I find that my new honesty to self has engendered a few consequences. My time here in life has become more dear. My heart has become more open. My passions more intense.
I have recently been experiencing a calm but profound change in perspective. The virtue of self-honesty has become increasingly apparent to me. I am now admitting to myself that I have never had a firm belief in God, the divinity of Jesus, the prophetic call of Joseph Smith, and so on. I have never experienced the power of the Holy Ghost as others seem to have done. I have always doubted.
Something held me back. Admitting that I was wrong or [deceived] threatened my tender ego. I was afraid of what it might mean if there were no God watching over us protectively. I held out the hope that I might someday feel that rebirth of spirit held out for the faithful.
That day of renewal never came. I remained the same person with all of the fears, shames, and troubles as I ever was. That changed sometime around when I took a yoga class at [the university]. I don’t remember now which came first, the class or the change, but a radical change began at about that time. I became more self-aware. My mind quieted. I shed some of my fears and began to see light for the first time in my life. That process has proceeded in fits and starts since that day.
Shame has begun to fall away, too. I allowed other men to dictate the workings of my conscience for too long. I have no other testimony for divine displeasure aside from the deranged, fearful state of my own mind. I see no evidence for a Fiendish tempter who delights in the destruction of men. The most I can say with any certainty is that evil arises in the hearts of men. Perhaps there is an evil influence out there, but it pales in my view when compared to the strength of the will of man. My worries about Satan [have] kept me in constant crisis since my childhood. Giving up belief in what appears to be a late creation of the Christian community has freed me from unnecessary guilt which weighs me down. I can go no further while looking back to Sodom.
I no longer take for granted that God exists. Some part of me still hopes that I am wrong, that this change is merely my divestiture of unworthy beliefs in order to be reborn, naked and infantile before God. I begin to feel some of my childlike newness return to me. I see with new eyes. I decide for myself what I hold to be true.
Some things other than hope are holding me back. The first nobler cause is that I have made vows and promises to my beloved Lacey. I fear that her heart would be broken if I revealed these innermost thoughts to her. Relatedly, I believe the Mormon faith to be excellent in teaching a man to find happiness and think critically. I want my children to be guided well, and don’t think they would find good guidance in the aimless secular world.
The other fear holding me back from a public avowal of my change of heart is my fear of how others would judge me. I politically hope to change my public positions slowly.
May God, if He exists and is favorably disposed toward me, guide me in this uncertain territory. If He doesn’t exist, may I find the faith and strength to follow the truth wherever it leads.
[It's interesting that I still felt like Mormonism encouraged critical thinking and happiness. If I'm fair, I believe that some aspects (e.g. clean living, frugality) may help some of us lead a happier life. I no longer believe that everyone will be happier on that path.]
]]>I thought immediately of all those covenants that I made as a Mormon. Some would tell me that I’ve lost my integrity by breaking eternal covenants. I felt bad about that for a while. Now I see that integrity demands that I break covenants made under falsehood. Constancy in promises can be a vice which values personal reputation over loyalty to the truth.
The only promises I regret breaking are those I made to flesh and blood.
]]>Alan Watts (via freshminds)
This dovetails nicely into the subject matter of The Mind’s I.
]]>It is a collection of writings from authors such as Alan Turing, Richard Dawkins, John Searle, StanisÅ‚aw Lem, and Jorge Borges on the subject of mind, consciousness, and artificial intelligence. That’s exactly what I’ve been pondering lately. The authors present conflicting viewpoints (they promise to make everyone think) and then present their responses to the essay. A simple, very effective format.
The authors delivered on their promise. The book caused me to take a long look at what exactly it means to be a conscious, intelligent being. What is the self? Is there a soul? Can consciousness be explained reductively by interactions of neurons? What gives rise to our experience of consciousness? Many were the thought provoking moments that I spent with this book.
By the way, this is the book that I was reading in that Indian bistro a while ago.
An excellent read.
]]>Can atheists be spiritual? I hope that after reading further you will be able to answer this apparently oxymoronic question with a comfortable “YESâ€.
The latest Humanist Symposium led me to a beautiful article answering the question can atheists be spiritual?. It expresses a lot of my own thoughts and feelings. It brightened my day.
I wish there was a better word for it, but the last year or so has been a time of increased spirituality and openness for me.
]]>Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,…
(The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats)
I envision my consciousness like a wave of the sea which eventually crashes on the beach and ceases to exist. My mind is just a process which will come to an end someday.
I feel like I should be immortal only because the only world I’ve ever known has included me in it. As a child, I imagined every event that happened before my birth in black and white as if the world wasn’t fully real until I entered it.
Is this observer truly me? If the observer in my head defines me, what happens when I drift into dreamless sleep? Where am I then? Does death feel different than drifting off to sleep?
Or does the process which defines me also include all of my body which supports that observer? Without my body, my mind wouldn’t exist. Is my body part of my self? Does my self even further include the world which gives nourishment to my body and gives shape to my thoughts? What uniquely defines me as me? Where is the line where I end and everything else begins? Can an honest line be drawn between me and not me?
Is my self essentially my intelligence? My personality? My memories? What if I am in a car accident on my way home tonight suffering a traumatic head injury and all of those are taken away from me? Am I still me? Or have I become someone else? Have I ever ceased changing from one person to another?
Is there any truth in the idea that there is a clearly defined self which persists throughout my life? My body changes. My mind grows and changes. The material that makes up my body is continually cycled in and out. The flesh and blood which currently make up me isn’t the same stuff which made up my body as a child. I am constantly in flux, continually remade.
I eat death. Death gives me life. I die in turn each day giving birth to new life.
The only self I can point to is a whirlwind, a wave, a flame which has an apparent beginning and an end. It comes together from other processes, gives birth to still others, and eventually becomes unrecognizable.
Why should I become attached to this process of experience that is my self? What the Lord gives, he also takes away. It is not equitable to mourn the end which is the natural consequence of the fact of my wonderful existence.
As I see myself outside of ego, death begins to lose its fearful power over my mind.
I try to live life to the fullest not because it will ultimately make a lasting difference in the universe. All life will probably come to an end in the distant future. I live now because that sterile future comes only after many people live and die. I live so that I can make my personal experience better and to improve the lives of future generations in any way that I can. The universe doesn’t care, but I do. I live in curiosity, compassion, thought, and passion because I am human. That’s what humans do.
[Adapted from my comment to a post at Letters from a broad.]
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