Beginner's Mind - March 13th, 2007
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
[The Secular Spirit]
[trauma treatment]
[Xllibris]
[Trauma Research]
[Epitaph For Marxism]
[Body Mind Community]
|
01:51 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/59441054/5950467) [Link] |
the end of "faith", the beginning of awareness
The End of Faith; the Beginning of Awareness
I'm not happy with talking about the end of "faith", because in The Secular Spirit, I use the terms "sectarian faith" and "universal faith", to distinguish between what religions provide and what is a universal human awareness.
The main point is to recognize that religion clouds your mind as much as it clears it. The only thing you need is to ground yourself in awareness of, engagement with, the ultimate conditions of human existence. This awareness is not discretely conceptual rational-logical.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin talks about it this way:
"... I took the lamp, and leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came -- arising from I know not where -- the current which I dare to call my life."
And this leads to the state of mind described by Shunryu Suzuki:
"Because you think you have body or mind, you have very lonely feelings. But when you realize that everything is just a flashing into the vast universe, then you become very strong and your existence becomes very meaningful." [Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind]
GETTING TO AWARENESS
Some people come by it naturally. They just have interior clarity. Most of us have to work for it because we had normal child-rearing, which produced normal child-rearing traumas, and so our interior insight is clouded by the residue of trauma imprints.
In order to remedy this condition -- as we now know, as only recently has been discovered by trauma treatment research -- we only need to "make friends with ourselves" by "sitting". I am talking about a particular kind of sitting, not exactly the same as zen. I call it "therapeutic mindfulness accompanied by a highly-developed inner body sense." http://www.thesecularspirit.com/thesittingroom.html
Clearing out trauma imprints gives you that realization Suzuki Roshi talks about. Since everything IS just a flashing into the vast universe, then you have more choices than you ever thoight you had otherwise.
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
michaeldee's journal