There's a risk in being inundated with religious reading because of the whole "institutionalized religion" thing, and I'm anti-institution. Getting filled to the brim with external written sources risks drowning out listening to my own heart. The problem is that there is a lot my own heart can't tell me. It's hard to delineate what to take on faith, and then where to draw the line.
At the same time, I'm writing all this stuff about suicide; my comments on the responses to that Craigs List suicide note, and there are like 30 of them that I've saved. It's not a slam-dunk issue for me, I still mull over it and the morality that people stick on it. I wonder if it's the right thing to do, even though deep in my gut I feel it's not a wrong thing to do for me. My mind becomes a swamp.
Then I think of Peter Gabriel's lyrics, "When things get so big, I don't trust them at all/You want some control, you got to keep it small" (DIY).
Simplify. The very core of my belief is that the very essence or nature of phenomenal reality is void. All things must pass. They change, impermanent, and then gone. None of this is Real. You can choose to think all of this is real and treat it that way, there's nothing wrong with that. But once you choose to be done with that, you're not in Kansas anymore.
I believe that the phenomenal world is a function of the law of cause and effect, which is integral to the cycle of re-birth. I also believe that it is possible to pierce the veil of the illusion of the phenomenal world to either escape the cycle of re-birth, or to continue in it with that understanding.
I believe that disciplining and focusing one's mind through concentrated sitting is key to piercing the veil. I also believe that critical thought, more so than, but including, right thought, right actions, and right words, is just as key. I believe that progress along the path is just as much an emotional process as it is an intellectual process, if not more so. I believe keeping an open channel and open mind is crucial to receiving and reading the signs.
Simplify.
I don't believe in human morality except as a symbolic social phenomena. I believe that attempting to transmute all experience towards the positive is crucial. Even suicide, whether on the giving or receiving end. I believe in non-corporeal guidance, but I don't yet believe, or maybe I just don't understand the worship of non-corporeal entities.
I think anything that is muddying up the works is shite.
