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. By the way, I put “occult” in quotes because very little of this is secret these days, so I wonder why we still use the term so loosely.

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. My mom’s family had an interest in such things long before then. Her maternal grandparents were Spiritualists. 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, and I find many New Age marketing strategies highly questionable.

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

When I wrote my first post about prayer beads, almost three years ago, I considered buying a ready-made strand or a kit. I started out wanting sandalwood beads, but my budget was constrained, and it wasn’t as if my prayer beads were a necessity.

Then I remembered a string of beads that were once my grandmother’s and had passed through a few family members’ hands before they came to me. Their string was literally on its last thread, so restringing them into a new form made sense. There were about 92 beads, and with the addition of some crystal beads that had been my mother’s as quarter markers, and a larger wooden bead I had on hand as the summit bead, they made a full mala of 108 beads. I added a crystal elephant I’d had for years, along with more crystal beads as counters.

At that time, I didn’t know what my beads were. But when I came across a photo of beads like them online, I learned they’re Job’s Tears. Job’s Tears are natural beads made from part of a grass plant, with numerous uses throughout the world. They’re a humble, common person’s rosary bead, easy to grow and replace. For more information, see the “About Job’s Tears” links below. Here’s a detail view of my Job’s Tears:

I know next to nothing about making jewelry or stringing beads. My experience is limited to stringing a few strands for myself, not very professionally, and making some tatted lace earrings years ago. But I had fun with this project, and the best thing was that I was able to stick to materials I had around the house. For the counters, I crocheted colored Pearle Cotton into a chain and found that the chain was just the right thickness for the crystal beads to slide over easily with my help, but to stay in place when left on their own. Here are detail views of the elephant and counter beads:

Ten counter beads may seem ambitious, but I wanted this string to fulfill any future goals I might have for working with mantras, prayers, or affirmations.

After using this Job’s Tears strand for a few months, I began to wish for an additional strand half the length or less, for use anywhere that a long strand wasn’t convenient or practical. Additionally, the Job’s Tears hadn’t been easy to restring. I’d used nylon beading thread, which isn’t the most modern, durable material, and the original holes in the beads were small, not always straight, and sometimes difficult to get my needle and string through. Since Job’s Tears are essentially dried flower buds, they’re somewhat fragile and they split easily. In spite of that fragility, they’re also woody, and the little splinters inside tear and fray the thread a bit as it passes through them. Since I slide the beads over the thread as I count, the more I use them the sooner I’ll need to restring them. If they were Job’s Tears I’d purchased, that wouldn’t matter. They’d be cheap to replace if any get lost when the thread breaks. But these particular beads have sentimental value. Next time I’ll try a different thread, and maybe I’ll knot the strand — which I haven’t tried before with beads.

Sanskrit mantra repetition has turned out to be a reliable sleep aid for me, as well as a good way to start the day, so I wanted a shorter strand I could keep by my bedside or carry in my purse. I decided on a half mala for my bedside table.

Finally I remembered some beads I’d made when I was playing around with polymer clay a few years ago. I’d made a necklace to match a favorite outfit, but I’d stuck the rest of the beads away in a jar. I had enough beads already made up for two quarter-malas (27 beads each) and one half-mala (54 beads).

One of the two quarter-malas didn’t turn out to my satisfaction, but I’m very happy with the other two, pictured below. I used more crystal beads as counters, and this time I attached them with a slipknot so I can remove them. That way I can wear the smaller strand as a bracelet without a counter dangling from it. These are strung with a doubled strand of sturdy, size 10 crochet cotton. My polymer clay beads are pretty unsophisticated, in fact rather primitive, with large holes, and even my fingerprints on some of them — so I guess I have to plead guilty that I made them. My favorite thing about them is the colors and shapes, which suit me just fine. Another advantage is that they don’t have splinters inside like Job’s Tears or sharp edges like some semi-precious stone beads, so they won’t wear the string out anytime soon. Of course there are more durable beading cords that can be purchased, but I’m still working with what I have on hand.

The purple beads look bluer here than they actually are:

I’m not sure polymer clay is the best material environmentally or energetically to use for prayer beads. Polymer clay is primarily PVC, which isn’t natural or biodegradable. But these beads have come in handy, and I don’t worry nearly as much about something happening to them as I do about my Job’s Tears, which carry sentimental value. I still use my Job’s Tears as well, because I love the natural feel of them in my hands.

I’ve recently remembered another craft supply that I bought and squirreled away to try later. Creative Paperclay modeling material is reportedly made of natural, biodegradable, and completely non-toxic materials. It can be fashioned into shapes and, once dry, it can be painted with water-soluble paint, sanded — basically treated like softwood — and then varnished or lacquered to protect the finished piece. I could even omit the varnish and let my Creative Paperclay beads gradually return to nature.

So my next prayer bead goal is to make beads out of Creative Paperclay and experiment with including ground dried rose buds, as a bow to the original rosaries, which were so named, according to some sources, because they were made from rose petals.

About Job’s Tears:

Encyclopædia Britannica: Job’s Tears

This Garden is Illegal: Job’s Tears: Gardening for Crafters

Wikipedia: Job’s Tears

Wayne’s Word (Palomar College Arboretum): Job’s Tears

The Most Worn Bead Plant

How to make rose petal beads:

Covington Innovations: Making Rose Petal Beads

Wendy Mukluk Domestic Recipes: Rose Petal Beads

Beads For Prayer: How To Make Rose Petal Beads

Catholic Culture: To Make Rose Beads for a Rosary

Associated Content: How to Make a 5 Decade Rosary Using Real Rose Petals

Knotted Prayer Ropes:

If you’re not interested in working with beads, but you count knot tying among your skills, you might want to consider making your own knotted prayer rope out of cord, following these instructions: How to tie an Orthodox Prayer Rope knot.

More prayer bead links:

Perhaps the most comprehensive and well-researched site I’ve found on prayer beads is Karen’s Prayer Beads, where Karen Deal Robinson covers many different traditions, how and why she designed her personal strings of prayer beads, and ideas about how to use them, including her own versions of some prayers.

Most of what I’ve learned so far about Sanskrit mantras has come from two books and a CD by one author, Thomas Ashley-Farrand:

Healing Mantras: Using Sound Affirmations for Personal Power, Creativity, and Healing

Chakra Mantras

Mantra Meditations for Creating Abundance (CD)

Thomas Ashley-Farrand’s focus is primarily on Hindu mantras, but Healing Mantras includes a few from other traditions as well.

I also own a book titled Meditation, by the late Eknath Easwaran, and several of his other titles are on my wish list. I recommend his writings for helpful information and instruction in meditation and mantra use, provided from an Eastern perspective (he was Indian by birth) translated for Westerners.

I find that repeating certain of these ancient mantras helps me gain peace and center myself. I try to select those that suit my individual needs. There are Sanskrit mantras for protection, for improving relationships, for healing, to enhance creativity or abundance, and for simple devotional practice. In a sense Sanskrit mantras have provided me a “reset button” for my brain, helping me to silence all the negative and cluttered thought patterns that modern life seems to burden us with.

If your interest is primarily in Buddhist mantras (also traditionally written or recited in Sanskrit), the most commonly used and most well-known one is Om Mani Padme Hum, with the Green Tara Mantra coming a close second: Om Tara Tuttare Ture Swaha. A search for either, enclosed in quotes, will lead you to numerous sites discussing their use. I’ll share just a few here. Tibetans pronounce the Sanskrit words a little differently than Buddhists from other places, and the first link below includes an amusing story about “correct” pronunciation.

Dharma Haven: Om Mani Padme Hum

Four Gates: Tibetan Chants and Mantra

Wildmind Buddhist Meditation: Buddhist Mantras

Religion Facts: Buddhist Mantras

Beads for non-spiritual practice:

You don’t have to be a Hindu or Buddhist — I’m neither — to benefit from Sanskrit mantra practice or meditation. Neither do you have to be a Catholic — I’m also not — to pray the Rosary. In fact, you don’t have to be spiritual or religious at all to use beads for repetition, affirmation, and focus. Someone who’s uncomfortable with any form of spiritual practice still might find strings of beautiful beads helpful for centering practice or for repeating affirmations to help improve their quality of life.

Various religious and philosophical prayer bead traditions and their associated prayers or mantras:

Health & Yoga: Using Mala Beads (Rosary) For Meditation

Wikipedia: Prayer Beads

Wikipedia: Anglican Prayer Beads

Wikipedia: Buddhist Prayer Beads

Wikipedia: Japa Mala

Wikipedia: Rosary

The Threshold Society: The Most Beautiful Names of Allah

The Catholic Rosary:

My prior post about prayer beads mentioned a book by medium John Edward on practicing the Catholic Rosary. Below are links to a few different Internet sites with guides for the Catholic Rosary. Though they’re similar in content, each offers slightly different tidbits of information about rosaries, and the Catholic Rosary in particular:

A Detailed Guide to Our Lady’s Rosary

How-To-Pray-The-Rosary.com

A Beginner’s Guide to the Rosary

How To Pray The Rosary

I could probably keep adding more, because this topic obviously fascinates me and I love to read about it. But if you’ve gotten this far and you still want to know more, I’m sure you’ll find your way to what you need on your own. If you decide to make or buy prayer beads and use them, I hope they provide for you the same peace and healing balm they have for me.

A simulation called Step By Step Into A Black Hole depicts a theoretical descent into a black hole and the subsequent view of the outer universe from inside the black hole. In the first pictures we see the black hole as a bubble of darkness (scroll down) in an otherwise starlit universe. From inside, we see mostly darkness with a bubble of starlight. The two opposing views remind me of the Yin-Yang or Tai-Chi symbol, with its two sides of light and darkness, contrasted by bubbles of their opposites contained within each half (in the eye of the fish). This led me to question — and research a little more — the origins of the symbol.

I’ve always thought of Yin-Yang as a purely philosophical or even spiritual concept, one of integration, interdependence, and balance. I never thought of it having any connection to our physical universe as conceived by scientists. But according to two sites I came across today, here and here, it may originate from prehistoric observations of the Big Dipper — or the Plough, as the constellation is known in China — as it changes apparent position in the night sky through the course of a year.

If true that the symbol originated from celestial observations, then its origin is the same, an observation of the changing seasons, that we find in the western, European pagan precursors to the Neopagan Wheel of the Year, only instead of the seasonal changes observed in daylight hours or the points on the horizon where the sun or moon rises, it measures the concurrent changes in the predominant feature (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least) of the night sky. Please note that what I refer to as the Wheel of the Year, as we know it today, is a fairly recent invention used in Wicca and Neopaganism, but is based for the most part on ancient European celebrations of the seasons, including the solstices and equinoxes — which no doubt hold some connection to ancient astronomical markers such as Stonehenge and Newgrange. There are also possibly similarities in the origins and symbolism of the Native American Medicine Wheels, which would take another in-depth post to explore, though this appears to be a good resource to start with.

I only found two sites that mention the possible origin of the Yin-Yang symbol with the Big Dipper’s path, though other sites certainly hint at the possibility, and according to one Chinese Mathematical Astrology site, “The most important constellation in the heavens to the Daoist is the Plough (or Dipper).” The eight trigrams of the I-Ching Ba Gua, with their broken and unbroken lines could be perceived as gradations of light and darkness pertaining to the seasons of the year, and might be seen to correspond with the eight quarters and cross-quarters of the Wheel of the Year. They are often depicted or written of as corresponding to the elements, the four directions, or the seasons. Most sites I found have more to say about the meaning of the Yin-Yang symbol than its origin, but nearly all say it’s based on “precise observation.” Most also associate its meanings with the sun and moon as well as to the seasons. I’ve included more links below.

Where does the Yin Yang Symbol come from? (also linked above)

The Sacred Wheel of the Year as revealed through the I Ching (also linked above)

Ancient Chinese Astronomy

The tai-chi mandala: Taiji or Yin-Yang symbol

Tai Chi Symbol, Yin-Yang Emblem, Taiji Tun by Michael P. Garofalo

Tai Chi & Taoism (lists movements of the Tai Chi form that take their names from the Big Dipper or its seven stars)

Taoist Nine Star Astrology (also linked above)

the origins of Yingyang and the symbol deconstructed

Tai Chi Symbol (Gin Soon Tai Chi Chuan Federation site)

Chinese Philosophy: Yin and Yang

I-Ching (Wikipedia article)

And if you’re ready to jump traditions and do even more exploring, check out this page of a much larger resource site:

ABORIGINAL STAR KNOWLEDGE: Native American Astronomy (also linked above)

Main site: NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN RESOURCES

Certainly the symbol is more likely to have originated from a simple observation of the heavens, without the aid of a telescope, than from anyone way back when conceptualizing a black hole. But I still like my observation that a theoretical journey into a black hole resembles this ancient symbol in some regards. The universe seems to repeat its basic patterns, and the spirals of galaxies we observe at great distance with sophisticated technology find their counterparts depicted on stone walls our ancestors decorated eons ago. Even though our cultures and philosophies took many different turns through the course of time, prehistoric humans everywhere started out with similar reverence for the natural world, and based our traditions on observations of the world and heavens around us.

Happy New Year!

This quote —

“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. 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

“Be the change that you want to see in the world.”
— Mahatma Ghandi

Growth
9 x 12 watercolor collage (click on image for larger view)

This painting’s background sat in my file cabinet for over a year, a cast aside experiment. I reworked it a little, adding bits of blue, and I nearly threw it away. But I have trouble throwing anything away. This summer I found a fallen avocado leaf I’d saved from a young tree. Its stem, when dried, curled into a spiral on its own. At first the actual leaf was part of the collage, but it proved too fragile, so I settled on a painted one. The abstract leaves were also scraps I’d painted, thought I’d never use for anything, and almost threw away.

I’m such a packrat, I’m not sure it’s good for me to get so much satisfaction from using my discards this way. Maybe it would be better not to encourage my hoarding. But I can’t argue with the sense of effervescence and growth this gives me personally. Some clutter is worth saving.

In this world, growth begins in shadow. Incubation, gestation, germination, all take place out of sight. We shelter and protect our young. As we grow, it’s a relief to duck back into familiar shadows now and then, or to at least be aware of them still behind us, to honor their place in our lives, the impetus they provided for growth, as well as a resting place at each stage of growth. Our shadows are part of our whole, they add perspective and depth to our existence. They’re a refuge when sunlight blazes too brightly and radiates summer’s heat. It’s easy to burn out under too constant, too bright a light. The cool, darker reaches sustain us and remind us that night time will come again, that winter will roll around. Everything lives and dies according to its cycle. In growth, that cycle is a trailing spiral, ever working it’s way both outward and inward, branching out, taking root, opening, closing, curling, unfurling, expanding, contracting. We come to know ourselves by incrementally opening, coming to know every self in existence, and recognizing our tiny niche in the greater whole, by seeing how the whole constantly shifts and changes, and by constantly shifting and changing ourselves as integral parts of that whole.

Fear resists change, holds it back, cutting some parts off from the whole until they wither and die. Love — loving unconditionally, embracing the whole in all its diverse elements and forms, both light and shadow — is the key to unlocking resistance and letting growth happen. Love is water dripping or condensing on leaves, trickling down stems or falling in drops to penetrate to roots. Love is water rising in vapor and mist, transpiring, evaporating to moisten other life. Love is movement, pushing its way up and out, toward the sun, stretching toward nutrients, nurturing the self, flowering, fruiting, and nourishing others, leaving seed behind to repeat the cycle.