Caer Abred

Being immersed in esoterica and transcendentalist thinking again until recently, I found I had to come up for air. My grip on everyday reality was becoming endangered by too much woo thinking, enjoyable though it was. I've flipped back into rational mode. and closed the trapdoors to the sub conscious mind a.k.a the Other World once again.

I agree there seems to be "danger down such rabbit holes", but I must say I do not like the taste of your on/off methods. In any case, have you learned anything you would like to share?

I wish it was a controlleable and conscious deliberate 'method'. But its more like a bi-polar spiritual disorder. I seem to swing over a period of months from a floaty feeling of otherwordliness to definitely not believing and back again, and this has been the case for years. I'm sorry to inflict it upon you (I suppose I could just stop posting about it, but wheres the fun in that...and maybe I will get free therapy) My intuitive sense of and desire for spiritual reality is very strong, but so is my need for rational explanations. Is there a psychological explanation for this wierdness?

Haha, I was merely probing to see if you had reflected upon this swing as you put it. And my distaste for it is just, why explore in such a dualistic way? It seems to me like you're erecting a barrier in your thought that is more a hindrance than help. But, just my opinion from what limited information I read, I havn't read all of your recent posts, far from it. In any case, you didn't tell me what you've learned, or do you not want to share?

Hmm. Okay. What did I learn...well I hugely enjoy complex philosophical debates, and i can imagine all kinds of spritual profoundities, and debate theology 'until the cows come home' as the phrase goes. But none of the glistering images and archetypes I like playing with strongly relates, connects to my every day life, and more important to my real self. My core spirituality is very simple, a sense of profound mystery, and depth, unity and wonder, mostly about nature and existence, and the apparent 'fated-ness' of some aspects of my life and personal gnosis (unverified of course and unfalsifiable). None of the religions on offer in the religious supermarket of the world really explains it or adequately manifest it for me to be honest, and what I say further on, doesn't alter this core modus operandi of my brain functioning.

Paganism comes closest, but much modern paganism sometimes seems to me to reflect only the very little that modern people can believe in: a pale, much watered down, consumerist, post modern, ironic, and god u like reflection of the 'real religion' lived by our ancestors that they fought, and died for. And if our theistic paganism is not based on some deep passion and convictions, we are just raking over I think the dying embers of millennia old culture that believed absolutely in a spiritual universe inhabited by gods and supernatural force? It seems that if we half believe, our gods are only half gods.

If I could not breathe fire into it, I did think my pagan druidry was in severe danger of becoming just a second adolescence, and as an outsider looking in, I'd surely just see someone with a very odd hobby and no answers. I was becoming convinced that no non pagan world would or could ever take seriously. Then to confound me, TDN was granted charitable status. That has given me pause for thought though. I'm still contemplating that one....

There was at least one very controversial religious conclusion I came to on my journey. Now this is my truth, what I can believe, not your truth and not a prescription to what you can or can't believe of course. In summary though, in my spiritual search and flip flopping, the middle ground has totally dropped out of my options list. So I'm afraid I learnt I don't think I can mix a belief in a nature religion with a belief in an anthropomorphic, remotely benevolent deity or deities. There is too much pain and suffering for me to rationally accept anything I'd call a deity is compatible with nature that is red in tooth and claw and meant to be that way.
If I want a deity, them i am only attracted to a monotheistic conception, and I can't believe in this, so I'm in a bit of a bind. Call me brainwashed, dualistic or whatever, but for me deity is about, necessarily honouring, servile worship - a bhakti vedanta. Such religion is an extreme desire for union mixed with a holy fascinated dread of the wholly other, and a sense not of deities as equals or guides but as something much much greater, along the lines of a life changing source and sustenance.

Take for example, our much maligned, mostly reasonably so, religion of Christianity, which in its least corrupt form is the natural heir to the mixed up half way monotheisms that classical 'pagans' like Plato, the Stoics and Aristotle were dabbling with in late antiquity. These classical ideas almost led me to think I could be a very soft polytheist into the pagan bargain. But my mind rebelled, and my ardour for this religious confusion, has totally cooled.

The Western Mystery Tradition is also heir to the same ancient philosophical ideas but is so chock full of mad esoteric obscurity, that while fascinating, it doesn't help me. It is no so much based upon primitive science, but rather alchemy, astrology etc was the actual form of medieval primitive science and psychology. But then this primitive science has been superceded. The tradition can I suppose provide a whole new-old psychobabble at worst, and a life enhancing powerful therapy at best, but not, I realise a religion. You may disagree, but there are so many esoteric ideas in the tradition that are even less plausible to me than full blown ritual Catholicism.

The crunch conclusion for me, was that if I have to make a choice between theistic beliefs then I think I would make a far better heretical Christian than a vague god bothering pagan with no answers and no fire in his belly. If I want a strong supernatural belief, I find I have to insist on a fully worked out rationalised theology and grand unified theory of the meaning of life and all that spirit stuff. I'm sure it reveals some serious character defect to admit this. Sad, I know, that I am so 'totalitarian'. In seven year's I haven't found in paganism the fully fledged and worked out theistic world view and social standing for my beliefs that maybe I've secretly craved. In my case any kind of anthropomorphic theistic paganism turns out to be the wrong path. The only paganism that continues to attract me, strongly and powerfully, not least for its aesthetic and solid as a rock rationalism is a non theistic, naturalistic paganism. Since I can't embrace any theism wholeheartedly (as I see it) then this is my default place, the meeting of my sense of nature's wonder and my over analytical mind. In other words, in the long run i'll be either around here or if the Woo Woo has finally got me, I'll be taking mass at the Cathedral.

ARgh! Well you did ask. I will be sorry I confessed this tommorow!

Ah, well, thanks for sharing.

My last post was written very late at night. Which is always unwise...

Made a lot of sense to me! I would agree a lot, except I really can't take the transcendental deity thing seriously!