Skepticism rears its head frequently on the Internet, in ways we may not think about very much in our day to day lives off line, and with good reason. There’s a lot of unreliable or questionable information on the Internet. There are no editorial guidelines, no filtering process. Anyone can post anything they want. This is both good and bad. But there are also a lot of people on the Internet that say they’re skeptical when, I think, they don’t really understand what skepticism is, especially when it comes to metaphysics.

I’ve nurtured a lifelong interest in occult subjects like astrology and psychic phenomena, as well as the afterlife. I’ve read about various forms of religion and spirituality. Some might say I’m one of those “New Agers” and dismiss me as gullible.

While my interests lean in the same direction as the New Age community’s, I don’t use the label “New Age” for myself. First, because I tend to avoid labels. Second, because my interests were such long before I was aware of any identifiable New Age movement. In fact my parents first sparked my interest in metaphysics when I was a child in the sixties — and no, they weren’t hippies, or even close. Third, the New Age community is sometimes, in my opinion, too accepting and non judging, and has gained its reputation for being flaky in ratio to the number of such people it appears to take under its wings. I don’t mean by that to bash New Agers, not at all. There are many people in the New Age community that I consider my friends, favorite authors and artists, or simply people I like and admire for their tolerance and loving nature or remarkable insights. But I think more questioning is called for.

I’m happy to have no religion, and no particular label for my spirituality. I’ve been happy with that for many years. I’m a seeker, but I’m not looking for a religion. I choose to seek everywhere, not just in one grouping of writings or beliefs. And while I am seeking, I’m also always finding, so I don’t feel lost at all.

My metaphysical and spiritual leanings, even if kept entirely to myself and not shared within a religious or spiritual community, have continued to remain strong, introducing me to various religious writings, encouraging my interest in astrology, Tarot, intuition, meditation, and the afterlife. I attended lectures at the local astrological society for months, years ago. I read books on religious, mythological, spiritual, and metaphysical subjects, including several by Alice Bailey, the Bible, and a portion of the Nag Hammadi Library. I’ve studied the Tarot, both as an aid to plumbing my own psychological and spiritual depths and as a personal oracle of sorts, for nearly 20 years. I’ve kept a dream journal and that led me to discover that, just as Edgar Cayce said of everyone’s dreams, some of my dreams are precognitive. I suspect everyone is at least a little psychic.

Other dreams simply give me deeper insight into my own psyche and how I’m responding at every level to changes around me and in my life. Soon after retiring from my former career, as a technical writer-editor, and later a technical manuals distribution manager, I had a dream one night in which I always wore beige pants, and I had to crawl through a narrow transom to get where I needed to go each day. I was tired of doing that, in the dream, and on my last day I felt great relief. As I crawled through for the last time, my beige pants split at the seam to reveal that I wore paisley tights underneath.

I think of that dream as my unconscious letting go of a my old technical, cut and dried line of work and my feeling of needing to fit in there. I think that dream initiated me into my new creative path, with the freedom to pursue my more Bohemian interests without any risk of being seen by coworkers or superiors as a “kooky New Ager”. Not that they would’ve been so judgmental, but I’d always been shy of sharing my interests in metaphysics with people in that technical world. I’ve been shy in general about sharing these interests with many people at all, not just there. Nowadays, when I reveal some of my interests that I’ve kept to myself for so long, I sometimes joke to myself that my paisley tights are showing.

I believe in intuition, not as a distinct, reliable source of data, but as a whisper full of potential and possibility, because I’ve experienced it. Is that dangerous? If I believe, based on my intuition, that something is worth looking into or reading about, what is the harm in doing so? If synchronous events seem to lead me in a particular line of study, why not follow for a while?

I don’t rely solely on intuition to tell me whether it’s safe to cross the street. That would be foolish and dangerous. I rely on my sight, hearing, and on the traffic signal if there is one. But if those things all tell me it’s safe to cross and my intuition still says it isn’t, I pause and make sure. When I’m driving, if my intuition nudges me to pay attention to a particular car, and it’s safe to do so, I fall back and keep an eye on it from a safe distance. My intuition has alerted me to dangers I needed to avoid enough times that it’s a part of my safe driver’s tool bag. I’ve had unexplainable things happen that I think saved my life, things that I can’t explain other than through some combination of intuition and, possibly, cosmic intervention — a guardian angel perhaps? Who knows. Such incidents don’t seem likely to be mere coincidences or accidents. For instance, a fleeting dust devil that my mother spotted at the side of the road once saved me from certain injury in a fire. A little voice, not physical and not mental, sometimes whispers a warning, and if I don’t heed it in my rush to get something done, invariably things go wrong and I wind up kicking myself for not listening. Listening to whom? I’m not sure. A Christian might call it the Holy Spirit. Another might call it an Angel or Spirit Guide, or the Higher Self. Perhaps it’s simply an extended sense that science isn’t yet aware of, something like what is accessed in remote viewing.

I believe there are aspects to life and reality that science can’t yet explain, but which are very likely real nonetheless.

I’m still skeptical.

How, you say? How can I call myself skeptical if I fall for that sort of thing — Tarot, astrology, and psychic phenomena?

That depends on what you understand skepticism to be.

What is skepticism? It’s not disbelief. It’s not belief. It’s not bashing every new idea that presents itself, as unproven, unfounded, or as a hoax, just because some accepted authority says so, such as the school system, the media, a leading business, a church leader, an academic, a government official, or a scientist. It’s not rejecting an idea because it doesn’t fit with one’s entrenched worldview. It’s not telling people they’re fools or gullible because their beliefs differ from one’s own. It’s not making up one’s mind about something before one has bothered to consider at least some of the evidence for and against, or considered that although the notion may not be in one’s own experience, it could very well still be true.

To put it in my own simplistic terms, I see skepticism as reserving judgment until all the facts are in. It’s acknowledging that with some ideas the facts are never all in. Skepticism is saying, “I don’t know,” and not committing oneself until one knows. It’s the ability to accept that one may never know the answers, that not all questions require a definite answer. In fact, some of the most worthwhile questions don’t have answers, at least in this lifetime.

For me skepticism means that I believe what I know to be true, as the Buddha and by some gnostic accounts the Christ taught. It means I know something is real, or true, either because there’s solid scientific evidence that’s known to me, or because I’ve experienced it for myself and have good reason to know it wasn’t just my imagination. I also merely believe some things without knowing, because they make sense to me, intellectually or emotionally or both, or which I hope are true, such as experiences relayed to me by people I trust. I allow myself to believe some things for now, with full knowledge and comfort that I may not believe them the same way later in life. I believe that my beliefs should change as I learn and grow, not stay stuck in one configuration for life.

While pondering my own take on skepticism and beliefs recently, I came across a collection of articles on the subject at a site called The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I haven’t read them in their entirety yet. They’re actually rather plodding and academic for my taste; but if, like me, you’re interested in how skepticism differs from belief or disbelief, from cognitive dissonance or outright rejection of new ideas, these articles may interest you as well:

Ethics and Self-Deception

Contemporary Skepticism

Ancient Greek Skepticism

In an interview at Alternet titled Michael Pollan Debunks Food Myths, author Michael Pollan discusses his new book, In Defense of Food. He talks about why news of the latest scientific nutritional studies is probably not the best source for nutrition information, and how the best eating advice given to Americans in the past five decades is probably the simplest — that fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are good for us. According to him, we’re likely best off getting back to basics.

Pollan says:

“I’m not a Luddite; I’m not anti-science. I’m fascinated by nutritional science. But I’ve also acquired a healthy skepticism about how much and how little they know. It has only been around for about 175 years. Its history is of one overlooked nutrient after another. As I see it, nutrition science is kind of where surgery was in the year 1650, which is to say very interesting and promising, but do you really want to get on the table yet?” (read article)

Further on, Pollan mentions how the “imitation rule” was eliminated by the FDA, without going through Congress, and how what we eat has in some sense become a political statement. According to Pollan, cooking our own food from scratch may now be a subversive act:

“It’s funny to think of something as domestic as cooking and gardening as subversive, but it is. It is the beginning of taking back control from a system that would much rather do everything for you.” (read article)

I’ve found more fantastic art journal blogs, ninajohansson.se, and Laurelines Drawings and Paintings. Links courtesy of Jana’s Journal and Sketch Blog. Laurelines also recently posted links to other Must-Read Art Blogs for 2008.

In case you haven’t been watching my link updates in the sidebar, please also be sure to visit Beverly Jackson’s new art gallery website, The Art Shack Studio. I met Bev when we belonged to the same writer’s group, before she moved away. I’m proud to count her as a friend, and a multi-talented one at that.

See how your candidate is faring in the blogosphere by checking the candidates’ stats at 2008 Presidential Candidates - Blog Buzz. If you look at this drilled-in page for Dennis Kucinich, you’ll see that Dennis Kucinich is getting more blog exposure than ever. It’s important to keep the buzz going!

The statistics are derived from a count of Technorati tags in blog posts. For more information about Technorati tags, go to the Technorati Tools Page.

Posts that contain Dennis Kucinich per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Technorati Profile

I’m adding art journal blogs to my blog list as I find ones that I can’t live without visiting regularly. My two newest links are to Jana’s Journal and Sketch Blog, and Princess Haiku (who visited me and commented a while back, leading me to watch her intriguing blog for a while).

I hope you all enjoy visiting these fresh, new to me blogs.

This quote found at Perceval Press —

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

— seems to blend perfectly with the current topic at Michael Prescott’s Blog, even though I wouldn’t ordinarily combine references to the two sites — and even that helps illustrate my point. Michael’s post titled, Art, this one’s for you!, explores the notion that we’re here to experience separation, and is the third or fourth place that I’ve seen Michael Talbot’s and Jane Robert’s writings mentioned in the past couple of weeks, which has led me to finally add them to my future reading list.

My question is, could it be that we’re here to learn how to love while in a separated state? The entire topic can bend one’s preconceived notions of reality. Beyond science and beyond the physical, what are we really? Is there something even beyond spirit? Why are we here?

Is unconditional love only love of the whole and an ability to find empathy in our hearts for one another? Or is it also the ability to love and appreciate one another in spite of our separateness — perhaps even because of it?

This isn’t a new concept. Perhaps I’m just seeing it differently today, from the perspective of all the divisions, conflicts, and pressures humanity is experiencing. If we can learn to love each other now, then we’re incredibly, miraculously, and perhaps infinitely capable of love.

P.S. Art, the commenter to whom Michael’s post is dedicated, added this URL to the discussion, which presents an intriguing story:

Riding the Dragon: An Unexpected Encounter

While I mulled over various blog topics, including the essay I planned on honeybees, my husband sent me a link to an environmental article about pollinators and the recent scares regarding disappearing bees, Are the Bees Dying off Because They’re Too Busy? The article offers a slightly different answer to the puzzle than that of GM crops, but one every bit as indicative of our artificial modern food production methods. It surmises that bee colony exhaustion, due to overuse as pollinators on factory farms, is the cause of disappearing bees. Small beekeepers who let their bees live a more natural life cycle don’t seem to have the same problems as commercial beekeepers who lease hives to one large monoculture farm after another, almost year round.

That made a nice segue into another topic I’ve planned to write about, the importance of family stories. A few weeks ago I came across a brief memoir my mom wrote of her childhood in San Diego during the Depression. When food luxuries were tough for my grandmother to come by, she would sometimes visit her father’s ranch in Potrero, just this side of the border from Tecate. She’d bring home fresh eggs and honey, and presumably milk and butter, since he also kept dairy cows. The trip took a vehicle and gasoline that were often scarce, so there were times that those trips didn’t happen as often as she would’ve liked.

The honey came from my great-grandfather’s bees. My mom recorded no details of the process, but mentioned watching her grandfather extract honey from his hives. My grandmother wrote that at one time he had “90 stands of honey bees” in his apiary. No doubt the bees kept his orchard and garden well pollinated, as well as those of his neighbors. My great-grandfather was from the Danish island of Læsø, famous for its Northern brown bees, among other things. I don’t know whether he learned about beekeeping as a boy. I know he used to herd geese, and he left home at fourteen to sail the seas for ten years, made three trips around Cape Horn, and once almost got stranded in Antwerp. I also remember Grandma telling how he’d hitch a team to a wagon and make the trip from Potrero down to the shore in San Diego, two days there, and two days back. He’d load up with kelp to use as mulch in his garden after washing the salt out. I wouldn’t be surprised if he learned that use of kelp back on his island home.

What should’ve remained a pleasant excursion into my family’s past is blighted by recent news. The tiny community of Potrero, with its valley’s quiet agricultural history (Potrero is Spanish for “pasturing place”) was once home to Kumeyaay tribes, who subsisted on acorns and game from its oak woods, and carved metates into the nearby granite hills to grind meal. Potrero’s pastoral peace remained intact even when Pancho Villa’s rebellion took place just across the border. But the valley’s serenity may be about to change.

Blackwater USA wants to build an 824 acre training facility in Potrero, called Blackwater West. People in the community, the county, and the entire state who know of this plan are horrified.

There’s already fierce debate in Illinois regarding Blackwater North, an 80-acre facility there, as well as troubling reports of its response to wrongful death suits by families of its employees who fell in Iraq.

One has to wonder what the impact would be of such a facility, near environmentally fragile oak tree stands already threatened by Sudden Oak Death, and to the golden eagles that nest there. What about the fire hazards and the noise? The quiet little communities and single outlying residences near Potrero are some of the last true countryside settings left in San Diego County. Will they soon be shaken by the sound of weapons fire and helicopters resonating off nearby granite boulders?

Blackwater in Potrero is a bad idea.

I found a couple of videos about Blackwater at YouTube (warning, these are disturbing):

Blackwater, America’s Private Army

Blackwater: Shadow Army

Here’s another video, Blackwater Invades Illinois, with Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Just some thoughts I’ve had while in the middle of reading a book titled, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. It was written by Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteeenth Dalai Lama, recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize and religious and temporal leader of the Tibetan people. It’s not the first book of his that I’ve read, but it may be the most difficult.

In this book the Dalai Lama explores parallels (and differences) between science and his religion, Buddhism. I particularly like how this religious leader is willing to adjust his beliefs according to what science has proven, rather than trying to twist science to fit his beliefs. At the same time he recognizes that science can’t tell us everything, and that one’s personal experience, observation, and intelligence are valid to take into account when determining what to believe. This book is deep, abstract, conceptual, and difficult reading for me because I have trouble wrapping my mind around concepts like relativity and superstring theory. Give me good old gravity. That I understand. Sort of.

It’s good reading, though, and especially good for me, in my non-scientific but more creative and spiritual nature. It gives me more of a handle on what science and belief have in common, as well as that overlapping territory in between and beyond, which we’re sometimes reluctant to face if we let our minds get too set in one pattern of thinking. I refer to the unknown, and our ability or inability to find peace with the fact that so much is still unknown. As knowledge changes, we must in all honesty be willing to take on the new known, adjust the old known, and change our view of possibility, just the way we change clothes with the seasons. It does no more good to believe faithfully in something disproved than to believe that because my coat kept me safe and warm in winter it’s a good idea to wear it on the hottest day of the year. This book is also careful to point out that just because something isn’t proven, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Disproof and lack of proof are two different things.

I’m also reminded by the implications of this book, of a documentary about Alaskan fisheries that was part of the Nature series on PBS. The closure of pollock fisheries several years ago was intended to protect the environment. Later, scientists came to realize that the herring declined even more rapidly once pollock was protected. Herring was found to be a more important source of critical nutrients for marine life than was previously known — a better source than pollock, which constituted a veritable junk food in comparison. Endangered Steller sea lions were forced to fall back even more on pollock once it began to repopulate, while still hungering for their necessary herring.

Even well intentioned science can be a kind of religion, where people (not scientists perhaps, but people) hold too fast to discoveries and continue to defend them, when a wider-angle view is needed, or it’s time to move forward because more is known. When we combine with that the intransigence of government that causes regulations to lag behind each new discovery, we can see that clinging to any beliefs, scientific or religious, can have disastrous effects. One must wonder, for instance, about future effects of genetically modified crops, and the fact that there may soon be only one company supplying most farmers in the world with their seed — much of that genetically modified. How many people’s quality of life could be salvaged by stem-cell research? By more research into natural alternatives to pharmaceutical drugs or surgery? If we can be wrong about sea lions, pollock, and herring, what else might science be wrong about, or simply not yet know? What might religion be wrong about that’s holding its followers, and possibly whole cultures and governments, back? Are bio-fuels better for the environment than fossil fuels, or do they harm the environment just as much in their production, and at the same time threaten world food supplies and distract us from finding or developing more viable energy solutions? What good is knowing how to do something if one doesn’t also know when or if it should be done?

I’ve rambled on. The main lesson I’ve gotten so far from this book is that no source of knowledge or wisdom is sacrosanct, that there are few known absolute truths, and that flexibility and a healthy skepticism are necessary in all areas of study. It’s important to believe that we can do better, that we can know more, that we can think for ourselves, that we can take better care of the planet and each other. It’s also important along the way to acknowledge our limits and exercise humility regarding what we don’t know. What we don’t know may be the biggest vacuum in the universe.

I planned to post a poem, about posting work on the internet before it’s really finished. Ironically, that poem is not yet finished enough even to post unfinished. (See the category “Poetry Sketchbook” for my poems posted to date.)

So instead I’ll post a few links to what others are saying, and my take on some of them:

One House wrote earlier this month about one of my favorite passages by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, his advice on washing dishes, in More Dishes. I don’t have the book mentioned there, The Miracle of Mindfulness, but I have four of Thich Nhat Hanh’s other books, and his writings always bring me to a peaceful place. In particular I like his biography of Gautama Buddha titled Old Path White Clouds. The book I own that contains the dish washing essay is Peace Is Every Step, a compilation of short readings that can be opened to any page, any time. In the Foreword, the Dalai Lama voices his support of Nhat Hanh’s method of bringing about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals.

Those words reflect a personal belief of mine that the universe is held together by energy that’s a form of divine love, and that each of us is a conduit for that perfect, unconditional love. Each of us in this world, in our imperfection, has our little (or big) blockages and resistances to that energy. What I consider a very important purpose in my life is to gradually work out those resistances in myself, to let love flow freely, in me, in my life, and thus in my little part of the world.

I’m sure that seems simplistic to some, maybe even a little “goody-two-shoes.” I’m certainly not perfect at this. I have so many flaws, if they were physical holes I’d be see-through—and leaking like a sieve! But everyone needs a goal, something to work toward, right? That work can take me into the shadows, and it used to startle me when that happened, but I’ve learned that in order to clear out my resistance, I have to understand where it is, why it is, and what to do with it. That last part, what to do with it, can be the real trick. But for some of us, in some circumstances, acknowledging the resistance is there to begin with is the trickiest.

One of the best ways I know to encourage and spread love is through creativity. The language of art is universal. By showing others what we see, what our personal world looks and feels like, we encourage understanding, sharing, and taking an interest in what’s really happening — both inward and outward. Awareness of ourselves and each other can’t be a bad thing, provided we respect one another, and each other’s personal boundaries.

Kerrdelune, at Beyond the Fields We Know always leaves me a little breathless with her nature photographs, poetry and prose, and she did it again with The View From Here, which just sort of stopped me in my web-browsing tracks. No explanation needed. But she also posted recently in response to a prompt of “shoes” a photo and blog post that, well, resembled me. I don’t own any boots or snowshoes, don’t need them here. But like her, I used to think high heels were a necessary part of my life, especially when I worked in an office. I never could manage the really high ones, even then. Two inches were my limit. These days, my shoes are all flat, out of respect for my poor aching back, and those that I wear most days, if I wear shoes, are primarily functional. If they happen to look nice too, that’s a bonus. I like it that way! No more torture for beauty, especially a particular flavor of beauty — that state of fashionable or popular showboat perfection (always youthful and symmetrical and airbrushed) which, no matter what you do, only lasts a few years anyway, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to have it to begin with. Even if you have it, it’s way too much work to maintain, and not worth the trouble unless you’re a fashion model or making movies, and I’m not making movies, I’m living a life. My beauty priority at the moment is eating right and working very slowly and without undue pressure on losing weight — without dieting, without guilt, and being healthy, without shame over how I look right now. In fact, guilt has nothing to do with it. I’m losing it to help me feel better and be healthier, and that’s all. I have, by the way, declared a moratorium on guilt of all kinds. Beauty is a process to me now, a more authentic way of living my life.

When I turned 40, a friend of mine several years older told me that 40 was his best year. That was the year he finally stopped feeling it was more important to please others than to be himself. Maybe 50 is that year for me. Maybe I’m a slow learner. Maybe it’s something about being on the downhill slide of life. A slide should be fun. Even if I live to 100, it’s more than halfway over. Why spend it trying to be someone or something I’m not? Ah, it feels good just to say that.

I took a class once, provided by my employer, that was unusual as government-contracted classes go, in that the teacher asked us questions such as whether we could remember being born (one woman in class did remember her birth), whether we’d ever seen the human aura. He also taught us some things that were of a psychospiritual nature. If I remember correctly, the class was stress management, and not the half-day stress management class. This one was three days. I was in a stressful job at the time, and my boss knew it, acknowledged it, and — bless her heart — did what she could to help.

At one point the teacher asked if anyone in class was prone to migraines. When I raised my hand he fixed his gaze on me in a way that was almost mesmerizing, and asked why I thought I was responsible for everything, why I thought I had to be perfect. I nearly fell over. He’d nailed me. That is a tendency of mine, and I was in a job at the time that fed that tendency. It’s a losing place to be, because of course you never succeed. I always felt like a failure, no matter how much I did or how well I did it. Everything that went wrong filled me with remorse, guilt — even if I had nothing directly to do with it. And I’d been that way all my life. The fact that I remember that moment so clearly, five years or so later, is at least a good sign that I took him seriously, that I’ve been thinking about it, working on it. I have no idea how I got that way to begin with, maybe a nasty configuration of planets when I was born. I’ll blame Saturn and Mars this time around.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is a translation of the Gospel of Mary from Coptic, with commentary, by Jean-Yves Leloup (English translation and notes by Joseph Rowe).

The existence of the Gospel of Mary was brought to light in Cairo in 1896. Some fifty years later, what are now known as the gnostic gospels were discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Jean-Yves Leloup provides here a fascinating interpretation and commentary of the Gospel of Mary, with a few rewarding diversions into other texts, including some surprising revelations, and his alternate translation of excerpts from other gospels. At the heart of this work is what amounts to a map of human spiritual potential, the essence of Jesus’s goal as found in the Gospel of Mary, presented as a way of guiding those who would follow, to become fully human. (more…)