Psychotherapy

Psychologists have developed methods to help people with low self-esteem,
depression, anxiety and phobias.
How come they have never developed methods to treat greed, complacency,
hypocrisy and career obsession?

Get real?

“Only the now is real”, is a popular slogan. However, slogans are mental creations. The Now is also a mental construct, just like memories and plans for the future. What you can see with your own two eyes are images that are created in your visual center and the sounds you hear are created in your auditory center.

Right-wingers, left-wingers, religious people and atheists have completely different ideas about what it means to be realistic. Not even the best scientists in the world can agree on how reality really works. How can this be? They have fantastic instruments. How come they arrive at different conclusions? Well, conclusions are also made of mental stuff, like dreams and fantasies.

Is this world made of matter, spirit or energy? What is matter, really? What is spirit made of? What is energy? We're all in the dark.

Relativism is also an outdated worldview, like materialism and idealism. We're all lost. We're lost in space. No one knows for sure why we are here. How ridiculous to argue about things that we don't know anything about. We're like drunks, quarreling about whether Einstein was right or wrong about time.

So, stop arguing. Give up the fight. Stop defending your worldview. Ignore worldviews altogether. It's time to wake up now!

Rationalizations

Some people are very intelligent. They get good grades in school.

Eventually they become phDs and start to write books.

Their way of thinking is based on logic and reason

and they come up with very intelligent explanations.

The problem is that they also explain things that they don't have a clue about.

They find rational and intelligent explanations also to incomprehensible events.

They should limit their explanations to what they have evidence for, I think.

Why do you feel that you have to, at any price,

come up with a rational and intelligent explanation,

also to aphenomenon that you have no experience of?

Are you afraid that your rational world would fall apart if you can't find
a logical explanation to the inexplicable?

                                                     ***

Other people are not as clever. They did not get good grades in school

and their explanations are usually unintelligent and irrational.

They have to invent gods or spirits to explain what they can't understand.
Allah, an angel or Jesus Christ intervened in the events, they say.

Why do you feel that you have to explain synchronicities?
Why do you feel that you have to explain consciousness?
Is the brain a receiver of cosmic consciousness
or is it a computer that manufactures thoughts and a sense of self?
Are synchronicities delusions or are they strange messages from somewhere?

Why is it so hard for you to say 'I don't know' or ' life is really a mystery?

How are we to live?

Many physicists, just  to mention a few of them: Stephen Hawking,
Brian Greene, Leonard Susskind and Neil deGrasse Tyson,
believe that this universe is not the only one.

The question is, what difference does it make to you, in your life,

if there are innumerable universes out there, or if this one is the only one?

What difference does it make to you if there is a God somewhere
or if God is just a fantasy figure?

What difference does it make to you, in your everyday life,
if a part of you lives on after death, or if no part of does?

Would these different beliefs change anything in your way of life?

Things that are important in our daily lives, are what is important, I think,

not what is going on in other universes or what is happening to us after death.

How are we to live?

Are greed, vengefulness, self deception and lies useful strategies?

Is it important to get rich, no matter how?

Is 'survival of the richest' a fundamental natural law?

It seems to me that physicists, religious and spiritual people
as well as militant atheists

care too much about matters that are not of vital importance.

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett never confront
the irrational ideas and beliefs behind Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism.
They devote their lives to debunk religious nutcases.

The search for serenity

Accept the things you can't change,

change the faults and failings that is possible to change

and try to find out, seriously, what is changeable and what is not.

It's possible to stop smoking.

It's not easy but it is possible.

Many nicotine addicts have managed to give up smoking.

Even many heroin addicts have been able to stop taking drugs.

It's possible to stop lying to oneself.

It's possible to stop making a pig of oneself.

It's possible to get off the bandwagon and ignore the rat race.

It's possible to leave a religious faith, a religious sect,
a confession, a worldview or a political platform,

without adopting another belief system or mind set.

But it is not possible to change the past.

Thin places

I heard about the "thin places" on the radio and then I read about such places on the Internet.

“There is a Celtic saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller. A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted.”

Interesting! However, I don't think that a thin place is a geographical place. I think it is a short sequence of your life. You get a glimpse of something. You can not spend the rest of your life there. You have to continue your journey. You have to live your life here, on this side.

Tribalism

Humans are pack animals.

We feel lost and bewildered without a group and a leader.

We've been put together in this way by the biological and social evolution.

Someone has to tell us how to think and what to do.

Someone has to tell us what is right and what is wrong.

A strong political leader can lead his troop straight to hell if he feels like it

and the troop is so grateful that someone shows them the way.

Soldiers follow orders.
Spiritual seekers love to sit at the feet of a guru and listen devoutly at drivel.
The great majority, those with a more formal religious orientation,
goes to a Church, a mosque or a synagogue to listen to their particular truths.
A famous pop star can make a large audience hysterical.
A skilful hypnotist can make you think you are Napoleon.

We need good role models, they say.

But who is a good role model?

Bill Cosby? Mother Teresa?

How can we know beforehand that we're not hoodwinked?

However, free will, pioneering, wakefulness and questioning
are also in our being
but these traits are heavily suppressed by the majority rule.

It is possible to break the spell of biological and social conditioning

if you put your back into it

but you will not gain anything from this effort.

On the contrary, you will become outcast and despised.