The God of materialism

A certain type of materialist has become quite trendy: the one who states with such certainty that materialism is obvious and the only rational point of view, far superior to the wishy-washy superstitions of any other theory.

They like to go so far as to deny free will and in some cases to say consciousness itself is an illusion, or at least nothing more than an evolutionary emergent property, a byproduct, of our brains.

Matter is the cause of everything and the brain creates all experience including the (perhaps illusory) experiences of being conscious and having free will, they say.

The materialist denies the primacy and significance of your immediate conscious experience; the materialist laughs at your belief that you are consciously choosing and making decisions that shape and create your life; the materialist loves to belittle you, saying you are nothing but a biological robot controlled by external factors completely beyond your volition, in fact you do not even have any volition to attempt to have any control over anything.

Perhaps the greatest anathema to the materialist is the idea of there being a God, a non-physical being that has divine power over us all. Yet materialists have created their own God, the God of matter and of universal physical causation.

For the materialist, physical causation is the omniscient and omnipotent God of us all. The materialist God is absolute and uncompromising: there is is no relationship, no interplay, no thought, no meaning; their God is omnipresent, their God is responsible for every movement, every cause, every effect and every experience - these is no room for anything else in their world.

Maybe they are correct, but be clear what it is you are taking on board if you subscribe to this brand of metaphysics: your life is meaningless, literally devoid of any meaning; the entirety of your conscious experience is nothing more than a byproduct of chemical activity and is totally predetermined by non-sentient matter.

Think about that for a minute: the whole of human experience reduced to a random and accidental collision of meaningless objects.

But why is this a God? Because it is the materialist’s creation of something outside of ourselves that has complete power over us; it is the materialist’s creation myth that explains how everything comes to be; it is the materialist’s universal explanation of all things and their answer to all philosophical and existential questions - and their answer to all of these questions is simple and absolute: there is no meaning, there is no significance to life; the monotheistic God of physical causation is all.

And perhaps most importantly, their arguments for this God are based on faith, they believe in this God. There is no evidence that can ever prove that their chosen metaphysical belief in materialism is correct.

It is also of interest to note that the believers of this materialist God are all complete hypocrites: not a single one of them makes any attempt to live according to their beliefs.

Dealing with negative emotions

1 Access

We have to allow ourselves to access the raw negative emotions we carry around with us. If we don’t do this we cannot begin processing them. To avoid this step is to condemn ourselves to be forever under the hidden and pernicious effects of suppressed negative emotion. We can’t go beyond our negative emotions by making effort to be positive. We have to explore the negative emotions that exist before we are free to be genuinely and wholly positive.

We can access these emotions by finding time to reduce distractions in our life and by becoming more sensitive and more aware of how we are feeling and then acknowledging and encouraging any signs of negative emotion, giving it space to grow within our awareness - rather than our usual and fearful ‘fight or flight’ response to any sign of negative emotion.

2 Express

We can’t avoid or intellectualise away these negative emotions once we become aware of them and access them. They are an energy that is a part of ourselves, an integral aspect of our who we are. They need to be fully and fearlessly explored and expressed. The energy of negative emotions needs to be released fully and freely. The energy behind our negative emotions is the same energy that will generate our joy and bliss. If we do not express this energy that is currently tied up in negative emotion, we will never experience true and deep happiness and contentment.

To express these negative emotions we need to allow them to overcome us whilst at the same time we need to totally own the emotion and not direct it towards anyone else. It is our negative emotion and our negative experience and expression and it has nothing to do with anyone else. We are experiencing a part of ourselves for ourselves with ourselves.

3 Process

We need to step back and allow the negative emotion that has been accessed and expressed to go through it own process of resolution and integration. Insight and understanding may come during this process but they are byproducts, we cannot use intellectual exercises to initialise or complete this process of resolution and integration.

We need to be patient, to let go and to be open to whatever occurs as we allow the energies of negative emotion to work themselves out in our body.


So in summary: find time to allow negative emotion to come to the surface; fearlessly allow it to fully express itself in your body; be open to this experience generating a new understanding of who you are and a new capacity for experiencing authentic positive emotions.

The philosophy of immediacy and certainty

This is a brief and fairly simplistic summary - according to my limited understanding - of two little known early 20th century Canadian philosophical theses, The Essentail Nature of Immediacy* https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/0148/10174 and The False Hope of Certainty* https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/0366/12964 (*translated from French).


The Essential Nature of Immediacy

The main argument in this work is that the cause of all the ills of the world, and the most fundamental weakness of human nature, is that we continually seek to distance ourselves from our immediate and direct experience of our existence and our life. This arises out of a deep and intractable fear that we experience very deeply from birth. To avoid addressing this existential dread of being alive in this world, we seek to place layer upon layer of distraction between ourselves and the world. The practice of philosophy is itself criticised for often being nothing more than an intellectual exercise in further distancing ourselves from the immediate experience of life. A warning is given that theories and explanations of life that do not give prominence to people’s phenomenological experiences are dangerously divorced from reality and prone to creating a negative impact on humanity.


The False Hope of Certainty

This thesis is a blistering attack on all forms of professed certainty: religious; philosophical; moral and political. But more than this, it actively encourages the individual to not seek a state of localised certainty and instead to practise living with and embracing the inevitable and inescapable uncertainties of their lives. We are called upon to dismiss the idea that we can make right or wrong decisions whilst still being encouraged to do our best to navigate through unsolvable conundrums. It is important to note that this is not an existentialist, nihilist or morally relativistic philosophy: it is made clear that there is no contradiction between the fact that we cannot know the answers to many questions we are faced with with any degree of certainty and the fact that there is still a general direction of righteousness or droiture that we should be aiming for.

These two philosophies provide an interesting framework wherein the practice of mindfulness can be placed.

...

Projecting your shit onto the world

whats your philosophy of life and the world? Until recently mine was that this world is really a prison for consciousness. I came up with a rationale to justify this. Then a dramatic change in my life circumstances. Then suddenly the world felt very different. It's a place of possibility and potential. A place of exploration and a place to find and create and share joy, passion and intensity. So my previous philosophy was a projection of the fact I was putting myself in a prison in my personal life. Now I have freed myself, I have freed the world.

Is consciousness an illusion: Experiments in free will and pre-sentience

There are people who argue that free will is an illusion. One notable proponent of this theory is Sam Harris. There are others who go further and say consciousness itself is an illusion.

Tom Campbell argues that consciouness and free will are intrinsically and inseparably combined; it is not possible to have one without the other. I'm not convinced this is necessarily the case. My experience is that this seems to be true: my consciousness and my ability to make decisions appear to be intertwined experientially. I can, however, imagine consciousness existing without free will; why is it not possible for a consciousness to exist that can be aware and observe and pay attention to existence and yet not be able to act or choose? In fact does consciousness even necessitate the ability to be aware of anything other than itself? The essence, and only necessary function of consciousness is to be conscious, that is to be conscious of its own existence as consciousness. Being able to be cognisant of anything outside of itself is an additional capability and being able to initiate expression or action is a further ability, and being able to choose between different acts is yet another additional capability.

So the argument that consciousness cannot be an illusion does not mean that free will cannot be an illusion. The evidence however seems overwhelming and conclusive that we do have free will. This is the underlying assumption of how we act and interact with each other and within society. So unless there was any evidence to the contrary, why even posit the idea that free will may be an illusion?

There are two sources of evidence against free will. One from scientific experiments, the other from spiritual experience. I will argue that neither are persuasive.

Susan Blackmore makes the argument that she, through meditation, has experienced herself to live without free will, as have a number of experienced enlightened spiritual masters. The fact that we can have this experience is not evidence that free will doesn't exist, it is simply evidence that some people, some of the time, can experience living without consciously engaging the faculty of free will. These experiences are exceptional and so that means that the vast majority of experiential and subjective evidence very strongly suggests free will does exist.

To say otherwise requires a judgment to be made on the relative realness of these two different experiences. It seems, logically, equally valid for someone to argue that the experience of not having free will is the illusory experience. It seems more reasonable to conclude nothing stronger than both experiences are possible, living whilst using free will and living without it; why relegate one of these experiences to the category of illusory?

To do this more evidence would be needed as to why the experience of having free will is not what we think it is. This is where the experiments come in.

Experiments have shown that brain activity can be recorded that can be used to predict the subjects actions and this brain activity occurs before the subject records themselves as being aware that they have made a conscious decision. Sam Harris and others argue this is evidence that our experience of making conscious decisions is not what is actually happening, as before this, the decision has already been made and can be recorded in our brain activity. This leads them to also argue that our decisions are not freely chosen but are determined by physical processes.

Firstly, let me say these experiments are very interesting, surprising, illuminating and worthy of discussion and further exploration, but they are not evidence that free will doesn't exist. What they do seem to show is that what we may have thought of as being the action of free will, the moment of making a decision in our conscious thoughts, is not the whole story of free will decision making.

Predictability does not equal determinism. In the cited experiments it is said that the freely chosen action - for example the raising of your left or right hand - can be predicted up to 5 or even 7 seconds before the conscious decision is made. The problem with this being equated to determinism is that we know that we can make instant decisions to override existing propensities.

Correlation does not equal causation. Science can provide no mechanism for how brain activity could cause consciousness nor conscious decision making. These experiments show correlation not cause. The argument for a causal link is made purely on the basis that that would fit in with the theory of materialistic determinism. Similar experiments show pre-sentience*: our bodies react to a randomly selected emotionally charged image before it is seen by the subject. It would be as reasonable to conclude that the emotional reaction in the body is determining which image gets selected as it would be to argue that brain activity is determining the conscious choice to be made. In fact, in both types of experiment we do not know what the underlying causal processes might be. The materialist will assume a causal link in the free will experiment but not in the pre-sentient experiment because that what fits their belief system.
http://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/presentiment#Presentiment_Meta-Analyses_

Why idealists need to prepare for AI

Consciousness uses complex carbon structures to express itself. There is no reason why consciousness cannot use similarly complex silicon structures to express itself also. So the creation by scientists of complex silicon structures would not create consciousness, but it could provide consciousness with the opportunity to dissociate part of itself to express itself through the structures. From the scientists' point of view it will look like they have created consciousness, just as it may look to parents that in giving birth, they have created a new consciousness.

So if idealists state that artificial intelligence is impossible, then when scientists seem to themselves to have done it, they will have proved to themselves that materialism is true and idealism is false. It therefore behooves the idealist to describe now how the apparent creation of AI is not necessarily as it seems. To simply state it is impossible and saying therefore AI will never happen is a self-defeating stance to take. We need to be prepared for the existence of AI and to argue that the consciousness of AI has not been created by the silicon structures, but that they have presented consciousness with a new opportunity of expression.

AI will be another example of science thinking it is providing evidence for materialism through its successes, but is will be seen as not just evidence this time, but conclusive proof. They will say they have finally solved the hard problem of consciousness because they will say that they have created consciousness through their physical creation. If idealists say this will never happen as it is impossible under idealism, we will make this conclusion all the stronger amongst the materialists. We should be discussing how the appearance of AI fits in an idealist framework, not saying that it is impossible.

The psychosis of God

What if each of us is a fragment of the consciousness of God?

God's mind has become fragmented, split into billions of pieces. God is a schizophrenic with a multiple personality disorder like no other. The whole process of spirituality and enlightenment is nothing more than the urge of God to try and heal herself of her schizophrenia, that is, to reconnect the fragments of her mind and become a whole person again with one unfragmented mind. We are nothing more than a symptom of God's mental illness.

The striving to experience God or wholeness or any transcendental experience is the manifestation of God's attempt to heal her own mind and bring the multiple split personalities back together into one. The activities that are not towards this aim are the playing out of the symptoms of God's schizophrenia; they are the signs of what is left to heal, where healing hasn't even begun.

The person engaged in the healing process must attempt to integrate themselves into the whole mind of God and that means accepting that everybody, including all those exhibiting the most extreme expressions of God's mental illness, are no less a part of God and are no less a part of the process of healing. The only answer to a fragmented consciousness is the acceptance and integration of each and every fragment. No one, no fragment can be left behind or we will never be whole and sane again.

Don't believe anything in this blog

Don't believe anything in this blog:
Be critical of everything you have read. Do your own research. Do your own thinking. Come to your own conclusions. Don't repeat things unless you have truly studied them or experienced them for yourself. If the evidence suggests other wise, disregard what is written here. Look in detail at the arguments of those who disagree with you. Empathise with their viewpoint. Engage in a dialogue and debate with your adversaries and be prepared to change sides if that is the rational and reasonable thing to do. Don't hold on to a belief or theory out of habit or familiarity or fear of change or fear of having to admit you got it wrong or out of a sense of loyalty.

Looking to youth to bring about change:
Adults do of course have experience on their side and when we are young we can be very naive and say and do things we will later, quite rightly, be a bit embarrassed about and some things we will truly regret. But youth has many advantages and it's important not only for yourself but for the world as a whole that young people do things differently and idealistically and radically. Adults are largely stuck in their ways, they generally think that they know just about everything that there is to know, or at least everything that it is worth knowing. They are of course spectacularly wrong about this.

Knowledge and experience are like an expanding circle, the bigger it gets, the more knowledge and the more experiences you have, the greater is the opportunity to know and experience even more. As the circumference of the circle increases the greater the awareness of the unknown and the yet to be experienced becomes. There is never an end, you will never know everything, you will never have experienced everything, but there is a danger that one day you will think that you know enough and have experienced enough and your circle will stop expanding, and whilst you may feel you have settled for a big enough circle, if it isn't continually pushed further out it will begin to shrink and you will become rigid in your thinking and inflexible in your outlook on life.

So be careful you do not become adulterated as you become an adult, remain pure, innocent, fresh and continually challenge yourself to explore more of life.

Why do beliefs so often undermine the facts?
Most people like to think that they are rational, reasonable and intelligent people. We prefer to portray ourselves as making decisions based upon careful consideration rather than emotional impulse, most of the time. There are however two things that get in our way, two things we are very reluctant to acknowledge.

Rationalisation:
Check yourself next time you make a decision about something. Do you justify to yourself why you made that decision? Our justifications will invariably be an appeal to reason, we tell ourselves that given the circumstances it was the rational thing to do. However if we are really honest with ourselves our decisions are most often, at least in part, based on emotional responses stemming largely from fear and ego.

Rationalisation is a very versatile tool as if you think about it you can come up with a reason for almost any action. Next time you make a decision and catch yourself rationalising why you made that decision, stop for a moment and imagine that you had made a completely different or even contradictory decision. Now see if you can come up with an equally plausible rationalisation for the alternative path chosen. Easily done isn't it.

Logic, whilst in its purest form, gives us the best opportunity we can ever have to get close to an absolute statement about how things actually are, yet somewhat ironically and maybe even paradoxically, it is most often used in a slightly perverted form to justify and find excuses for unreasonable, unjust and irrational acts and beliefs.

The abuse of logic in this way can lead some to think that real true expressions of honesty need to come only from the heart rather than from a logical head. Gut feeling and intuition can cut through the obfuscation of over thinking things.

Of course, as with all things, a balance of both logic and intuition, working with each other not in opposition, is where we find the happy medium and what we should perhaps be striving for.  Research has shown that gut feelings work most effectively when people who are already experts in a field make a decision. That is, we need to know our stuff first through mental effort and work by the brain, but then to access the most appropriate bit of information at the right time can best be done by our intuition.

This is analogous to creative performance; only when a dancer or sportsperson has put in the hours of hard work and endless repetitive practice of structured moves can they then let go in the middle of a performance and produce creative and spontaneous bursts of brilliance that can never be taught nor practised.

Cognitive dissonance:
This is when we hold two contradictory ideas at the same time; we will justify one belief or action with one rationalisation, and justify another belief or action that directly contradicts the first with another rationalisation. Our rationalisations therefore keep us in a deluded sense of reasonableness as we ignore the fact that we are holding entirely contradictory positions.

Know your own ignorance and arrogance:
Beware; it is always easier to see the ignorance and arrogance of others than of ourselves. It is a very useful idea to always hold onto the possibility that you may be totally wrong about something, about many things, maybe even about everything!

Be guided by the evidence but be aware that you may be consciously or unconsciously avoiding the evidence that doesn't fit in to your preferred theories and beliefs, and you may also dismiss some evidence on unjustifiable grounds as you desperately seek to hold on to what you believe to be true.

Always be prepared to go where the evidence takes you, like a sceptical but open-minded detective.

Our next scientific paradigm will be ...

The digital physics of virtual reality

Theories in physics change: there are many models of reality that came before the current one and there will be many more. The next big shift in how we see the world may well come from digital physics, but we have yet to come to terms with the implications of the previous one, quantum mechanics.

Many, in fact most probably all, of the topics in this blog can be explained and clarified within the context of reality being digital and virtual in nature. This has always been the case, but only now with our familiarity with computer games, digital computers and virtual realities, does this analogy become a meaningful and useful one to increase our understanding of the possibilities that life holds.

But the main reason that the digital physics of virtual reality may well become the new paradigm is that it explains the physicists experimental data better than any other current theory.

Life after death - the answered question

Possibly one of the most profound questions of life is, what happens when we die? Common sense would suggest that we can never know until after we have died. Materialists would argue that obviously nothing happens as when the body stops functioning, there can be no more experience.

However, people do technically die for a period of time and come back to life and they report quite amazing and seemingly impossible things.

The experiences of people when they die have many common features: they often find themselves looking down on their bodies; they report going through a tunnel of light; meeting a being radiating love; meeting deceased relatives; having a life review where they experience the emotions of all the people they have interacted with; and often an experience of a strong reluctance to return to their body.

The experience is usually described as being hyper-real, of being more real that everyday reality, and of being timeless. The experiences are also very impactful and often have dramatic and positive life changing effects on the experiencers. In short they do not manifest any of the attributes that are associated with hallucinations or dreams.

During the out of body phase when they are looking down on their body, there are many cases where the person has described exactly what was happening and what was being said around their lifeless body. This has included the conversations surgeons have had as they operated on their body whilst it showed no signs of any brain activity.

Mind over matter - already proven

The predominant belief in western society today is materialism, the belief that all that exists, all that is real, is matter, that is, the physical world. Identity, emotion, thought and all non-physical things are seen as secondary, as being caused by the material world.

It is perfectly understandable that this belief is so popular, but it is important to remember it is just a belief, and just one belief of many possible rational beliefs about the world. Unfortunately many materialist seem to think that their belief is the only sensible, provable and rational way of seeing and explaining the world. This is of course nonsense.

Science is very good at analysing and explaining physical processes, but that in no way means that physical processes are the only processes that are at work.

Scientists and materialists will rightly stress the importance of evidence. However when they are presented with evidence that doesn't support their belief in materialism it is surprising how many resort to very unscientific arguments against that evidence.

Pear labs have shown repeatedly that conscious intent affects random number generating machines. This is of course impossible from a materialist point of view and yet it happens. The chances that these changes are due to chance are infinitesimal. However because the materialist belief system doesn't allow for any mechanism by which this could be happening they cling to the belief that it is in fact happening by chance even though that is not a rational response to the numbers.

Some may also question the reliability and integrity of the researchers but that is completely unfounded and unjustifiable and clutching an straws.

So rather than explore this further and widen their perspective to actually start looking for the mechanism by which this phenomena occurs they dismiss it and hold on to their precious belief system that says it isn't possible. They ignore the evidence and arrogantly proclaim it cannot be so.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/experiments.html

UFOs and ETs - not such a strange idea after all

UFOs

Most people are aware of the term UFOs and most of them probably know it stands for Unidentified Flying Object. What you might not realise, unless of course you happen to be one of them, is that a surprisingly high number of people have actually experienced seeing one.

What is also significant is that included amongst all these people, who have seen an object in the sky that they could not explain, are generals, pilots and government officials
http://www.amazon.co.uk/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Officials/dp/0307717089
and large groups of people seeing the same UFO at the same time.
http://www.thephoenixlights.net/News.htm

And to those who say, 'why don't they land on the White House lawn?', well there are plenty of good reasons why not, but they came close in 1952 and again in 2002, flying over Capitol Hill.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Close-Encounters-Capitol-Robert-Stanley-ebook/dp/B004R9QVQM

It's also the case that there is in fact quite a lot of physical evidence of UFOs - it isn't all just lights in the sky.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/UFO-Enigma-Review-Physical-Evidence-ebook/dp/B00FOT9FL2/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1420468359&sr=1-2&keywords=UFOs+physical+evidence

So UFOs are real. The question to ask then is, who is flying them?


ETs

An astrophysicist once calculated that the probability that there is not any other communicable intelligent life in our galaxy is zero.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

The number of exoplanets that we are discovering - planets that could host life - is ever increasing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30705517

So it is perfectly rational to think that ETs exist. Some would say, however, that they couldn't travel the large distances of space to reach us.

Firstly the evidence of UFOs suggests that they can and indeed have. Secondly, how arrogant to think that just because we can't travel these distances yet, civilisations millions of years in advance of our own can't. It was not so long ago that airplanes were thought to be impossible.

Einstein is often sited as the reason space travel is so difficult as the amount of energy needed to travel anywhere need the speed of light is so vast. This may be so, but we need to realise that however ET is travelling it is very likely to not be in any way that we could conceive of at our stage of development.

There is also plenty of evidence of many people experiencing ETs directly, either as contactees or abductees. Even those who are happy to explore the possibility of UFOs draw the line at direct ET experience. This is an irrational response. If ETs are visiting us here in their UFOs then it would be surprising if there were not any reports of direct contact. It is such a difficult concept for many to imagine that they would rather not think about it at all or dismiss those who report these experiences as being crazy. This is demonstrably not the case. Google the following names: Jim Sparks; Whitley Streiber; Kim Carlsberg; Billy Meier.

Prison planet - a few indicators

Exploring some ideas and redefinitions within the analogy that this planet is a prison.

The best prison is one where the inmates don't know they are in prison and have no concept of a world outside the prison that they could escape to.

The bars of this prison are virtual, the cell walls are a temporal and spatial 3D illusion.

In a prison, the inmates in charge are the baddest nastiest most immoral and ruthless and violent prisoners; so to here on Earth with our leaders, both visible and hidden.

Reoffending rates are notoriously high, hence reincarnation and increasing population.

Free Will: We are free to deal with being prison in any way we choose. We can fight against it, resent it, try and escape, withdraw, distract ourselves, riot and destroy, contemplate, learn, play, work, go within, help others, be constructive, prepare for the day we are released.

Why new age ascension ideas are never going to happen: the idea presented is that one day soon all the prison doors will fling wide open and we will all suddenly be free to go and as we walk free all out criminal tendencies will magically disappear; this is not going to happen.

Religion: an historical rehabilitation program that has become corrupted by many inmates as a means to further their criminal intents; a means by which the wardens placate the inmates into acceptance of their sentence and of their guilt and unworthiness.

Spirituality: an avoidance of the truth of imprisonment, a futile attempt to escape the prison; or the spontaneous and true experience of nearing the end of one's sentence, the preparation for release, the sign one is nearing parole.

Buddhist escaping the wheel of karma: being released for good behaviour after serving your time.

Karma: natural justice.

A new religion

'We are one'

Philosophy:
Like the fingers of a hand, we are one
We are connected
The hand of consciousness is one, undivided
We are fingers of that hand
We may appear to be separate
But in truth we are inseparably joined
Humanity is a hand of seven billion fingers

Practice:
To realise and experience our shared consciousness we can practise being totally present in each other's company and connecting through eye contact.

Ethics:
Treat others and yourself with the understanding that we are all part of one consciousness.
What you do to others you do to yourself, to the whole of humanity and to the one consciousness.
Cultivate and practise tolerance, acceptance, harmony, unity, empathy and compassion.

As above, so below - a warning

Our view of spirituality, ETs and the New Age is like the view of institutions, government and religion we had in the 50s. We will one day find out that all is not well, beneficent, efficient and altruistic. At all levels, there are beings, despite superficial trappings of benevolence and enlightenment, that are corrupt, self interested, manipulative and deceptive. As below, so above.

Why I won't be incarnating here again. (Includes swearing.)

Many spiritual teachings are actually the excuses and vacuous justifications of a broken system that simply doesn't work. The evidence is in and is overwhelming: growth through pain and suffering is perverse and massively ineffective.

We have of course known this for a very long time. Find me an expert that will say today that the evidence shows that fear, ignorance and violence is the best way to bring up healthy, loving children or is the best way to inspire learning and growth in our schools? Of course no one believes that any more, that would be complete nonsense.

Yet when it come to spirituality we accept this ridiculous justification for suffering. 'Soul contracts', karma, law of attraction, 'everything is good' and pre-life agreements to experience the horrendous suffering that take place every day to millions of this planet - this is no way to bring about any significant spiritual evolution other than in a few remarkable people who do transcend the worst of situations.

The point is most of us don't make miraculous transformations in the face of extreme suffering, most of us are negatively affected by negativity - why wouldn't we be? Many spiritual teachings seek to lay the entire blame for the failure of this world to produce any significant spiritual progress, with us for not being able to rise above the inherent ignorance of our situation and the relentless negative onslaught of circumstance and become enlightened beings.

If the system isn't working - which it isn't- it's because the system is broken, not because we are failing the system. If a school or hospital consistently fails to educate its pupils or heal its patients and its response was simply, 'it's the fault of the uneducated and the sick' then it is the institution that is failing to take responsibility and needs reform.

Now a materialist would say there is no higher plan or institution, we are just here alone having to muddle through. I have sympathy with the consistent logic of this approach to suffering. However the evidence strongly suggests materialism is wrong and there is a lot more going on 'out there'.

The teachings of spirituality can't deny there is no institution to take responsibility for how things are as their teachings are predicated on there being a whole wealth of enlightened beings and ways of living out there.

'From a wider spiritual perspective everything is Good, you just can't see it from down where you are'. Bollocks. This is an archaic 'the means justify the ends' philosophy that only the worst kind of sociopath uses to justify torture and the excesses of evil: 'its bad now for you, but it's for the greater good'. Fuck off. Evil begets evil, fear begets fear, violence begets violence. Violating an individuals rights for the perceived greater good is an ignorant and very unenlightened way to justify doing what the fuck you like to who the fuck you like.

Yes you can say that the world simply reflects our consciousness and all the negativity of the world is our own negativity and yes you can say that no one can remove your negativity you have to do it yourself. That may well be true but that doesn't excuse the fact that this simplistic system of reflection  of our negativity simply isn't working and what it does is multiply negativity and makes many people worse that they were to begin with.

It would be like a parent saying to social services, 'I only smack my child when they smack me. I'm simply reflecting their own behaviour. They just need to learn that smacking is not good and to then stop smacking me, then I'll stop smacking them back.'

A good parent teaches by example and by not responding to negative behaviour with negative behaviour and by demonstrating clearly the alternatives.

Imagine if a school said to the Ofsted inspector, 'I know we are not actually providing any useful educational material nor a conducive environment for learning for our pupils but that is because we see it as our role to simply reflect the ignorance of our pupils back to them; it is they who need to learn for themselves. After they have educated themselves, then and only then will we reflect back that learning to them.'

A good school provides a wealth of opportunities for children to explore through creative and inquisitive play in a safe and secure environment, guiding where necessary, providing differentiated learning for all levels and learning styles, and providing prompt, positive, constructive and encouraging feedback.

Most people have no idea why they are here and have no clue how things work. To expect humanity to transform themselves in a place where the very purpose and means of doing this are completely obfuscated and to do it in an environment designed to make that almost impossible, is a crazy and cruel approach to have.

Yes the answer is for people to take responsibility for their own negativity and not blame external factors but this just won't happen in an environment that prides itself on creating negative downward spirals. We need a supportive and educative environment to learn these lessons not a ruthless heartless hellish torture chamber to force us into it through hopeless desperation.

This is a bit of a rant and as such is somewhat extreme and unbalanced. I am not however suggesting we should be saved nor that we should be given everything on a plate nor that everything should be easy nor that we should start from perfection and not have to grow at all. I am arguing that the method of growth that is taking place here is far from optimal and that is obvious from the results we can all see.

I don't accept that the system is perfect and if we are not progressing it's because we aren't trying hard enough. I suspect that this isn't even genuinely a system that anyone out there believes is optimal. There are probably a vast plentitude of other systems that are far better at producing much better results. This one is most likely an early archaic model that is just being left to run out of vague interest to see what will happen or has simply been forgotten about out of neglect.

So I choose not to incarnate again in this failed model of evolution. And when I am out of body, don't try to convince me to come back by showing me all the valuable lessons I've learnt and showing me the bigger picture; show me the actual and real suffering that we are experiencing here and now and have been for thousands of years and then ask me if I want to go back. Don't tell me I'll think it will be worth it all after, show me the despair and agony I will be experiencing during my time here. Then I will make an informed decision and go elsewhere.

For my next life I will choose a school of evolution that would pass its Ofsted inspection with flying colours not this disgrace of a school that should have been closed down long ago for gross neglect and continued systematic failure of its pupils.

The mindfulness of God

It seems clear that we do not have an interventionist God. The horrific nature of life on Earth for so many is extremely hard to reconcile with the idea of a benevolent God who actively steps in to prevent harm in an omnipotent and omniscient manner.

Experiences of enlightenment and God describe an 'otherness', an experience of being that is beyond this world entirely. Mindfulness - accepting everything exactly as it is right now - is the only way to join with this experience of otherness and be truly beyond with God. This is because we are meeting God where God is, we are sharing the same awareness, the same consciousness.

Any experience of God that is not one of oneness, that does not involve the ending of all separation, is either a projection of our beliefs in a god or a partial filtering of God's distant influence.

So to be one with God we must share the consciousness of God which means our awareness must be totally accepting, totally allowing, totally untouched by the world, even whilst we are still here with the world. In this way we bring the consciousness of God into the world in a way that God cannot do as God by definition must always be other and beyond.

So this is when things here in the world can start to change as a completely new and other consciousness is now present. We will be inspired to act and interact differently, with the divinity of the other, that is with the grace of the presence of God's consciousness.

Matter of fact conspiracies

Conspiracies are not way out, bizarre and unthinkable. They are mundane, everyday occurrences that we are all extremely familiar with. Of course the rich and powerful lie, cheat and steal and do all they can to cover up their illegal and immoral activities. We all know this, along with death, taxes and gravity, it is one of the certainties of life. No one believes our leaders are beacons of morality and selfless acts of generosity.

So why this knee jerk reaction against conspiracies? Every government in every country, now and throughout history are involved in conspiracies of varying degrees of self-serving insidiousness.
So why do we default to dismissing conspiracies? The answer is obvious: the conspirators create, reinforce and spread this idea for their own protection. It is just one more lie, one more deception as they continue to desperately grasp onto their positions of power and influence.

Why the world is designed to fail

Don't get depressed when the world doesn't get better; the world isn't designed to get better. This world is the place where people come to experience the effects of their ego, fear and hatred.  Faced with this mirror we can finally be inspired to give up on these limited ways of being and change to become more loving, more connected, more accepting, tolerant and forgiving.

We, as individuals can gradually get better, and if we all did that together the world would be totally transformed, however, we are all, inevitably, changing at our own pace. We will never all change at the same time and so the world will not transform at one time.

Add into the equation the fact that new, limited and negative individuals are constantly being added to the world and that those few individuals that do become enlightened generally leave this world behind, and you will see that our personal growth is not ever going to change this world, in the sense that the system is as it is and will continue to be that way unless the designers of the system* fundamentally change how things are operating.

Yes, your personal growth will have influence and create ripples of positive change around you and can inspire others to engage and accelerate their own growth towards love and connection, but an individual's growth does not change the system, system designers* change the system, if they choose to do so.

*Here I am referring to beings outside of this reality: the god-like transcendent programmers and engineers, not the worldly leaders. Over-throwing worldly leaders provides no lasting change as the system we are all within has not changed. We cannot over-throw the actual system designers any more than a character in a computer game can reprogram the game they are playing in.

Could this system be designed better? Is it currently an optimal design? Are the results that we see around us, evidence that it is working to produce more loving souls? Are the system designers any more trustworthy and altruistic than those in positions of power inside the system? Are the few who successfully grow into loving and wise beings, evidence that the system is working, or are they an anomaly; have they grown despite the restrictions in place not because of them? Is the purpose of this place for people to change or is it a place to constrain people who don't want to change?

Science fiction film idea

Our 'hero' is feeling lost in the world: something isn't quite right, things just aren't making sense. He searches for meaning and truth to find just what is really going on. He explores religion and new age spirituality and experiences first hand that there is something else out there beyond the enclosed world of the materialists. Idealist philosophy gives him a rigorous and rational framework to supercede the prevalent and fervent reductionist materialism of Dawkins, Cox et al.

But the 'mainstream' theories of the new age seem to be as flawed as those of the older more established religions: the same fundamental ideas redressed in a more palatable form.

Then comes the world of conspiracy. Not theory but fact. 911 was a controlled demolition for example, objective science from the experts conclusively demonstrates that beyond all reasonable doubt. But then the rabbit hole gets deeper with evidence of aliens and abductions becoming similarly  compelling.

The age old question remained amongst all these theories: why is there so much suffering in the world and how do we end it?

The materialists say it's meaningless and random and conscious experience and free will are an illusion. This is self-evidently nonsense, patently absurd and laughable in its complete dissociation from our experience of reality.

The religions are pathetic in their anachronistic attempts to rationalise away the pain.

The New Age is equally ridiculous in their false hope and intellectually poor relativism and worthless repetition that everything is good.

The only thing that makes sense of everything is that this earth-bound life is a sentence we are serving in a very sophisticated prison, where the nature of our punishment and reformation is entirely the creation of ourselves. There is sorrow and suffering because we are flawed and corrupted people all thrown in to a limited space and left to work things out.

Knowledge and experience of life outside the physical prison is suppressed for the same reason that prisons have walls: we would run away and not face ourselves and the consequences of our limited consciousness.

This world isn't a school to learn, no school would be so cruel and ineffective. This world is a last resort for those who have refused to learn, it is a harsh mirror of all our failings. It is a place where you have to learn to survive and where there appears to be no way out if we choose not to learn, other than misery and death.

This sounds very bleak but actually it is the first step of liberation. There is no hope in leaving prison if you don't even know you are there; there is no hope of reforming your character is you don't accept that as the cause of where you are and the purpose of being here.

This prison is far more sophisticated than any we have known. The inmates have no concept that it is a prison, they have no memory of their life before they entered the prison and so the very idea of escape is far beyond anything they could even begin to conceptualise.

Rampant materialism reinforces the impossibility of thinking anything other than this existence is all that there is. Religion and the New Age promote false hope of sudden release through some form of saviour or transformation that will never come.

So the conspiracies are true, we are kept ignorant and restrained both physically and spiritually by hidden dark forces, the prison guards of this prison that must be kept out of sight to maintain the illusion that this is not a prison.

But we are not to blame anyone or feel hard done by. It is reasonable to assume that the vast majority of us are here for good reason. Realising this is a prison, we should not get angry and try to escape. The right response is to feel utter relief that at last everything makes sense and we finally know why we are here. Our life's purpose becomes crystal clear: accept our sentence and patiently, with quiet determination, work at reforming ourselves, discovering and gradually transforming our many and deep character flaws.

Accept that this world is neutral, it reflects only what we are so that we can directly experience the consequences of our limitations first hand and only escape those consequences by changing ourselves. Accept that the reason the world is such a mess is because this world is for those whose consciousness is a mess.

Don't try and escape the world, for that way lies the endless punishment of an unreformed character. But don't fool yourself that the world is mystically benign or meaningless. Accept everything that happens as your own creation and take full responsibility for all your own sorrow and happiness and know that you have entered a world where the truth of the larger reality has been deliberately wiped from your memory and is continually hidden and obscured from your view by forces beyond your comprehension until such a time as you can emerge as a whole, responsible and benevolent contributor to consciousness.

What if ...

What if the world was actually a completely neutral space when I arrived in it?
What if my world and all my relationships can only ever reflect myself, a perfect multi-dimensional mirror?
What if there is no meaning nor significance inherent within my world other than that which I give it?
What if I can never truly know the world of another and can only guess at what their world is like through the distorted lens of my own limited knowledge, perception and deeply held beliefs?
What if the transformation of myself inevitably led to a transformation of my entire world of experience?
What if the only route to transformation of myself required a complete unconditional acceptance of everything, everyone and every experience in my world?
What if, despite having no real way of knowing if all this was true or not, I chose to live my life as if it were true?

my favourite alternatives to materialism

The philosophical idealism of Bernardo Kastrup

"The present framing of the cultural debate in terms of materialism versus religion has allowed materialism to go unchallenged as the only rationally-viable metaphysics. Bernardo Kastrup uncovers the absurd implications of materialism and then, uniquely, presents a hard-nosed non-materialist metaphysics substantiated by skepticism, hard empirical evidence, and clear logical argumentation. He lays out a coherent framework upon which one can interpret and make sense of every natural phenomenon and physical law, as well as the modalities of human consciousness, without materialist assumptions."

Tom Campbell's Big Theory of Everything

"My Big TOE (Theory Of Everything) is a trilogy of books written by Tom Campbell and is designed to present ideas leading to a Big Picture understanding and paradigm shift by answering many of the unanswered questions existing in science today. My Big TOE is conceived as a work of science, consistent with scientific principles of discovery and exploration of new knowledge, but presented at a level fully accessible to the general reader and without requiring mathematical and specialist based understanding of science. My Big TOE is based on the understanding that all of our reality as we experience it is based upon consciousness and that we exist in a non-physical subjective reality, rather than an objective physical reality. This strongly challenges the belief traps held by conventional and main stream western science by treating our world as a virtual reality rather than an external, physical objective reality. My Big TOE extends the concept to include the existence of multiple virtual reality frames within which we exist simultaneously. It highlights that our physical matter reality (PMR) is no more than a set of constraints defined by rules of physics that limit the information we receive that we interpret as physical. This Theory Of Everything also provides an understanding, as a model, of the Larger Consciousness System or LCS within which everything exists and is the fundamental base of all of our reality."

Rational Spirituality from Ian Lawton

"Rational Spirituality, as encapsulated in The Books of the Soul Series, has its roots firmly planted in the fertile soil of modern evidence from fields of research such as near-death and out-of-body experiences, spontaneous past-life memories in both children and adults, and past-life and interlife regression. By contrast, traditional religions tend to rely heavily on faith in ancient scripture and modern interpretations of it. It is also dynamic, changing as new evidence is placed on the table or if previous evidence is discredited."

Skeptiko

" Skeptiko.com is an interview-centered podcast covering the science of human consciousness. We cover six main categories:
– Near-death experience science and the ever growing body of peer-reviewed research surrounding it.
– Parapsychology and science that defies our current understanding of consciousness.
– Consciousness research and the every expanding scientific understanding of who we are.
– Spirituality and the implications of new scientific discoveries to our understanding of it.
– Others and the strangeness of close encounters.
– Skepticism and what we should make of the “Skeptics”."

J Krishnamurti

"You can see that those who pursue a system, who drive the mind into certain practices, obviously condition the mind according to that formula; therefore, the mind is not free. It is only the free mind that can discover, not a mind conditioned according to any system, whether Oriental or Occidental. Conditioning is the same, by whatever name you may call it. To see the truth, there must be freedom, and a mind that is conditioned according to a system can never see the truth."