We are all so very caught up in the day to day workings of this thing we call reality.
Each of us feels that we have found the answer based on our religion, spirituality or belief system.
Our greatest solace is associating ourselves with others that feel the same as we do.
Even tho' we may not mean to, overtime this practice leads to exclusionism.
Why are we afraid of creating and believing in our own basis for morals, spirituality and religion?
With 5 working senses, including a keen eye site, a sharp mind and our drive to perceive, we feel that we have a thorough understanding of reality and all that that encompasses.
Each branch of religion, spirituality and mysticism is at odds, at least on some level, with all the other branches. Each claims a certain thoroughness of understanding and/or acceptance that the others lack. IOW, each group sees itself as the truest way to an insight as to the nature of our existence and how best to participate with it.
Our 5 senses are mental/physical constructs, evolved over time, that allow us to perceive and interact with the world around us.
Our bodies and minds have evolved physical attributes that interact with our reality and a conscious mind to interpret what our bodies are sensing.
Our bodies have also evolved the pathways that allow the perception of the information being sensed to be transmitted to the part of our mind that is capable of making sense of those perceptions.
However, what we see, feel, hear, smell and taste in our environment has to be de-coded by our sense organ, that info has to be transmitted thru our bodies to the correct center, or centers of our brain, and then has to be re-coded so that we may have a mental image of the world around us.
But what we see, hear, taste, smell & feel is not the actual environment around us. It is a mental construct of what our mind has evolved to perceive of the world around us.
IOW, what we perceive of the world around us is not the real existence; it is a mental picture our mind has created (a sense-a-round movie) so that our conscious selves can comprehend and make sense out of what is going on.
I am not saying that reality does not exist, merely that what we perceive as reality is merely a mental picture locked away in our brain. Our personal interpretation of reality. Not reality itself.
What we perceive as reality is only what our blindly flailing senses tell us and our brain deconstructs.
Remember we could cause the same sensations if we hooked our brains up to a really smart computer and pumped this info directly into our brain. It would not be able to distinguish the info being perceived from info sent in from our eyes, ears, tongue, nose and hands!
Are our perceptions limited?
Let's take seeing as one example. We see the world as it exists. Not really. We see the world as well as our eyes are able to capture images of the world around us. However our eyes are extremely limited in our ability to see. What we see as light is only a very narrow band of wave-lengths that go all across the electro-magnetic spectrum. This band of EM energy covers the full spectrum from infra-red to ultra-violet. Some other animals can see other spectrums that we can not and they, in turn, can not see certain things that we perceive.
But we are blind to the vast majority of the EM scale. We can not sense it at all. If it were not for our minds and the machines we have created that can sense these other bandwidths we would never know that they exist.
This is the same with each of our senses. How much more exists in reality that we have not had the where-with-all to discovery that our minds and bodies are totally blinded to?
And what things exist in reality that we are so blinded to that we can't even conceive of their existence, simply because we do not have the capacity to imagine them since we have never been able to sense them?
What else exists in reality that we don't even know to go looking for?
The more I examine the nature of how we know anything about existence, the more I understand that I am too stupid to even know what I don't know and don't have a clue how to ask the question to open the door on other perceptions that I am not aware of.
What about the thing we call a sixth sense? Is it real? How do we know. So many scouff at that notion, but maybe it is only the rudimentary evolution of a new sense that is just evolving.
Maybe it is a catch-all sense to help us understand other parts of reality where our first 5 senses are inadequate.
What about ghosts and metaphysical things? What if they are simply the same as magnetism and electricity as we understood them only a couple of hundred years ago?
What if we are evolving sense organs that will open up a whole new vista on reality that we had no clue is out there?
I guess the moral to my story is that we are stupid to think that all of existence can be explained away by our brains. We will be stunned over the next hundreds or thousands of years to find whole new areas of existence we had no concept of. But right now it is laughable whenever anyone makes a statement to the fact that they have a thorough understanding of our universe or god or spirituality or whatever! We are too limited by our perceptions and to stupid in our thinking to have even put a small scratch on the surface of reality. What we have yet to uncover, we can't even put into words. We are too arrogantly stupid to possibly fathom how arrogantly stupid we are.
So the next time someone tries to tell you that they have everything figured out, simply have a good laugh and savor the absurdity of the moment. The court orders say you can't kill them and it's not worth spending your life in prison just to win an argument with an idiot.
And pull the corn cob out of your ass. I am saying nothing here against god, nature, religion, metaphysics, spirituality or anything. If I did, wouldn't that be icing on my cake? (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) I think that we should keep ourselves open to whatever is out there that we can't comprehend.
I am afraid that all of our knowledge of existence that is shared with us thru religion and spirituality is simply magic. VooDoo! We have learned some tricks and incantations that seem to do us some good; in most cases. And if we stand on one foot and pour chicken blood on ourselves at midnight while saying the lords prayer we will force whatever god or mother nature or whatever to bend to our will and have to shower us with blessings we feel we deserve. All of our religious/spiritual practices are done to bend existence/god to our will and make them perform like puppets.
There is no magic. Just stuff that looks magic until we can fully understand what they really are.
I can't say if you and I see the same colors, hear the same music, taste the same flavors or smell the same perfumes. Now we all agree enough, for the most part, that we all seem to be having the same experience. But our experience is in our minds and each of our minds are different. Each of us are different. And each of us are barely scratching the surface of existence.
Sure, we've created some rules in societies about how to act, love, feel, make money, run governments and play one-up with the next person; and see where that has gotten us? We're not smart enough to conquer diseases, do away with poverty or stifle the stupid. How do we think we can understand existence or god?
