Religions > Atheism > Atheists and theists both suffer from blindness when they 'get attached' to their views...for without this dream world, life for them would not be tolerable.
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"V" |
| Date: |
05 Aug 2007 11:18:26 PM |
| Object: |
Atheists and theists both suffer from blindness when they 'get attached' to their views...for without this dream world, life for them would not be tolerable. |
Let me tell you about the godfather of mind blindness...
Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant, was born in the late 19th century
and was credited with developing the first pyramid scheme in the
1920's, which has appropriately been dubbed "The Ponzi Scheme" He
would deliver the promise "Would you like to be rich? I can double
your money every ninety days, guaranteed" and was successful with
bilking people out of many millions of dollars For those that do not
know what a pyramid or Ponzi scheme is, here is the definition from
Investors World dot com:
"An illegal investment scheme in which investors are promised
impossibly high returns on their investments. These are scams in which
money from later investors is used to pay earlier investors. The
creators of the scheme get most of the profits while those who come
later are left with nothing because there are eventually an
insufficient number of new investors to pay the existing ones. These
scams inevitably collapse because they require exponential growth in
the number of participants at each step, which is impossible."
A few years ago I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about
Ponzi. The article stated when Ponzi was interviewed he was asked how
he was able to swindle so many people so easily, his responded, "When
a man's mind is concentrated he is blind." When I read this it hit
home that this is what I had been doing all those years with my
addictions. I was anesthetizing myself to living and dealing with life
with my drugs and had done a good job blinding myself with my
addictions and unbalanced way of living. This blindness lead to more
blindness and more unbalance and it snowballed from there.
Atheists and theists both suffer from blindness when they 'get
attached' to their views. When we invest excessive time and energies
in acquiring or building attachments these attachments become
veritable extensions of our being and come to define us for ourselves
as well as define who we are for others. When these attachments take
on this role we become susceptible to pain via these extensions. If
the person, place or thing we are attached to gets rebuked it is a
personal rebuke on us, if they get damaged or defaced so goes the
defacement and damage to our very being.
It is hard to become full detached to ideas, for if we did we would be
like a feather floating wherever the wind blew us and would pick up
any old idea with no firm grounding of what we perceive as right or
wrong. But, we can practice being open minded and look at ideas
without prejudice that we immediately hit ideas with. Learn to judge
other less. We especially do this with everyone we meet...they are
better or lesser than me type of thinking.
This case of having your mind concentrated to the point of blindness
is not anything new. The ancient philosophers new this well. They
called it "putting passion before reason." Both these areas of passion
and reason where the foundation of much philosophical discussion of
ethics and virtue with the ancient Greeks. They knew when passion
rules the mind, that the only job left for reason is that of the
subservient task to find cleaver ways to satisfy the passions. When
our minds are occupied with too much wreckage of the past, too many
problems and complexities and out of control passions then there is
little room left in it for reasoning. This is why addicts make poor
decisions a lot of the time. Addicts blind themselves with their
addiction and out of balance life.
You see this same concentration of mind in many other lifestyles as
well. The chronic volunteers that mind everyone's business other than
their own suffer from it. Remember what the program tells us - "we
cannot transmit what we do not have." They do not understand the
concept of getting their own house in order before loosing themselves
in others problems. The collectors that concentrate on perfecting
their obsessions can also suffer from it. I've know many collectors
and was a massive one myself. A funny thing with many collectors is
once they finish a collection they lose interest in it and must find
another collection to start to occupy their minds. It is a never
ending treadmill of desire, attachment and unsatisfied demands. This
is the same reason that we can only find transient state of happiness
in people, places or things that we pursue in life. They all deliver
various states of pleasure but the happiness they deliver is short
term and not sustainable.
Once we acquire our acquisition the happiness only lasts a few days
and sometimes does not even last for the drive home from the store.
Whenever we put our happiness in people, places or things we will
sooner or later be let down. Happiness starts from within us and
cannot come from anyplace else. We can achieve a "diminishing of pain"
from people, places or things, but cannot find true happiness in these
material things as the pleasure found in such things can readily be
turned into pain as well. True happiness has no limits, whereas the
aforementioned do have limits and also contain qualities of pain in
them
Perfectionists of all sorts can be blinded to the big picture when
they get concentrated on some unimportant minutia they fixate on that
they think will mean life or death to them. Personally, I used to work
to perfect many unimportant areas of living. This gave me the
illusion that I had some control over at least one "thing" in my life,
when the broader part of my life was a total mess and out of control.
I found that balanced living is better than concentrated living in one
area with the rest of my life being sickly out of balance. We
sometimes get so wrapped up in these external areas that appeal to our
ego that we forget to work within us to develop self worth that is
real and stems from within us. All the addictive areas we participate
in are in the same boat whether we are concentrated on a bottle or a
fix or what to buy next.
I had to learn to restructure my life in a balanced way under the
guidelines of the 12 steps with special attention given to living
right size and accepting and living comfortably with my OWN means as
is mentioned in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps and 12 Traditions on
pages 122-125. I also had to learn not devote too much time to
perfecting any one area of living for fear of being too concentrated
in one thing and blind to many other important areas of my life. My
Buddhist practice also warns me against developing attachments and
whenever I try to perfect anything to a high degree I cannot avoid
this area of clinging, desire and attachments so I try to avoid it if
possible. While I can never be 100% perfect with this, I give it much
thought and work on living within my comfortable means in the broad
spectrum of my life and not just on certain concentrated areas.
Sometimes we make a conscious effort to escape through fantasy and
fixation on something, someplace or somebody else. Other times we are
not aware of what we are doing and can get lost though ignorance.
Isn't it much easier to fantasize about something else than stay in
the hear and now and deal with today's problems? I try and catch
myself when I practice this escapism and work to bring my thoughts
back to the present. Whenever the fantasy starts I check to see what I
am escaping from? Why do I fixate on something else instead of where
I'm at? My Buddhist practice of mindfulness helps with this area as
well as my 12 step work of living in the present. I have to make an
effort to stay balanced, as I can still live unbalanced even from
putting too much effort in a seemingly good area. Chronic gamblers
seem to live in this fantasy world quite a bit. Here is an excerpt
from a Gamblers Anonymous pamphlet.
"The Dream World of a Compulsive Gambler."
"A lot of time is spent creating images of great and wonderful things
they are going to do as soon as they make 'the big win.' They often
see themselves as quite philanthropic and charming people. They may
dream of providing families and friends with new cars, mink coats and
other luxuries. Compulsive gamblers picture themselves leading a
pleasant, gracious life, made possible by the huge sums of money they
will accrue from their 'system.' Servants, penthouses, nice clothes,
charming friends, yachts and world tours are a few of the wonderful
things that are just around the corner after a big win is finally
made.
Pathetically, however, there never seems to be a big enough winning to
make even the smallest dream come true. When compulsive gamblers
succeed, they gamble to dream still greater dreams. When failing, they
gamble in reckless desperation and the depths of their misery are
fathomless as their dream world comes crashing down. Sadly, they will
struggle back, dream more dreams and of course suffer more misery. No
one can convince them that their great schemes will not come true.
They believe they will, for without this dream world, life for them
would not be tolerable."
'Without this dream world, life for them would not be
tolerable'...sound familiar atheist and theists? The theists putting
all hope in the next life and the atheists put all hope in destroying
theists.
As Thich Nhat Hanh writes:
"There is no way to peace, peace is the way. This means that we can
realize peace right here in the present moment with our look, our
smile, our words and our actions. Peace work in not a means, each step
we take should be peace. Every step we take should be joy. Every step
we take should be happiness. Are you massaging Mother Earth every time
your foot touches her? Are you planting seeds of joy and peace?
Enlightenment, peace and joy will not be granted by someone else. The
well is within us and if we dig deeply in the present moment the water
will spring forth. If we are determined, we can do it. We don't need
the future. We can smile, breath fully and relax Everything we want is
here in the present moment. Peace is every step. Shall we continue our
journey?"
Until atheists and theists can find peace in the present, they will
continue on their hopeless path in life disregarding the present and
just looking towards the future, just wishing their lives away for a
state of happiness that never seems to come.
It is important to be able to concentrate, but it is also important to
be able to see life in a balanced way and not get too concentrated on
one thing. Contemplative time, meditation time, down time or
relaxation time is very important to fostering peace in our lives. A
lot of the addicts I read about live lives of constant doing and
running with no time for such useless things as sitting around to
relax or meditate. Workaholics usually put little time in self
actualization. They may think that workaholism provides all the
financial benefits they need to live a happy and fulfilled life, but
while putting all effort in this one area they are bankrupt in the
area of their inner peace and contemplative needs.
When we are not self aware of our real needs it is the same as not
having controls in our car that tell us the internal condition of what
is going on. We cannot tell how fast we are going without a
speedometer, nor can we tell if our car is overheating until it its
too late without a temperature gauge and without a gas gauge we will
be left stranded with an empty tank. All these instruments give us
feedback as to the internal condition of things and so does his time
spent with ourselves when we look within.
There was a successful local businessman named Bobus who owned a
communications company. He was a workaholic was fat, smoked, consumed
lots of coffee, never exercised and ate junk food all the while he
overworked at his office desk while building up a million dollar
company. I read in a newspaper article he died from heart attack in
his mid 40's right at his desk. Isn't that the dream of every
workaholic to die at their desk? Bobus could not comfortably have the
company he built up. He created it artificially by sacrificing his
life. Bobus robbed Peter to pay Paul to develop his business by
sacrificing his health. Bobus was blinded to many areas of living
healthy by his ego and greed for money. Ruskin tells a similar story
"In a shipwreck, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with
one hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was afterwards found
at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking--had he the gold? Or had the
gold him?"
An addict once told me she disliked spending any contemplative or
introspective time on herself to become self aware. She claimed it
just promoted being more "self obsessed" and she wanted to spend less
time thinking about herself and not more. Well, all this has to
balanced up, but without giving the question of "who I am and what are
my real recovery needs" some thought, I would not have the recovery I
do today. When I was blinded by the Ponzi effect, I had little time or
ability to look within me to see what was wrong. As an addict, this
self inventory is needed every day on a continual basis, as each day
has 1440 minutes in it and it only take one of these minutes, or even
less sometimes, to suffer a slip. Seemingly good areas of
concentration, when overdone, can lead to bad outcomes as well.
A 12 step acquaintance was the poster child for doing all he could do
in his respective recovery program. He did tons of service, went to
all the meetings and out of state conferences. Unfortunately for him,
his excess concentration in his one 12 step program did not help him
in an area of speculative gambling and he ended up losing just under 2
million dollars...gambling it away on a Ponzi scheme. Myself? I am a
minimalist and only put enough recovery work in each respective
program to give me a semblance of peace. I could never afford to work
8 - 12 step programs any other way and still maintain a healthy
balance.
Balanced living - As the Buddhists recommend, "I seek the middle path"
and have to accept I need some introspection time as well as some non-
introspection time in my life. I try to work towards balance and work
in the direction of not over doing your self awareness and insight or
under doing it as well. Don't ever expect perfection either with this
balance of self awareness and self obsession. If you see things
getting out of hand, reign things in some. I don't run perfect
programs by any means, but I run successful ones as long as I work
towards perfection but am not upset if I never get there. I have to
look out for blindness though fixation or concentrated mind as well as
ignorance and have to be aware that if I concentrate on any one thing
too much it can blind me from other important areas of living.
Take care,
V (Male)
Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
AA#2
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| User: "Pastor Kutchie, ordained atheist minister" |
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| Title: Re: Atheists and theists both suffer from blindness when they 'get attached' to their views...for without this dream world, life for them would not be tolerable. |
06 Aug 2007 12:54:56 AM |
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On Aug 6, 5:18 am,Drunken fart and solipsist V <vf...@aol.com> wrote:
Let me tell you about the godfather of mind blindness...
Na zdrowie!
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