, test theories, and constantly be willing to revise your theories or throw them out if they don't work in light of the information you have. If you're honest about that process and how it informs what you do, I don't think it will lead a good person wrong. Of course it's possible for it to lead bad people wrong, but the funny thing is that that's often because they do things like say "how strange, the evidence doesn't actually seem to show that the dark-skinned people are less intelligent than me, so I'm going to go ahead and change the evidence so that it does." Or, you know, not look for the evidence at all and just do the Descartes thing of making a blatant assumption about the beginning and "proceeding via logic" (excuse me, I have to go gag about saying "logic" in the context of Descartes) from there. If you don't make stupid leaps that have no basis in reality, I think you're probably okay, but the thing is that this attitude requires constant vigilance. Is this thing that I would really like to be true really true? How do I know? Is it possible that I just want it to be true? Is it honest to keep believing it if it's likely that it is just compelling because I want it to be true? Etc.

Ultimate trust in the universe means little more than that I am in love with the universe as a whole, in adoration of all the wonders that are in it, and believe that's the best basis for anything that I could ever care about. There's so much beauty, so much absolutely amazing stuff out there. I can't label it belief, because there's nothing to believe in - I don't need anything external to that. (Sidenote: I do have a tendency to animism of a very general sort, but that's a whoooole other issue that I'm not going to try to deal with here.)

And trust in history (in a general sense - I'm talking "history" as in the past, not "history" as in "the written record of the past ever since we invented writing"), to me, means that I don't believe humankind has changed our natures in millenia, and I do believe in paying very close attention to the past and learning lessons from it, exactly because at our cores we haven't changed much (if at all) in all that time, and what has changed has been because we are increasingly able to care about things that we didn't have the luxury to care about before (like "gee, it might be a good idea to try to treat people equally" and "gosh, it occurs to me, having killed off the last of those funny birds, that there won't be any more of those funny birds anymore, and that's probably a bad thing in the long run.") Progress, in these matters, is ongoing. In the middle ages, the idea of people being at all equal would have been frankly ludicrous, but that's a matter of culture, not inherent nature of humanity, and we've been working ever forward, very slowly, for a very very very long time. Long enough that, allowing for a lot of backpedaling and loss of ground, I think we're always headed in the right direction, as long as we keep at it.

What does that all have to do with anything, least of all spirituality?

First of all, I don't believe in miracles, and I find relying on them to be abhorrent to the point of blasphemy. The universe (god, whatever you want to call it) surely does not want us wasting what we have by saying "oh, (god, the universe, whatever) will take care of it." S/he/it/they gave us brains. No doubt they want us to use them to good effect, and would much rather reward those who work for themselves and others than those who sit around on their asses pretending that it'll all handle itself and even if it's bad and it happens "it must be god's will." But I do believe in wonder, and part of me definitely pulls to believe in mystery and that thing that I would call magic except its inherent in the world around us and not at all touchable or open to being manipulated by people (dear gods, spare me from people who think they can solve their problems by casting spells). I've long been inclined to ritual, and to myth as well (I think, in a very Joseph Campbell and/or Jungian sort of way, that they're closely related). It's part of what made me study anthropology, part of why I spent a good part of my undergrad career taking folklore and comparative religion and classics and as many other varieties of mythology as I could in a university that didn't offer a degree in either mythology or folklore (Because wouldn't it have been fun to have a degree that was even more useless in the modern business world than the two I have? Of course it would).

Gods (I started out this wacky journey as a pagan, so they'll always be plural to me) to me, are metaphors. I believe humanity created gods to understand the universe and personify it, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We're storytelling animals. It's what we do. I have a deep attachment to certain gods or ideas of gods, deep connection to certain stories and myths, and I used to get a lot of comfort out of the quiet, rather pedestrian worship of those gods. I've always said that if neo-paganism ever got its shit together and started building some nice new temples, I'd be there in a heartbeat. Unfortunately the next step in that, from my experience with other neo-pagan groups and organizations, is that I would immediately notice a lot of nonsense, pseudoscience, willful ignorance, false history, hypocrisy and outright lies - all things that I've noticed are common anywhere (people will be people), but particularly common in the neo-pagan communities in the US. So, pretty much as fast as I got there, I'd be gone. And probably wishing I'd never come in the first place. (NOTE: Most of the neo-pagans I know are wonderful, sensible, intelligent people who do not fall prey to this nonsense. Just like how most of the Christians I know are wonderful, sensible, intelligent people who do not fall prey to the sort of nonsense spouted by Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan and his hate-mongering ilk. It is nothing against neo-pagans as people to say that neo-paganism as a movement is, frankly, full of crap. It's just one of those things.)

The last few years I've been engaged in a process of stripping-down in terms of my personal philosophy/beliefs. I hit bare essentials a few years ago (atheism tempered by utter enthusiasm and passion for myths and stories and the natural world), and since then seem to be aching to build back up a little, but I don't know to what. Or rather, I don't know how to build back up without accepting things that I interpret as lies to myself.

Once again, one of my tenets is strict honesty with myself. I do not believe in gods that have control over the universe or intermediary powers in it. I do not believe in divine intervention. Therefore, to what purpose prayer? Cut it out. Ritual goes with it, because when prayer is removed, what's left? Not much. After that... I'm left with an aching spot where ritual used to go.

I had an anthropology professor my senior year of college - brilliant man, taught one of the best classes I've ever had. Comparative Death. He and I were pretty friendly on the basis that I was his A/V tech as well as his student (the department I worked for was happy to allow me to double-time, since I was already in the class and it was easier than sending in a second tech) and, by a minor fluke, we had the same last name. Plus, he was just plain a gregarious kind of guy. Anyway, we were talking about graduation one day, and I said that I wasn't planning to go to mine - at the very least not the big all-department graduation, which, at my school, took place in the football stadium and, from what I'd heard from older students, pretty much required binoculars if you wanted your parents to be able to actually see you, not to mention taking all day and being packed and generally unpleasant and boring. Not my cup of tea. Anyway, he was horrified. "No, no," he told me. "You have to do something." His point was that it didn't matter what I did, but that ritual to mark the transition periods in life is very important.

I thought about what he'd said, and I realized that he was right - I'd been through enough landmarks in my life by that point to notice that the ones that I didn't mark in some way with some kind of ritual, I would never really feel done with. I need that mark, even if it's an arbitrary one. So I compromised with myself - I skipped the big all-school graduation and went to the much smaller graduation organized by the anthropology department itself. I ordered a cap, borrowed a gown from an older friend the same height as me (otherwise it would have trailed around my feet like a joke), and I got my parents and grandparents and went, and felt very accomplished about the whole thing.

And that whole tangent is to say this: I've been feeling lately very much as though the landmarks in my life aren't getting noticed again. Months slip by without my noticing them, I move from house to house without ever making a big deal of it, and I feel faintly as though I'm slipping into a dull, endless sludge of work, weekend, try desperately to write, work, weekend, try desperately to write. Worse, I feel like my writing has been suffering lately, and whether that's because I'm tired of work, or because I haven't been practicing as much as I should, or for some other reason, I have a niggling little thing in the back of my head that says "you're not recharging your batteries properly, you're not feeding wonder, you need ritual."

Okay, fine. Why?

Theory: I need ritual because I'm human, and humans are storytelling animals. Rituals are stories that help us mark delineations in life and the world. Rituals are stories that tell us who we are and where we're going. It doesn't really matter what those stories actually say, only that they matter to us.

Counter-theory: Stories always matter. If you keep whispering that story over and over to yourself, it's a part of you. Girls who grow up with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and nothing that speaks back to that are naturally going to have a hard time with the idea that they can rescue themselves. Extrapolated, lying to myself in ritual is a very good way to confuse myself and start causing problems in my head, even if it feels nice at the time.

Theory: Meme theory - thought patterns 'want' to keep going. They want to be perpetuated. What I'm running up against right now is the part of my mind that is entrenched in ritual and story and belief in gods and fairies having found a new way to niggle at me and pull at me and try to drag me back.

Counter-theory: ...For fuck's sake, I'm a writer. Worse yet, I'm a sci-fi and fantasy writer (or I will be if I ever get off my ass and out of my existential nonsense for long enough to actually finish something). I already know that part of my brain controls me. Why bother pretending that it doesn't? What harm does it do?

Counter-counter-theory: It's dishonest, and intellectual honesty is important to me.

Counter-counter-counter-theory: Yes, but I've never been irrational about these beliefs (even though I may occasionally have wanted to be), and, to be petty, almost everyone else believes in seven impossible things before breakfast, so why can't I at least pretend to?

Next-counter-theory: Pretense is unhealthy, because pretense leads to belief, and our minds are intensely malleable to belief. If I were to repeat something untrue often enough, I would begin to believe it. That's how human psychology works. I don't want to trick my mind into believing anything untrue, because then I wouldn't be able to trust myself. I enjoy and want to encourage my ability to see clearly, even though sometimes I am at the same time embittered by it.

Conclusion: I want to go back to ritual because I miss it, but I'm very nervous that it's irrational of me to miss it and that I miss it for the wrong reasons. I want to be intellectually honest and, at the same time, want to be emotionally and artistically open and whole, and I'm not sure how those two things fit together because I recognize that a lot of what lives and shines brightest in my head is utterly irrational. I want both not to lose that, and not to let it take over, but keeping it means opening myself to temptation by it. I also have to recognize that I am weak to influence and tend to be faintly whimsical when it comes to that sort of thing - I have a tendency to absorb ideas from what's around me, and lately I've been heavy on things that tend me toward ritual and myth and so on. Largely, um, because those are the things that I love. Honestly, I suppose I can't think of a time particularly when I haven't been heavy on those influences, because those are what I love.

It is somewhat significant (and sad, and hilariously silly) that all of this heavy-duty questioning came crashing back to me after some absence following a line from B5 - "We are the universe trying to discover itself." That, more than anything, sums up what I'd like to believe about the universe. It's a very nice brand of pantheism in a nutshell. Unfortunately, pantheism doesn't give one a whole hell of a lot to work with on the ritual-and-practice angle, and philosophy without practice/ritual/whatever often seems hollow to me.

Ritual without belief: Hollow, shallow, empty or potentially a good answer? What is the purpose (or what would be the form) of prayer and/or ritual without belief? To what extent would it help? What other options are there?


Statements in here are what works for me. Organized religion... doesn't, in my experience. I've tried and/or studied most of them. Additionally, I don't expect anyone else to abide by my weird concepts of intellectual honesty in terms of ripping things to shreds if they're not "real," and clearly I'm not too sure about how it's working for me, so I'm by no means advocating it. That said, it seems to be how I work. No offense is intended, only a whole lot of navel-gazing through the medium of print.

Comments

[websandwhiskers.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating - I am nowhere near as rational as you, though I think we have had similar experiences of / reactions to organized neopaganism. I consider myself pagan mostly because, every time I sit down and try to come up with the best possible word to describe that I in fact am, that's the term that keeps coming closest (presenting one's self accurately is, to me, a large part of both personal identity and personal integrity, so using the right word really does matter to me psychologically even if I don't think any goddess or god I worship especially cares what I call myself). That said, I don't think neo-paganism as an organized (giggle, snort) religion could have worse spokespeople if we all sat down and actively tried to look ridiculous. I think by virtue of being counter-culture and oft-misunderstood, with strong ties to the occult, neo-paganism has a tendency to draw certain attention-seeking personalities. Which is really unfortunate, but there you go.

Part of me would love to see pagan temples, if only to see what we'd build (I can't not love cathedrals, even if they're not my houses of worship), new and zealous as we are. The larger part of me really likes going out in the woods to worship, and suspects the early Christians who met in homes and caves and sewers and wherever three could gather and all that, probably meant it a lot more than the folks later sitting in cathedrals. A large part of my spiritual practice is the seeking of ritual, praying and asking to be taught and guided . . but then, I do believe in higher powers, so probably that's not relevant to you. :) Anyway, point being, while some of what I do ritually (and I do any of it so much less than I should) is a nod of respect to a higher power, thanks and praise and all that good stuff, a lot of it is also about submission and seeking guidance and keeping my head in the right place. I'm not sure quite how that'd work from an atheistic perspective, but I think using ritual as a sort of forced reminder of what matters to you, a re-calibrating of self, if you will, is valid with or without any spiritual component.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I think by virtue of being counter-culture and oft-misunderstood, with strong ties to the occult, neo-paganism has a tendency to draw certain attention-seeking personalities.

YES. The thing that tweaks me is that a large part of it is the attraction to people who desperately want to be misunderstood, that teenage "I'm a martyr" kind of complex that we all go through if we're not very mainstream (and I think even the mainstream folks go through it because, hell, not feeling like you fit in and feeling like a martyr are kind of what being a teenager is all about), but most of us grow out of it... and then there are a lot of people (a lot of the people who are drawn to paganism) who don't. And we've all had our brush with that kind of feeling, that wish to be more than what we are, but... for crying out loud, is that all there is for us? It's certainly all the bookstores and such offer pagans.

Part of me would love to see pagan temples, if only to see what we'd build (I can't not love cathedrals, even if they're not my houses of worship)

*Nods* Agreed, on both counts. The building I love best in all the world is a big, gothic-cathedral style library on the campus of my alma mater, and I'd love the opportunity to spend more time in buildings like that. Similarly, though, it sure would be nice to have temples to gods that I actually connect with.

But, then again, as you said - woods are my place, too. Little groves, forests, whatever - as long as it's got a few trees, I'm happy and I feel at home and safe and comfortable and... pulled up a bit, if that makes any sense. There's a little circle of birches by my bus-stop, for example - just landscaping, not really meant to be much of anything, but to me it looks just like one of the kinds of temples I'd want if I could design one.

A large part of my spiritual practice is the seeking of ritual, praying and asking to be taught and guided . . but then, I do believe in higher powers, so probably that's not relevant to you. :)

Yargh, and there's the rub, right? I've sifted that part out, or rubbed it off, or some other metaphor that works better that's eluding me right now, but whether because it's habit or because it's instinct or because it's culture or just because it's hard to figure out what the heck to say to the universe if you're not asking for that, it's hard to get rid of. And anyway, I'm muddled and perpetually swinging back and forth on that pendulum I talked about - I don't know what I mean by any of this half the time, anymore. I still have what I think of as the in-born instincts and inclinations of a pagan. I think like that. And then again I don't.

I think using ritual as a sort of forced reminder of what matters to you, a re-calibrating of self, if you will, is valid with or without any spiritual component.

And that is definitely a good point, and where I hope I'm headed right now. I'm trying it in little bits - trying to re-form the rituals that I had for years in a way that fits what I'm thinking about them now. It's weird, though - even weirder than paganism's "do-it-yourself" types of rituals and religion, and that's saying something. ;)

Mostly, I really, really appreciate the sounding-board - it's good to bounce this stuff off someone who's coming from a similar direction as I am, since paganism is such a funny animal in terms of religion. Goodness only knows where I'll end up in all of this - I feel like I could easily end up right back where I started, or in some sort of middle ground that doesn't have a name, but I think I've narrowed it down to this little circle of possibilities, and within that maybe I just have to accept that it's okay if I wobble a bit from one thing to another. I think the past few years have established that flat atheism without ritual isn't working for me on an emotional level. Pantheism with ritual, I think I can do. It's not far from where I started, anyway, allowing for metaphor. We'll see how it goes.

[nightsinger.livejournal.com]

The thing about ritual, for me, is that it's about the act of reverence -- and whether you're revering a literal god or a figurative one isn't always important. Like your professor pointed out and you're coming to think about more, sometimes the ritual itself matters a lot more than the reason behind it. (After all, you would have received your degree without a cap and gown and all the pomp and circumstance, right? The ritual there had no bearing on the fact of your graduation, but that didn't make it less important.) Whether the gods created man or man the gods is far less important than the act of recognising the beauty and awesomeness (in its original sense, thank you) of the universe, and for some of us, myself included, we're happier when that recognition takes a more formalised, ritualised form.

Nothin' wrong with that; we are each of us defining what makes life worth living as we live it.

[windrose.livejournal.com]

I've often wished that I could believe in religion. It's a comforting thing to a lot of people, especially in times of stress. The idea that there is something larger than you are, that will be there to guide and care for you no matter what ... yeah. That's attractive.

The dark side is that religious conviction is often coupled with arrogance, and the belief that you are a very special snowflake because you follow the One True Path: "My religion is the only one that's right. That makes me better than everyone else. My life is more valuable than those who don't believe." It also makes people do stupid, stupid things, like stay home and pray rather than go to hospital, or refuse to evacuate for a hurricane because they believe their devotion will protect them. "God will save me because I am special." And if God doesn't save you? Well, that's God's will, too.

I'm far too rational for that. I wish I could believe, it would probably take a lot of stress out of my life. Alas, it just doesn't make sense to me.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Totally agreed on all counts. For me, the problem I'm having is less about belief (I'm beyond hope of that, particularly as any kind of organized religion goes) out to something that isn't really religion, isn't really spirituality, but is more about practice.

I'm going to be trying out ritual/meditation in terms of refocusing on what matters to me, and seeing what I can do about that without belief. It's a funny situation, but I figure it's worth a try.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Whether the gods created man or man the gods is far less important than the act of recognising the beauty and awesomeness (in its original sense, thank you) of the universe, and for some of us, myself included, we're happier when that recognition takes a more formalised, ritualised form.

Yes, that's exactly what I've been feeling lately. I feel like it's a strange sort of attitude to take, given that I don't even really know what to call it or how to describe what it means to me or who I am, but I'm starting to think it's important.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Here are my thoughts, and you certainly can--and should--feel free to do what you like with them. I come from no particular expertise except my own experience, so I'm going on gut impressions and questions and what's come to form my own rather eclectic, ill-defined belief system. They're apparently too long for LJ, so I'll split them into two comments.

* Science is a great thing. We like science. But you know...science can't explain everything. It can explain a helluva lot, but not everything. And I'm not convinced that science has a monopoly on the truth. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" indeed. Maybe we'll explain it all someday, but right now? No way. Is it really awful to consider other explanations? I don't think so. (And considering some of the things that have happened to me in recent months, words like "coincidence" no longer need apply, as they're not nearly up to the task--so what do we call it next?)

* You quote B5, so I shall as well. One of my favorites from G'Kar:

"If I take a lamp and shine toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume the light on the wall is God, but the light is not the goal of the search, it is th...e result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the revelation upon seeing it. Similarly, someone who does not search, who does not bring a lantern with him, sees nothing. What we perceive as God is the by-product of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light, pure and unblemished. Not understanding that it comes from us, sometimes, we stand in front of the light and assume we are the center of the universe. God looks astonishingly like we do. Or we turn to look at our shadow and assume all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose - which is use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty and all it flaws, and in so doing, better understand the world around us."

* I don't believe in any sort of Big Three sort of God. I believe that God is a collective consciousness that we all carry, and with practice (I ain't there yet) can see in each other. And it's useful to call this collective consciousness by a name, or in the case of polytheism, many names. I personally like the idea of addressing aspects of it as particular gods and goddesses. Clearly, I'm not the only one.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

* If I'm honest, your fear of/disdain for irrationality scares me. Love is irrational (I can tell you a story...). Fear is irrational, too, but if you don't fear, you don't love. It's a package deal. We're not Spock. We're also not Daleks or Cybermen, all of whom would cheerfully argue alongside you that rationality is strength and irrationality is weakness, and that's a big part of why I find that take on life frightening. If you had no irrationality you would have no music, no art, no dance--none of the things that make life so gloriously worth living. Science is great, bit it's a bit cold served on its own, with nothing to lighten things up. I fear you're trying to take all the joy out of your life, whether you realize it or not.

I could be wrong.

* Have you ever heard of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research center? Science investigates bizarre phenomena and finds evidence that human consciousness affects machinery. No joke. There are more things in heaven and earth...

* I am plenty skeptical of certain things that people discuss, and not necessarily just at Circle. But the thing is, I can't prove that they don't exist any more than someone else can prove that they do. They're possibilities. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the nuttier-sounding stuff is pretty close to the truth and some of the more mundane is completely wrong, just because that's the way some of these things go. But I've seen evidence of things beyond comprehension, even in my own head--I have, on several occasions, known things I should have had no way at all of knowing. It freaked me out, but it happened. How can I then deny that it might have happened to someone else?

I can't.

* Ritual and storytelling are, as you say, necessary to human beings. Must you believe in something for the ritual to work? How many people really understand, or even pay attention to, the rituals they witness in church/synagogue every week? Probably not many. Must one believe in the ritual of graduation in order to graduate? Listen to your anthro prof and your own heart and don't get so hung up on what's rational and irrational. Your heart is almost always going to be irrational. The only solution is to cut it out, and I wouldn't recommend that. Somehow, you need to make peace with the fact that you are human, which means that you are both sides of the coin--and that that dichotomy is beautiful and mysterious and what makes us--including you--what we are.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Slightly ironic icon aside, I think I've inadvertently given a much more hardcore impression of my attitude toward irrationality than I really espouse or would ever want to have - for me, I think the purpose of rationality could best be explained as examining situations that I find problematic or uncertain and don't have a gut instinct on, or situations that are to do with external issues or something like that. I don't know exactly how to explain it without reaching for examples or metaphor - rationality is for figuring out how to deal with which skin cream to buy or whether to believe what some politician is saying, not figuring out what I should do about my dating life or a problem with a friend (unless the problem is something that requires problem-solving on a rational level, like "okay, how the hell did we get lost this time, and how do we find our way back to the train station?") For matters of the heart, I'm as cheerfully irrational as anyone could hope to be, albeit with an occasionally distracting tendency to over-think things until something slaps me in the face and I just react from my gut. ;)

I'm pretty well aware of and comfortable with aspects of my irrational side, on most subjects. My writing gives me the opportunity to reach out as much as I want and embrace the mythic external world that is so sadly detached from the 40 hr work week, and I take a lot of joy in all that comes from that. And the one thing I actually love about my job is that I can usually at least half tune out what I'm doing and pay attention instead to lectures, audio books, music, or whatever story I'm plotting at the moment.

The slightly embarrassing thing about this is that I'm also, um, kind of really prone to short (and, thank goodness, reasonably shallow and fairly controlled, by comparison to clinical standards) mood swings. We've had a lot of unseasonably crappy weather in Seattle lately, and the combination of that and the end of a holiday weekend made this whole thing feel a lot more drastic than it otherwise would have been. This morning dawned beautiful and sunny, and the whole thing felt pretty much like yesterday's business, and that's pretty standard for me.

It doesn't hurt that I had a productive writing night last night, either. That always helps. ;)

The bit that's not going anywhere is the need to get back in touch with a bit of ritual and spirituality that I'd put aside the last few years. I think the process of setting aside was important to me - I'm not always good at middle roads, and in the middle of a lot of transitions that I've gone through the last few years I really needed to see what was important and what could comfortably be dropped in the service of honesty and practicality. In the last few months I've come to realize I dropped too much, and from there it's just a matter of finding the bits that I missed, and reintegrating a bit. The process will be a little bit weird, I think, but I'm excited about it.

I have, on several occasions, known things I should have had no way at all of knowing.

Yeah, I've definitely been there as well. And that, for me, is part of the honesty thing. I've lied to myself about things, oh, no, it's fine, blah blah blah, and then had to have things drag out until my subconscious (or something external) slapped me on the face with it. So, a little bit obsessed with being honest with myself about things (including what my subconscious has to say about the matters at hand). That part, I don't have any trouble accepting. I have too much experience with that one not to pay attention. ;)

Gar, must finish up with work before EOD. I'll get back to the rest when I'm home.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Wow--thanks for all of this further explanation/detail (and for not ripping my head off since I got it wrong--not that you necessarily would, but I know in my moments of frustration, I'm more prone to it than I'd like to admit!). I find this sort of conversation really fascinating, so I'm enjoying reading it.

Thanks especially for clearing me up on the rationality issue, 'cause I really was a bit worried there for a bit! This makes much more sense. I think writing is so healthy on so many levels--including some that we don't really recognize/comprehend, I'm sure!

For matters of the heart, I'm as cheerfully irrational as anyone could hope to be, albeit with an occasionally distracting tendency to over-think things until something slaps me in the face and I just react from my gut. ;)

LOL me too! I think we could start an Overthinkers Anonymous group. I bet there are a lot more out there!

I'm looking forward to the next installment, though I may not have a chance to reply before tomorrow evening.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Lol. It's not that you're wrong, it's that I wasn't communicating clearly. A lot of that last night was just me throwing things at the wall to see what would stick, so I'm not at all surprised it went a bit left-field (or more than a bit).

I think we could start an Overthinkers Anonymous group.

"Hi, I'm Jen, and I'm an Overthinker. Well, sometimes I'm an overthinker, but there are other times I tend to go off into whatever random direction pops into my head, and then other times I get neurotically attached to some random idea, and sometimes I think overthinking is the safest way to get by in the world, you know, because most people don't really think about what they're doing..."

I think we'd have to block out 10 hrs per meeting. And that's with small membership. ;)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit "meh" on the whole "more things in heaven and earth" issue - there definitely are a lot of fantastically wonderful things we don't understand yet, but it seems to me to be a case of cutting off our nose to spite our face, since we seem to have two options when it comes to finding out more about those fascinating awesome things: sitting around on our butts theorizing the living daylights out of them with no real idea of whether or not we're telling the truth, or going after them honestly, to find out what they really are and do and are saying. It's like with astronomy. People were so hurt and upset to discover that the earth revolved around the sun, and that the sun is 'just' another star like millions and millions of others. And now that we're used to it, isn't it just so much more awesome than the boring old spheres or whatever other old theory somebody just made up? The universe (with a few exceptions) is loads more exciting and fascinating than the kind of thing we make up to say 'oh, but science could never say this,' in my experience.

I will admit to a few exceptions that pain me, however - some slightly more whimsical than others. ;)

1. I am frankly horrified by the idea that we might be alone. My reaction to perfectly sane scientists who posit this theory is generally to plug my ears, scrunch up my eyes, and run away and read Carl Sagan until I forget. The thought is just too scary.

2. I will forever resent the fact that dragons and faeries persist in having disappeared. Particularly Faerie. I'm willing to forgive dragons - ecologically, they'd probably be a disaster. Faerie? Terrifying, and we're probably better off, but I get as far as "I'd rather say faded, went away, not talking about it anymore." A bit mad, but whatever. :P

3. I wish science could go faster. A lot faster. It kills me to look at the plans for exploration in our solar system and think "shit, at the best case scenario, this is going to take way past my lifetime." What if I die right before we finally find the sentient space octopi on Titan? It would be just horrible!

...Blame a lifetime of sci-fi. If they manage to find some little bug of a microbe on Mars or something in my lifetime, I will be first in line to cheer and cry and get absurdly excited... and then get depressed again because we can't talk to it. God help me if we ever find something we can talk to, I'll probably drive myself nuts because I won't be able to be one of the few (no doubt all high-level politicians and scientists) allowed to talk to it.

Re: the light metaphor - interestingly, that's twice at least that JMS uses the lamp-light on the wall metaphor - Lennier uses it in his and Delenn's conversation with Brother Edward in "Passing Through Gethsemane." I wouldn't even have noticed, but we watched that episode just the other night. I wonder if Lennier and G'Kar have been having philosophical chats? I like that thought.

use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty and all it flaws, and in so doing, better understand the world around us.

Exactly. ♥ I may bitch about JMS's tendency to speechify sometimes, but other times he's right on the money.

I believe that God is a collective consciousness that we all carry, and with practice (I ain't there yet) can see in each other. And it's useful to call this collective consciousness by a name, or in the case of polytheism, many names.

Same kind of thing, yes. I'm just constantly debating how to express it, both in writing and in my personal life, and how... friendly, I'm willing to get with it in terms of metaphor. It seems presumptuous to press my ideas of gods onto the universe, sometimes, but then other times I figure that's the best I can do, and no one's likely to mind. It's a process.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

This sounds very similar to a lot of what I've arrived at: reverence and wonder towards the universe, without any need to construct a religion around it. I've been known to describe myself as a "spiritual agnostic"¹, if that makes any sense, and your tendency towards animism sounds familiar too - to the extent that I'm willing to profess a belief in any number of gods, I tend to fall to one of two extremes, and one of them is omniexistence. When your gods don't just inhabit or create the universe, but are the universe, the simple act of appreciating the beauty around you is a form of worship - and the only one I've ever really felt I've needed.

The other extreme tends to be that of the clockmaker deity, putting everything in place with a set of physical laws and letting it run forward with no further interference. We're still discovering those laws, and appreciating the beauty and elegance of the mathematics and physics that make up the world is the same sort of worship that I mentioned above. Many scientist believers have referred to this as some variation on "knowing the mind of God", and I find the idea of doing so with science to be beautiful.

After all, if the universe was created by some number of intelligent beings, I believe it was done so in accordance with natural laws, not in spite of them. If I were a deity looking to create life, I could think of no more elegant way to do so than to put the pieces in place and let evolution take its course - especially because then I could be as delighted and surprised by the results of my own creation as anyone else.

Anyway, though - I think ritual without religion is entirely possible. I see ritual all over the place. Everywhere from gatherings for birthdays and seeing the new year in, to the procedures we follow when starting up games. I've started learning Mah-Jong recently, and the sense of ritual and tradition is wonderful.² My team at work has a very particular rhythm to the way we do work - a "sprint" starts on a Monday, through fourteen work days ending on the Thursday of the third week, and then that Friday is a day of reflection on the past sprint and planning for the next one. It's not quite ingrained enough for me to call it "ritual" yet - and we're still constantly revisiting and revising the process - but the patterns and rhythms in life bear recognizing and observing all the same.

If your rituals profess beliefs that you don't hold, then maybe it's time to revise your rituals. But there is so much wonder in the world as we know it - and, as you say, so many stories to be told and recognized and passed on - that I hardly think religion is necessary for a strong sense of ritual.

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1 I also used to describe myself as a "Taoist Discordian", and recently decided I was more "lapsed Discordian" than active, so take my self-identification with a grain of salt. Like I do. :D

2 One of the reasons I enjoy casinos so much is that there's such a "just-so" way of doing everything - it may be a carefully-designed and well-maintained procedure to separate as much money from their customers as possible, but it still has the sense of ritual to me.