Through the Looking Glass III: The ‘AI’ already inside
'He says: if you win the lottery you’re going to be happy. So there’s a correlation between the winning of the lottery and the feeling. Here’s the shocking part: he says you can reverse that process.'
More Things In Heaven and Earth
In this, the third episode of Through the Looking Glass, Gerry O’Neill and I brave the elements so as to be present in the Great Outdoors, even in the depths of winter, the better to connect with what is most fundamental. In this conversation we delve into areas variously filed under spirituality, religion, psychology, faith, the power of mind, miracles, and/or positive thinking, not to judge or delineate but to probe possibilities, such as those explored by writers like the Irishman, Joseph Murphy, and the American Dorothea Brande.
Spirituality, the most vital realm of mankind’s self-understanding, is also the most regimented, with many of those who consider themselves arrived to the Truth on the alert at all times to upbraid and redirect those they regard as dogmatically or theologically retrograde or in error. It may be way past time to move beyond such approaches. This is for me the core meaning of that much-used term, ‘the spiritual war,’ which we have been using with increasing clarity and emphasis in the recent years: that we cannot define this war by reference to the institutions to be observed on one or other side of the divide, but most look to the nature of its assault on every human heart soul.
One thing we can say with certainty: had our transcendent imaginations remained strong, we should not have ended up as baaing sheep, taking orders from smirking simpletons and behaving in a manner as to cause the lights of our civilisation to go out, one by one, with no let-up or remission for five years and counting. It is confusion as to our meaning and purpose that ultimately causes this degree of demoralisation. And, yes, the churches — worst of all the Catholic Church — played a vital role in this degradation, selling the pass on freedom and courage, without which there is no possibility of retaining truth, wisdom and justice at the heart of public or personal affairs.
It is necessary to tread carefully through these topics, but hopefully not too carefully. Mostly, religious-minded people attend talks ‘about religion’ to be affirmed in their own certitudes, just as people who have persuaded themselves that it is all superstition gravitate to such discussions to disrupt them with ridicule and nonsense. I’m not interested in catering for either party. Both a dog-in-the-manger approach to faith by the faithful, and the dumbass neo-atheism of the past couple of decades, have each in its way contributed to bringing us to this darkest of places. Everyone needs to remember that fixing what is broken will involve talking in a language that as many as possible can relate to. There is no point preaching to choirs, and anyone coming to such discussions to hear what they already know and believe probably deserve to find themselves in the wrong place.
I have as little patience with those who dismiss all these vital questions with an 'Oh it’s all just a means of control!’ as I do with Holy Joes and Holy Josephines who tell me there is a fixed protocol by which I must pursue my spiritual life. Both factions appear to agree on just one idea; that spirituality/religion is all and only about morality. Both, I would say, are gravely and equally mistaken, for morals are one of the effects of spiritual growth, rather than any part of its mission or motivation.
Overcoming such outlooks, really, is one of the ambitions that motivates and drives this discussion between Gerry and me — two searching men who try to remain continuously conscious that the absolute truths about reality tend to be evasive of attempts to condense them into sentences. As usual, then, we seek the least inadequate words.
Short, selective bibiography:
Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
Dorothea Brande, Becoming a Writer.
{There is a possible confusion of terminologies between the two books, in referring respectively to the subconscious and unconscious minds. Ultimately, in this discussion, what we address by either name converges on the same phenomenon: the living soul of man as a reachable entity in this dimension.)
From The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
You have a mind, and you should learn how to use it. There are two levels of your mind — the conscious or rational level, and the subconscious or irrational level. You think with your conscious mind, and whatever you habitually think sinks down into your subconscious mind, which creates according to the nature of your thoughts. Your subconscious mind is the seat of your emotions and is the creative mind. If you think good, good will follow; if you think evil, evil will follow. This is the way your mind works. The main point to remember is once the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to execute it. It is an interesting and subtle truth that the law of the subconscious mind works for good and bad ideas alike. This law, when applied in a negative way, is the cause of failure, frustration, and unhappiness. However, when your habitual thinking is harmonious and constructive, you experience perfect health, success, and prosperity. Peace of mind and a healthy body are inevitable when you begin to think and feel in the right way. Whatever you claim mentally and feel as true, your subconscious mind will accept and bring forth into your experience. The only thing necessary for you to do is to get your subconscious mind to accept your idea, and the law of your own subconscious mind will bring forth the health, peace, or the position you desire. You give the command or decree, and your subconscious will faithfully reproduce the idea impressed upon it. The law of your mind is this: You will get a reaction or response from your subconscious mind according to the nature of the thought or idea you hold in your conscious mind. Psychologists and psychiatrists point out that when thoughts are conveyed to your subconscious mind, impressions are made in the brain cells. As soon as your subconscious accepts any idea, it proceeds to put it into effect immediately. It works by association of ideas and uses every bit of knowledge that you have gathered in your lifetime to bring about its purpose. It draws on the infinite power, energy, and wisdom within you. It lines up all the laws of nature to get its way. Sometimes it seems to bring about an immediate solution to your difficulties, but at other times it may take days, weeks,or longer. . . Its ways are past finding out.
— Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
From Becoming a Writer
The unconscious is shy, elusive and unwieldy, but it is possible to learn to tap it at will, and even to direct it. The conscious mind is meddlesome, opinionated, and arrogant. But it can be made subservient to the inborn talent through training. By isolating as far as possible these two sides of the mind, even by considering them not merely as aspects of the same mind but as separate personalities, we can arrive as a kind of working metaphor, impossible to confuse with reality, but infinitely helpful in self-education.
For the root of genius is in the unconscious, not the conscious, mind. It is not by weighing, balancing, trimming, expanding with conscious intention, that an excellent piece of art is born. It takes its shape and has its origin outside the region of the conscious intellect. There is much that the conscious can do, but it cannot provide you with genius, or with the talent that is genius’s second cousin.
The best way to do this is to rise half an hour, or a full hour, earlier than you customarily rise. Just as soon as you can — and without talking, without reading the morning's paper, without picking up the book you laid aside the night before — begin to write. Write anything that comes into your head:
— Dorothea Brande, Becoming a Writer
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