From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Fri Jun 29 2001 - 01:45:14 MDT
Michael Wiik wrote:
>
> Why I think such experiences are potentially valuable, I think that I
> along with most people are too grounded in the material world to get
> much use out of them. For example, I spent some years studying various
> 'occult' subjects with the only real payoff being an increase in
> observed coincidences, synchronicities perhaps. Aesthetically delightful
> of course but not enough of a payoff to continue along that path as
> opposed to developing marketable skills.
While I am not confortable with the word 'occult' if it is used
to liberally to cover all kinds of experiences of this kinds, I
do agree that chasing after the experience itself is a waste.
However, the small practice of meditations and various spiritual
practices that I have done gave me more that an appreciation of
synchronicity (which I never much focused on). It gave me more
of a grounding in something beyond "me" and how "I" was doing.
I opened more to the world around me, to science, to
spirituality and to simply getting on with the work that I felt
most calling out to me.
Now it is certainly true that in the midst of the strongest of
my spiritual practice that I got more than a little distracted
from the everyday business of career. But I don't think there
is an inherent deep conflict between being marketable and
exploring these things. They can even enrich one another.
>
> Robert Anton Wilson, in different books, linked both an increase in
> meaningful coincidences and susceptability to asthma attacks to occult
> study. Hardly seems a good ROI to me.
>
And of course RAW is a fantastic guide balance and understanding
of all things. :-)
> I sort of think of such unexplained glitches as easter eggs in a
> software application. If we made an all-out effort, we might discover
> that we're all in a computer simulation, but the next day the code would
> be reconfigured, the previous day's discovery shown to be incorrect, and
> the easter eggs might be removed as well.
A few days later we learn to code our own advanced simulations
and then the shit really hits the proverbial fan. It comes as a
shock when real beings much like ourselves develop within the
sim and have much of the same issues. Many of us are chagrined
how easy it is to becoming a petty tyrant of a 'God' to 'our'
creatures. Others start to get an uncomfortable glimmering that
if this world we grew up in is not a sim then we will eventually
produce worlds as sophisticated that are and will live in and
outside of them, immanent and transcendent as ti were. We will
deal with many issues unfortunately quite similar to some of the
'mind games" those ditched spiritual/religious/mystic ninnies
used to go on about back in the old days before the Spike. And
then we might notice we have at least a theoretical means to
reach back past the supposed space-time barrier and tweak even
our own becoming. And then? Then all heaven or hell or many,
many mixtures of the two, breaks out.
And all we wanted to do was ride our materialism and science
into a future beyond death and full of infinite possibilities.
Where did all this other stuff come from? Poor little
godlings.
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:08:21 MST