On God and Philosophy

Evolution is self-correcting and so is faith. Evolution needed the big bang and faith needs a first step. Martin Luther King said “you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” It’s only through the transmutation (tranfiguration) that occurs through the renewal of our minds that we can start to fathom these things. As Aquinas asserts, faith is not a way of knowing that leads to believing, but a way of believing that leads to knowing. Empirical philosophy is trying to put the cart before the horse and then whipping the poor equestrian!

Look, your conception of God is wrong, as are all of ours (courtesy of our finite minds). Although there’s proof that babies and animals have very different frames of consciousness than we do, any ENCULTURATED conceptions of God present in adult rationality are almost certainly flawed from genesis (as in both from the beginning AND also cos of Genesis the book). As usual, the finite symbols of language that we paint our rational consciousness pictures in are too dualistic to accurately speak of esoteric principles. The word “truth”, for instance, has been hijacked by empiricists and applied to a very narrow range of observable phenomena. This wasn’t the only conception of truth that philosophers originally pondered over. Truth is also a way. Its what is meant to be and, beyond human distortion, IS (ie. truth). Scripture says “test the Spirits [cos many can seem wise but aren't] and that “a tree is judged by its fruit”. So you KNOW that you’re experiencing God when the ongoing encounter produces the following:love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and self-control. It may sound cliched but these “fruits of the Spirit” are profound and empirically verifiable (at least psychologically) frames of mind. Seek and you’ll find bruv. It’s philosophers’ prerogative to conduct these kind of mental/spiritual/abstract experiments. You can’t see it as testing GOD (remember He’s not a fan of that). But test the power of prayer and the application opportunities that it produces (by following the inner promptings when the situations arise), and then check for increases in these Spiritual fruits in your life. And walla, you’ve found God. (For yourself at least, it’s a secondary concern to try and prove it to the empirically-obsessed who’s hearts are hardened.)

Painting my world in the color of language

waiting...
but PRESSED for time.
When the circular track I run around in my head collapses, I come home to myself more often and run around less.
But yet cover more    d i s t a n c e.
A distance that has nothing to do with space; like love has nothing to do with time.
You're not gonna find It in It's s ym  b o l; mistaking the means for the end means the end.
But more writing follows the period.   (2012)
Can we rise above these words, or delve below them?
What do we find in the collective unconscious besides the unconscious.
The floodlight of the mind probes away for symbols to allow it to translate the untranslatable - essence.
Sometimes it does a good job.
That's when I truly meet you.

Specsavers Need to Employ Paul...Just Like We All do

So psychology talks about a concept called “schema”. See humans are efficient (ie. lazy) creatures. Exerting GREY-power is a second preference to exerting STAY power! Our brains all aim to be on those fabled holidays to ROMANIA (remain here)! Generating electrical current in order to make everyday decisions takes more time and effort than our chilled-out psyches are keen for. So lo and behold we’ve figured out a handy shortcut - sticking things in boxes. Have you ever questioned why there are so few items in the exact shape of boxes? Neither have I. Oh, you have?…you weirdo!
See things weren’t meant to fit neatly into four 90-degreed sides. The world’s too diverse and strangely angled for that. But we shove these poor conceptions into their brown-sided Alcatrazes and tape them up. We label these boxes, or “schema” as them psychological people call ‘em, and put them away to be pulled out at an appropriate opportunity. Next time we see a dude with pink spikey hair (usually every third Wednesday of the month) we whip out the punk box and try to neatly place the guy in it. Imagine how the brother, in his fanatical attempts at individualism, would resist being shoved into four brown corners! I mean if they were orange or pink corners that might be a different story but brown’s for frikken SQUARES man!
Look out! You’re likely to get a spikey pink chunk of hair to the eye!

Anyhoo, these schemas can be activated, or “primed” by exposing someone to a relevant stimulus beforehand. They did this experiment where they asked people to solve word anagrams. The group who had words relating to aging were proved to walk slower down the corridor on the way out of there than the control groups! In a huge way, the framework that we use to interpret the world affects our behaviour (including inducing the need for a FRAME!) This behaviour, in turn, affects people’s reactions to us, thereby creating self-fulfilling prophecies!
Same thing with watching violent movies. “They” (you know, those enigmatic yet official academics) proved that being exposed to violence promotes, say, reacting more aggressively towards someone who steals your parking spot. Come on man, has this recession made you too stingy to give a brother the benefit of the doubt?! (Ok ok, you’ve got me. This is all a big conspiracy to get you to chill out so I can nab your parking places!).
So its all about frames…lense frames. If the lenses we view life through colour it to such an extent that it defines our reality, then our trip to Specsavers may need to be taken more seriously as its outcome will form the foundations of this trip called life.

Now how much wisdom does Paul’s passing comment imply when he tells us to meditate on the true, honest, just, pure, lovely and good. etc.? Meditate on it, chew it, digest it so that it becomes part of your being. You are what you eat. Such wisdom…and from a world two millenia before psychology reared its inquisitive head!