Oct 5, 2011
Reality Is My Religion
I can’t say that I believe in God, but I do believe that there is a real reality.
Yes, I’ve heard about relativity and multiple universes and even the astral plane. And, yes, I understand that seen at a certain scale, “reality” gets kind of indeterminate.
But at this macro-level, there is usually one and only one way that things are: my car is parked in my driveway; this skull-and-crossbones pin sits atop a pile of business cards; Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater; etc.
Needless to say, and once again depending on scale and perspective, it is not always easy to perceive the way things really are and it can be equally difficult, if not more so, to establish the way things really were in a certain time and place in the past.
In fact, it is thanks to this inherent “concrete unknowability of the real in its totality,” that I call reality my religion. Reality can be known to a degree, but not absolutely. When you cannot absolutely know something, but you assume that it is this way or that way, and in fact act, without thinking, as if it were so, then you are said to believe it is so.
Thus, I believe in reality, the really real that I cannot ever know in its entirety or infinite complexity, and I ask reality everyday to allow me to draw closer to it, to know it better and conceive it more deeply, to the real limit of my mortal consciousness and to the ultimate capacity of my mortal will.
What’s your religion?
“Really, really, really real”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwffWq3LEXU
That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.
Matthew, you said concrete unknowability of the real in its totality,” that I call reality my religion. Yes, ultimate reality cannot be known totally, but…
Forgive my plug, but in my free ebook on comparative mystics I talk much about this unknowable, underlying reality. Three brief quotes:
Many scientists today have no doubt that ultimate Reality does exist, although they are unable as yet to confirm it. Proven or unproven, Reality is what it is, whether we would rather believe, think or desire otherwise.
Divine Reality is infinitely here and eternally now, not within the spatial or temporal constraints of earthly realities. No words can ever describe ultimate Reality, yet a single word might suffice: One. Some people call it omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent; some mystics speak of the One underlying the many, the Real within all and beyond any of the apparent real. It is what is here and now.
All of us know many surface realities of this world. There is within each of us a deeper Reality which is truly universal, in which all existence is united and that is accessible to any person dedicated to experiencing it. Many people call this soul, which is united with what most call God, although neither can be correctly named or described. These essays use the approach of mystics of five of the largest religions, but the search is open to everyone.
Thanks for the note and thanks for not embedding a link in your plug. I appreciate that.
A friend of mine used to misquote Roxy Music by saying, “Learn from the mystics is my only advice.” The words were wrong, but the advice is sound.
… as we sail into the mystic …
You mean: Reality is my REALigion! Me, too.
Thanks, Chris.
Gimme that old time REALigion!