Jumping on the bandwagon long after most people have gone to their destinations...

[jducoeur]

So Mr. Perpetually-Behind is only now wading through this particular meme. But late or not, it's one of the more interesting ones I've seen lately, so I'll jump in.

The problem with LJ: we all think we are so close, but there is a lot we don't actually know. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Comments

[jducoeur]

The literal answer? "At great length." It's not a simple question, especially because it's been mutating steadily over the past ten years. Let's see if I can summarize in a few paragraphs.

Summary: the nearest thing to an established religion that matches me seems to be Minbari. That's not a matter of geekitude -- I just find it unusually consonant with my views.

Basic premises: at an instinctive level, I believe that there exist powers higher than our own, and in some sort of existence beyond normal life. At the intellectual level, I demand that my spiritual beliefs be at least not contradictory with what I know of the world. (That is, science trumps faith for me.) Rectifying these two aspects is probably a lifelong project.

I don't believe in God in the classic Christian Highfather model, tending to all the details of the world; I can't rectify it against the world I see. Insofar as I believe in a demiurge, I tend to think of it as being well beyond our comprehension. I vary on whether I actually believe such a being exists at all. (Not a small problem for me, since it's one of the few mandatory dogmas of Freemasonry.)

Increasingly, I've come to think of the problem sort of in terms of quantum mechanics. I'm drifting towards a rather mystical philosophy, suspecting that the world exists simply because it *can* -- explaining that is a project unto itself, to be posted one of these days. In that model, essentially everything that *can* be *is* -- all the varied possibilities existing side-by-side in a constantly bifurcating universe.

As for life-after-death (always one of the big spiritual questions), I'm coming to suspect that it's usually phrased incorrectly. I certainly don't believe in continuance of the ego -- indeed, I don't think it's even accurate to say that I am quite the same person I was ten years ago. But I do *hope* for a sort of outside-time meta-view -- that the demiurge exists outside the simple concepts of "before" and "after", and consists of the collected experiences of everything and everyone in the universe. Hence, the result isn't so much continuance as a sort of omnipresent connectedness.

Hmm. Describing mysticism is hard. One of these days, I'm going to have to put in enough time to really spell this out more clearly.

Oh, one last detail: the other thing I love about Minbari is the trappings. I don't believe in ritual magic at the *literal* level, but I feel that it's terribly important at the *symbolic* level. That is, I don't think it affects the rest of the universe, but it does affect the participants profoundly. That's most of what keeps me in Masonry -- while the performance quality of the ritual isn't often as good as I like, it still provides a real spiritual hit...

[dreda.livejournal.com]

Describing mysticism has always been hard - much ink has been spilled - but you're in good company. And recognizing that it's not a simple question tells me, at a bare minimum, that you're grappling with it to a degree that suits the question. Sometimes, I think that's the best answer I can ask for.