Green Oasis

I’ve been spending a good chunk of time at Clark Goble’s blog, Mormon Metaphysics. He posted about the problem of evil. I spent a little time over the past month challenging and examining some ideas that people proposed to overcome the problem of evil.

Things got more interesting (and more verbose all around) when Blake entered the fray (I believe this is Blake Ostler). The discussion has veered to the topic of the validity of “spiritual” experiences as a foundation for knowledge and a philosophical attack on naturalism.

Interesting, wide-ranging discussion.

Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood…
Matthew 26:26–28

Did Jesus not command us to kill him? To break his body and drink his blood? He commanded us to take and bind him, scourge him, and ultimately crucify him. He went to the cross willingly so that we could find nourishment in pieces of his rent flesh and spilt blood. His corpse was the bread of life and the fountain of living waters. We locked his body in the tomb of our churches, thinking to reverence it. His truth defied the sepulcher of our reverence. He rose on the third day, free from the prison of our pallid devotion. If we look for Jesus in the tomb of our faith, we should expect to hear the answer which mocks our pride “He is not here, for he is risen.”

It is only in his death that we find salvation from error and deceit. The truth is not in our books, doctrines, myths, sacraments, beliefs, ordinances, rites, dogmas, idols, commandments, or beliefs. The truth is too large for them to contain it. It is the sweet aroma which escapes from their dead bodies. Our Jesus-shaped idols will not answer our prayers. Jesus demands that we kill him that we may gain life. He that loves Jesus’ life shall lose it. He that hates Jesus’ life shall gain eternal life.

Only one Apostle had ears to hear His words. Only one Apostle had the courage to follow the commandments of his Lord. Only his most beloved Apostle loved Jesus enough to set him free.

Kill God. Lay him on the altar. Stay not the blade that ends the innocent life. Let the burnt offering send a sweet savor up to the empty heavens. Consume the offering of Jonah’s flesh and blood. Digest him in the depths of your belly bringing health to your navel and marrow to your bones. Make his carcass live again in the temple of your own body and blood. Bid all saints to come forth from the grave and walk among the living, rejoicing in the deliverance of the tyrant Jesus crucified. Proclaim to the world “God is dead! I am become God!”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,…
(The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats)

I envision my consciousness like a wave of the sea which eventually crashes on the beach and ceases to exist. My mind is just a process which will come to an end someday.

I feel like I should be immortal only because the only world I’ve ever known has included me in it. As a child, I imagined every event that happened before my birth in black and white as if the world wasn’t fully real until I entered it.

Is this observer truly me? If the observer in my head defines me, what happens when I drift into dreamless sleep? Where am I then? Does death feel different than drifting off to sleep?

Or does the process which defines me also include all of my body which supports that observer? Without my body, my mind wouldn’t exist. Is my body part of my self? Does my self even further include the world which gives nourishment to my body and gives shape to my thoughts? What uniquely defines me as me? Where is the line where I end and everything else begins? Can an honest line be drawn between me and not me?

Is my self essentially my intelligence? My personality? My memories? What if I am in a car accident on my way home tonight suffering a traumatic head injury and all of those are taken away from me? Am I still me? Or have I become someone else? Have I ever ceased changing from one person to another?

Is there any truth in the idea that there is a clearly defined self which persists throughout my life? My body changes. My mind grows and changes. The material that makes up my body is continually cycled in and out. The flesh and blood which currently make up me isn’t the same stuff which made up my body as a child. I am constantly in flux, continually remade.

I eat death. Death gives me life. I die in turn each day giving birth to new life.

The only self I can point to is a whirlwind, a wave, a flame which has an apparent beginning and an end. It comes together from other processes, gives birth to still others, and eventually becomes unrecognizable.

Why should I become attached to this process of experience that is my self? What the Lord gives, he also takes away. It is not equitable to mourn the end which is the natural consequence of the fact of my wonderful existence.

As I see myself outside of ego, death begins to lose its fearful power over my mind.

I try to live life to the fullest not because it will ultimately make a lasting difference in the universe. All life will probably come to an end in the distant future. I live now because that sterile future comes only after many people live and die. I live so that I can make my personal experience better and to improve the lives of future generations in any way that I can. The universe doesn’t care, but I do. I live in curiosity, compassion, thought, and passion because I am human. That’s what humans do.

See Ego—The False Center.

[Adapted from my comment to a post at Letters from a broad.]

I’ve been reading The Power of Myth today while my family was attending their church meetings. The overwhelming impression that I get is that we have misunderstood the purpose of our myths.

Myth comes to us from people who have experienced reality from another perspective. These poets, shamans, and mystics have left the mundane world and its concerns to experience transcendence of the self. They have sacrificed themselves on the altar. They have died and been reborn to bring us the bread of a new life beyond the illusion of duality and separation. Their stories point the way along the path that they have followed and beckon us to join in the journey.

We have missed the point entirely. We take our myths literally while ignoring the larger reality behind their words. We believe in the literal existence of a sky-father who sits on a cloud listening to the cries of his children and intervening in the world of humankind. We believe that our selves will continue in a world of joy after we die. We have polluted our myths with simpleminded, comforting stories to ward of the fear of death and to assuage our shame.

Our myths are not about facts. They are a call to transform ourselves, to see ourselves in our true relationship with the world.

It’s as if we believed in a literal Pinocchio, a puppet with a growing nose, but failed to learn about honesty. Our religious failure is not that we don’t trust enough in our religious stories, but that we have mistakenly taken metaphor for literal truth. If we truly understood, it would make no difference to us whether or not there was a literal first father and mother named Adam and Eve. We wouldn’t care whether Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth was literally crucified. The question of the existence of a personal God is entirely the wrong question to ask.

Is there a God? Mu.