Overdue Brainspill
Another year passes, and I feel like a grown man. Sometimes I feel like I had too much childhood, sometimes not enough. I think of the strange trajectory my life has taken, and can't really pinpoint a single moment when it hasn't defied linear storytelling in some fantastical way. I imagine whole lifetimes in each place, see people whose lives I might have lived, had my own made any damned sense. I haven't left pieces of myself behind; I've shed lives like skins, molted seasons and sensibilities. It makes memory a carnal act of regression, slipping into an old self. This is all a very good thing; it makes the thought of mortality simultaneously less and more terrifying. What I fear most is the dissolution of my consciousness, the joy of observation and cognizance.
I've become more comfortable in my skin, more at peace with the immediacy and perpetual movement. I am less concerned with the fact that I can't simply stop, though I still begrudge the need to sleep. Why, when we already have so little time, are we saddled with spending one third of our lives inert and unaware? I diverge.
Skepticism has driven me to a fulcrum of un-provability, at which I realize that faith is ultimately a decision, with all the evidence incapable of really convincing me one way or another what the world really is. When I say this, I don't mean simply that I have faith because I believe in God, or lack faith because I don't. Rather, to either believe or not believe is a state of faith (a state, rather than an act). Belief transcends evidence, in that evidence can always be turned to support or deny one or the other state; experience is a Rorschach against which we project what we believe.
This does not invalidate God any more than it proves God - God here meaning no bearded earth-shaker, rather I could say "Godness", the possibility of God, in some formulation or other. What it tells me, instead, is that whether God exists or not is almost irrelevant to my belief. If God is, and I believe in God, it is incidental. If God is not, and I believe God is, it doesn't matter. If I don't believe in God, either way I am left in a sadder world. If God does not exist, then there is no harm in the opiate comfort. But none of these really matters, either, as having a reason to believe is not sufficient to justify belief - whether in something or nothing.
So, what do I believe?
I do not believe in a God of dogma, any dogma, or any description that incorporates language. I do believe there is a "-ness", a state of ----, something deeper than simple physicality, or more difficult to describe. This is sub-lingual and visceral; it is, in fact, comforting, but I would be hard pressed to determine whether the comfort comes from the belief, or the belief from the comfort. What I mean is, I feel most comforted when I am taken by a very specific sort of momentary state, when language (like my many lives) drops away, sloughs off and leaves me with an essential core from which no more can be taken, and to which no mere description can apply. I look at the sky, and see past the words and into the rare existence of this place, in this context and beyond all other moments. It is the sky as can only be described by total contemplation, borne on emptiness and devoid of symbolism. It is a sense, a whisper of essentiality that I believe is, and everything else is manufactured by logical symbolism.
Does this mean I am a Christian? No. I can not in good faith agree with a doctrine as sneaky and underhanded as that of any religious institution I've ever encountered. Do I deny the validity of spiritual experiences? No. But I do reject the interpretations, the vanity, the agenda-mongering. Inasmuch as I've decided what I believe, it is still rooted in the same skepticism which brought me to it in the first place. I believe that the moment faith is encapsulated in institutional form, it becomes an engine by which a few control many. Churches are great, in that they allow people to share an experience which is in some ways very lonely, but they are dangerous in that they create an atmosphere of consensus which is easily taken advantage of. It's not hard to create a doctrine, all you have to do is share faith and mingle it with language and an agenda.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I have faith, but what I mean when I say that is that faith is inescapable, because it applies equally to belief and disbelief, and all the arguments and evidence are an afterthought. At the same time, I reject the specificity of religious doctrine on the grounds that religion attempts to co-opt an experience which is profoundly personal.
(PS: this is me attempting to write where I'd stopped for awhile, more brainspill/journal style than what I'd been doing - you'll see more of it.)
I've become more comfortable in my skin, more at peace with the immediacy and perpetual movement. I am less concerned with the fact that I can't simply stop, though I still begrudge the need to sleep. Why, when we already have so little time, are we saddled with spending one third of our lives inert and unaware? I diverge.
Skepticism has driven me to a fulcrum of un-provability, at which I realize that faith is ultimately a decision, with all the evidence incapable of really convincing me one way or another what the world really is. When I say this, I don't mean simply that I have faith because I believe in God, or lack faith because I don't. Rather, to either believe or not believe is a state of faith (a state, rather than an act). Belief transcends evidence, in that evidence can always be turned to support or deny one or the other state; experience is a Rorschach against which we project what we believe.
This does not invalidate God any more than it proves God - God here meaning no bearded earth-shaker, rather I could say "Godness", the possibility of God, in some formulation or other. What it tells me, instead, is that whether God exists or not is almost irrelevant to my belief. If God is, and I believe in God, it is incidental. If God is not, and I believe God is, it doesn't matter. If I don't believe in God, either way I am left in a sadder world. If God does not exist, then there is no harm in the opiate comfort. But none of these really matters, either, as having a reason to believe is not sufficient to justify belief - whether in something or nothing.
So, what do I believe?
I do not believe in a God of dogma, any dogma, or any description that incorporates language. I do believe there is a "-ness", a state of ----, something deeper than simple physicality, or more difficult to describe. This is sub-lingual and visceral; it is, in fact, comforting, but I would be hard pressed to determine whether the comfort comes from the belief, or the belief from the comfort. What I mean is, I feel most comforted when I am taken by a very specific sort of momentary state, when language (like my many lives) drops away, sloughs off and leaves me with an essential core from which no more can be taken, and to which no mere description can apply. I look at the sky, and see past the words and into the rare existence of this place, in this context and beyond all other moments. It is the sky as can only be described by total contemplation, borne on emptiness and devoid of symbolism. It is a sense, a whisper of essentiality that I believe is, and everything else is manufactured by logical symbolism.
Does this mean I am a Christian? No. I can not in good faith agree with a doctrine as sneaky and underhanded as that of any religious institution I've ever encountered. Do I deny the validity of spiritual experiences? No. But I do reject the interpretations, the vanity, the agenda-mongering. Inasmuch as I've decided what I believe, it is still rooted in the same skepticism which brought me to it in the first place. I believe that the moment faith is encapsulated in institutional form, it becomes an engine by which a few control many. Churches are great, in that they allow people to share an experience which is in some ways very lonely, but they are dangerous in that they create an atmosphere of consensus which is easily taken advantage of. It's not hard to create a doctrine, all you have to do is share faith and mingle it with language and an agenda.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I have faith, but what I mean when I say that is that faith is inescapable, because it applies equally to belief and disbelief, and all the arguments and evidence are an afterthought. At the same time, I reject the specificity of religious doctrine on the grounds that religion attempts to co-opt an experience which is profoundly personal.
(PS: this is me attempting to write where I'd stopped for awhile, more brainspill/journal style than what I'd been doing - you'll see more of it.)