#we can all coexist and have fun and we don't have to convince each other that mine/your opinion is the right one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blackwoolncrown · 5 years

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Hey I'm wondering if you could help me out? I'm trying to figure out how spirituality can coexist with science and I'm starting to think (and hope) that I have some fundamental misunderstandings about spirituality? Like, I don't feel like I've heard a definition of spirituality that didn't include basically believing in something that i want to be true without a firm, knowledge based reason to? Am I incompatible with spiritual belief or am I just really ignorant?

-I was inspired to send that ask because of the Rational Thinker™ ask because I’ve always considered myself to be that sort of person but I’ve been realizing that there are so many people who find so much value in spirituality that I’m thinking it’s pretty closed-minded of me to dismiss it because I don’t understand it properly (end)

So this may be one of the most interesting and relevant asks I’ve ever gotten.

First of all, you are very very intelligent to second-guess your conviction.

Second of all, all anyone can really be, in terms of ‘wrong’, is simply ignorant.

Third of all, it is my belief as history, culture and science show, that not only are you not incompatible with spirituality, but you as a human are inherently compatible with it as much as you are compatible with the scientific process and the curiosity and intellect it embodies.

So sure, I could help you out, but I don’t know what you need. I can’t prove anything to you the same way no one can think for you, and it’s best if you just ask questions. But a really helpful jumping off point is to understand the cold, hard fact that most of what we all are convinced to believe are ‘rules’ and fixed realities about how the world works are only at best relative, subjective, consistent but transient ephemera.

There is probably nothing I’m more passionate about than the overlap of science and spirituality because there’s nothing I’m more passionate about than creation- the universe, the world, All There Is.

It’s all very big and very subtle and very there but as human history conveys…evades direct dissection or examination in much the same way that a single eye cannot see into itself. That being said, a good jumping off point is knowing that the irony in the Rational Thinker™ archetype is their conviction that they are the only rational thinkers. Plenty of spiritual people got there through rational thought. Plenty of religions are fundamentally based on rigorous dialectical investigation. And also…

Plenty of things Rational Thinker™ holds dear as ‘normal, rational, real’ is also nothing but a belief, simply ‘real’ to them because everyone else believes it.

There is the world of perception- literally the world the human body can directly perceive, there is the world as it is, which often we can only attempt to measure as our own bodies are not attuned to observe it (think of how certain sounds and light wavelengths are beyond our perception), and then there is the world of ideas, which we project on the world as it is.

For instance, there is a thing, over there. It is up in the middle and down on the sides and goes to where birds fly. I may call it a mountain, like I’ve named the birds, but a mountain itself does not exist. The idea of it, some manner of rocky, large peaked thing, exists that I project on it, but in reality each mountain is differently shaped, all of them are connected to other mountains, and there is no real, extant barrier between the ‘end’ of a mountain and the ‘start’ of a valley. They are only relative, they are only subjective things. Furthermore, while we can agree that globally mountains exist, they are also called different things by each group of people. Which group is right? None are, but we accept as ‘right’ the consensus idea that humans project.

The first step in going beyond the rigid ‘rational thinker’ persona is realizing not that there is an issue with rational thought, but that what you thought was rational was a lot fuzzier, in reality. ANd that’s the issue- dogged ‘rational’ thinking operates on the fact that beneath it all, there must be some rigid, accurate ‘true’ reality we can discover. This is actually just a belief.

The more science you get into, the more you see that that does not exist. Reality at its most fundamental is fuzzy, probabilistic, transient and so on…which not-so-coincidentally is precisely the belief that fundamentally underlies lots of indigenous and Eastern Religious thought.

My favorite thing about The Stuff, for instance, is the incredible similarity between Hindu and Buddhist explanations of the universe and what is being discovered in Quantum Mechanics.

If you have any questions I’d be glad to help but on your own time I’d suggest to you that, strange as it sounds, what is most rational is an un-learning or a de-centering of whatever it is you are not-so-sure is correct. Doubt is an alchemical preparation to soften ones convictions prior to alteration. Double-fist Sapiens by Noah Yuval Harari and anything about time by Carlo Rovelli if you want to start reconfiguring your data from the scientific side.

Just like there’s bad science, there are spiritual things that I would say are probably wrong. But that’s not the point here. The point is that it’s not actually so irrational to be a spiritual being.

Have FUN! K love you bye.

Note: Rational thinking is like a boat that can take you anywhere you want to go. Eventually though, you have to walk on dry land.

Edit: PSYCHEDELICS study psychedelics, they’re another GREAT synthesis, research-wise, between science and spirituality.

#antediluvian-microchip

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