must we practice what we believe?
by tetrapod.sapien 24 Replies latest jw friends
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daystar
Not reading all the comments...
My opinion is that if one is living their life in ways that belie what they profess to believe, then they are being dishonest. Now, that is not to say an atheist going to Sunday services is being dishonest necessarily if they present things the way you did. However, if they adamantly profess all believers to be utter idiots and then sneak in for the occasional mass, then I'd have to say that person is less than an honest person, with themselves and with others.
It's not very beneficial to the individual to be split thus.
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tetrapod.sapien
hey everyone! thank you all for your comments and thoughts on this subject. sorry i haven't replied. i went to bed after i made the thread yesterday, heheh.
but ya, i value what you all had to say on the subject. you guys are a brainy bunch for sure! :)
i guess in my journey of logic i began to see duality everywhere, but duality to the point where the opposites became so polarized in the logic, that they became the same thing. most spectrums are 180 degrees in design. and yet, when i would go to the far left, or far right (not just political) i saw them remesh again in a 360. this was just in following thoughts to their so called logical conclusions.
and then i started to wonder about logic itself. and duality.
and then i had what some people would consider mystical experiences, this last summer.
and then i realized that there was a genuine part of my psychology as a human that was not being fulfilled with a lack of belief only. and so my journey lately has been to try to hold my skepticism in some sort of balance with mystical experience. and it's funny, because the skeptical part of brain, which i intend to always have, of course is always explaining to me what those mystical experiences were: all in my head. which is fine. but again, in the logic of it, sometimes the skeptical part of my brain goes so far in explaining it, that the explanation itself becomes magical again. the duality disapears. it's insane, i tell you! ha ha!
anyways, this journey out of that religion, and by extension culture and mind space, has been a super wicked one. and i hope i never know the answers to all the questions i am capable of asking. and thanks to you all for being a part of it with me.
peace!
tetra
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tetrapod.sapien
must we practice what we believe?
i think it was Jung who said that he was only comfortable believing what he knew. i sort of feel like that.
tetra
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Midget-Sasquatch
I'll reiterate the point made by JaguarBass. Its very useful to "test the waters".
And as a few have already touched on, motive is pivotal. If one is acting out of harmony with their beliefs strictly for some material gain at the expense of others, then I'd find it distasteful. I'm unhappy with myself, because I'm hypocritical in that I'm still trying to keep in good standing with the jws, even though I don't believe any of it. That just so my family will still talk to me.
Then we have the curious. If we always only followed one particular belief system, I think we then deprive ourselves of a key component of alternative belief systems: the experiential. And to some belief systems, its all about the experience as opposed to the doctrine. I think experimenting or practicing something even if we fully may not believe it, for the reason of seeing what may happen to us, can be eye-opening. Or then again, nothing may happen: like my not yet having any classic mystical experiences...tonnes of chocolate induces a satisfactory mood in me for the time being.