Friday, July 24, 2009

I dont care

I don’t want to question my beliefs. I don’t want to change my ways. Why should I? Seriously, human beings have always been violent. We have always been at war. This is the way we are. This present civilization will disappear like all previous civilizations. There is nothing we can do about it. There is no meaning with it. There is no change in the collective consciousness going on. Paradigm shifts, Jesus Christ what nonsense. You are so fuckin out there. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we're going to die. I have my beliefs and you have yours. I'm not trapped in my own thinking. Fuck you! I try to be realistic. Go ahead! Do what you want. I don’t care.

Imagination

Both religious and scientific minded people use their imagination when they try to understand what this world is like. What would we do without our imagination?

Creationists or evolutionists

Creationists believe that the world was created by a God who has a purpose with it. Evolutionists believe that our world is a result of stupendous but blind random processes. No one knows for sure why we are here but, to my mind, it doesn’t make much difference. To me it can be either way or maybe some other way. The problem with the creationists is that they also add tons of other beliefs to their agenda. They are mostly extreme right-wingers who believe in an unregulated market, a strong army and the unimportance of care for the environment because the judgment day will be here soon anyway. It is the same with the evolutionists. They also carry lots of other beliefs in their heads. Where are all these beliefs coming from? Are they really necessary?

I don’t care if people are evolutionists or creationists. I don’t think that such beliefs are very important. However, if people around me are racist or if they vote for extreme right-wingers I complain. I am not indifferent.

Escape

There are many way to escape the reality, excessive work, excessive exercise, excessive drinking, excessive reading, spending all free time watching stupid stuff on TV or playing stupid computer games all night…

It seems as if most people try all they can to escape what is here and now. Why do we feel that we desperately have to escape? What is the mechanism behind it? Why do we feel that we have to make ourselves much more stupid or silly than we actually are?

Are we afraid of the reality? Are we afraid of the now? The now can be quite pleasant but we try to escape it anyway. Why is that? Is it out of habit? Why is it so difficult to just relax now and then and simply do nothing?

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Monday, July 20, 2009

Delusions

You will never know when you are deluded. However, when you realize that you are deluded the spell is broken. A fundamental shift in your perception takes place.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

The placebo effect

A placebo is a sham medical intervention. In one common placebo procedure, a patient is given an inert sugar pill, told that it may improve his/her condition, but not told that it is in fact inert. Such intervention may cause the patient to believe the treatment will change his/her condition, and this belief does indeed sometimes have a therapeutic effect, causing the patient’s condition to improve. This phenomenon is known as the placebo effect.

A meta-study of 31 placebo controlled trials of the gastric acid secretion inhibitor drug Cimitidine in the treatment of gastric or duodenal ulcers found that placebo treatments in many cases were as effective as active drugs: of the 1692 patients treated in 31 trials 76% of the 916 treated with the drug were “healed” and 48% of the 776 treated with placebo were “healed”

In some trials placebos were effective in 90% of the cases…the result of two studies which examined “ulcer relapse in healed patients“ showed that the relapse amongst those “healed” by the active drug treatment was five times that of those “healed” by the placebo treatment.
(Wikipedia)

Isn’t this interesting? Beliefs can heal you and beliefs can make you ill.

Beliefs are obviously very important. I had this realization yesterday as I crossed the golf course on my way to work: "some of my beliefs are useless and create nothing but misery." I have always thought of death as an end of it all and that life is essentially meaningless. I have always been thinking that meaning is something we have to invent to ourselves. But I might be all wrong. Perhaps life is very, very important and meaningful in itself, but I can't see it because I have so strong conditioned ideas and a limiting mindset that blurs my vision. Death may not be an end to it all. Maybe we die when the time is right for us. Maybe I'm carrying this heavy load for a reason. Maybe I have to go to work and struggle with all thees stupid things for a reason. Maybe it's not even a heavy load. Maybe it is not even stupid things. What do I know?

The problem with religious beliefs is not so much the belief that life, death and suffering can have a meaning. The problem is the politicians, the churches and the religious sects. They kidnap the belief that life, death and suffering might have a meaning and then they add tons of nonsense, dogmas, rules and weird beliefs to it.

If you truly believe that life, death and suffering might have a meaning, it will make you happier. It might not be the absolute truth but it will make you feel better and this is good, isn't it? You will feel lighter, stronger and you will get more energy. Your burden will not be so heavy to carry. However, the priests, popes, mullahs, preachers, gurus, scribes and religious teachers are all dangerous people, I think. Be very apprehensive and mindful if you listen to them. They might want to implant other crazy ideas and beliefs in you're mind, ideas and beliefs that can ruin not only your own life but also the life's of many other people.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Beliefs

Some people truly believe that they are saved and that they will go to heaven when they die, some believe that they are not awakened and that they have to do something about it, some believe that selfishness and competitiveness is in our biology and that we should encourage such behavior. Some believe that they are stupid, some believe that they are ugly and some believe that the skin color of other people is important.

What are we, really, without our beliefs about the world and ourselves? Is it possible to live without beliefs? I don't think so.

Most of our beliefs are not our own. We have mindlessly adopted them from our family and friends, from books and from our education. Our family and friends have in turn adopted their beliefs from others.

Sometimes we hold on strongly to beliefs that we don’t like; sometimes we hold on strongly to conflicting beliefs and sometimes we lie and say that we believe in something but secretly we believe something else.

Mostly we are not aware of what we believe. I think that it is very important to find out everything we can about our beliefs and then we should question them.

Moreover, we should question all beliefs, not only our own, because other people try all they can to force their beliefs down our throat. Sometimes they use cunning tricks, like mothers who coax a stubborn baby to eat another spoon of mashed banana. The advertising industry and the political campaign makers knows all about this. Beliefs should not be ignored. They affect our lives to an enormous extent.

Well, some beliefs are pretty harmless, I suppose, if you believe in UFO’s or astrology for example. Other beliefs are more important and some beliefs extremely important. Some people have to kill themselves because they believe that their life has no meaning and some people have to kill others because they believe that they have to kill infidels.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Abstractions

Words are just words. If you point at an apple tree and say, “That is an apple tree.”, it is something I can easily comprehend. However, it is much more difficult to understand what you mean if you say, “God is inside of you.” or “When you drop your ego you will experience oneness.

What do you mean with God? What do you mean with ego? What do you mean with oneness?

What do you mean with Christ consciousness? What do you mean with awakening?

To describe all these abstract nouns you need a lot of definitions and clarifications because all people give different meanings to such words. With all these definitions and clarifications, you will get lost in the world of abstractions and ideas. You will get lost in the mind made world.

Aren't all religions, philosophies and ideologies maps over imagined territories?

"Words are just pointers." OK, but what are you pointing at?

I’m sitting here at the computer. We have terrible weather here now. It is raining cats and dogs. And soon I’ll be off to work. And you are staring at the computer screen, right now, thinking something to yourself.

Your thoughts are popping up automatically, aren't they? My thoughts and your thoughts and all thoughts in the world just thoughts popping up without our consent. Your ideas, my ideas and all the ideas in the world are nothing but thoughts and ideas. But what do thoughts and ideas consist of, really? Electricity? Transmitter substances? Hot air?

What is the reality like if we don't try to explain it with words? It is not that fantastic. Or maybe, it is, in a way.

I have to rush now.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Mindsets

“I can’t stop drinking alcohol. If I don’t get my daily bottle of whiskey, I’ll get sick. It is a genetic thing. It has been proved scientifically. It could also be a deep social conditioning but it doesn’t make any difference. I can’t stop drinking. I need alcohol to live a decent life. I'm not a boy scout. No rehab or therapies work for me. Some people pop Prozac, others smoke pot and I drink whiskey. Stop your nagging. You have to accept me as I am or leave.”

This is a typical mindset of an alcoholic. He can’t see that he has to do something and that he can do something. His deeply ingrained mindset is not the truth. It is a deeply ingrained mindset.

We all have or have had deeply ingrained mindsets. I have always nurtured the idea that there is not much point with anything, really. The human race is mad and there is nothing we can do about it. I have tons and tons of proof of human madness, including my own. A few weeks ago, I caught a glimpse of that mindset, realizing it was just a mindset and that was very liberating. “Bloody Hell! It's just a mindset.”

I’m now reading Ellen Langers book Counter Clockwise. Here are a few quotations from her wonderful book:

“In most of psychology, researchers describe what is. Often they do this with great acumen and creativity. But knowing what is and knowing what can be is not the same thing.”

“When faced with disease or infirmity, we may find a way to adjust to what is. In the psychology of possibility, we search for the answer how to improve, not merely to adjust.”

“There are many cynics out there who are entrenched in their beliefs and hold dear their view of the world as fixed and predictable. There are also people who, while not cynical, are mindlessly accepting of these views.”

“In more than thirty years of research, I have discovered a very important truth about human psychology: certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility and closes them to the world we actually live in. When all is certain, there are no choices for us. If there is no doubt, there is no choice…”

“People are not that observant, although we think we are. We see what we expect to see, even to the point that we don’t notice things that others clearly do.”

“People have a tendency to see what is and to assume that is what must be.”

“We can all say we believe in the possibility of improvement, but unless we really do, we won’t find it. That is, we are more likely to find it if wee look than if we presume it cannot be found.”

“Tightly woven ideas and theories may be fabrications that make it hard to see how things could be otherwise.”

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Payback time

If you have lived beyond your means for a long time, you will eventually find yourself in a lot of trouble.

In the same way, if you have been extremely selfish for many years, you will eventually find yourself lonely and miserable. You may have saved up a lot of money, but what if there is nothing your children desire more than your death. Your employees may be polite to you, or even praise you for your business acumen, but no one loves you and if you look inside of yourself, you will find nothing but a wasteland.

If you drink too much or take too many drugs for years and years, you will eventually find yourself in the gutter. In the same way, a society that emits more toxic waste than nature can decompose will eventually be poisoned to death. This is very simple logic.

Some people are constant, habitual complainers. Absolutely everything is wrong and all people they meet are complete idiots. They often try to hide their feelings of disgust behind polite manners and smiles, but it shines through. It is not very pleasant to be around such people.

The question is, is it possible that mindsets like this can be changed? This is in fact the only question you have to consider. Is it possible?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Take it like a man

OK, should we take life seriously or should we take it like a joke? Well, some things in life we have to take seriously, I guess, and other things we have to take as a joke.