Core Beliefs

 

What are my beliefs? Everyone believes in something whether they know it or not. I don't necessarily identify or prescribe with any one religion, yet I wouldn't say I'm an atheist either. I wouldn't even say I'm agnostic, since that again kind of puts me  into some sort of classification but maybe I could say it's what I'm closest to. When I say everyone believes in something whether they know it or not, I mean everyone's mind has been molded and shaped by culture and experience that has influenced the mental model they have for reality and existence whether they are cognizant of it or not.

Belief systems influence behavior, certain models allow for certain types of behavior. I think maybe my behavior borrows from an assortment of different belief systems. Some wisdom from Christianity, Sufism, esoteric magick schools, a lot of rationalist (and irrationalist) philosophies, Buddhism of different sects, Hinduism... many people seem to be influenced by the fear of damnation of an eternity in hell and the elation of the possibility of forever in heaven and bliss. 

Hell and heaven I think in any case is something we create in our own minds. Its not entirely an external phenomena. I think if your mind was pure and you had the right perspective, you could look at the most damning horrible situation in a certain light such that it was blissful, and conversely if your mind wasn't you could exist in the most heavenly wonderful environment and still think it a sort of hell depending on your perspective. In either case, I wouldn't want to spend eternity in a heaven or a hell, maybe time in a heaven but if you can't leave heaven does that just make it a fancy prison then? 

I am reminded of Rabia of Basra, a Sufi mystic who has a quote on the purity of ones hear that I identify with somewhat. One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a pot of fire in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said, "I want to put out the fires of hell, and burn down the rewards of paradise. They block the way to Allah. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of Allah." In a sense there is something here that is interesting. We should act out of the purity of our hearts and not out of fear of punishment or promise of reward.

  

I don't want to be a good person and be compassionate to others because I will get some reward later down the line, I do it because *I* want to do it (maybe here then, What is the *I* spoken of? After all this *I* has been influenced by culture, biology, and so many other factors and overall might itself merely exist as an illusion). I don't want to be the causes of suffering and not be a bad person because I'm afraid I will be punished, I don't want to be the cause of someones suffering because *I* don't like causing other people suffering.

 

Whatever the self is, the illusion or whatever, has these feelings that influence my behavior. That being said, we have bad feelings as well. I haven't always acted in such a way that has always been compassionate and understanding for other people, I haven't always acted such that my actions haven't harmed or been destructive to the lives of other people, beings and so on. Maybe this is due to ignorance, cloudy judgement, lack of knowledge, wrong knowledge, fear, anger, and distrust. I've had moments of clarity too where I know I've acted for the best interest of others to the best of my own mental models of reality but we don't really know. We are all human after all and work with the best of what we have. Merely because I am a certain way doesn't mean everyone is like me at that core level. Maybe despite promise of reward or certainty of punishment there certainly are people that if placed in this vacuum situation would try to be as uncompassionate and destructive to others as possible. 

Here lies a strange aspect to all of this then, and that is the *I*. If the self is an illusion, where do we begin and where do we end? I would argue in some abstract sense, everywhere and nowhere. This statement has no real meaning perhaps. The atoms and molecules in my breath were not part of my body a moment ago, then were inhaled and recombined to provide a necessary ingredient to keep my cells alive they have become part of me, and then with each exhale molecules leave my body again and join the external world outside of my body. There is some blurry aspects here at the boundaries and the limit to them extends out to infinity, much like the wavefunction of a subatomic particle theoretically extends out to infinity, but mostly only remaining closed within a certain boundary, but nonetheless never having any clear demarcation. 

Maybe in a sense, since we are the universe experiencing itself the harm we do to others is merely us harming ourselves or helping ourselves in the long cosmic scale. Throwing morality and any objective sense of ethics out the window, our lives are art and we want to create the most amount of beauty perhaps, but then what is beauty? Probably more objective to classify than good or evil. 

In a very real and unreal sense, we exist as processes in an interconnected system of the whole universe. Actions have consequences that sometimes reverberate and effect us negatively or positively in the future. Maybe in this sense there is some truth to Karma. Truly looking at my belief systems, I deep down believe nobody has any idea what the hell is actually going on. I don't think we will unless the human race survives far into the future before we discover any true insights of the deep mysteries, and even then we won't know the boundaries of what we can possibly know and unknow until we have attempted to truly explore them, and right now we are barely at the cusp of this. 

That being said, it could be possible some truths we have discovered exist in the world today to be known by us today. We may not know everything we will ever know or could know, but we do know some knowledge that I would say is closer to or shades of truth of whatever is actually going on. We do know some things, and we should be curious, but we must also be critical and diligent in sifting through the chaff of lies and bullshit. There's a lot of it out there. As a great physicist once said, (it was Feynman) "The easiest person you can fool is yourself."