Actually this is the science of psychology. Psychology as it presently exists is no science at all. It has no clarity about what it is studying. Psychology should be the science of our consciousness. That is the psyche to which this "ology" is attached. The psyche is the experience of a human being. It is not really possible to observe the psyche of others. The only experience that I can really know is my own. I can try to verify that the experience of others is like mine, but I have to rely on the reports of other observers, observing their own psyche. It is completely absurd to try to define psychology as "behavioral science." The mirror that reflects reality for us is one's own consciousness. Rocks behave, so do chemicals and robots. We also behave, but unlike rocks, chemicals and robots, we are aware of behavior. I am conscious, therefore I am. Descartes didn't have it quite right. It is not my thinking that makes me a person, it is my consciousness. Certainly having a body is also a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for personhood. If we were only bodies, our world would not exist. Our world is the world of human consciousness.
There are "perfectly good reasons," as Mr. Nyland said, for doing this practice. The point of it is to do it. In our culture, we are not accustomed to thinking along lines that reveal the necessity for this practice. For example, our understanding of religion tends to be based on the false belief or delusion, or even hallucination, that God is a person. This sidetracks our attention from the main issue.
The meaning of "religion" is "reconnection." But obviously, we are connected. The sense of estrangement exists because we are only partially aware of our own reality. The fault is with our consciousness. But the point is to remedy that fault, to experience healing in that sense. It will not be accomplished by thinking.
I have learned by frustrating experience that few people in our culture seem to be able to hear the angels singing, or to identify where their song is coming from.
Unfortunately, the same cultural stupidity applies to those who would teach this practice, such as myself. Awareness of reality, putting aside "gifts" and accidents, which are by definition unreliable, is experienced only by those who know how to experience this, wish to experience it, and are presently making the necessary effort. Our default mode is "waking sleep." In "waking sleep" our same old habits of thought, cultural habits, continue by momentum. It is true that our thought is informed and improved by our experience of awareness of reality. Still, thought is only thought. Awareness is how reality is known.
Our culture is not "the best of all possible worlds." To me, there are certain basic questions regarding the nature of reality and the reality of God that must come up for a human being, but those questions actually seem to come up rather rarely in our culture. One reason is that paying attention to these basic human issues, to our actual business as persons with the potentiality but not yet the actuality of real consciousness, is not encouraged by the immense power of accumulated capital concentrated in often multinational corporations. There is no profit for them in such concerns. Other concerns have real profit potential. When I, a complete Internet neophyte, was trying to set up this blog, I happened on a survey of the day's hot blog questions. Number one was, "what gives you a boner?"
You are suffering from the state of your consciousness, even if you don't know the difference between consciousness and an erection. Our consciousness is the direct cause of our suffering, of course.
Our religion and psychology are full of blatant nonsense. Our so-called mental health system is a bad joke. And of course, our political system is no democracy. It is, as is. There is one saving grace, and that is that the reality of our suffering cannot be entirely ignored.
Jesus Christ, a great teacher, emphasized that it is the "poor in spirit," those who suffer, who can benefit from this teaching. He put it very forcefully: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven." "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven."
The poor in spirit may be too depressed, too anxious, too psychotic to understand the kind of psychological statements that I am making here, which are a bit off the beaten path of our materialistic and hyper-commercial culture. Many of them may wander into the web of our "mental illness" system, where they will be encouraged to take medications that routinely have harmful side effects and to depend on the expertise of doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, social workers, case managers and other support professionals. Their poverty of spirit will be attributed to their alleged "mental illness," that will o' the wisp. All these dependencies constitute a practice, a remarkably passive one. You know, the attribute highlighted by the word "patient" is waiting. "Hell of a waiter, old Joe. Never saw a person wait better. Waited his whole life, until he died." Jesus did not advise those who suffer to merely wait for "pie in the sky by and by." He advised action. "Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men." The rich also suffer. "Sell all you have, and give to the poor."
The point of this practice is to do it. I have explained why one would want to do it. Of course, that can be explained otherwise. I have also explained how to begin. One must do it correctly, which is always a learning process. One must also do it seriously. An occasional half-hearted effort is not going to bring much result in this, or in anything else. This is not to say that a person has to buy this practice whole-heartedly without trying it. But one has to try it seriously and persistently at times, in order to have a realistic assessment of its value.
Depression and anxiety are the two most common emotional states associated with "mental illness." They are also associated with poverty of spirit. Depression and anxiety are not just some kind of impersonal "chemical imbalances in the brain." A person becomes depressed because one's needs are not being met, and one doesn't know of anything that one can do to get them met. It is an emotional reaction of a person to reality as experienced in the partial consciousness of that person. The same is true of anxiety, which is the apprehension or fear that one's needs may not be met. When that fear is chronic, the "fear itself" prevents us from getting our needs met, which frequently and logically leads to depression as well. This practice is a much better and more available remedy and protection against depression and anxiety than any amount of pills and therapy. It has no harmful side effects if done correctly. But you have to actually do it.
Sometimes truth is expressed most clearly in dreams. This blog is an expression of the truth of this practice by me. I have a right to make these statements, which refer to my own discoveries, discoveries made however with the benefit of good and rare guidance, and not for either the first or last time. It is like the movie of the Neverending Story, my personal quest but also the ancient quest. I have felt a need to create this blog, and now I feel that I have recorded the essentials, a sufficient indication. "Those who can hear, let them hear." Last night I dreamt that there was going to be a nuclear attack, and we had to flee. (This does not purport to be prophetic, it was just a dream.) What would I take, aside from immediate necessities, something from our culture that must be preserved? Knowledge of this quest must be preserved. It is the Neverending Story of humanity.
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