Uncommon Sense
Chapter 6 : The Secret of the Gods
Let us recap where we are. We have identified that common sense is a sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. We have seen that judgement based on a simple perception is anything but sound and it is certainly not prudent. What we need to cultivate is an uncommon sense. Uncommon Sense is a sense of things based on a more in-depth perception of that which is common to our experience.
We also realized that what is probably most common to our experience is the problem of choice. The problem of choice is the resulting cognitive dissonance from an overload of choices in the modern world. This further enforces the need for an uncommon sense. So how do we develop an uncommon sense? We identified that uncommon sense is the result of a personal journey, the search for truth. It is not a universal truth but a deeply personal one. This is not a journey without but a journey within. No one can do what they are not able therefore the first task is to become able. We therefore need to identify what are the obstacles in our way.
Thus far we have identified that the angst and turmoil that one may be enduring is merely a symptom of something deeper. What we may be experiencing is a stage of mental and spiritual development described as the Call to the adventure. The Call is not supernatural in origin. It is a natural part of the human experience. You simply have reached a point in your mental life where you are ready to mature and grow beyond the boundaries of what you have been told to believe. This uneasiness doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you. It means that something is right with you.
Next we explored the significance of the adventure in that it is essentially a search for truth. The Call is beckoning you to search for truth. Often the reason why we reject the Call is because we are vested in keeping what we believe. We do this because that is how we think we aught to protect who we are. However we only protect ourselves from knowledge because of how it makes us feel or more importantly because of what it makes us “not” feel. But in doing this we abort our own development and rob ourselves of our own potential. What we must come to realize is that only a copy can be perfect. Mirroring and matching others will only enable you to become a copy of a copy. To truly be yourself you have to allow your authentic sense of self to emerge. This means having the courage to answer the Call.
In the search for truth you need to know what you are looking for. Truth doesn’t mean adopting a belief reached by consensus. In order to find an objective truth you must hold it to a standard that is higher than the reactionary impulses of how you feel and what you believe. Therefore in order to find the truth you must make a choice between what you believe and the truth. Most people are looking to keep what they have and get a little more. They do not seek the truth. What they want is a verisimilitude (something that has the appearance of truth). They are looking for reasons to believe or to not believe. Those who search for the truth are looking for answers to the questions that drive them not reasons. They may not like the answers but they choose to know the truth because this will help them forge lasting change.
The real problem is choice. You must choose and accept responsibility for your choices. It is how you deal with the problem of choice that will determine what you get out of life. Consumerism promises us health without exercise, relationships without commitment, that you can keep what you have and get a little more, all of these propositions appeal to larceny. Larceny in the heart is wanting something for nothing. Everything has a price. The price of knowledge is ignorance. Therefore, you have to rid yourself of this mental disease if you are ever going to benefit from a search for truth. You also need to focus on the question of how and not swim around in the sea of conjecture. You cannot theorize your way into right thinking. Only action gets results. You have to take action that changes how you think. If you want right results you have to take the right action. If you want to find out what the right action to take is then what you need to know is not who, what, when, why or where. What you need to know is how. The question is not why. The question is how.
No one can do what they are not able. The first task is always to become able then do. This kind of mental preparation is important. It is an integral part of acquiring an Uncommon Sense.
Now we get to the part where we must choose the means to knowledge. This is the secret of the gods. We all have a foundation upon which we built the way we see the world. From the Religare™ course, which is available from The Que Fellowship, we learn that there are three foundations for forming a world-view, theistic, atheistic and agnostic and they really have nothing to do with what you believe about a god. They have to do with your means to knowledge about your experience of life. They are about the standard of proof that you hold for the beliefs you have and how do you go about getting that knowledge.
The theistic foundation believes that something outside yourself, usually supernatural in nature, is responsible for the experience of life. The distinguishing factor of theism is the use of faith as a means of knowledge. They believe what they feel and accept their belief as evidence of what exist. Faith is more than just believing without evidence. It is confidence or trust in a perception with some degree of warrant. Warrant here means a theory of justification. The consequence of using faith as a means of knowledge in the search for truth is that you are not looking for truth at all but rather constructing a foundation for justification. As a human organism we must possess faith as a means of knowledge because we cannot know everything about everything. We have to act on and interact with a world that we mostly know nothing about. It is therefore an important stage of cognitive development. It is literally the foundation upon which we all build.
The atheistic foundation rejects theism. An atheistic foundation is based on the belief that the experience of life is controlled by physiology and causality. Specifically they reject the notion that anything “super-natural” is responsible for the experience of life. Their rationale is usually grounded in science. The distinguishing factor of atheism is that it uses reason and reject faith as a means of knowledge. They hold what is true as that which is observable. Reason is the means to knowledge. Reason is a skill of applying logic to ideas. Reason is not something you are born with. Logic is a formal system not a natural one. Intuitive reasoning, which is acquiring knowledge without recourse to conscious thinking is just a fancy way of saying you don’t know the process by which you got to a result. There is a process, whether you know it or not. It is only by being able to examine the process can one know if it is logical or not. As a human organism you must be taught the formal system of logic in order to accurately use reason as a means of knowledge. This is therefore evident of a stage of cognitive development. Since our model of the world is incomplete there are gaps whereby we can only leap over through faith. This leaves even the most skilled logician with *G*aps *o*f *D*iscernment or GOD. However rather than taking the theistic perspective of this being proof of existence the atheist accepts this phenomena as proof of intuition. Consequently even the atheist must have faith.
Agnosticism is distinguished from atheism in that it accepts both faith and reason. Agnosticism uses reason as a means of knowledge and an act of faith as a way to get experience not knowledge. An agnostic person is someone who realizes that it does not matter if something outside themselves such as a god exist because the fact remains that they are ultimately solely responsible for their experience of life. True agnosticism is grounded in the idea that faith and reason has their place in the human experience. The distinguishing characteristic of agnosticism is that it accepts faith as a means of experience and reason as a means of knowledge. For the agnostic both faith and reason are valid and one method does not supersede the other. To an agnostic person faith is a means to getting experience, it is a way to be able to “act like” and so get an experience about something but faith is not a reason to believe. To an agnostic reason is the correct means to knowledge. To the true agnostic faith and reason are complementary not adversarial. As we can see this is yet another stage of development. What then does an agnostic do with the Gaps of Discernment. Rather than proof of existence or proof of intuition, an agnostic sees this phenomena as a limitation of the model used to model all occurrences.
These foundations are our means to knowledge and therefore form the basis of all that we experience. We are not born with a foundation. It is merely something we inherit from our environment. There is no right or wrong way. There is only your way. The human brain is an ever changing environment and a position is not permanent but rather it is reflective of your mental stage of development. In fact your mind has a natural process for evolving through each stage and literally that is what the search for truth is ultimately all about.
The Religare™, a course from Natural Spirituality, enabled us to make a quantum leap forward in understanding the human experience. What we discovered is that what is most significant about the three foundations is that they are the architect of a world-view. They are evident not of religion, but of a stage of cognitive development. This kind of cognitive or mental development does not happen with age necessarily. It is an evolution that occurs as a result of the level of sophistication of your understanding of the world. As a general rule we all begin with a theistic view of the world and through an education evolve into an atheistic view and then with experience mature into an agnostic view. These changes are evolutionary in that one doesn’t just change an opinion. It physically becomes impossible to imagine how one could have ever been at the other stage. At every stage of this mental evolution is a transformational process that literally reorganizes the noetic structure of the brain. Interestingly enough we discovered that this transformational process is also the same process found in mysticism, a process that the renowned scholar Joseph Campbell, aptly coined as the Heroes Journey. There is nothing supernatural about it. In fact it is natural and only human. As our level of sophistication about our understanding of the world reaches critical mass it forces an evolution in our way of being that we mentally experience. Since our ancestors didn’t know they lived on a planet, about DNA or atomic structures, they had no way to make sense of this experience except in myth.They did the best they could with what they had. Being thestic, athestic or agnostic speaks to something deeper than what you believe about a mythical god. God is only god until you no longer need one. It has to do with what stage you are at in your own mental evolution as this will determine what you could understand. Reason without faith results in one experiencing paralasis by analysis as there are some things that are gaps in the model used to discern. Faith without reason leads to delusion as one becomes obsessed with making true what one believes, which by very definition are not true. In Uncommon Sense we choose the agnostic path as we have nothing vested in either theism or atheism. As an agnostic one is only interested in the results not the method.
Let us now take a short detour and address the question of right and wrong, since we live in a theistic world. We would like to believe that with our technology we are rational people but the fact is we are not. Our group mind is most definitely theistic. Uncommon sense is a personal path of educating oneself. This is not the kind of education that gives you a better job. This is the kind of self education that gives you a better experience of life. Many people have a deep innate fear of this kind of education. They will do anything not to disturb the delicate balance of their beliefs. They are terrified that if they do it may somehow endanger the way they feel. You don’t have to be agnostic to learn. There is nothing wrong with becoming educated about what you believe or do not believe. It is important to understand that you don’t believe in something because it is a fact. You believe it because you “want” to believe it, whether it is true or not is actually irrelevant. It is vanity that begs for justification. You believe in something because of how it makes you feel. Getting an education will deepen your experience of life. The only thing in life you need to fear is ignorance. Ignorance is a cage and indolence is the jailer. Only a slave lives in fear. So liberty, that long and unremembered dream, is the birthright of knowledge. We must wholly reject the doctrine of proselytism. To force another to be like us because we believe, whether such beliefs are founded or unfounded, that our conception is the way they ought to be, is the very foundation of man’s inhumanity to man. Diversification is the seed of innovation. If you believe it, then no proof is required. If you don’t, then no evidence will convince you. Believing something doesn’t make it true. Not believing doesn’t make it not true. It just doesn’t work that way. Expand your values to be more inclusive because if history has taught us anything, it is that intolerance is the root of evil. Choose good instead of evil. Be and let be. Remember there is no right way. There is only your way.
If we are going to develop an uncommon sense then we will have to drill down to the very foundation of our world view. We will have to address the secret of the gods, those gaps of discernment. Specifically we must look at how are we going to go about acquiring knowledge or another way to say that is we need to decide what will be our means to knowledge. Uncommon Sense is agnostic and reason is our means to knowledge. Faith we will leave as a means to experience. We are not in search of truth to justify what we believe, that would be common. We seek the uncommon.
