Monthly Archives: April 2013

A Dance of Minds

27 Saturday Apr 2013

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The Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile has long intrigued onlookers. It’s no secret that Da Vinci had features conform to geometry. The attraction therefore probably has something to do with the automatic response within our brain that can’t help but to recognize familiar shapes like letters and basic geometric shapes like circles and squares. Psychologists like Daniel Kahneman have long recognized this type of behavior in the ‘fast thinking system’ of our mind. There’s also a more control-oriented slow thinking system.

We all know how much the Renaissance artists like to put the human body within circles, squares and special rectangles like ones based on the golden mean. This applied to features of the face as much as it did to the entire human figure, as illustrated by Da Vinci’ Vitruvian man. The work of art becomes more intriguing because our minds can read it on two levels at once: geometric shapes that our minds just recognize involuntarily, and the human features which are also of special interest to other humans. The Mona Lisa is enigmatic because she’s both geometry and a human likeness, and these play into each other seamlessly. The flawless execution does also appeal to our slow mind’s appreciation of technique. Thus our fascination is due in part to our brain’s involuntary recognition of geometry. This recognition is effortless because those patterns do not have to be ‘checked’ by the slow thinking system that serves as a control function on our impulses.

Snapping your artistic compositions to well-liked geometry is a gimmick that will help your work become more intriguing. I call it a gimmick because it plays on the involuntary recognition system in our fast brain. Today, master Atelier programs and their literature go on extensively about geometry in master works. Several of the masters I’ve observed painting do in fact create the underlying geometry as a structure for their art. Our minds like order and recognizable shapes of manageable sizes (why else do we artificially break the surface of large window panes into a smaller grid in homes?). Music likewise has cadence and rhythm that adds a natural structure to the work. Like a person with wooden heels walking near you on a hard floor – you can’t help but listen to the ‘tac tac tac tac’ rhythm of the person walking. Like it or not you have to listen. Isn’t that annoying sometimes?

This is of course stagecraft designed to spell bind us. There’s a sense of power achieved when our involuntary attention is commanded. At this level, however, it is all very superficial and of no lasting consequence. It’s just a gimmick to get our attention. Part of the allusive power of art, I think, is the reference to the instantly recognizable. At this level, however, it is a ‘brainless’ allusion because we don’t really have to think to recognize it. A passage of music will remind us of a bird song, or running herd, or impending tempest, or a deep sentiment or sweet emotion. The appeal of art in part is this unavoidable reference to something that is both familiar and also presented in a new cultured, civilized form. Like wild cat strutting in a circus ring, we can safely observe without being at risk. Art takes references – whether it is a benign circle conforming a face, or the deep pathos in the eyes – and presents them in a cultured, safe and civilized form.

The great artist is a ringmaster who has taken forms ‘out in the wild’ that we can’t help but respond to and ‘tamed’ them for us to view. Disconnected from their natural context, the works are an affirmation of our ability to control, to civilize and subordinate. As such they appeal to the ego because our intent as individuals and a society is to rule and subdue, to culture and civilize. Art, like technology, is an affirmation of our ability to tame the wild, to re-order it to our liking. Powerful art preys on our fast thinking brain’s commitment to recognition. It is also an affirmation of our ability to subordinate both the subject matter in the painting, and the captive viewers. We celebrate great art. How do we direct this compulsive behavior into channels that are sustainable? Since we’ve mis-ordered out world with economies that are not sustainable for the long term, new art can help us change the content of our liking and hopefully influence our civilizing choices going forward. Can art, which is arguably sustainable, play a role channeling humanity’s unquenchable passion for subordination?

In any case, our fast and slow thinking minds are in a constant dance in daily life. The fast system responds intuitively, and the slow system checks judgments against statistics and evidence. The slow mind serves as a correcting and control function, and if it has to work too hard, depletes our ego, our energy. Incidentally, because our mind requires more calories when it’s working hard, eating glucose can restore some of the energy. Alternatively, getting drunk will shut down the corrective function for those who want to forget about reality for a while.

My hunch is that art also shuts down the corrective function in our mind and thus gives us an escape, albeit healthier one than alcohol. Slow thinking usually checks our behavior for reasons of survival. If we are in a safe environment, like a theater, a museum or a church, we know our existence is not at risk. If the content before us is art, be it dance, opera, a play, an orchestra or works of art, our slow thinking system can ‘kick off its shoes’ and relax without being shut down completely. That’s the wonder of great art: we can be fully engaged cognitively, but not depleting our egos through a conflict with an over-active control function. The self-preservation imperative is suspended.

With art, as with religion, you step into a fantasy world where the thunder never has lightning that can strike you, wild animals can’t eat you and the villains won’t kill you. Observing art, both fast and slow systems are active. The slow system is examining the technique, the media, the color scheme, and the flawless execution without having to worry about interrupting the fast thinking mind with existence threatening alerts. The fast mind is reading familiar shapes and coming to quick conclusions about what the art work is really saying. The allusive nature of art means that the ego can project its own interpretation of the meaning of the subject matter, or reject it outright. In either case, we are in control in a way that affirms the ego. Part of the delight of art, it seems, is both the celebration of those who civilized forms and presented them to us within a silver frame, and at the same time the choice to interpret and even outright reject it. Art snobbery indicates a healthy ego.

The notion of vicarious enjoyment of timeless memories is the subject of a mini-mythology I wrote called ‘The Land of Serene.’ There, people’s packaged troubles plunge on rafts over the waterfall of Utter Darkens, where deprived of time in the light-less depths, their memories have risen again weightlessly in the mist to the forests and fields above to intoxicate the wandering Feathermen. These people have lost touch with their current reality, inhaling the timeless memories, vicariously participating without any personal risk or involvement. They are immersed and fascinated by actual memories, but not afflicted by any context or consequence.  The behavior of the Feathermen is a metaphor for our obsessive need to escape. One way we do this is by participating in the conflicts of others without getting hurt, through so many soap operas and dramatic programming.

Museums and churches are both safe places to just ‘be’ and contemplate. Art has a place in both as a catalyst for vicarious enjoyment. In the case of the Catholic Church it is the troubles of the saints, the innocence of the Virgin and the resurrection of the Savior. Like the Feathermen, overly religious worshippers never step out of the intoxicating effect of those stories, and they completely take over their judgments. Somehow the control function is overridden or re-programmed, and every spontaneous reaction has a religious filter. The same can be said for anyone who has been ‘brainwashed’ into an alternative worldview. In some the manifestation is good works; for others the manifestation is destructive violence. Art taken to this level should be a controlled substance.

Every religious person is a Featherman to some extent, as is anyone who cannot step out of a mythology. Joy in Eternal Life is the realization that the disconnect from current reality afforded by the religious experience will persist forever! In that sense, a mythic experience is a taste of eternity. The mythic mind is incredibly powerful, able to override slow thinking’s control functions.

The Serene narrative is a story used to explain the experience of the mythic mind. It is a recursive art-about-art allusion intended to help the overly religious recognize their state. It has little chance of success if those with a mythic mind can’t step into a new myth. It is almost as if we have a limited capability for overriding the control functions, although some of us have managed to rewire that programming through self-conversion (as discussed in my previous article). The Feathermen story should be a mirror for us to recognize that we can leave reality with all its existence threatening situations in favor of an alternative one. The proper behavior, however, is not to leave permanently, but rather use the mechanism of myth to program new controls into our slow thinking. Our will has to let in new facts and statistics that support the right behaviors. These data points are woven together with a narrative that abides ready at hand whenever our fast mind requires them to support a judgment. The narrative serves as an indexing function to identify the instance in the story arch we find ourselves, and pull up the appropriate response based on the prior mythic programming.

It takes an extraordinary act of the will to replace a deeply engrained narrative with a new one. This is especially true the more life decisions we have tied to the old narrative. The techniques of community mythology are designed to facilitate change as a group, where it’s safer and there’s a support structure. Art plays the crucial role because it isolates us from the survival pattern that can forbid consideration of alternate control functions. Through art we can safely explore the new narrative and its emotions and behaviors until we accept and internalize it. Then later we can sort out the implications for survival decisions. There’s more than one way to make a living.

The artistic process is an incubation space for newborn mythologies that will provide a new backbone from which we can hang reality facing facts later. Yet, instead of having an ideologue indoctrinate us with a new narrative and supporting facts, however, with community mythology we do it to ourselves. Artists are particularly adept at this because they frequently start with a blank canvass and create a world. We should all learn to have the will of an artist and create a safe normative narrative. Hollywood does this all the time, however, their output is usually not suitable for programming behaviors that lead to a sustainable existence for all.

Transformation can happen on an individual level based on shared values. In other words, the conscientious individual who knows what the sustainable life is can create great art that supports those values. However, without a shared narrative that is adopted as a community myth, the impact is good but limited. Star status of an individual can help spread the message further, and ironically several Hollywood celebrities who starred in mindless movies have taken on good causes outside of their art. It should be the other way around – the ‘mindless’ movies should support the good causes.

How do you create art that has a sustainment agenda without making it didactic? All art has an agenda, and good art is allusive, leaving room for interpretation. The trick is to steer the user’s consciousness in a general direction, baking in some assumptions as part of the framework of the work of art.  For example, making holy people appear skinny and in rags or fat and well-dressed betrays an assumption about the nature of holy work. The first one presupposes a vow to poverty; the other hints at divine responsibility of the powerful to do good works. In other words, the scope of interpretation is in fact bounded.

If we subordinate our will to one world view or the other, we will enjoy the work and go along with it. If we reject it, we reject the work. In either case, viewing art is a safe experience, and we have time to consider both without any existential threat, and make our decision. The community mythology process is about picking and affirming the underlying world view assumptions explicit for artists. They can and must still be allusive and create aesthetically rich works, complete with geometric gimmicks if needed. But they do it within bounds, and the saturation afforded by all these works when presented in a safe environment will help viewers consider the message and internalize a new normative narrative, which ultimately results in new control points that impact our daily choices for a sustainable future.

 

— Roy Zuniga
    Kirkland, WA
    April 2013

Copyright 2013 Roy Zuniga

The Will to Change

19 Friday Apr 2013

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What is the psychology of conversion? How does a military officer mentally justify actions when he follows orders to obediently hurt innocent people? What was the mental state of the good Germans who became evil Nazis? How is an innately humane spirit subordinated in favor heinous actions? Nazi’s thought they were terminating Jews for God and fatherland. Likewise, what is the serial rapist telling himself? How does violence and exploitation become a normative practice? How is a community of terrorists created? Are they not telling stories to themselves that reinterpret reality?

Somehow, stories have penetrated their psychology to the point where they live in a different world and can withstand bribes and riches to support the cause. The Taliban are really hard to convert. How are corporate workers any different? How do workers at Monsanto or a fracking operation or tar sands mine justify their daily contribution to violence on mother earth? What are the dynamics of getting a new belief system in so deep that it stands up to any adversity?

These very negative examples illustrate a dynamic that has to happen in our minds for good. We are all compromised in our thinking to some extent because we are collaborating on the slow destruction of our world. We have to flip for the positive. Ideas have to penetrate our psyche until we are sold out for humanity and the environment. Why not? People sell out for all kinds of things. Let’s sell out for goodness and health. But enough people have to convert to make a difference.

Mass conversions are composed of individual conversions. Each person has to arrive a point where he or she takes an oath. To attain a disciples’ level of commitment to a good cause will require a deep inner conversion. In our model, however, the driving narrative does not come from heaven above on tablets, or from a prophet or a charismatic leader. It comes from within us and our like-minded friends, who by the way we chose. We are responsible agents: we should drive ourselves to conversion.

Self-conversion has two steps:

  1. Establish the values to convert to
  2. Facilitate the conversion

Establishing Values

In the first case you are essentially stepping into a new mythical world while in living in the old. Now we do this type of thing all the time for limited durations (when we attend church or watch a movie, for example). This step is preferably done with a group, although of course you must do some preparation – unless you just want to consume the results of the group’s work. Once you participate in a group discussion on values, I think you’ll find participation irresistible. We are wired to contribute to ideas that impact what we believe in.

At whatever level you participate at this stage, the engagement is limited and safe. It is an envisioning exercise; a non-threatening idealistic ‘what if’ session. The pre-cursor is completing mythic awareness workshops, which are also safe and non-threatening. During mythic awareness, the participants de-construct one or more myths to determine the story arch, character types and their underlying drivers. This is not unlike an exercise in literary or movie criticism with a focus on the underlying worldview and corresponding values. The user can participate and then go their current world view ‘home’. Both the mythic awareness and the community values sessions can be fun and easy going, and non-threatening.

In the first phase, the user gets and answer to ‘what do we believe?’ In the second phase, which follows logically from the first, answers the question ‘what should I believe?’, can be a wrenching transformation. It’s even tougher if the user is going the route of individual self-conversion. Doing it as a group is easier, but in some cases where the group is just not forming or the person is isolated, self-conversion is the only route. It’s the route I took because Community Mythology was not a methodology at that time!

Facilitate the Conversion

The second transforming phase essentially reverses the flow of ‘stepping’ into and out of myth. You establish your new world view, stepping in and out of your old until you’re ready to leave it. Think of it as a migration that starts even as your new world view is under construction. The home-purchase analogy is appropriate here. You’re not out shopping for a 200 year old home with all the design decisions made by generations who are long dead. Rather, you are designing a new home. Now you can chose to build it yourself or have the experts build it. Let me explain.

Building a community mythology is not just about writing down values and thinking about behaviors. It’s about holistic programming of our human psyche, which involves all the senses and especially our artistic receptors. So the framework and walls of this new worldview includes narratives, poetry, art, plays and other activities in which you participate. Now if you are artistically inclined, you can get hands-on in this construction phase. If not, there is a mechanism in the process to charter a creative team, analogous to having a contractor build your home. And there’s room in between for you to do some of the work. In fact, because it is a community effort, this is more like a group barn raising. 

Whichever way your new world view ‘home’ is built, you will have to move in, which means leaving the old behind. The good news is that you can bring along the best principles and values from the old. However, I don’t recommend that you bring old characters and stories with you because those tend to drag you into old behaviors. Even if you want to keep some attributes of the old, give the character a new name and some fresh clothes.

Realizing our current world view is a fabrication is hard enough – you have to admit that you vested a huge amount of trust and personal equity in a world view that, it turns out, was not handed down from God himself. Humans shaped it over centuries. For the faithful, converting to a brand new mythology is severe cognitive dissonance. We’re used to people converting to an established religion. The notions that 1) a substitute can be created by humans; 2) I have a role in creating that new myth, and; 3) I should crawl into the nest I just created, just doesn’t fit with our current way of thinking. We’re essentially handing God tablets with Holy Writ. Is that blasphemy?

Actually, I don’t think it is. My hunch is that God doesn’t oppose the plurality of religions on this planet precisely because we are created to imagine. This doesn’t mean goodness is arbitrary. We have a God-given conscience that develops in the context of a community and its troubles and lessons. When we ‘give tablets to God’ with a story, the content – if it we have deemed it to be Sacred Content – is founded on goodness that originated with God in the first place. We are the voice in the burning bush.

Given the high personal threshold of mental anguish required to leave a belief system we took for truth, what would motivate a person to change? It’s not impossible. I was a devout Christian missionary and a believer for decades. For me the drivers were threefold: 1) ridding my mind of an entrenched cognitive dissonance caused by the attempt to reconcile religious conundrums (like free will and predestination); 2) as well as the dissonance caused by not acknowledging the religion as myth, and; 3) also trying to make myself and others believe it was somehow objective truth that if not accepted would damn people to hell, and; 4) the conviction coming from having had very real mystical experiences with God that we can in fact experience God. There is true goodness and there is a right way to live on this planet. Finally, 5) survival! I awakened to the fact that our decisions are fast depleting this planet.

For example, soon the jungle elephant will be extinct! And the acidic content of the ocean will dissolve all coral reefs in my lifetime, etc. It’s really sad to know my great grandchildren will not get to dive in coral reefs out in the wild. These and so many other indicators show that if we don’t change drastically, we will have an irreversible dissonance of far greater impact: our future generations will be living on a wasted planet!

The best motivator for the adoption of change is not going to be an academic explanation of a new method for self-conversion. The driver for change will be a demonstration of our dire situation. In other words, awareness will incent change. Community Mythology as a methodology has to be available to the motivated participant when he or she is ready for it!

Some have greater awareness than others. Both the poor and the rich are somewhat insular in their thinking due to their economic circumstances: one preoccupied with survival, the other with attaining and maintaining wealth. At risk of over-generalizing, the rich are nevertheless the ones who can have the greatest impact for change, even if it means a loss of net wealth in the process. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the proverbial needle.

Short of external coercion, which tends to impact behavior in the short term and not necessarily shift the subject’s worldview, what would motivate a rich person to change? He or she might have worked hard to get where they are (or their parents did). They learned the game and invested a lot in attaining and protecting their wealth. We already mentioned awareness of the peril our planet is in. What else can truly motivate them to change? Let’s look at additional factors:

  • The happiness factor – does wealth bring happiness, or are there other ways of attaining it truly satisfying happiness? True happiness will lower stress levels, a point brought home by the movie ‘The Economics of Happiness’.
  • Empathy – get close to the poor and suffering
  • A common humanity – when it comes right down to it, the rich are flesh and bones like the rest of us
  • Immersion – experience nature, you will come to love it
  • The common environment – a nuclear disaster or mining pollution doesn’t just affect the local community – it can have repercussions far from the source
  • The future – get a clear picture of where all this is leading us. You can buy yourself a new condo, and even a luxurious survival bunker, but you can’t buy a new environment
  • Negative examples from the old world view, like:
    • a corrupt and inefficient church hierarchy
    • the deception of a story that is advocated as ‘truth’ should annoy if not anger the deceived
    • The goodbye list – we should put together a web site that lists all the things we should experience before they kick the bucket. For example, a pristine ocean or endangered species.
    • The positive opportunities:
      • We still have time to build a beautiful future
      • The opportunity to create new world views that are compatible with the ecosystem
      • The spiritual dimensions:
        • Do good, it is good karma – it comes around. Pay it forward.
        • Integrity – avoid dichotomies and contradictory beliefs
        • The artistic dimension:
          • Conversion is not towards some impoverish aesthetic experience. Great art isn’t the privilege of the monetarily rich; it’s the right of every one to be aesthetically enriched by art.
          • Making art a habit can reduce the dependency on environmentally expensive technology.
          • Great music is like hearing the voice of God

Part of the program then, has to be a series of awareness sessions on the various topics relating to humanity and the environment.

The Will to Change

The intent is to increase the will to change among those who can impact change the most. Of course, we also have to impact those who would take their place. Ultimately significant change will be a mass conversion.

What we’re advocating here, by the way, is not an ascetic separation from the corrupt world into a commune in the woods. That’s fine if that’s your thing. However, separation into self-sufficiency will not halt the progress towards wasteland. We’re also not in favor of using violence to stop a corporation from pursuing a reckless and short sighted development plan. We’re also not looking to migrate from one ruined area to a pristine one (which will eventually also get ruined). We have to be agents for change everywhere; we have to recycle old cities. The bottom line is that ‘we the People’ have to find the will to change, and collective change ultimately can only happen with a great number of individual conversions.

Re-programming ourselves starts with the will, then. For me it’s not even the stories I tell myself because after you gain mythic awareness you realize they are fabrications that can and should change. Ultimately community mythology is a means, not a beginning in itself. The true source is your will. After you have softened for change you must harden your resolve towards a good direction. The key is to take control of belief itself and redirect it.

Incidentally you can have good behaviors without full conversion away from a false mythology (i.e. a myth that is purported to be objectively true). You can be a nominal Baptist and live in harmony with people and the planet. You can be a nominal Pope and be corrupt. In the end, the strain of sustaining believe in a false mythology and the conundrums some of these religions brings will keep you from achieving full integrity and happiness. Once you understand the dynamics of myth you will be more at peace converting.

Obviously it helps to understand the process, and the dynamics of myth serve to bake in and harden the direction we choose. Once we are established, stories and art can be used as needed. In a sense growing up to spiritual maturity will leave us with sustainable riches to enjoy but we will not be dependent on them. There’s a deep satisfaction and inner happiness that arrives when we are in harmony with an environment that is in balance. There’s also a humble independence knowing that because our shared stories can be changed, we can step into a new one if it will help others on the same journey.

— Roy Zuniga
    Kirkland, WA
    April 2013

Self-directed Conversion

15 Monday Apr 2013

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We need to get together and canonize a set of values (that are aligned with goodness) we believe are the universal way forward. There should be a process to ratify them around the world and have them be the holy foundation upon which each culture can create their own stories. In other words, a peace pack of good intent.

What would that look like? Let’s use our imaginations and fast forward to a possible future. Obviously timing of the creation and ratification would be centrally managed, and there would be central guidance on how to do it. We want to avoid creating another hierarchical organization, of course. Execution is naturally de-centralized, starting probably with house groups all around the country (and the world). Outcomes would need to be clearly defined, and there would be a certification process because the values selected would become binding in some way, and normative. A federated set of web sites can help communicate these values to other groups around the world so we all can learn from each other.

The stories that flow from these value sets can and will vary tremendously in content and quality. Regional clusters of cultural traditions will spring up, depending on the local talent, written and visual traditions, etc. Cultural exchanges will happen across communities on a new set of Holidays established for this purpose. There will be a cadence to the year, and even an alignment of sub-set of values and/or themes for the cultural productions depending on the calendar. Thanksgiving, the various solstices, etc. Real heroes will be praised based upon the values they espouse and consciously be made into archetypes for countless stories. As a normal unfolding of mythology, the actual and the fictional will blend into each other. This will not be seen as ‘lying’, i.e. distorting the truth, by others who have different stories. At the same time we want to influence the creation of each other’s value sets in a comparative dialog, so that we can still cohere as a country. Otherwise, some groups would devolve into a hedonistic, sadistic and/or cultic negative spiral of hate. On the contrary, to guarantee a positive spiral of the imagination, those who participate must adhere to the First Principle, i.e. an aspiration toward the good god.

It all starts with value awareness. The only way to want to change is if we see the need for each of us to change individually. And especially those on Wall Street who are driven by cynicism, indifference and greed. They, like the rest of us, need to understand and acknowledge what they believe in. Then they need to see the logical consequences of their decisions. Is top thinking always corrupt? Does absolute power always have to result in absolute corruption? It can’t, or we’re doomed as a civilization and a race. Why did George Washington and the founding fathers accept slavery and South America’s liberator, Simon Bolivar, did not?

Ultimately the self-regulated values-based approach espoused here only makes sense if there is enough to go around for all, and enough room for everyone. Our American Constitution gave protects our right to self-regulation but gives us tools for choosing the direction of our decisions. If planet earth becomes like a lifeboat, i.e. some have to get left behind, then survival does become an exercise in values all right – in favor of those values that ‘preserve the race’ (even if some number of individuals are lost); more likely it will boil down to influence and blood lines rather than skills, abilities or a pristine genetic pool as the criteria for selection. The whole dynamics of myth will be invoked for evil, as it was by Hitler’s propaganda machine. The masses will be programmed to accept their fate for ‘the good of all’, to sacrifice ‘for the homeland’ (or some such story).

Luckily we’re not there yet; at the same time, it’s too easy to imagine that scenario, as is evidenced by recent movies like 2012. It might be another 40-70 years before The Preservation of the Few becomes the primal imperative to sustain civilization, probably after we’ve severely depleted the natural resources of the planet. By the way, don’t get your hopes up about manned missions to space colonies on earth-like planets. We’re not anywhere near being able to colonize any rock in the sun to the scale that it would make an ultimate difference. Earth might end up being just another scorched rock in the sun at the rate we’re going. Anyway, the planet is big enough to sustain us well into the future, if and only if we make the right choices.

How do we make this shift to truly sustainable living? How do we shift the thinking of the rich if not the masses? Can you have a propaganda machine that brain washes the powerful? Isn’t that an oxymoron? It is contradictory if the rich necessarily are on the side of exploitation and selfish preservation. Would it take an act of coercion to change them? Isn’t that how the French aristocracy finally turned (or lost) their heads in favor of democracy? Isn’t revolution and blood-letting the hard earned wisdom of history if you want to change who’s in charge? Maybe. But doesn’t history also teach us that one of the next generations will end up being as bad or worse? How do you permanently change the thinking at the top?

Perhaps a little water-boarding torture will help. Doesn’t that change the decisions of torture victims? Maybe. But does it really change their world view? How do you change someone’s world view without destroying their person as torture does? It took a civil war in America to eventually change the South’s thinking about slavery. That was a lot of blood-letting. What happened in the losers’ mind set in the conversion-by-torture scenario? A voluntary change of will is always better than coercion. We have to understand the psychology of defeat. We have to splice out the violence and replace it with a positive realization. We need a more positive analogy for a change of mind. What happens when a person is willingly ‘sold out’? How does one give up old values and at the same time manage the destruction of former behavior associated with their core sense of being?

How about religious conversion? I was converted to Evangelical Christianity in the distant past. Then I shifted my worldview again, the second time by myself, towards a belief in the power of community mythology. It may be that my first worldview shift at conversion, which was an assisted one, enabled me to shift it again on my own.

My first conversion was leveraged with no small amount of passive threat. The ‘Four Spiritual Laws’ preached to me indicated that: 1) God created all things and created them good; 2) Sin corrupted all things; 3) Christ died to redeem all things, and; 4) therefore I’d better accept Christ (or be corrupt and suitable for Hell). It was a loving humiliation, which unlike torture, co-opted my will without physical pain. The mental logic at conversion, once you accept the premises, is to accept the need for change. This proves, to me at least, that we are capable of willful change that goes against our programming. If I can convert, why can’t a Wall Street baron?

Even though my worldview was destroyed, unlike torture or gunpoint, my personhood and sense of self-worth was not. This is partly because I was not humiliated by a fellow human. At least I thought it I was humbling myself before God. Of course, His proxy the church was standing right there between us facilitating the whole transaction, making me feel good about the decision. Which would explain why I was subsequently inducted into the rank of church missionaries. In any case, religious conversion is an example of a person changing deeply held convictions and behavior patterns over time voluntarily. Immediate change of all behaviors was not required, which helped soften the blow. Thus with hindsight, humility and grace take on new meaning.

In any event, my second conversion was voluntary and self-directed. It required no small amount of separation from the old. The dynamics of self-directed conversion are absolutely critical for us to understand if we are to succeed in non-violent change. Stay tuned. . .

— Roy Zuniga
Kirkland, WA
April 2013

Copyright 2013 Roy Zuniga

The Sacred Myth

14 Sunday Apr 2013

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Myths may be filled with the irrational and fantastic, but neither the process of creating them or of assimilating them is irrational. In fact the orchestration of myth creation can be detected repeated with new content.

Recently I had an engaging dinner with friends who were very concerned about world events and global conspiracies. All kinds of wild and disjoined assertions were flying out – bits of truth projected like so many pellets from a shotgun, each capable of doing some damage to a naïve believer. The only commonality among those hard balls of truth was their source in the voice of a dear friend, and their negative nature. Everything from the meaning of a president’s name to the Federal Reserve to the Catholic Church to the Illuminati to homeland security barbed wire pens to Beyoncé’s satanic signs and symbols during her performance at the super bowl was allegedly hard evidence of a centuries old conspiracy by a corporation that controls all others. All real power in all the world is controlled by a few at the ‘capstone’ of the corporate pyramid. And there were plenty of freakish and well produced videos on YouTube to ‘prove’ it.

As I sought to untangle the reasonable concerns from the irrelevant or downright zany assertions that would pollute any solid understanding of the real situation, my friends got defensive. It seems that you either buy into the general angst, or you get put in the bucket labeled ‘non-believer’. One friend in particular kept bringing up points of religion in defense of certain orthodox positions on Christ. ‘He is the Lamb of God’, ‘He died for our sins’, ‘He was resurrected’. ‘Why would someone die for the sin of others if He wasn’t God?’ she asked.

In my usual fashion I was countering the assertions with non-standard viewpoints. For example, why would God need someone’s blood be shed in order to forgive? Blood atonement has its origins in ancient pagan rituals of animal and human sacrifice to appease the gods. Also, how do we know he was raised from the dead? Only the testimony of a handful of people stand between the universal traditions of the Christian church at Easter and what really happened. And so on.

I was actually less interested the particulars and or winning a theological argument than I was in the phenomenon. Like me in the past, she was programmed and it was coming out. What struck me was the way many of these ‘facts’ of myth were spewed out from some inner repository with no logical connection. In their import those facts were as real as first hand events, and more meaningful. The resurrection is as true as the last presidential election or even the half empty glasses of wine in front of us.

As I listened and bantered tenderly with her, in my mind the only real truth was the phenomenon of how mythical stories were used by her brain to both explain and defend doctrines she had absorbed in religious training in the past. She was also in the process of training herself in the new dogma of world domination by a similar mechanism. Using the media of the internet, she was streaming videos and filing the new ‘facts’ away with those old ones.

Whether true or not, the doctrines of Christianity are highly systematic. It has taken theologians millennia to streamline the thinking and give a defense of their faith. Any good second year seminary student could have countered my bantering with talking points about God’s justice and evidence that demands a verdict about Christ’s divinity. The world conspiracy allegations, however, were new and somewhat disjointed in her mind, even though a richly produced ‘leaked’ video about Illuminati induction talk does a fairly nice job of typing everything together into a one world power narrative worthy of a Hollywood production.

A barrage of facts from both of these more or less systematic streams of thought came gushing forth at the same time in what could be taken by some as a nutty jumble of incoherent thoughts. The religious mind, it seems, needs to have a coherent narrative for history with a greater meaning. Here, right before my ears, I was confronted with both the all-powerful Christ and the all-powerful evil world power. (This brings up an interesting point for another day: the indoctrination of those who do not think systematically results in piecemeal understanding and a sporadic, spotty defense of the faith.) It was interesting to see the dynamics of myth at play, both on the input of new doctrine and the use of that in defense of a world view. She brought up every snowball in her arsenal to lovingly throw back at me, even as she was legitimately concerned and wanted another opinion on the matter.

My view on the matter, for what it’s worth, is that there are nuggets of truth in these urban myths. There is also a lot of fear being fostered by these ‘leaked’ disclosures about what is really going on. If they are so powerful, why would they allow such propaganda to be released? We always have to think about who stands to benefit from fear and the negative imagination. Remember the arms race in the cold war and the MAD (mutual assured destruction) doctrine? Russia and the US kept building up their nuclear stockpiles an industries based on fear, and greatly expanded the great military complex. The same can be said for the exponential growth of Homeland Security in response to 911. Now the dynamic is shifting from external to internal threats. The more the rednecks arm themselves to the teeth to defend themselves against the one world government, the more Homeland Security has to be prepared to deal with them. Fear and rumor are sadly fueling an internal arms race in America.

There is another way, one of positive imagination and local thought. Not that we ignore world events, but the focus of community movements like Transition US is to un-plug from dependency on the global economy and monetary systems that will fail and or dominate us. We can come together and form resilient communities. Transition communities farm, barter, trade services and seeds and generally take very healthy positive steps towards a sustainable lifestyle.

Of course that only works while there is law and order in the land. If everything really unravels, a half million starving city dwellers will overwhelm a transition community like a pestilence of locusts eating everything in their wake. If it comes to that, God help us because not even medieval-like walled cities would stop those with modern tanks and missiles. Only the few with enough wealth and forethought to build bunkers and fund defensive forces can survive. We can’t let it come to that, and the only way to avoid that is if everyone collectively calms down and starts making the right choices driven by a faith in universal goodness.

The bottom line for me is choice: we can’t prove or disprove the Illuminati conspiracy any more than we can disprove Christ’s divinity or alien visitation of the ancient Aztecs. Our fundamental choice then is about the direction of our beliefs: do we take the negative fear driven arm-yourself-to-the teeth view? Or do we tie back to our first principle for life, that fundamental human aspiration toward God, and the genuine assertions of individuals achieving a personal, recurring, momentary connection with a God? It is the human experience of the Divine that keeps the aspiration going, along with an inner good-god awareness.

This aspiration towards God has been present across time and civilizations. Call it the God-principle, good vs. evil, Christ against Lucifer, good / bad karma or whatever. All cultures have similar notions, some with personalities in the metaphors for good and evil, others impersonal energies. Our fundamental choice is whether we are going to believe the aspiration can be realized. That is the only source of hope and positive energy.

Personally I have to believe God is there because I actually had a mystical experience, an exorcism and a ‘baptism in the spirit’ in my early twenties. I can connect with God and have faith in the progress of goodness, as have many in other faiths. The Biblical statement about the Spirit of God that ‘He is near you, He is in you’ rings very true for me personally. My assertion of that can’t be denied, as neither can yours. No do we need to deny each other’s experiences of faith. The new normal has to be tolerance for good behavior, regardless its sources.

In other words, the spiritual consciousness, which is full of metaphor and story, is necessary for us to make good choices. That is Enlightenment to me. Not the melting away into a state where you are not aware of temporal concerns and understand that all is illusion. That doesn’t bring forth proactive good choices. We have to avoid world views that result in passivity and inaction; our problems need attention! Solid focus and mass-decision making for a positive direction in our only salvation. The mechanism for this choice is to unplug for the media and take ownership of the myths and mental ‘proof-points’ we will us to defend those choices. Each community has to make its choices locally.

The ruling elite do have a choice – and they can only make it themselves, i.e. it has to be a local re-programming, and it has to happen soon. We can’t wait a generation. This makes documenting and disseminating the process for community mythology urgent. Those in the inner circle have to diffuse their own negative tendencies. Whatever it is about capitalism that isn’t working has to be changed, and not necessarily swapped out for an equally bankrupt version of socialism. There is another way that is sustainable. We can plan it; some are living it.

There is no proof in an appeal to mythical facts beyond the deep knowledge that these new local beliefs are part of a social contract. This is The New Sacred, as I have called it elsewhere. They are not ‘true’ because the miracle making characters in our myths are actually historical figures with ‘real’ supernatural powers. They are true because we created them together in a solemn process of collective sacred myth making based on shared values we hold Holy in the deepest sense of the word.

— Roy Zuniga
Kirkland, WA
April 2013

A Common Deity

09 Tuesday Apr 2013

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What we’re developing here is a universally applicable praxis of spirituality that focuses on the phenomenon and dynamics of faith, and not the specific trappings and content of a canned religion. In other words, we seek to establish universal practices that result in bonding with God and people. How do we know we are successful? At least three criteria must be met:

  1. A personal connection with God that is undeniable, i.e. an experience
  2. The so-called ‘fruit of the spirit’, i.e. a manifestation of a godly personality in inter-personal relationships
  3. Scalable choices, i.e. those decisions that can be applied broadly without detrimental effect on the environment and fellow humans

Have you ever met a holy person, a preacher or guru or prayer warrior or missionary who exudes the presence of God? I have and so have many people across the globe. A connection is undeniable. It’s not so much how they say they connected that is interesting. Instead, for me it is the love and spirit presence they emanate that convinced me a connection is possible, and I experienced the Spirit rushing through me like a fresh waterfall from above. They all spend time establishing that connection and use Scriptures in the context of life experiences as a catalyst for prayer and meditation. In other words, they make the effort, come with good intentions and an open heart. Yes, it’s possible they are duped by spiritual beings (because of the n-level problem described elsewhere). However, with these ‘saints’ we get the sense that they are connected straight to the source. The smell of scammers is more often on the hierarchy in the religious organizations than it is in these saints. So the possibility of a personal connection with God is pillar of faith.

Another other pillar is choice, or put another way: human agency. Nothing happens in this world apart from the actions of people. These two pillars are of course related. If you see a person acting selfishly and not for the greater good, then we know by their fruits that they are not connected to God.

We often think of choice as consumer choices. We have to also consider spiritual choices. In other words, it is not just about a shopping choice, or choice of career and good social behavior. It is also about what spirits we let into our lives to listen to. We often act based on muses we summon. We can pick our influence; we can exorcise undesirable spirits from our dwelling places. Music we listen to, movies we watch, angry talk radio, etc. All of these influences predispose and open our imaginations to being fed. It’s like tossing bread crusts to the sea gulls – put it out there and they will show up. I don’t know the dynamics of spiritual beings, but one thing is for certain, they are hungry for action; and the way they act is through human agency.

So how do we get rid of them? In whose name do we exorcise the foul demons? Since it is our choice, why do we need a name? Can’t they just go because we said so? Or do we need the name of Jesus or some other spiritual bouncer? In the first degree, it is in our own name that we can do wondrous things, because we have the choice. We are not the source of life and goodness. However, we channel it.

Nevertheless, we as humans seem to need a personification of that source. ‘In the name of Jesus’ is what Evangelicals say. Other cultures invoke deities with different names. Some are facts of God. Some embody the quintessential behavior of a holy man, i.e. they a proto-faithful, like Jesus. That is to say, they embody the pattern for our faithful behavior. How do you fill in the blank?

‘In the name of ____________.’

Jesus was said to be God because he could give commands and miracles would happen (wither the fig tree; convert water to wine; heal the sick; raise the dead, etc.). Assuming those acts happened as reported (which is never really the case when humans are involved), let’s flip it around and take the reported proto-faithful-behavior not as evidence, but as a pattern. For the criteria enumerated above, we don’t actually need tricks like turning water into wine. Because of the n-level problem and the factional will applied to the interpretation of those events, we don’t really know they came from God. They don’t really catalyze a personal connection because they result in awe of the performer, and veneration of the Other, which doesn’t further the cause of scalable decisions unless it’s under an organizational control framework. Yes we can use organizations, but they should be intentional by and for the community, and not driven by miracle evidence and a class of intermediaries.

We should remove the exclusive thinking in the Scriptures, for example the ‘I am The Way’ credentials for inter-personal mediation, and rather view what conforms to the criteria above as proto-behavior, i.e. the normative pattern of behavior. Ironically, in Scripture what was interpreted by the mediator class as evidence of God was reportedly touted by Jesus Himself as phenomenon possible by anyone with the ‘faith of a mustard seed’. Jesus himself diminished the miracles as tricks compared with the fruit of personal behavior and decisions. You can move mountains, he said metaphorically.

Thus what makes me suspect some of the Scripture is true are empowering assertions like that. ‘Oh ye of little faith. . . ‘ or ‘He is near you; He is in you’, etc. Despite the controlling intermediary class, these precious insights made it into the Holy Book. Generally they are obfuscated by the exegesis that interprets His ‘miracle’ acts as evidence of deity. In fact, I feel confident to say, those acts were prototype for us to emulate, and likewise not take them as evidence of our deity as some who have figured this out actually do. The only thing they attest to is the ability to manipulate nature; the source of that ability cannot be known, good or bad.

What we have to watch out for are those who exercise a religious pattern of interpretation, i.e. who take the normal miracle-practices and interpret that as evidence of deity and therefore requiring veneration of the intermediary class by the faithful. Give glory to the ‘Father in heaven’, or ‘Gaia’ as some now call her. God has aspects, not a gender; however, our minds require a name.

We should all manifest the fruit of a connected relationship and as such be common deity. Evidence of connection is normative behavior and the agent cannot be mistaken for an intermediary. Rather he or she are demonstrating what must be our ‘new normal’. This is not to say that every person will provide wine from the water faucet at parties. No, miracles have their own logic, and God doesn’t always make an exception to the laws of nature and mortality.

What should be common practice among mortals who are ‘common deity’ is healing and the fruit of the spirit. In the end, the only name that really counts is your own. After all, we God-fashion Him in our image, like so many 16th century capitalists commissioning portraits of religious subjects in the pious garb of their own times. We can paint our own mental icons if we want, if that helps. Or we can flush them out as spiritual crutches and in the end act in our own name. It is time we own up to ourselves as common deities. Believer or not, the only name counts is your own. So then, why not make it a good name? That’s your choice; it’s your decision.

— Roy Zuniga
    April 2013
    Kirkland, WA 

 

copyright 2013 Roy Zuniga