It’s been an interesting night..
About 8.45, I had a couple of Lads from the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons in common parlance), knock on the door. I spent a good 15 minutes chatting to them about faith, belief and so on.. unusual for me as I’d normally just say, I have my own beliefs thank you and wave them on their way.. but tonight was different.
Now.. before you jump to conclusions.. No.. I haven’t been converted.. but the discussion prompted a train of thought that led to a meditation.. and here we are.
During the conversation, I made several statements.. the most striking of which (and the one that prompted my meditation) was that faith should be neither blind or unquestioning, for if it is, then it is simply adherance to dogma. Faith NEEDS to be challenged, every moment of every day.. how else can we be sure of what we truly believe?
Sitting afterwards, whilst having a bath, I found my conciousness drifting away.. as it tends to do.. (I usually do my best thinking in the bath) and suddenly found myself following that train of thought. Regardless of what we believe to be true.. be it religion, science, the existence of aliens, the coming ascension of 2012.. even what it is that defines who we are.. it needs to be challenged at all times or we are simply following another form of dogma.
At any given moment, we as individuals have a tendancy to hold fast to ideas that we hold true.. and these ideas can be positive or negative. They form the very core that defines us as the individual we think ourselves to be. It could be something as simple as “I am a kind person”, through to “I KNOW the Catholic faith to be the one true faith..” or “There IS no G*d..”. For each individual, no matter what the belief that resonates.. it becomes THE Truth.
IS there one truth? IS that truth fixed for all time? Or is it a case that for each of us, the truth is simply exactly what we chose to believe it to be at any given moment. If the latter is true, is the act of holding fast to that “Truth”.. of refusing to accept any other view or way of interpretation, simply the ego holding fast to that which gives it, it’s current form?
In the search for enlightenment (whatever the hell that actually may be), we are told that we must rid ourselves of ego and move beyond it. Mostly, we interpret that to mean that we must shed the sense of self.
That got me thinking on the concept of oneness and duality. I hear a lot about “Oneness” recently.. and something hit me tonight during my mental ramblings. The idea that we must shed the sense of self and realise that you and I are one in the same.. the single conciousness experiencing itself from different perspectives.
Hmmmm…
Maybe what we actually need to do is get rid of the concept that dogmatic thinking.. that there is only ONE way to see the universe and our individual places within it. Perhaps.. instead of trying to get us all to think the same way, we’d all be much happier if we just accepted that I think my way.. you think yours.. and both are just as valid as the other.. and in all honesty, we’d all be a hell of a lot happier if we stopped trying to get us all to think the same way and say.. it doesn’t matter a damn if I believe in little green men making crop circles and you think it’s pissed students having a laugh. I am who I am and you are who you are.. and I accept you as you are and love you for it just the same.
No matter what you believe.. we should all be open to having that challenged and continually asking questions of ourselves.. and the answers we arrive at by doing so are irrelevant. Just so long as we accept each other and our differences and choose to show unconditional love by saying “it’s fine to think whatever you choose to think and be just who you are”.
M x
