Ride the Spiral To The End

So, I am an atheist, which has been mentioned before on this blog. The sort of atheist I am is...complicated. I have been in arguments over my beliefs because people insist to me that, "You are NOT an atheist." It is true that I dislike Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins when it comes to their explanations of spirituality and religiosity. However, I don't believe in God, gods, god, G-d, or anything related to theistic beliefs.

This entire post has been difficult for me to write, not because I fear sharing anything about my beliefs feelings, but because it is hard for me to express it properly. Recently, a friend had asserted that I am a transcendentalist. While I enjoy Thoreau and Emerson, there is something that makes me not a transcendentalist, though I am not entirely sure what that is. The existentialist aspects of transcendentalism I empathize with, but I would guess that it is the focus on the individual's will and the overall idealism of the movement ultimately leads me to stray from their beliefs. If there were cynical transcendentalists, then maybe that would be more amenable to what I feel. Maybe part of what is tripping me up here is the difference between the terms transcendental and the transcendentalists. I am conflating the two and it's just pissing me off because I can't really understand the difference. Fuck language (see below for more on that).

There is nothing "greater" than my own experience. Greater in this sense would mean on any sort of elevated plane of existence -as in there is nothing greater than the immanent world (re: this is not the same as what Descartes is asserting). The Hindu monism of "everything is Brahmin" makes sense to me, as we are all part of the same universe, acting out a bit of energy and matter in our own lifetimes, to then pass ultimately into non-being when we die, with our energy and matter continuing to exist, albeit in different forms.

To better explain this, the metaphysical rockers Cynic have a great line that comes to mind, "Cosmic cavalcade we are but one," from their song "Integral Birth." The idea that we're both wave and particle, both dead and alive (Schroedinger's cat, human style), is, to me, not transcendentalist, but natural law. Our understanding of time as a dimension is limited. Our knowledge of our own finitude is scary. Combine the two and we have millennia of myriad interesting religious beliefs.

Honestly, most of what I find trips us up in our understanding of each other's experiences, feelings, beliefs etc, are words. Language plays a large role in our perception of the world around us. Linguistic structure and vocabulary affect how we analyze and ultimately understand what we take in via the sensory. Also, since language is a construct of human intellect, a side effect of the human condition, everything is, in a sense, metaphorical. Even the simplest words color our understanding. It's only an approximation of any sort of feelings we have. Imagine if you were asked to draw the events of your day. It is likely that something would be lost by having to share your experiences through such a method. Our adeptness at speaking and writing helps to narrow that gap between what we experience and how we relate it to others, or even reflect on it ourselves, but it, too is still not perfect.

If we take the Catholic tenet of the "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" we can see it as 3 separate words and therefore separate concepts, or we can see it as asserting that there is one existence in various forms. Jesus' temptations, his conversations with God and Satan, are all representative of what it means to be a conscious being. He is conflicted about whether he should continue to do what he knows is right, not because God is telling him he must, but because it really fucking sucks to be the target of other people's ire. He also has to suffer to show us that we can do what we know is right over what we know is comfortable. Taken in this sense, the story is beautiful to me, but it is convoluted to fit particular agendas that use it to subjugate others.So, sigh, because we could learn a lot from actually using religious texts to understand the world around us, instead of making a modern world fit into ancient stories.

 Leave it to another song to really understand my feelings. Tool's song "Lateralus" really hits home for me in this verse:

As below, so above and beyond, I imagine

drawn beyond the lines of reason.

Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.

Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must

Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines.