Ideal, Perfection

Continuing on from 'Consider some stuff', we can inquire further about the nature of stuff.

Since it's infinitely inclusive, my choices (and everyone else's) necessarily are 'made of' this one-stuff, whatever it is.

As well as the brain matter that facilitates (filters and frames the range of) choices.

Once again, one-stuff can't be excluded from all that occurs, otherwise it wouldn't be one-stuff that is the ground of all.

btw, one-stuff is perhaps a poor description. It might better be described as one-process, or one principle.

Which ultimately validates the Theory of One and All, with both sides being interdependent, and inter-penetrating, like individual and community; hand and body, wave and particle, finite and infinite.

I often hear of, or run across people who espouse all sorts of ... well, quite frankly, incoherent, contradictory ideas and beliefs.

Here's a few ideas that might reset standard thinking.

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Consider some "stuff" of which the entirety of existence is composed. Not physical, not even necessarily spiritual. Let's just call it "stuff".1

Now, this "stuff" is, by definition, literally everywhere, in everything, everyone one, every thought, God, Evil ... it's literally everywhere. In fact there is no place it is not. Given its ubiquity, we can say it is "one-stuff"2.

If we want to believe that some spiritual beings or others are not composed of this one-stuff, we need ask of what they are made. Whatever that is, it will ultimately need to be made of said "one-stuff" in that said one-stuff is the ground stuff of all existence. No exceptions.

Now it gets interesting.

Recently I was reading an interesting book, and it advised one to wake early one morning (in the dead of night, around the 3.30am mark) and quietly ask what is really important in one's life. As was explained in my Letting go post, I've drifted in recent years, not exactly sure how I can best be of benefit and service to people.

Anyway, I did as the author suggested, waking early this morning around 3.00 am-ish, and the immediate and easy answer or strong natural sense of purpose was my work to uncover and 'mend' the old-paradigm thinking and beliefs that beset and bedevil our world — in other words, and for want of a better description — to be a good Belief Doctor. As I've explained elsewhere1, the old-paradigm is rooted in 'either-or' thinking: right or wrong, pure or impure, good or bad, us versus them. It's the basis of tribalism, which within the context of the emerging need for great collaboration on a planetary scale, makes such beliefs a danger to the survival of our race.2

[update, October, 2016: see below]

Over the years I've come to more fully appreciate the extent to which many people seek refuge in illusory ideals ... be it religious perfection, or scientific certainty.

As I've explained elsewhere on this and the Belief Institute website, the ideal of perfection (and of perfect scientific certainty) was born around the time of Plato, and has persisted ever since. In spiritual new-age teachings and practices, it's the seeking of spiritual perfection — of transcending one's ego and finding one's perfect higher self1; in religion it's the perfection of God and of the Pope's infallibility; in science it is the certainty and control of life expressed through some equation or theory, perhaps most tellingly exemplified by the incorrect and unsupportable assumptions surrounding the solutions to Zeno's Paradoxes that date back nearly 2,500 years.

Last night while enjoying a wonderful dinner I had the pleasure of engaging conversation with a number of intelligent men on matters philosophical.

It became evident that some held beliefs that were rooted in the ideal of perfection: the age-old belief that when we get 'over there' or perhaps 'up there' everything will be 'perfect' (at which time, we'll have 'transcended' the troubling, fault-ridden ego).