The Mirrors

There really is something out there. This must be true or else science wouldn’t work the way it does. At least I choose to not view God as an elaborate trickster down to the nth detail. Scientists are permitted while doing science to totally ignore the God idea, not as a matter of faith in the idea of not God, but instead faith in the idea that resorting to the assertion God did it stops inquiry. There is nowhere further to go. Nowhere further, you must not go there, has been a part of the debate over the centuries. Scientist have the faith that they can and should push to “go there”. They have the faith there really is something out there and that it is worth looking at, that there is something more to find out.

But there is more. Both the science and the experience of mind tell us firmly that our boundaries are pliable and do not hold still. We are difficult to map. The breath for example reaches beyond the skin and so do the bio-energetic fields. Some are sure the mind reaches farther than that. It is difficult to decide where our edges are. In fact there are definite overlaps in families, such that my boundary may actually extend into your insides in some real way. This takes place not only with family members. A good hunter often will claim that he has bonded with the prey animal or else he could not find it.

Finally there is this projection thing. I know under the right conditions, and once doing drugs was one of the conditions for me, that I am a psychic broadcaster. Another name for this is charisma. In other ways I call myself a weaver. It is music but not only music. I may do that here sometimes. That’s when it is effective and useful. As often, projection is more difficult. The traditional psychological definition is projection happens when some part of me is difficult and uncomfortable and I wish to not know it about myself, so I put it out into the world and pin it on some person, place or situation that fits the projection tolerably well. If I do that with very many parts of me, then the world begins to fill up with myself in weird ways, perhaps so full that really all I am seeing is me. That is an awkward state of affairs. It is also one aspect of what the Eastern Religions mean when they assert that we live illusory lives if we do not use some discipline to break the illusions. They assert the projections and other devices we use to adjust to things renders the "out there" that we see almost completely blanketed with ourselves, making any genuine observation basically impossible without a great deal of work. There is always a hidden personal agenda though not always the same one.

That is why scientists use a formal method and peer review so that even the geniuses like Einstein had to accept peer criticism. It is also why Newton actually spent much more time on biblical study and prophecy than his science but his science is so much more impressive. It was accessible to agreement where his prophecy is not. That is also why spiritual seekers enter a discipline, and often a community, why the self taught are dangerous and may be deluded.

The Mirrors

It is difficult
when my insides spill over
like this...what is true
then, really out there,
a vista, or a mirror?

I wish for answers
but fear them as well.
Long ago mirrors were cold
and I froze to death.

May 18, 2009 12:29 PM