August 07, 2004

Watching Watching the Friedmans

Recently, I saw Watching the Friedmans. Immediately after that, I put on The Mating Game, a "60s" romantic comedy (it was from 59 actually) with Tony Randall and Debbie Reynolds. To me, these movies and movie experiences side by side offer a perfect case for asking whether the point of life is to be happy and if so what choices one might make. Why the hell did I submit myself to the ugliness of Watching the Friedmans? I felt dirty and sad afterwards. Watching The Mating Game I was between amused and laughing out loud. Tell me, why would one choose the former over the latter? Life is hard enough, filled with enough ugliness. I don't need to add to it by looking inside the minds of sick people that the world would be better off without. Give me farce....

Full entry: Watching Watching the Friedmans

August 03, 2004

Myers-Briggs Personality Test

My Myers Briggs Jung Test Results

Introverted (I) 59.46% Extroverted (E) 40.54% Intuitive (N) 55.26% Sensing (S) 44.74% Feeling (F) 52.78% Thinking (T) 47.22% Perceiving (P) 60% Judging (J) 40%

Your type is: INFP

...

Full entry: Myers-Briggs Personality Test

June 03, 2004

alt 3rd

I wrote this alternate language, and it made it possible to voice the words without reservation, making it a powerful part of my spiritual life:

"I give myself to love -- and to the primal
interconnectedness of all life, which it manifests --
that it may flow through me and guide me. Relieve
me of the bondage of self, that I may better serve
to advance that Oneness. Let the grace that fills me
when I act out of love relieve my difficulties, so I
may bear witness of its power to those I would help.
May I abide in love always."
- Phil R.

Full entry: alt 3rd

April 30, 2004

Karma or God's Will

There's a difference between fighting the flow and choosing your path through it. Many people, when faced with the epiphany that much of the struggle and unhappiness in their lives comes from fighting the flow, the Tao, the natural order, God's will, whatever they call it, respond by flipping 180 degrees and denying free will, believing this flow, this order is in control, and their job is simply to submit to it. This results inevitably in lots of magical thinking. God's-willers -- whether in Christian Fundamentalism, AA, Taoism, or whatever -- take the frequent remarkable coincidences in their daily lives as proof that "things happen for a reason" and that God is determining these little events in our lives based on some pre-planned roadmap. But a much simpler explanation is synchronicity -- seemingly unpredetermined events are actually the result...

Full entry: Karma or God's Will

August 26, 2003

God is love

"Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love." [1 John 4:8 ] "... God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. " [1 John 4:16] Some talk about God being the source of all love. Some talk about God’s love for us, God's servants, God's creation. Others talk about God’s love being a perfect unconditional love that is distinct from the petty earthly love we express between each other. But there's another interpretation: take the statement at face value. You know love? Well, guess what, that’s God. It’s not something God does; it’s not separate from God; it is God. God is love. It's the other descriptions of God that are the metaphors, metaphors for the life force that strives for connection with others, that recognizes the...

Full entry: God is love

April 14, 2003

Everything is not science

In the 20th century the scientific method and worldview was forced onto every aspect of life with disastrous results. The belief that one can control something by gaining information about it is at the heart of much of this. The scientific method of observing controlled repeatable experiments and predicting future behavior from the results, while appropriate when dealing with consistent physical phenomena, can produce misleading and invalid results when applied to other things. (And of course, even with physical phenomena one's powers of observation are limited and are likely not revealing the full reality.) The most blatant examples are in pseudo-sciences such as psychology and economics. Of course, plenty of good work does get done in these disciplines, but by labeling them sciences rather than arts, we give them an aura of being tapped into some fundamental natural truth,...

Full entry: Everything is not science

February 18, 2003

Empowerment and Truth

I have often struggled, in talking to people with more traditional political views, to explain how truth and empowerment work as the central organizing principles for my politics. Here's one attempt: In Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled, the book that in many ways kicked off the self-help phenomenon (but from which that movement strayed very far), he says that when people "blame someone else – a spouse, a child, a friend, a parent, an employer – or something else – bad influences, the schools, the government, racism, sexism, society, the 'system' – for their problems, these problems persist. Nothing has been accomplished. By casting away their responsibility they may feel comfortable with themselves, but they have ceased to solve the problems of living, have ceased to grow spiritually, and have become dead weight for society. They have cast their...

Full entry: Empowerment and Truth