[Paracelsus]

(12-09-2014 04:01 AM)2Wycked Wrote:  

This quote by Pastabagel stuck with me:

Quote:

You have to accept the infinite so you can make the right moves in the finite.

Does a man have to accept -- on faith -- the concept of eternity to achieve higher levels of awareness or actualization?

Eternity need not be believed in. All you have to do is take the number one, and keep on adding to it without stopping. There lies infinity, which is eternity by another name.

I regard eternity as a vitally important concept in raising your awareness or actualization because its contemplation is a good way of inducing a numinous experience. Greek philosophical tradition often linked the numinous experience -- a mindblowing awe of something so much larger than one's self -- with the experience of ekstasis, being "outside one's self". I really think there's a lot of common ground between Nirvana, Zen, and this concept.

Speaking anecdotally, maybe the first real numinous experience I had came when I was fairly young, lying in bed trying to get to sleep, and then thought about a grain of sand on a beach. And then I got to thinking that grain of sand was on the vast size of the Earth, which itself was nothing but a grain of sand compared against the size of the Sun, and the sun itself was a grain of sand against the colossal size of the galaxy, and the galaxy a grain of sand in the universe ... it was overwhelming, especially when combined with the thought I had: among this massiveness, God is aware of and loves you.

Like I said, that was an early thought pattern I had, but it was a fair component of my early faith.

The other thing I think is important is to retain a healthy sense of skepticism about the revealed order of existence. It'll sound trite, but Agent K from Men in Black reminds me to never forget my assumptions:

Quote:

Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.