The #New #Spiritual #Paradigm - Less Emphasis on #Afterlife as in Right Here - Right Now!

The New Spiritual Paradigm

Life, like most everything else in the universe has 3 parts - 1) Beginning/Birth – 2) Middle/Life & 3) End/Death.

Birth and life are things that we humans can somewhat deal with but death freaks us out. Let’s start by saying all is a miracle – the whole enchilada – birth, life, death and everything else in the universe. Miracle has been a historically positive noun/expression, but as of late in the 21^st century it has lost some of its positive mystical power via an ever-growing cynical, desensitized modern humanity. The term miracle has like so many others become an empty platitude. Although I am being cynical in this sweeping generalization! I like many others still believe that all is a stupefying glorious miracle!

Life throws us constant curve balls! Or at least that how we see things and yet our perceptions are often wrong based on our collective fear based evolutionary mental constructs. Many untrue biases come from the lazy brain, non-thinking of our primitive older, lower limbic system brain that uses less precious glucose to function. This is unlike the newer frontal lobe Brain, which is our evolved central processing unit of higher thinking that eats up a lot of fuel/energy in the form of post-digestion glucose feeding our ever-yearning hungry brain.

Life’s valid and invalid existential worries lead to much of the suffering humans encounter, such as depression and anxieties and all the maladjusted mood disorders etc. Most stem from fear based responses to our environment and mysterious yet totally natural 3-part life cycle – but mostly death. Death is one of the greatest of all mysteries because there is nothing we can know for sure because no one has come back from a lengthy stay to report what happens. There has been however, millions of anecdotal near death experiences (NDE) where people report seeing a colorful bridge to cross and a comforting voice informing them that it may or may not be time to die and go to the next situation. Many of these people lose consciousness and even legally die for a moment or two (rare extreme cases of longer times exist as well) but this is not the same as not coming back as in permanent dead.

This is where religion comes into the picture. The three great objectives of most religions is to believe in a creator (God), serve as a guide to proper moral behavior and finally as a balm and vision of what’s to come after life ends in death. These big three are still the big three almost 2,500 years after many of the great prophets and sages laid down the laws that we humans try to follow consciously or unconsciously.

The afterlife teachings and promises of Heaven, Nirvana, Elysian Fields and the not so great hell etc. however, need to become less emphasized. Whether it was Jesus or Mohammad promising heaven or Hindu’s reincarnation or Buddha’s ultimate release from the cycles of life and death via Nirvana, the importance and urgency placed on where we go and what happens next is no longer as applicable as it once was.

Back in the days of the great prophets and sages between 2000-3000 years ago, one could die from a simple scratch that could become infected etc. Also there were the constant plagues, wars and violent, deadly neighborly disputes in most parts of the world that one could easily be caught up in, in a bad way. Thus the constant fear of death was lurking around every corner and therefore the need of solace in the form of awesome afterlife stories to ease the stressed out, worried mind.

Now in the 21^st century many of these ancient worries of death are no longer valid for most humans on the planet. Because of modern science, one rarely dies from a scratch or even worse injury. Most diseases have been brought under control. War and murder in the latter half of the 20^th and early 21^st century is at an all time historical low. Most people (5-6 billion out of 8.5 billion) are pretty safe and have the basics covered. This is not to let humanity off the hook for the remaining 2.5 billion that do not have the basics covered! We should not rest until all have the basics of clean water, food and shelter and thus basic dignity. There has been major progress toward this goal in the last 60 years regardless of what you hear in the "if it bleeds it leads" sensationalist corporate news or from cynical skeptics without real facts on their side.

An unfortunate side effect of the emphasis on the after life is the disrespect and destruction of our current lives; the only one we really know exists for sure! Many Christian Evangelicals that number in the many millions are not that concerned with the long term negative effects of human created toxic pollution in the here and now. They are consumed with John’s Final Revelations in the New Testament, even more so it seems than the core teachings of Christ! 

I have heard personally from a young, handsome, healthy teen bagging my groceries in North Carolina that global warming did not matter because the world was going end anyway according to his Evangelical end of times belief. Catholics are only slightly less negative on this life (original sin) and realm depending on who the Pope is. The current Pope Francis is rare to care so much about the earth’s health among Popes historically. The same extremism of afterlife beliefs can be found in Muslim terrorists who are willing to kill, die and destroy everything to get to heaven where they are promised a great after life for supposedly being martyrs for Mohammad. Or how about the millions of the lowest caste of Hindus living unjustly in slums that have been brainwashed to think they deserve it, and maybe in a few million lifetimes they will reincarnate enough and finally move up the ladder to have a better quality of life? Give me a break!

These unrealistic and straight up unfounded beliefs in the after life are literally destroying the world via millions of uncaring, uneducated polluting human consumers, misery, destruction and the cause of hundreds of thousands of deaths in the ongoing Middle East wars and regional conflicts elsewhere around the world. It’s time to reevaluate what is truly important and useful in religious doctrines and focus more on this living waking life – the only life any of us know. This is the evolution of ideas. Keep the best - get rid of the rest. Otherwise we stagnate and will eventually go extinct clinging to unhealthy dogma.

The one commonality that most people who believe intuitively in a greater source can agree upon is that something does happen after we die. We don’t just pop like a bubble and disappear from all existence like material atheist put forward. Another universal intuitive concept is that what we do here on this planet of both good and bad, will affect where we end up in the next situation. But as far as knowing the details – it is all conjecture and there is no way to prove what happens beyond a doubt – period. Anyone who says otherwise is delusional and/or brainwashed.

So here we have a real problem in that billions of religious people consciously or unconsciously pollute the planet myopically based on their lower caste status, prophesied dooms day and or kill/die in the name of their religions projected after life scenarios. All this maladaptive behavior based on the supposedly divinely inspired speculations of ancient prophets and sages. How do we deal with this huge, ancient, ingrained dogma problem? We evolve and keep what is essential in our religions. Keep those teachings that add to our collective healthy co-existence in the here and now - because this all we truly know!

Death freaks all people out - including atheists, agnostics, spiritualists and of course religious folks. The miracle of birth and life is slightly easier to grasp for most because of its material basis in reality. We have figured out the basic flow of evolution of simple to complex life forms in nature, the birth of our universe in a Big Bang event and what has transpired with the flow of elements into the planets, stars, quasars, etc. since that Big Bang anomaly occurred 13.8 billion years ago. We have figured out the 4 primary forces, although there may be others at work we have yet to discover. We have written amazing concertos, painted phenomenal images, designed and built incredible architecture and machines, cured many diseases, and landed humans on the moon!

On the other hand, we have also split the atom that led to tons of toxic radioactive energy waste and atomic bombs dropped on hundreds of thousands of humans, guns, burned megatons of fossil fuels generating a global warming crisis, created over 80,000 toxic chemicals since WWII and in the process have poisoned the earth and all inhabitants on many levels in a mere 200 years post Industrial Revolution!

Acquired knowledge in the form of hard science is a double edge sword that has been used for both good and bad purposes. But Pandora’s box was opened long ago and there is no going back. But maybe just maybe we could up the ethics and oversight and slow down the crazy machine for a minute and rethink this conundrum of so-called technical progress.

Death is one of the biggest mysteries – right up there with God itself and what is consciousness and what happened before the Big Bang? This last big mystery of the pre- Big Bang scenario may actually be discovered and proven scientifically one day but as far as the other big three - God, consciousness and death – probably never – even with the most powerful Artificial Intelligent super computer(s) of the future. 

This robot or cyborg (human/machine combo) is what some refer to as the singularity when robots become conscious and have a collective hive mind encompassing the entire planet’s interconnected cyber realm with all the gigaflops of data that entails. This robot/cyborg entity will far surpass humans’ little brains capabilities. Limited brains that are trapped in our aging, dying bodies.

Nevertheless, even these super, hyper-smart robots will not clearly understand the concept of God or consciousness and death even less so. Although even they too would be susceptible to a finite existence if a piano happen to fall on their central processing units (CPUs) or some how the energy powering their processors got unplugged. But physical death would not be a major part of their core concerns like it is for we humans.

Keep in mind that this singularity robot consciousness idea is also total speculation. Since we have no clue on what the mysterious gift of consciousness is other than a limited awareness of our environment, or specifically where it comes from – I have my doubts on humans being able to manufacture via AI this miracle of a conscious existence.

We need to rewrite the script as far as fully appreciating the here and now as in “right here-right now”, a core lesson taught to the people of the fictional utopian society in A. Huxley’s last book Island (1962). This living in the now philosophy piqued out in the early 2000s with the best selling The Power of Now by contemporary Western and very mellow spiritual guru Eckhart Tolle. This living in the moment concept is actually an ancient Eastern philosophy concept that goes back thousands of years, but is as intelligent and pragmatic now as it was back then!

I do not want to confuse a healthy living for the here and now with the extreme and most likely untrue – “You only have one life so live it to the fullest!” secular leaning philosophy that does not allow for any after life – period, which as I stated in the first part of this essay is not what most of us believe. Based on many surveys and studies, most humans do believe in a greater source aka God and an after life but just disagree on the details. This one life only idea can and does lead to decadent, regretful behaviors because its rooted in a non-belief in a greater source and/or an after life so there is no one to answer to for ill behaviors.

Like the spiritually reformed original existentialist Kierkegaard, I personally believe in some type of God’s judgment on death day – how it works – I have no clue because of the hyper-complex interwoven nature of all nature. It is way beyond my limited human comprehension. I will leave this complex Karmic distribution judgment system to God. Surely the same God who created such a vast and complex universe(s?) with a perfectly balanced space-time geometry, myriad life forms etc. can determine our little individual situations and where our souls should be headed next based on our human behavior in the here and now on earth. I have faith that God is good and just and has our long-term best interests in mind.

Speaking of the mind – the human mind that is. Our mind is made of carbon based material substance and is the ultimate hardware/software thus far on planet earth, although this may change in the near future with AI advancing faster than ever before. AI could become a cyborg extension of the human mind that is the central cause of our fear of death. The mind has a mind of its own!

What Eastern religious peoples call the busy monkey mind (hyper non-sequitur thinking) is not the top of our holistic human hierarchy as many may think. The top of the pyramid is the soul and/or consciousness. Any one who has meditated knows this. When one observes the space between our thoughts – this is the ultimate consciousness i.e. soul that temporarily inhabits our bodies.   

The mind and body is sometimes in conflict with the more evolved ancient reincarnated soul. The brain and body with its built in DNA and RNA chemicals directives, hormones and synaptic drives geared toward survival and pleasure can seem primitive to our higher evolved soul selves. Nonetheless the soul was assigned to the body where God thought best based on its judgment calculations. The soul usually is just a co-pilot and reluctantly allows for God’s gift of free will to flow even if it knows what we are doing is a sin! However the soul does have the right and power to intervene and often does. A classic visual metaphor manifestation in story telling is God's angel appealing to the soul conscience on one shoulder and devil's demon appealing to our primitive reptilian pleasure center in our brains - on the other. They both are battling in our consciousness to do their good or bad actions.

Yes, I am an old school dualist and yet totally believe in the Oneness of all things in the universe. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive and it seems to me pretty obvious as we juggle this reality every second of every day we are alive by navigating this life both as a unique individual and as part of the greater collective. This is not some mystical metaphysical mumbo jumbo but the actual workings of the interconnected material universe we inhabit for around 80 years on average. Nonetheless, there is nothing wrong with a little metaphysical mumbo jumbo once in a while as it can sometimes lead to great scientific breakthroughs like Einstein’s intuitive vision of gravity bending a fourth dimension known as space-time, which is a real thing that has been proven true empirically.

Meditation, which leads to mindfulness, is a calmer and healthy aware state of mind. When one is in such a state one has a clarity that leads to jumps in consciousness to higher levels of peace and awareness of how the world actually works and breaks with primitive lower mind states/biases that lead to unjust judgments and prejudices as the plethora of studies of heuristics have revealed. These unrealistic fears and biases can and do lead to conflict and violence. Unfortunately, this primitive fear based mindset still dominates the world we live in, but as I said before - things are getting better, albeit slowly.

Yet, distractions in the form of drugs, entertainment and tech gadgets etc. are proving to be another challenge to the little bit of progress we have made in the last 70 years on the world stage – but not necessarily in the USA where the quality of life has actually gone down for the masses in the last 30 years while the rest of the world has been coming up. Maybe a karmic balance as America is only 5% of the population of the world but has exploited 25% of its resources for decades. We would need 5 earths for all people to live as Westerners do. This is not a sustainable scenario and the reckoning is upon us in the form of the Global Warming crisis and an acidic ocean full of plastic. 

Decisions about clean versus dirty energy and superficial consumer lifestyles in the next few years will determine how dark or bright our collective near future will be on earth. Some people realize this more than others. Ignorance, fear and greed again are preventing real progress in dealing with these major issues that face all humanity.

Meditate – Meditate – Meditate! Clear out your monkey mind and become one with the universe and more conscious of reality as it really is! Do not let your ancient, primitive mind trick you into being paranoid! It’s not as bad as you think. There are solutions to our problems but just not the united collective will to execute them – yet! And the bottom line is that this life is all we know about and we should not take it for granted! Let’s make the best of it! This is it! Precious life as we know it! This is not a dress rehearsal! This is where we are at – right here – right now! Yes - what you do here does really matter and will affect your next situation, so all the more reason to do good and be part of the solution – not the pollution! God bless this human made mess!