Well said.

Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist, had a stroke that effectively shut down the left hemisphere of her brain. It took her 8 years to fully recover. In this video she shares her experience of entirely losing her sense of herself as an individual being.

Mystics, meditators, and psychadelic explorers have been to that “place;” a bleeding brain took her there. To her it felt profoundly spiritual but also underscored her understanding of the vastly different roles of the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

Are we spiritual beings capable of having physical experiences or physical beings capable of having spiritual experiences? I think the way that we’re “wired” prevents us from being able to know which is true. Does such a dichotomy even serve us?

Science continues to demonstrate how electrical impulses and chemicals interact to create our perception, which can include vast experiences of consciousness. If we truly are nothing more than extraordinarily complex machines, does that really matter? We do know that what matters in our relation to others and the world is what we do in the physical realm.

[via Open Culture]

Religious rituals may be quaint, a little weird, and a little silly, but they’re harmless, right?

Right?

Sure, unless you believe in transubstantiation (cracker becomes saviour) so strongly that you consider walking out of a church having not eaten your communion wafer to be kidnapping. And it’s especially harmful if you decide to threaten the crackernapper’s life. This is stupidity beyond compare.

[FOX Orlando via Pharyngula]

This isn’t a surprising revelation, but there’s a biological reason for it. From Newsweek [via Schneier]:

The evolutionary primacy of the brain’s fear circuitry makes it more powerful than the brain’s reasoning faculties. The amygdala sprouts a profusion of connections to higher brain regions — neurons that carry one-way traffic from amygdala to neocortex. Few connections run from the cortex to the amygdala, however. That allows the amygdala to override the products of the logical, thoughtful cortex, but not vice versa. So although it is sometimes possible to think yourself out of fear (”I know that dark shape in the alley is just a trash can”), it takes great effort and persistence. Instead, fear tends to overrule reason, as the amygdala hobbles our logic and reasoning circuits. That makes fear “far, far more powerful than reason,” says neurobiologist Michael Fanselow of the University of California, Los Angeles. “It evolved as a mechanism to protect us from life-threatening situations, and from an evolutionary standpoint there’s nothing more important than that.”

Politicians and all religions that claim the existence of “hell” have been capitalizing on this for centuries, and the more we trust the fear-inducing rhetoric they’re feeding us, the less chance reason will have to prevail.

I commented on this post on a Catholic blog [via Dane101]. Over the last week it had become a lively discussion until today when the priests took their ball and went home.

For my assertion that a rape-induced pregnancy should be a woman’s prerogative to abort, especially at a stage of development where a zygote is months away from the capacity to even feel pain, I was accused of “promoting death” as a “kill-all-the-babies-[relativist].” This wasn’t surprising, but I would have preferred that they stuck to attacking my argument instead of attacking me personally.

Once he started making it about me rather than my argument, I began asking Fr Renzo di Lorenzo: if God is required for moral behavior, then in the absence of God, would you rape, maim, and kill? Again and again he ignored it, preferring instead to speak in parables and insist that I don’t / won’t / can’t see. By the time the thread was closed he had created a caricature of me which was in equal measure entertaining and bizarre.

Christian mythology interests me at least as much as any other religious mythology. I was raised Lutheran, and at about age 11 or 12 I passed a brief public rote memorization test called “confirmation.” My first decision as an “adult” Christian was to immediately stop participating in the rituals. The belief system seemed to be just one of many forms of superstition, and what’s worse, it never helped me feel good about myself. There were mixed messages about love and hate, inclusion and exclusion, sin, duty, salvation, and damnation. What it was is damn confusing. I have since found out that my experience was far from unique.

Conspicuously absent from my religious education was an explanation of how the Christian bible in its current form came to be; it had ostensibly fallen directly from God’s powerful Caucasian fingers into the rack on the back of the pew. They certainly didn’t tell us about this:

Christianity is an adaptation of Mithraism welded with the Druidic principles of the Culdees, some Egyptian elements (the pre-Christian Book of Revelation was originally called The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis), Greek philosophy and various aspects of Hinduism.

All the doctrine and dogma, the moral code, and the categorization and judgment of huge swaths of the human race had come from this little Swiss Army knife of a religious text pieced together by a 4th century political leader to try to force everyone to get along. (Thankfully in the time since we’ve learned not to support political leaders that hand down religion and morality from the State, right?) The bible was appended, redacted, edited, and rewritten until it satisfied the Catholic church that other politically significant religious sects of the day could be assimilated.

Constantine was the ruling spirit at Nicaea and he ultimately decided upon a new god for them. To involve British factions, he ruled that the name of the great Druid god, Hesus, be joined with the Eastern Saviour-god, Krishna (Krishna is Sanskrit for Christ), and thus Hesus Krishna would be the official name of the new Roman god. A vote was taken and it was with a majority show of hands (161 votes to 157) that both divinities became one God. Following longstanding heathen custom, Constantine used the official gathering and the Roman apotheosis decree to legally deify two deities as one, and did so by democratic consent. A new god was proclaimed and “officially” ratified by Constantine (Acta Concilii Nicaeni, 1618). That purely political act of deification effectively and legally placed Hesus and Krishna among the Roman gods as one individual composite. That abstraction lent Earthly existence to amalgamated doctrines for the Empire’s new religion; and because there was no letter “J” in alphabets until around the ninth century, the name subsequently evolved into “Jesus Christ”.

I had heard that Constantine was a naughty little monkey, but not until today had I read a detailed account of his contribution to modern Christianity. The Nicaean Council was convened on the Summer Solstice in 325 to settle the question of man’s origins and role in the universe by the most divinely inspired means: they voted. A dash of Apollo, a pinch of Krishna, and a smattering of Dionysus… a New Testament was written, a God salad with something tasty for everyone. Fast forward 1600 years and we have the chimera of chakras, vibrations, angels, and extra dimensions from Eastern and pagan religions, metaphysics, and quantum theory known as New Age. Seems it’s not so new after all.

I’ll acknowledge that I’m not interested in expending the effort to independently research the references cited in this article. I’m not a biblical scholar, nor do I want to become one. I’ll leave that to anyone who wants to maintain their belief that the Christian bible is the original and infallible word of God. I will, however, give it just as much weight as any book handed to me without any references by someone who would counter any skepticism with “God wrote this.” If I’m going to base my life around a belief system, I’m going to dig until I’m satisfied that I’ve traced it back as far as I can go. But hey, that’s just me.

I know there are billions of people whose search for truth goes back 2000 years or so and ends with the Christian bible. Are they aware that there’s more to the story than what’s in the book itself? Do they want to know? People approach Christianity in different ways, and I think there’s a lot of value in some of the bible’s messages and stories…as allegory. Hell, I try to follow several principles that were introduced to me by the Christian church. However, there are a lot of people for whom nothing less than literal adherence to the text — even to go so far as to elevate it to historical and scientific fact — will do, and it’s amazing how many of their fellow humans they’re willing to step on to do so. Those that are bound and determined to follow its words strictly to the letter would be well advised to make sure they know who wrote them.

“Information wants to be free.” That phrase has popped into my head every time I’ve seen someone selling a set of teachings. There’s the fundamental necessity of needing to make ends meet, and I understand that that would play into an author’s motivation to charge for their work. The struggle for me is that non-free information always arouses a bit of suspicion and skepticism in me, especially when it comes to anything spiritual.

If you have a set of spiritual teachings that you truly believe is of benefit to anyone who would hear it, why would you put up any barrier at all to its dissemination? Wouldn’t you be more inclined to go out of your way to get that information into as many hands as possible? Why should only those with $20 for a book, $100 for a workshop, or $400 for a weekend seminar be privy to the enlightenment it would provide?

Access to the Internet isn’t free and universal yet, but it’s trending that way. Things that strike a chord with people spread exponentially to reach millions with incredible speed, and I think it’s de-legitimizing traditional publishing methods. Yet these books are still flying off the shelves. Does the adage “you get what you pay for” apply to everything, including spiritual insight?

I think it’s hypocritical to breathlessly advocate love and giving to others while guarding such wisdom with a price of admission. How many people neglect the best interests of their families or themselves by giving what they can’t afford to spiritual teachers? Are they any less deserving of the hope that these people are selling than those that have disposable income?

Some spiritual teachers have made very lucrative careers for themselves. Sylvia Browne and Deepak Chopra come to mind. I’d like to know by what process they have come to reconcile their message with their lifestyle. Does their message endure by its own power, or does it need a price tag, a mention on Oprah, and a spot on the New York Times best seller list?

It began exactly one year ago today.

The first five months were more difficult than any I had ever endured — by a large margin. Anyone that knows my history well knows that that’s saying a lot. It absolutely blew me away. Everything just stopped and stayed motionless for what became endless weeks. What I had identified as myself suffered a sudden complete annihilation. It turned out to be exactly what I needed.

There were elements of my life that had become toxic, and they needed to go. I just didn’t have the perspective to see it at the time. I couldn’t or wouldn’t do it myself…so they were removed by force. I was bewildered back then, but now I can’t imagine it happening any other way. It was elegant in its stark simplicity — like simply-drawn characters doing exactly what the audience would expect them to. There were a few weeks of confusion, upheaval, and adjustment, and then the whole scene quickly and neatly wrapped itself up. It was unimaginable and devastating and perfect.

What followed has been the greatest period of personal growth I’ve ever experienced. Seven months later, I have a new job, new friends, new interests, and a far more rewarding way of approaching life.

Sometimes it takes nothing short of a total catastrophe to set things back on the right path, and the catastrophe is not something to be feared. It comes when it’s needed, and for that reason it should be welcomed as a blessing.

Saturn comes back around and lifts you up like a child or drags you down like a stone to consume you until you choose to let this go.

Give away the stone. Let the ocean take and transmutate this cold and fated anchor. Let the waters kiss and transmutate these leaden grudges into gold.

   – MJK

Salon.com is running a review of The Secret, a book that I haven’t read and now never intend to. This review strikes a chord with me when it addresses what I think is a fault in a lot of modern New Age spirituality:

“Secret”-style belief is a perfect product. Like Coca-Cola, it goes down easy and makes the consumer thirsty for more. It’s unthreateningly simple, and a lot more facile, sentimental and, perhaps paradoxically, intractable than the old-fashioned kind of belief. Like Amway, it enlists its consumers as unofficial salespeople, and the people who constitute its market feel like they’re part of a fold. It’s indistinguishable from, and inextricably bound up in, the Oprah idea of self-esteem, the kind of confidence you get not from testing yourself, but from “believing” in yourself. This modern idea of faith isn’t arrived at the old-fashioned way, by asking questions, but by getting answers. Instead of inquiry we have born-again epiphanies and cheesy self-help books — we have excuses for not engaging in inquiry at all. Let other people schlep down the road to Damascus; we’ll have Amazon send Damascus to us.

I think there’s more value in following spiritual guidance from those who have experienced spiritual abundance in their lives (the stuff that really matters) without becoming materially wealthy in the process.

Can’t we have teachers who give away their knowledge for free, or for the cost of subsistence of a relatively simple life?

Aren’t the best teachers the ones that can maintain a connection with their students through common lifestyles and shared hardships, rather than those that preach from the ivory tower of the New York Times best seller list?

Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk who was found to be “The World’s Happiest Man” by our own UW-Madison Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, had this to say in Robert Chalmer’s interview for The Independent:

…ultimately, it’s how your mind relates to the world that determines whether you’re miserable or not. You have to ask yourself: is my happiness dependent on other people?“

This isn’t a new idea, but it’s as easy to forget as it is to grasp. It helps me to be reminded of it every now and then.