June 24, 2008
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A Perfect Opening
The comment below provides an excellent excuse to blog about myself today:
You don’t know me, but I felt the urge to tell you that I really appreciate this blog. Your strength gives me strength; your wisdom rubs off on me. Clearly your experiences have imbued you with great character.Being young, I have a lot to learn (don’t we all?) and the psychiatry-related stuff certainly helps in regard to my self-education.
As well as sharing a few of the same interests, you and I seem to be on the same page in many instances –though I tend to discoutn the New Age mysticism. Despite not subscribing to that kind of belief system, I find it quite intriguing and I’m toying with the idea of learning a bit about astrology myself. What led you astray from the scientific method and (possibly) materialistic reductionism?
I’m very curious about you. I thought to myself, “What kind of genetic, epigenetic and environmental determinants could’ve helped mould such a person?” I suppose your life story tells me some of that… I don’t know anyone like you; though I wish I did.
Cheers on the kickass blog,
Despite my feeling that the praise had been troweled on a bit too thickly for credibility, this sent me running to the dictionary, where I learned what “materialistic reductionism” is (an absurdly simplistic expression of the dualistic fallacy, apparently), and that “apocatastasis” is the ancient Greek belief that material reality is nothing but a reflection of Zeus’s perfect thoughts. Wow!My husband, Greyfox, the eclectic shaman and ArmsMerchant, would tell you that you don’t know anyone like me because there is no one like me. Perhaps there is no one in his experience who is exactly like me, but I’m not as quick as he is to declare the non-existence of anything, just because I’ve never seen it. This, I know, is another of those traits that set me apart from most people.
“What kind of genetic, epigenetic and environmental determinants could’ve helped mould such a person?”
An astrologer looking at my chart would see some factors that would tend to explain me, more or less, to an astrologer’s satisfaction. Sun, Moon, and three major planets, plus several asteroids, are up in the ninth house of intellectual attainment, philosophy and higher education, and they are in the signs of Virgo and Libra, indicating that I would tend to see all sides of an issue and not disregard details, however obscure they may be. Stationary Uranus trine Venus, Mars, and the Midheaven, put me in the New Age, and Moon conjunct Neptune opens windows of perception into weird realms. Eighth house Mercury conjunct ninth house Jupiter shows me to be a natural born investigator, always seeking (and tending to find) information and insight.
I knew nothing of that, and, following my family and teachers, rejected the whole idea of astrology, until my mid-twenties, when I began to investigate it with an open mind. I suppose that was a major turning point for me in many ways, because I then realized how fallacious popular culture or “consensus reality” could be. Even so, it would be a couple decades more before I transcended the cultural rejection of reincarnation and opened myself to recalling my own past lives. Along with genetics and environment, anyone wanting to understand me also needs to take into account experience, in this life and those that have gone before, on this planet and on other planets.
Boundaries between genetics and environment tend to blur when looking at my infancy. My mother’s uterus was not a healthy environment, and her labor with me was so long it almost killed both of us. The damage to her, and her frequent hospitalization during my infancy, provided an enriched environment for me, in that my father received help from family, friends and neighbors to care for me, giving me variety and sensory stimulation. My mother, when she was around, tended to pen me in my crib or tie me to a chair. That also might have helped me, in that it made me rebellious and eager to get out and experience freedom.
From my first exposure to the “nature versus nurture” debate, I’ve had problems with it. It has never seemed to me to be an either/or situation, but one of both/and. Likewise with most of the other ridiculous dualistic debates between creationists and evolutionists, scientists and religionists, etc. Both sides are wrong, and neither side is completely wrong. Unable to take sides anywhere because both sides are stupid, and unwilling to give up on this existence which is rich in mysteries to solve and adventures to experience, I have been forced, in the absence of an acceptable social group that will have me, to accept myself as a constituency of one within the greater Oneness of All. … and that is me in a nutshell.
Comments (21)
Since it seems apropos, I would like to tell you (again) that you make me think quite a lot and remind me not to get soft on myself and self-indulgent. I want to use words like “brutal” and “harsh”, but without the value judgement. I need someone to be brutal with me when I get too self-indulgent with regard to stupid selfish emotions. You and my father are the two best people I know for that. Sometimes I go around for days thinking about things you comment at me.
Man…I sense another long blog in response to his/her comment…. I eagerly await….
A bit too thickly, perhaps - but entirely sincere.
I actually decided to use the term ‘apocatastasis’ because of its relation to, erm… Christianity, rather than Stoicism.
To borrow a quick definition from Wikipedia, “In Christianity, apocatastasis is the doctrine of the ultimate reconciliation of good and evil. Apocatastasis maintains that all moral creatures — angels, humans and devils — will eventually come to a harmony in God’s kingdom.” It also means a restitution of sorts.
In gnostic Christianity, it means that salvation comes from finding the kingdom of God within. Perhaps I should’ve picked a shorter username.
“I suppose that was a major turning point for me in many ways, because I then realized how fallacious popular culture or “consensus reality” could be.” – Join the club. When I got into psychology, I did a little research into social proof and the false consensus effect. These days, I tend to investigate an idea myself before outright accepting or rejecting it – regardless of what my intuition may tell me, and I’m often left outspoken. Since I haven’t looked into astrology, reincarnation etc. and they conflict with my current worldview, I don’t accept them; nor do I outright reject them. But because they conflict with that worldview, I maintain a mediocre degree of skepticism.
You seem to be pinning that stance on sociocultural influence which may have left me prejudiced against New Age beliefs, but infact I think similarly about Christianity (a much more normal way for people to express their spirituality in our society)… albiet with more outright rejection, at least in most of its current forms. As a child, sociocultural influences certainly had a much larger impact on me. I thought New Age stuff was bullshit and Christianity was the way to go. Oh, how things change. [edited in]
Sociocultural influence, however, has certainly shaped my worldview. I’m sure it’ll evolve in time as I seem to be changing quickly these days.
I agree with you regarding nature vs. nurture. It’s pretty much a combination of both for most things. Your genes interacting with your environment. As for whether there’s anything beyond the material… ultimately I don’t know. Materialism is a part of my worldview because I’ve yet to know of anything other. Again, I don’t outright reject the idea of there being something beyond the material plane of existence because I concede that it’s a possibility, but I certainly don’t accept it.
Neither do I accept reincarnation, because I’ve yet to see anything to substantiate or justify having such a belief. I kind of wonder what gave you reason to believe in it, among other things. Those past-life recollections may not have any basis in reality – ever heard of PLR therapy? It seems more likely to me that these past life recollections of yours are fictitious, given that [at this point] I know of no other way a belief in past lives could be substantiated. Maybe created by your mind with some combination of imagination and forgotten info. Did you deliberately induce them?
Thanks for the info relating to your early life experiences.
“Along with genetics and environment, anyone wanting to understand me also needs to take into account experience, in this life and those that have gone before, on this planet and on other planets.” – Your experiences actually fall under the category of environmental influences; shaping you into who you are today. As for experiences on other planets… I suppose they do too. edit – thought i’d respond to this too.
@Apocatastasis - I do not believe in reincarnation. Belief is for things one does not know. I remember my past lives, and there are enough others around me in this life who recall me and some of the same things I remember, that I know I’m not hallucinating. That is very different from a belief.
Are you aware of your defensiveness? Are you aware that in this entry, beyond the bit I quoted from you, and the opinion that you were laying it on kinda thick, I wasn’t referring to you. I was only writing about myself. You had expressed curiosity, and I was more or less addressing you.
“You seem to be pinning that stance on sociocultural influence which may have left me prejudiced against New Age beliefs”
What stance? Your beliefs, prejudices, etc., are none of my business, none of my concern, and not of interest to me. I, myself, do not accept “New Age beliefs.” Some of that woo-woo shit is absurd and laughable.
One of the few things I do believe is that the more we know and the less we believe, the better off we are. For a couple of decades now, I have been working at transcending all belief. I keep a few working hypotheses as investigation goes on in areas where knowledge is incomplete, and otherwise, I don’t even try to make guesses about the stuff I don’t know.
@soul_survivor - Not a blog, just a comment, and I was writing it when you posted yours.
His. Also, anyone know what’s up with these “memory error at line: 1″ errors I keep getting on this site?
hmm, another long blog. maybe. either way it’d work out well; she seems to be a good person to learn from.
@SuSu - ”I do not believe in reincarnation. Belief is for things one does not know.” – I use the term faith in that instance. Everyone has different standards for what constitutes “knowing”. Belief, to me, is whatever you see as being almost-certainly true. So under my definition, when you “know” something you believe it. When you have faith in something, you also believe it.
I don’t believe you were hallucinating, but it is possible to induce false memories and the subconscious can create memories of things that never happened. About 4 years back (and I don’t remember this well because I was quite young) , I saw a documentary on precisely this topic. They had shown that certain instances of recollection about these people’s past lives had been memories created by their own mind, because historically they didn’t match up. Not to say that all reincarnation is nonsense, just that it’s seemingly possible for these things to happen.
They even did a little test, where people had to try and remember their birth/being in the womb. Many of them actually started to ‘remember’ this far back, which isn’t supposed to be possible.
lol, that wasn’t defensiveness, that was the result of poor reading comprehension and not taking the time to properly read what you wrote. I have a tendency to get things all muddled up; demonstrable most recently when I took a test related to an IVEC course and missed two of the main instructions!
So I guess I just misattributed what you said to myself.
@SuSu - You really don’t think that what you “know” falls under the category of New Age? I mean, you’ve got your Indian influences (meditation, Oneness of All), you’ve got astrology, among other little bits-and-pieces. All of it matches up very well with New Age belief systems.
How confusing.
@Apocatastasis - ”believing IN” something is not the same as knowing it or having experienced it. I don’t believe in grass or flowers, or air travel or rock climbing, in precisely the same way that I do not believe in reincarnation. Do you believe in lunch? Maybe you approve of it or think of it as a necessity or at least a desirable luxury, but I think you’re probably a little bit too familiar with the reality of it to need to believe in its existence.
“experiences actually fall under the category of environmental influences“
Not necessarily. Not all experience is environmental in nature. Not all of mine, anyway.
One thing you don’t know about me is what a hard-headed realist I am. I have come to that position through conscious effort and conscientious application of intellect. I have determined, or discovered, or decided that it is not in my best interest to believe in fairy tales, or fantasies, or lies, or someone else’s misconceptions. Many of the things I observe are unpleasant to contemplate, but I prefer seeing things as they are rather than pretending they are otherwise.
When I was young, I believed what I was taught. It took me a quarter of a century to learn that I had been taught falsely regarding astrology, and almost half a century to realize that I had been wrong about reincarnation. Once I got hip to astrology, then psychology and history began to make more sense to me. When reincarnation became integrated into my conceptual framework, I understood for the first time the origins of recurring dreams I’d been having since childhood, and grasped the reasons why many of my most important relationships had developed as they did.
I had to laugh at that thing you said about what “isn’t supposed to be possible.” It all depends on who is doing the supposing. I am accustomed to doing what many people suppose is impossible. I am not limited by the false beliefs of others.
On reflection, maybe I was being defensive without realizing it. I’m not sure
@Apocatastasis - Ah, yes, I knew that. How refreshing that you not only realized it, but admitted it.
Re: “New Age” beliefs, are you aware of and familiar with the difference between “New Age” and “Archaic Revival”? Maybe you need to reread and think about precisely what I have written regarding belief in general and “woo-woo shit” in particular. I don’t really care how an idea is categorized. Categories don’t help me evaluate the validity of ideas.
Here is something else to think about.
thanks for sharing your chart! that is so cool!
@SuSu - I only believe in lunch, yes. I don’t ultimately know that it’s real. Think skepticism. For all I know, everything I “know” could be an artificial illusion; kind of like The Matrix. Maybe I don’t know anything at all, including whether or not I know anything. I hear descartes-style hardcore skepticism leads to a paradox of sorts; I’ll have to check that out sometime.
My lunch may not really exist at all. I don’t know whether exists or not, I only believe it does. IMO, the mind plays an active role in interpreting the reality around me. I don’t get to see it as it truly is. Kind of like lots of complex computer code can make what you see on your desktop… or something like that.My lunch as I percieve it is probably very different from my lunch as it truly is.
But I don’t know much about philosophy, and epistomology is a bitch. So that’s pure speculation; likely flawed and it’s leaving me tongue-tied.
The point is, I think human beings are extremely limited/not omniscient and I don’t think I can know anything for certain, so I stick with believing. Malleable, temporary beliefs that help me get by in the world as I percieve it. Yes, I only believe in grass and flowers. I can’t know whether they truly exist or not. Since you know they exist, you must have a different standard of what constitutes knowing than me. I can’t know whether they truly exist or not.
Knowing implies certainty. I have no certainty. Knowing is limiting to me, because it means you discount all other possibilities if you know you’re 100% right about something. It’s much less malleable, and it’s impossible for me to have absolute certainty about anything. I can’t even know whether the sun will rise tomorrow.
For example: maybe some sort of God does exist, and he’ll decide to ‘pull the plug’ on the sun tomorrow for unfathomable reasons. Maybe everything I’ve known my whole life is part of an elaborate artificial illusion, and it will all collapse tomorrow. Maybe my life is like that movie, “The Truman Show” (guy in reality TV show since birth). Sure, it sounds as though I’m paranoid and all of these scenarios seem highly unlikely. But there are a near-infinite number of possibilities beyond my wildest imagination – I know nothing/ anything could happen at any time. My standards for what constitutes “knowing” are absolute. Knowing means certainty. Everchanging beliefs get me by in the world as I percieve it. Knowing is too rigid. Ever heard of the story about the man who said, “All swans are white”? He thought he knew that there were no swans of any other colour in existence. And he went to Australia and found black swans. Even the most basic, fundamental things that people profess to “know” have been later shown as wrong. True certainty; truly knowing something… requires absolute omniscience.
Aside from that, it’s nice how everything you learn sort of comes together after a while, isn’t it? The interrelationships between different areas of knowledge sort-of show themselves in time.
In relation to the next comment, I’ve never even heard of Archaic Revival. I know it’s irrelevent to you, but since you reject the New Age label… do you more closely identify with Archaic Revival, whatever that may be?
Firstly, can you give me an example of an experience that doesn’t fall under the category of environmental influences? You say there are some, but I can’t think of any.
“believing IN” something is not the same as knowing it or having experienced it. - I agree. I should’ve been clearer.
Let’s clarify our definitions regarding believing and knowing. Vaguely, here are mine
Knowing: Implies certainty; possible only by omniscient beings. A term used all too casually. When you think you know something, you actually just believe it.
Belief: Pretty much everything we think is true to varying degrees. Often seems near-certain, but there’s always an uncertainty factor involved.
Faith: A form of belief not hugely grounded with proof or evidence. Often religious in nature. Hence the term, “leap of faith.”
What’re yours?
Edit: In relation to my defensiveness, I’ve decided that it was a combination of largely-skimming your original post + poor reading comprehension, and then the defensive part may have came in. You wrote:
Even so, it would be a couple decades more before I transcended the cultural rejection of reincarnation and opened myself to recalling my own past lives.
Because I hadn’t properly read what you had written, I automatically assumed that you were talking about me rather than yourself, without even realizing it. I thought you were saying that the only reason I don’t believe in reincarnation, astrology etc. is because I haven’t transcended the cultural rejection of it. Hence my seemingly-nonsensical reply of “You seem to be pinning that stance on sociocultural influence which may have left me prejudiced against…”. You asked me “What stance?” btw, the stance itself was in the previous paragraph.
Is me subconsciously misattributing your remark as being directed toward myself a form of defensiveness, or something else?
It’s strange. Now that I read what I wrote, it doesn’t quite fit together and that’s why. I didn’t feel a pang of something which would lead me to be defensive; a sting of sorts. I try to be humble and open which largely negates any sort of reaction like that, but if I was, thanks for informing me of it. Keep doing that, you’ll improve people’s self-awareness.
So what are these recurring dreams you had/have had since childhood, and how do they relate to your past lives? How does one ‘find out’ about their past life? I’m curious about mine (and others), assuming this isn’t the first time I’ve been here.
I find your blogs most fascinating, although I don’t often comment. I enjoy astrology, it helps me stay objective and gets me from out behind the 8 ball.
I have a Leo Sun, Virgo Rising, and a Gemini moon, which does help me understand myself better, which, to me is my primary purpose this lifetime on the planet.
Recovering from physical/emotional abuse at the hands of my first husband way back in the 70′s was a catalyst for the transformation from victim into a confident person. My latest recovery process started when I left a cult back in 2002. I still have dreams about those years, most of them involving issues with being controlled or repressed. ‘Ya think????
I can now reflect on those years and glean what I learned. No regrets. I am who I am because my character was forged in the fire of refinement, and I like me, I’m not perfect but at least I am not guilt ridden (only occasionally)
Keep up the good work.
It’s been really interesting reading your correspondence back and forth here. And from the beginning, Kathy, I could tell that your new commenter was sincere – whether you think so or not
@Apocatastasis - Our differences are both semantic and philosophical. I have no mission in life to convince you or anyone of anything. I gave you a link to think about, and the answers to most of your questions about me and my experiences are in my memoirs. Content yourself with that. I am moving on to other matters.
Interesting discussion going on here. A little long, but interesting nonetheless.
@SuSu - Sure, if that’s what you want. This is getting a bit long-winded anyway.
Well I’m atheist, but I find mysticism very interesting, so much that I studied it for three years during my early teen years and hope to learn more about it (especially astrology).
@adifferentkindofbeautiful - Aside from the atheist part, Amen! There are so many questions I want to ask this woman – especially since her worldview differs so radically from my own. She has a lot to offer in terms of helping people diminish their own ignorance. Hopefully by reading this blog, I’ll gain a greater insight/understanding into it. I’m interested in everything: my astrological profile & how it affects my life, past lives, psychic readings, all this psychology stuff she writes about etc. Hopefully I’ll get as much as I can out of this blog before she… reincarnates, lol.
Anyways, since you looked into astrology for a while… do you know of any good websites related to the subject?