The Philosopher in the Neuroscientist

Another golden nugget from Seed Magazine (If you are at all interested in science, do yourself a favor and go to www.seedmagazine.com and subscribe! Seed Media Group is also behind Science Blogs, see link @ right), the following is the following taken from the segment on Neuroscientist Sam Harris in the article "Year in Science: Icons":

"While there is interesting work to be done in the philosophy of mind, philosophers are now very much beholden to the work of neuroscientists.” Sam Harris

Fantastic thing to say.
(The entire segment on Harris begins here: http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2005/12/year_in_science_icons.php?page=11 at the very bottom).

Zen and the Art of....

I work at a library on weekends, mostly to entertain myself with high-speed internet and being in a one room building with 26,000 volumes. Occasionally I order a book through the InterLibrary Loan program, so I can read something not in the library. Today one of my newest orders came in and I've been sitting in the back of one of the corner stacks and reading it.
Its a good book - A bit dry, but with a lot of value to its contents.
There are many side-notes in the book, important single points from the main body of the text. They are quite "guiding", and I thought I'd share a few.

"The seer and the seen exist only in confusion. There is only the seeing."

You can act "without thought, without effort, without limitations. You must first understand those limitations."

"...concern yourself only with what is happening and how you are feeling. That will leave no room for what 'might happen' or 'just happened'."

"An idea is merely a formulation of thought as a symbol; and the effort to live up to that symbol brings about a contradtiction."

"Concentration can exist through awareness; but awareness cannot exist through concentration."

"The truth - that which is actually happening - cannot be written down or spoken about. Once it becomes spoken or written down, it is knowledge. And knowledge is not truth, because knowledge is fixed in time. And truth is ever moving and changing, without regaqrd to time. Truth is outside of all knowledge, of all thought. As soon as you pause to reflect, it is not truth."

"You can never learn to act. You can only learn as you act. Never limit yourself to what you know." (Slightly paraphrased...)

"Free yourself from the 'do this to get that' syndrome."

"The truth beyond the technique. The application beyond the analysis. The means beyond the methods. Here's where we stop thinking and start" acting.

"Pay attention! Nothing more really needs to be said. Most people aren't going to accept the truth of that because it is just too simple. They ask, What do I pay attention to? Just pay attention to what's happening. Its all right there before you. You must learn to see what you haven't been seeing. Find something that's out there and pay attention to it!"

"You see with your mind. Your mind and body work togather. When your body is tense, your mind is tense, 'sticky' also. And when your mind is tense, so is your vision."

"The only true limit is in the body's nervous system. Anything less implies interference from lack of attention."

"Any time you plan for action based on an idea, what happens? When you actually meet the idea - down to the finest detail - it is never the same as you had pictured it, and so your response will be lacking in creativity."

"Confidence is an emotion created by concious thought. By its very nature it can work for you or against you. When you step up" to act, "let the emotion of confidence yield to pure action."

"Do not become caught up or attached to the idea of knowing how to do something. The knowing is not it. There is only the doing."

"Everything in this book could be wrong...
Check it out for yourself. It's you who has to learn. You won't learn by copying an idea - you have to experience it for yourself. When you become the experience, you will have learned, possibly without understanding."

These can all be applied as guidelines for living a good, successful (emotionally and professionally speaking), life. Many of these ideas or their equivilent can be found in Eastern philosophy (particularly Taoist), but can be as easily found in Christianity or other major world religion.

The quotes above all come from the book "Practical Shooting" by Brian Enos. It is about effectively working with a handgun to affect hits. I am reading it to improve my ability to affect terminal effect with a handgun.
Art in all things.

Luck

Luck is simply being fortunate enough that the universe doesn’t notice what you're getting away with.

Bliss

"Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before."
Joseph Campbell

This is truth.
For every door that might close when you follow your bliss - More will open, and they will lead to your goals. The ones that closed, never would have.

The voice in your heart is the touch of the infinite.

Connections

My recent post has strong connections with three of my older posts as well. Just for the sake of completeness, I wanted to link them here:

Lost - Being observations on the state of searching, the spirit of the wanderer.

Hymn to God, My God, In My Sickness - Being a commentary on J. Robery Oppenheimer's spirituality at Trinity Site, and the particular work of John Donne used in the title. Important for the following post.

Wanderers - Being a further commentary on "being as passerby", the implications of a wanderer and connecting thoughts between the two previous posts, the quoted material there-in, and other spiritual and mythological works.

The Journey

This is from Col. John Boyd's book Creation and Destruction (which is, interestingly enough, a book on warfare - Its subtitle being "The Operational Level of War". All things intertwined and in harmony, in the natural order).

"Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, all taken together, show that we cannot determine the character or nature of a system within itself. Moreover attempts to do so lead to confusion and disorder - mental as well as physical. Point: We need an external environment, or outside world, to define ourselves and maintain organic integrity, otherwise we experience dissolution and disintegration - i.e. we come unglued.

Living systems are open systems; closed systems are nonliving systems. Point: If we don't communicate with the outside world - to gain information for knowledge and understanding as well as matter and energy for sustenance - we die out to become a nondiscerning and uninteresting part of that world."

Emphasis (bolding and italics) is mine.

To find the source (God) we must journey. To journey we must step forward into the unknown and experience it, in success and failure, in triumph and mistakes. To have the journey, we must walk new roads and see new things.
For some, for many, the road to God is well paved, heavily traveled and the journey has a group leader and very good roadmaps in every motel along the way.
But law, natural law (Gods law), is not evident from the teachings of other people to those who's spirits are of the wanderer. The wanderer must come to know God and the natural order, the harmony, of things through personal journey - not the guided tour. And that is about making decisions, making choices, and having control.
We are all part of the infinite, and the events that make up our lives happen according to the infinite, but the roads we choose to walk (perhaps are born to walk) help us to find the right events, the right places to be, to learn what we need to learn to complete this leg of the journey. None of those things are the same for everyone, but the voice in our hearts is our compass for the path.
Somehow, I think that voice in our hearts is not that different than the voice of the infinite.

Control & Faith

One of my very dearest friends, perhaps my dearest friend, has been having a problem balancing her need for control with her religious views which require relinquishing complete control to God.
I was, to say the least, fairly blown away to hear this coming from her because of her past history with her religion - in fact our history with that religion (I dabbled... well, actually seriously tried to be one of the faithful, but that nose-dived - although I sincerely tried to walk that road, the sincerity of my effort was my love for her, not for the religion, and no love is strong enough to support a lie, so I stopped lying.) Her religion has always seemed to me to be strong with her - something that I have both lamented and respected a great deal.
It is this issue of control that I lamented - I believe in freedom a great deal, beyond other men and God and law, and never found it within the laws of any religion. Every claimed truth, and professed "way to heaven" has always left me with the distinct feeling of being caged - forced on a guided tour through a museum that I know there are more exhibits in.
My understanding of God, which I have come to through being a wanderer in the spiritual sense and the teachings of many (From Jesus and Sidharta, to the very friend I speak of now), is not of a God who requires all that - who requires that the very essence of life, be given up to an idea of who or what He is, and could do for you if He had all that. I dont believe God needs all that - and I dont believe God is a dog and pony show for any of that either - Pennies for the popper and pay for the performer, but prayer doesnt buy services. What I know of God, what I have learned and seen of the Creator/Great Spirit/Higher Power, doesnt support that idea. It is not neccessary to be an automaton, to live in harmony and love with the higher power.
Free will is perhaps the strongest part of purely human nature - and the idea proposed by saying we must give up our freedom and our will (free will) to that unknown force that made us all, to be loved by Him, is absolutely contrary to common sense, and to the nature of the heart.
Love is a free and willful thing, and thats a two way street. No one requires a lover or a loved one to give up the very core of who they are, using love as a hostage to receive that. It is not in the nature of love - and I cannot imagine that greater love being so different from all the rest as to be that way. Have never seen it.

My belief, how I relate to the spiritual, the Creator, and the notion of freedom is a hard thing to explain. Essentially, I believe in both. I find freedom in the spiritual journey, comfort in keeping myself in harmony with it, and guidance in that comfort if I listen. I believe in a creator, God if you will, who is the beginning, the end and the one and all with everything, in the greatest of balances, harmonies.
I believe in faith, as a personal involvement in the spiritual and a belief in elements of the spiritual, God and Angels, The Great Spirit and other Spirits, The Creator, however you wish to phrase it. I believe that when it is truly a relationship of honesty, honesty about the natural order and all components of it, and living in loving harmony with the nature of the world and the spiritual (in the end these are the same - the spiritual is in all things) to the best of ones ability, the name of the Creator is not important. Our names, our ideas of form and shape, of thought or speech, are in our terms, to our understanding - they serve for us, but in the greater sense they are but dust on the wind: There are many particles of dust each of them reflecting light differently, in different angles, but it is all the same light - all from the same place. The relation of the size, shape and displayed color of each floating grain, to the sun itself is almost nothing, but if a reflecting bit of dust was all the nature of your eyes allowed you to see, it would be how you understood the sun and light - such are the names for God. Faith in God, in the spiritual, that strength to believe and work for spiritual harmony with all that is, is whats important.
There is a saying in a series of novels I've been reading which I really like, "There will be water if God wills it". I find myself using that a lot - Its not exactly a belief in fate, but it is a trust (a part of my faith) that as I go along in my life, things happen for a reason. I make choices, and for every action an equal and opposite reaction, but if I am in harmony these happenings, even the worst of them, carry me forward on my journey, and bring me closer to myself and the spiritual, God.
Its not about giving up our choices, our control, as a proof of our devotion to an idea - Its about going with the flow, letting what happens carry us forward into greater understanding, harmony and connection, with ourselves, the world around and the spiritual. In the end, we are all part of the same great infinite.

What the greater good, the end result, is I cant hope to know or imagine. Many things are bigger than ourselves. It is my belief that if our harmony and learning, the connection to the spiritual, come to some level of integration we can move on to the next place, the next step in this greater thing called life - the next session of classes with the Creator.

I hope my friend can come to find her balance, her harmony. Maybe the opportunity will arise to share my thoughts with her, and maybe they will help her. Because this is important – Not religion, not going to a particular building to worship, those are tools that I believe some people do truly need to make these connections, but that I think can only serve to hinder others in making their connection with the spiritual, finding their harmony, and hearing the voice of God within all things. That is what is important, that balance. In harmony is learning, in learning is balance, in balance there is connection, and from that connection is learning – the great wheel turns ever onward.

Delusion of Finality

There is a self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Alfred North Whitehead

I am amazed that I've never run across this quote before - it so perfectly sums up one of my core feelings about the ills of society.