Book: Sceptical Spirituality
Making a Start in Spiritual Metaphysics
You really need to want to know the truth for yourself
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First of all, before we even begin (!), you have to realise that this is all going to be about using your mind — that is, your discriminating intellect, and your thinking ability — to ‘set you free’, because you have no other capacity at your disposal with which you can meaningfully engage in this quest. Your heartfelt feelings (your innermost ‘love’ and ‘divine lovely goodness’ and ‘loving kindness’) are — if you can be bothered to examine them critically — infantile, selfish, sentimental and, worst of all, completely useless when it comes to helping your mind to think clearly and objectively as to how to get yourself out of the confusing, bewildering and tormenting mess that is the human condition. You cannot ‘love’ your way out of anything, and it’s childish to think you can: no one has ever managed it in all of the ongoing nightmare that is human history.
New Age piffle
So we’re not wasting time on anything that involves our ‘deep feelings’ and ‘love groovings’ and ‘divine yearnings’. These misdirecting phantoms are the incredibly popular soft engine of New Age kumbaya piffle, and they will keep you locked in a sentimental silliness which will prevent you from finding a way out of the horror of ‘never knowing what the hell’s going on’. So if you genuinely want to know what ‘the hell’s going on’, you will have to learn to think slowly, carefully and impartially. (And persistently and determinedly.)
What is thinking?
Thinking — in this instance — involves a careful mental/intellectual search for exactly the right words (very important) which assist you in being able to hold a thought — or a line of thinking — in mind for long enough to allow other thoughts to present themselves to you for objective assessment, such that you can try to tell the difference between ideas which trail off into fantasy, and ideas which might — in time — lead you to genuine metaphysical insight.
