Photo by Texture crazy

The world has been shaped and coloured by myriads of political ideologies, cultural dispositions, religious beliefs and spiritual affinities.  It is also strongly influenced by the zeitgeist or the collective spirit of the moment.

Some of them have been good and perhaps even though strongly resisted or fought over at first, they were conducive to the right social change.

Some other ideologies were however pointless, unproductive, incurred suffering or waste of life and in the end only benefited the ruthless few in power.

In today’s world there still are general collective mindsets or beliefs, we call ‘worldviews’, that even though not directly harmful are at best a hindrance to human creativity but can turn into hatred and violence at their fiercest.

I have picked up the top five worldviews which I personally believe the world would be a better place without.

I’m sure there are more but I think that the ones below are general enough to capture further and more specific forms of worldviews.

# 5 We are separate from the rest

This is a belief we have by default because we are subjective creatures within a body.

We grow up to believe that we are distinct and separate from other people, other sentient creatures and nature around us. This belief is reinforced by culture.

How does this affect us and the world at large?

Believing that we are separate and distinct fuels short-term decisions based on self-centred interests. It also makes us feel spiritually disconnected which is partly the cause of the neurosis of modern man.

Think about spiritually rich cultures such as the native Americans who believed that  they were one with nature and an integral part of the circle of life.

# 4 Scientific reductionism/materialism:

Often referred to as the classical view of Science, it is the held assumption that every phenomena in nature, including the subjective experiences of consciousness can be explained in terms of chemical and physical processes.

This general scientific worldview, which is still advocated in some scientific circles, has created an aura of disenchantment with the world and the universe around us.

I do believe that everything can ultimately be explained scientifically but to reduce it to the chemical and physical processes is a very flattened view of Science.

After all we only know such a minute fraction of matter, the visible universe (let alone the invisible universe such as dark matter and energy), the hyper-dimensional space, life forces and subtle energies.

Existence is too broad and rich to be reduced to such a flat line of explanation.

#3 Anthropocentrism:

The view that humans are at the centre of the universe and have the right to dominate over all other creatures.

Anthropocentrism is more of an attitude than an explicit worldview.  We feel that everything on the earth and beyond belongs to humans.

In religion, anthropocentrism is the naïve belief that God created existence for Man to enjoy.

This idea allowed Man to cumulatively exploit nature, abuse of the earth’s resources and lack respect to other non-human sentient creatures.

#2  Fundamentalism and dogma-driven fanaticism:

No need of any introduction. Any religious or political ideology that is based on strict dogma or blind faith is an accident waiting to happen.

Dogma-driven religious or political fanaticism (of any religion or political view) is one of the guises of the ego. It is about the ego’s attachment to an irrational mindset which it won’t let go of.

Religious fanaticism is the latching onto a set of beliefs, the narrow interpretation of some holy scriptures (dogma) or symbols and doctrines in such a way as to deny or exclude any alternative form of belief (religious intolerance), rational counterarguments (the anti-scientific stance) or in some cases, any secular way of life (as in theocratic societies).

Fundamentalist views are very often based on authoritarian, male-centric and ultra conservative structures.

It is inevitable that such worldviews very often cause high emotional arousal, hatred, intolerance, ethnic turmoil, fear-based indoctrination and even violence and blood-shed.

# 1  Nationalism/Fascism:

All in all the ideology is ultimately based on the illusion of the ego and the irrational fear of all that is different and new.

Nationalism and its extreme fringes are based on the idea that a nation constitutes a homogenous cultural identity that should be protected from the erosion and infiltration by other cultures and ethnicity.

If you strip it down from fanfare, ideological mumble jumble, theatrics and rhetoric you would realize that it is the reaction of a very basic human fear – the fear of the other, the unknown and the different. Nothing more, nothing less.

It is about the ‘us and them’, the ‘they are different than us’, ‘our culture’, ‘our nation’, ‘our women’ and other crap like that.  It feeds on the misperception of separateness or in many cases racial and cultural superiority.

Nationalists would arduously deny that cultural norms are relative and that national identity is just an illusion, a fabrication of the ego to rationally justify its irrational fears. They would argue that their way of life is absolute and supreme. Any learned man would see the shallowness and outright stupidity of this.

Nationalism is the cry of the collective ego to keep away the different and the unknown and safeguard that which is known – that which they can identify with.

But identity is the word of the ego. Identity equals attachment. To identify yourself with something or someone is to attach yourself to that something in a way that you would be very emotionally upset if that attachment is undermined or shown to be inauthentic.

Related posts:

1. Save the World: Live in Balance & Inner Harmony
2. Experiments in Faith and leaps of Science

Photo by Noel A.Tanner

One of the biggest ongoing debates in the last two centuries is definitely the one between the conflicting views of faith and science.

For too long now it seems that these views are not only irreconcilable but mutually exclusive. In simplistic terms, faith is commonly associated with the belief in a divine power which is not grounded in the senses, experience or reason. Science, on the other hand, is associated with the objective inquiry into the nature of the universe through experimentation, critical assessment, logic and reason.

Mixed messages of faith:

I was brought up in an ultra-conservative Roman Catholic country with a very fine line of divide between church and state. As a young inquisitive mind growing up in that cultural background I had learned to despise all those authoritative arguments about faith, dogma, and the narrow worldview of catholic doctrine they used to teach us at school.

I remember arguing with the priest that use to teach us religion class (which was compulsory of course) about the irrationality and blindness of dogma and he’d always answer with the same old answer – “It’s a matter of faith”. I used to hate that answer. I thought it was such an excuse for an answer when you don’t have enough reasons to back your arguments.

This is what mostly creates the conflict between reason and faith. It’s the reluctance of some people to have faith understood and assessed with a more evaluative undertone. They say that’s impossible because reason and faith are incompatible. Faith is faith and that’s the end of it.

Faith has another side though – a much more positive one which I have come to understand under a different light.

A broader understanding of faith:

I have described the dark side of faith as that irrational and dogmatic standpoint sometimes verging on fundamentalism and intolerance at its extreme fringes.

The thing is that faith is very often associated with religious loyalty rather than spirituality. It’s about the faith in God, the teaching of the scriptures, deities or the sacred laws of some religion or other. This again can be dangerous and self-defeating because people having faith in this sense run the risk of attaching themselves to some idea which is not authentically their own but as portrayed by the religious institution they belong to.

But I think that there is another aspect of faith which needs to be understood: One which is more religion-neutral in the sense that it shares a common characteristic amongst different faiths.

Faith is when your heart and mind are set firm in some direction even though the feedback you get from your current circumstances point elsewhere.

This is what is called a leap of faith. It is the ability to leap beyond the walls of your current reality and keep your mind and heart focused on a different one even though it is incredibly hard to do considering that circumstances can be pretty adversary at times.

Ask and it will be given to you:

Another important thing about faith which is very often not considered is that people of faith have the implicit understanding that their consciousness, through their prayers, believing, asking or wanting is a determining factor of how things unfold in their lives.

That is to say that one’s beliefs and intentions affects the way the future unfolds in the physical world. Their asking initiates a process which is then answered to and taken care of by that divine force they have faith in – God, the universe, etc.

In the words of Luke the evangelist: “Ask and it will be given to you…”

Experiments in Faith and Intention:

If you ever heard about the Intention experiment , you would have already guessed where I am getting at.

The intention experiment is probably one of the largest and most interesting experiments happening at the moment. Thousands of people from around the globe are participating in this collective experiment in which the participants are asked to focus their intentions at the same time on a particular object or outcome such as the healing of an organism.

The experiment started with small objectives such as having a hundred meditators focusing their mind on a picture of a plant’s leaf in a laboratory thousands of miles away. Special measurements and photography then verified if there were any positive effects on it which in almost every case it resulted that it did.

Then the website started putting up cases every week of people having some sort of problems such as terminal illnesses and participants enrolled in the experiment are asked to put their focus on the person with the intention to heal him/her.

The project is founded and led by journalist and writer Lynn McTaggart, author of ‘The Field’, ‘Living with Intention’ and ‘The Intention experiment’.

McTaggart’s idea is based on her scientifically oriented inquiry about the power of intentions as she studied and interviewed master healers, Quantum physicists, Buddhist monks and Qi Gong masters around the globe. Her findings point at the astounding relation between consciousness and the universe and to the increasingly popular notion that consciousness affects matter. (The experiment became also part of the main plot in Dan Brown’s latest book ‘The lost symbol’)

Having faith in the laboratory:

One thing which would be very interesting to find out in such experiments is whether people with a strong faith are better ‘intenders’ than those that are non-believers. A controlled experiment such as in the ones carried out in the intention experiment can be set up and the data properly analyzed to check out for any significant results.

I have a feeling that such experiments would show that people with strong faith have a significantly higher success rate at intending an outcome than those that do not or the control group.

But this is not all there is to it. It would clearly show an important feature of faith which has been disregarded – the idea that faith is deeply tied to the phenomenon of consciousness and like consciousness it stands the chance of being understood in a richer and more holistic way as our view of science evolves.

The old view of science is dying:

Back to Science.   In the post-war era a strict view of science known as the ‘classical view of science’ emerged. This view, which is now making way for a broader and richer paradigm, can be summarized in the three following relevant points:

• The world of objects and natural phenomena are separate and independent from us, the observers.
• Only knowledge ultimately based on empirical observation is scientifically valid and the data extracted is objective and value-free.
• Any phenomena can be explained by reducing it to the lowest-level material processes such as chemical and physical processes – a view known as reductionism.

The great scientific leap forward:

Since the birth of Quantum Physics till present, new evidence has shown that all the three points above are wrong. Physicists studying phenomena down at the level of the smallest particles in the universe have realized that:

• Our mere observation influences the outcome of the experiment. Hence consciousness is intrinsically interdependent with the physical world.
• Knowledge and data are not completely objective and value-free since our subjectivity plays a part in it.
• There are other dimensions of reality apart from our 3-dimensional physical one and hence our understanding of phenomena cannot be reduced to only those dimensions.

New bridges are being built:

What was once a big rift between Science and faith will start to narrow down. As paradigms change and old views are abandoned, both sides are starting to move towards each other until the conflict will start to ease and the line of divide blurs out.

On the one hand, faith is standing a better chance of being understood as a natural rather than super-natural phenomenon and its relations to consciousness given wider attention.

On the other hand, the general scientific view has been changing in the past few decades from one in which reality is flattened to its underlying physical and chemical processes, to one in which the conscious effect of the observer on reality is embraced.

Time will tell.

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Related posts:

1. 5 ‘World views’ the world can do without

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence” Aristotle

Photo by Hadrien

Every living being in this world seeks happiness whether s/he is aware of it or not.  It is the meaning and purpose of life as Aristotle had noted.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I hear you say. Yet is it really that obvious I dare ask again?

If it were that obvious why aren’t billion of dollars being spent in researching the ‘Science of Happiness’? Why aren’t political systems based on the pursuit, achievement and safeguarding of Happiness? Why aren’t there too many religions that instead of attaching themselves to Dogma and authority reorient their beliefs on the basic Human need of Happiness? Why isn’t Happiness a shared point of reference between political, ideological and International transactions?

Something is not that obviously straight forward to me.

A New Earth & Eckhart Tolle

The answers came from a book that I have read during the last year or so and which has profoundly influenced my perspective on life. The book is Eckhart Tolle’s  A New Earth.  Written by a real contemporary Spiritual Master, the book touches on many insightful and profound truths that seem to unknowingly spark off something inside the reader. There is that “A Ha! So that’s what it is!” kind of feeling in everyone who I know has read the book, including myself.

One of these insights is the fact that the human mind is by default dysfunctional since it is caught by the grips of the ego consciousness. The ego consciousness is that little Mr. Hyde in us that sabotages our every attempt to break free from our old patterns of behavior or self-destructive habits such as negative thinking, limiting and self-defeating thoughts, anger, greed & the incessant desire for having more than others and being better than others.

The Ego & its subconscious machinery

The ego-consciousness makes us self-absorbed and self-centered. It makes us blind and shortsighted. It makes us feel special and cut off from the rest.

There is always that ‘I and others’ or ‘’us and them’ kind of standpoint which breeds other negative repercussions such as prejudice, labeling, intolerance, hatred, etc. The ego consciousness is also a trickster. It comes up with apparently rational arguments in our ‘self-talking’ such as to justify our dysfunctional beliefs and subconscious irrational fears.

The Collective Ego

On a social level, the ego has its collective presence too. The world news is such a testimony to that. Everyday we hear about mass attacks on human lives from religious extremists with fundamentalist beliefs, violence spurred by racial or ethnic hatred and intolerance, political standoffs between countries due to a clash of ideologies and cultures.

This is the collective ego at work that makes us perceive the world through a self-centered orientation, making us narrow minded and blind to the needs and rights of others. We attach ourselves blindly to the shallowness of our own self-created and self-perpetuated system of beliefs & values in such a way that change and acceptance become the worst enemies for the ego because they threaten to uncover its covert trickery and end its reign.

The Transcendental Self

On the other end of Human nature there is what is often referred to as the Transcendental self. This is the nemesis of the ego. It is the part of us which transcends beyond the limited and self-centered vision of the ego and gains insights into the real nature of things without being obscured by the delusions of mind. It is free from attachment to thought.

The Transcendental self is not rooted in the conditioning of past habits or future worries but is rooted in the now, in the only moment which is ever real because everything happens in the now. Tying oneself to the past or future will only bring stress and anxiety while it forces us to live our lives on autopilot (which is the opposite of being awake).

The Transcendental self is not self-absorbed. Its vision is wider and feels and accepts that s/he is part of the universal being. S/he understands that all life is interconnected at some level and that all our actions have consequences which incur other consequences in an interdependent Universe of cause and effect.

A person who has transcended beyond his limiting ego-centric view on life is a person who is self-actualizing, takes his destiny in his own hands and co-creates his life rather than just reacting to it with worry, anger, guilt or attachment.

The Reactive vs. The Creative self

Two people can behave quite differently in a same situation. Imagine a situation whereby a man, Mr.A is driving along his way when some other guy thoughtlessly but abusively drives in the main road from a side street and almost makes Mr.A loose control of his car and send him into a possible life-threatening accident.

Mr.A, after getting out of his shock, hoots the horn at the other guy which promptly and cheekily replies with his middle finger. Mr.A gets wrathful to the point of foam in his mouth and steam coming out from his ears. He chases him, swears at him, hoots at him, swerves on him, calls him names, and after a long ride completely off route where he was going, finally decides to call off the chase.

But that’s not the end of it. On the remainder of his trip Mr.A drives with thoughts of revenge, anger, frustration, disbelief and then spends the rest of the day having a mental picture of the guy with all the things he could have said or done to him. Not to mention, the physiological stress and harm, Mr.A wasted his day by running a very vivid and negative documentary in his head.

Now imagine the same situation happening to Mr.B. Car comes out, Mr.B tries to avoid him, takes in a deep breath, makes sure he has full control of the car and himself, slows down then drives off just to forget about it as soon as he turns on the first corner.

Mr.A and Mr.B were victims of the same circumstances but while Mr.A held himself hostage of his own ego, Mr.B was free and made a choice not to hassle himself with the emotion arousing thoughts for the rest of his day.

The Unhappy Ego

The ego-driven self is locked into a powerless state of dysfunction and is very limited in finding happiness. It always wants the next best thing hence eternally dissatisfied with what it has. There is no appreciation of the present moment.

The ego loves a reaction as shown in the case of Mr.A. It feeds on it like a vampire feeds on blood. It is reactive rather than creative, hence its shallowness and shortsightedness.

It reacts as soon as it sees someone else being better than itself or to someone who said or did something that arouses a negative emotion. It will attempt its very best to react to the other person’s actions by trying to win over an argument with intellectual prowess, bitch back, pass on demeaning and insulting remarks, do or say something to show his/her superiority at something and so on down a very long list of silly and futile things the human mind can come up with. Worst thing is that we are not conscious that all this ever happening to us.

The Science of Happiness

Recent studies and Research in Cognitive Psychology and Positive Psychology are time after time discovering and verifying the age-old insights in mind, consciousness and happiness as outlined in brief above. Most of this ancient knowledge derives from Buddhist teachings but now is finding its way further into mainstream western thought and Science. I agree with his Holiness the Dalai Lama when he once was quoted in saying that Buddhism is after all a Science of Mind.

By slowly embracing a relatively more Holistic approach to Science, modern Cognitive Psychology is starting to recognize, through scientific tests, the validity of this ancient wisdom. (If you’re interested in this I recommend checking out the works of Jon Kabat-Zinn here)

Amongst some of the interesting findings, which throw light on the intersection between the old and modern understanding of the mind and happiness there is:

• Meditation has been shown to have many beneficial effects to mental health in general such as significantly reducing stress & anxiety, heart problem risks and depression. It also promotes general happiness and well being

• Attaching oneself to material objects, ideas or a narrow framework of thought causes a kind of black or white mode of seeing reality. Often this brings a loss of perspective and eventually anxiety or depression. The opposite is equally true. People who tend to see things in perspective without blowing up negative happenings tend to be more relaxed & happy.

• People who isolate themselves, are hostile to others or feel cut off and different from the rest have bigger chances of feeling jaded and unhappy. On the other hand, people who receive or give emotional support have a higher chance of being happy.

• Those people who introspect too much on negative things, are self-absorbed and self-centered have more chances of being depressed. Patients suffering chronic depression tend to use the ‘I’, ‘Me’ & ‘Mine’ a lot. Happy people tend to see life and goodness in others.

• Happy people also tend to be people who are not fatalists or who think in a disempowering way. Very often they recognize that they have the power (and the responsibility ) to make a positive change in their life.

Going back to the questions I put in the beginning, it is starting to become more and more clear to me how happiness is the realization and moving away from a rather ego-driven consciousness to a more transcendental one. The only problem is that this is not at all obvious and no one of us is born with a operating manual to mind and happiness.

Related posts:

1. Expanding consciousness through compassion & loving kindness
2. Developing Awareness – Part 2