and this loss isn't good enough for sorrow or inspiration
it's such a loss for the good guys afraid of this life
that it just is
cause everybody dies
- It Just Is (Jenny Lewis - Rilo Kiley)

I wish . . .there's so much I wish. I wish I had more time. I wish I knew you better. I wish I wasn't so stressed right now. I'm trying to calm my nerves by having the Schoolhouse Rock DVD on shuffle play in the background. It ain't helping. Although everybody does need a little elbow room.

It all changes tomorrow. I know you wish me luck even if you don't agree with what I write all the time, so thank you. I mean, if you tolerate my rants, you must be a kind soul, and what do kind souls do? They wish people luck. Logical.

Tomorrow I start figuring out the rest of my life, an idea that I'm still having lots of trouble with. I don't know if I'm ready, but too bad, gotta go. I'm going here, so if you're in that neck of the wood, stop in for a day of mindfulness.

Use it with an adjective, it says much more
Anything described can be described some more
Anything you'd ever need is in the store
And so you choose very carefully every word you use
Use it with a verb it tells us how you did
Where it happened, where you're going, where you've been
Use it with another adverb at the end and even mooooore
How, where, or when, condition or reason
These questions are answered when you use an adverb

I sent out a change of email address email last week. Most of the people on the list probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't informed them, but there were some surprises.

Most notably, Pasha happens to be in the U.S. and will be in New York on Thursday. I'll do what I can to meet up with him, although it being the day before I leave, it may not be wise. Pasha was one of my best friends in college and we fell out of touch for 8 or 9 years. His memory is incredible, but his information on me is outdated. He still thinks I can't stand my parents, and that's just a completely different reality now.

Madoka and I shot several short emails back and forth, maybe more than we have over the entire past year; certainly more substance. Our relationship has changed and I don't think we're special to each other anymore and that's settling in as the new norm.

Before, we always addressed each other in emails, always signed our emails, and always preceded the signature with an affectionate. It might seem formal, but I did it because she was exceptionally special. It was letter-like, and letters will always be superior to email.

I don't know why she did it, and maybe she did it with everyone. For me, it didn't feel appropriate anymore, so eventually I didn't bother with any of those conventions and sent her quick and easy responses, no addressing, no signature, no affectionate. Who knows? It might improve our relationship, but I doubt it. There's not much left to improve at this point. And it's fine as is.

October 27, 2004; 12:26 P.M.

I tend to write only the negative and angsty aspects of what's going on, mostly because that's what stands out in my day to day experience of it. It's also easier to focus on to express. In calmer moments, it doesn't occur to me to post about it.

That says something in itself. Maybe people who are more truly at peace and more comfortable with it would be more likely to post about that, and less comfortable posting about the negative and angsty.

An invisible part of me is looking forward to implementing what I've held in principle for all these years – that I want to be in a setting that investigates the nature of my being more closely, not attached to distractions and attractions of the physical manifestation of some "more real" reality.

The reason why I haven't taken this step yet is because I am strongly attached to this physical manifestation of life. I face and have to admit to this attachment most clearly when I'm lying in bed, looking at the ceiling, stressed and confused about this decision. But in the end, it's something I have to at least investigate. It's a reality I have to face.

There's nothing wrong with being attached to life, life is wonderful in all it's beautiful and ugly, happy and sad, varied aspects. I just decided for myself that I believe human experience goes beyond that and it is time for me to investigate it more thoroughly.

I don't want to float through a life of striving and yearning for something bearable, or comfortable or even wonderful, only to die, even though the end result is the same – I die. Ultimately, all religions are about that death-point and the meaning you bring to it. But ultimately, no one experientially knows what that's about.

Life is for living, and it's probably good enough just to be a good person and do good things. Know what makes you happy and enjoy your experiences, and suffer through your trials and just do your best. You don't need to make outward expressions of faith that, no matter how benignly you express it, is bound to offend or threaten someone.

It's all very nice. I could do it. But it doesn't make sense to me to do that. It makes sense for me to investigate beyond this physical experience of reality, even if it ultimately all becomes a big nothing in the end, my beautiful friend, the end.

So a part of me is looking forward to this part of my journey, my inquiry, my investigation. But going to a monastery is really no different from joining a rock band, getting a good job, getting further degrees, moving to the desert, becoming an astronomer, becoming a train engineer, or being a father, brother, son, brother-in-law, uncle. And, of course, committing suicide, even though that would lose anyone left on this train of thought.

I obviously don't put much thought into getting old. The idea of it has never really been a consideration or an option. But there's a possible path in front of me where I go to this monastery, end up staying, and end up getting old. What getting old means and the specifics that path entails are varied and diverse (hint: the options include leaving the monastery).

On the most general level, it would involve a transformation where issues regarding suicide and existence are definitively resolved. No small thing, mind you, basically a re-working of my very premise of being, but in a monastic setting it's a distinct possible reality.

I think of this because I re-watched one of my favorite recent movies, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring. I highly recommend it because it's a great film, but I should also warn that it's paced . . . contemplatively. I wouldn't call it slow, but the dialogue is sparse, and it's a story told mostly through images and ideas.

It's easier to watch than Wings of Desire, another of my fave films that I've watched multiple times, arguably because it's hard to stay awake for the whole thing.

Anyway, the film depicts a spiritual human journey in seasonal segments, and the segment I related most closely to was the Winter segment, when the main character is old (late 50s; hey, that's the best I can do in contemplating "old"). There's a sense of accomplishment, of settling, of maturity perhaps. A sense of being done with all the distractions and strivings of youth.

So even though I feel old on the inside, I never thought about realistically being old in age. I'm thinking it might not be all that bad. If I were given the option of aging 20 years right now, I might seriously consider it (taking into consideration the two other options I usually consider).

One week left. I think it's high time for me to start freaking out. No, not freaking out. But feel the same way as when, well, you know. Except in a week, I'll just be getting on a plane. It's so much easier to get on a plane than, well, you know. 

And it's supposed to feel the same, even if it's not the same. Because they're supposed to be the same. And if they're the same, then it's what I want. I'm done. I'm checking out. Right? Right. I'm giving up this life, doing these things, being pulled through this life of habits and illusions. 

There's nothing wrong with just living life, enjoying it for whatever it brings, and dealing with the hardships as they inevitably come. But it's not for me. What a waste it would feel like. 

Entering the monastery is suicide, and it's what I want. I'm not telling myself that just to convince myself. There are differences. Living is one thing, existing is another, and I've always had a harder time with existing than living. I can give up this life by committing suicide or by going to the monastery, but at the monastery I still have to deal with existence. And these theoretical "people", lord knows who they are, can be spared the outrage, pity, and condemnation they'd spit at my killing myself. Whatever. 

I am feeling it. And walking through the airport, getting on the plane, and getting to the monastery will be the same journey and will have the same mental imprint as locking my apartment, taking the 9 San Bruno, transfer to the 23 Monterey, and walking to the beach with the bottle of whiskey and sleeping pills and boogie board. 

I swear once I'm doing it, it won't sound or seem so dreary and morbid. It's just the torment we put ourselves through to find a little peace.

What ever happened to that sense of home? That familiarity? How do I even know what it is? I sure didn't learn it from my family. All I want to do is commit suicide. That would make me happy. That's the only being that feels familiar. 

I'm going to the monastery next week, but there's a sheen across my brain thinking it's not permanent, that it's a trial period that will end in deciding that it isn't for me and I'll leave. But then what? 

There's a reason I packed up my life and left San Francisco. My perspective of my life keeps bouncing around and looking at it from all these crazy unfamiliar views, and I just want it to stop and focus on where I am and why I'm here. It's either monastery or die. I'm not dying, so I'm going to the monastery with the full intention of staying. Easy. 

But I resist and I tell myself I don't want to follow someone else's spiritual path. I don't even want to walk along my own path with other people. I'm a loner. I feel I'm doing pretty well on my own, too. But what does that mean? Go back to secular life? Get a job? Why did I quit everything I had in San Francisco then? 

It's a feeling in the air. A season. The sound of someone's voice. Someone looking in my eyes and knowing. It's knowing someone. A stranger. It's a routine. It's a dream, a warm bed and a roof overhead. It's a smell, something burning in the distance at twilight. It's the first sip of coffee every morning that tastes like the best damn cup of coffee ever. It's the circumference of my brain. It's imagination. It's something not real, pretending it is. Breath. Lips. Intimacy. I don't want to make love to you, I don't want to enter you. I want to melt inside you, I want to inhabit your skin. I want to be continued.

Blasphemy: 

I always find it perplexing that there is a perception of Buddhism that there is no God. And I don't think "Buddhists" themselves have given it much thought, and have simply rolled over and agreed with that outside, colonial perception. 

I think it's more accurate to say that Buddhism doesn't actively worship, as a specialized practice, an anthropomorphized version of God. It can even be argued, at the risk of insulting them, that Buddhism practices what the major monotheistic religions preach – that God cannot be known or rendered in human understanding. 

Looking for the concept of God in Buddhism, God is all things, all phenomena experienced by humans, truly universal, truly omni, and worship of God is an every day, every minute, every moment practice. Theoretically, at least, since in all religious constructs there is a break between what humans are supposed to do and what they actually do. 

The logic would involve God being universal, all-knowing, all powerful. That's something everyone can agree upon. So the easiest conception of God is that God is the universe. What can be more universal than the entire universe, and God cannot be less than that. 

As the entire universe, God is all-knowing as the universe knows itself. If God is unknowable to humans, it is reasonable to suggest that the way humans "know" something is not the only way there is to know something. 

Or another way to think about it is to think of my body as the entire universe. I know my body, how it works, how it feels, how it is, as a whole, better than any constituent part of my universe could know it. I am, of course, God, and at this scale, a human being would be smaller than a String Theory string (if an atom were the size of the solar system, a theoretical String Theory string would be as large as a single tree on earth).  

Encompassing all forces in the universe, God is all-powerful. No force in the universe can be greater than the force of the universe itself and all it contains. 

But this is all very big and abstract. I wonder how many religious types delve on the universe as a practical matter. We get images from Hubble Space Telescope from billions of light years away, but they are just photos, snapshots, and viewing them on the internet is different from the stretches of creative imagination necessary to even try to conceive of these things as real. It is the height of arrogance to simply brush off the immensity of the universe, and the extreme forces involved in stellar, interstellar, and intergalactic interactions whose electromagnetic evidence happens to reach our miniscule telescopes. 

What we can do as humans is apply these big concepts to what we do know as a matter of practical course – our lives, and this planet. If God is all the universe, surely God is everything on this planet, every molecule, every quanta of being, every thought and every idea to the very edge of human consciousness and sub-consciousness. How can God be any less? 

And from there is where Buddhism splits from the monotheistic conception of God by not putting a face, personality, or gender on God, i.e., making God concrete and knowable. And distinctively worshipable. You can have a relationship with God and feel holy, but treat your neighbor like shit, even though as God is universal, you should be treating your neighbor with like reverence. 

As an entity with a personality, God can have enemies. There can be human beings that aren't part of the "universal" rubric of God, which is now conveniently redefined not to be strict universality. You have subjectively identified heathen and infidels; you have heaven and hell, all concepts that stray from an objective universality of God. God is partisan. God is political. God is something less than the universe. And only humans do that.

Suicide is not killing the self if there is no self to kill. 

I think there is a common misconception about the concept of "no self" in Buddhism. Nihilism gets attributed to Buddhism because of that concept, because I think the common conception is that "no self" means the destruction, extinguishing, or non-recognition of our dearly conceived selves. 

"No self" doesn't mean the snuffing out of identity. It's more of a spreading out, an extending of our understanding of self to encompass the universe beyond the outer edges of our skin. When trying to conceive "no self", you're not erasing you or any part of the mental or physical you. 

When conceiving no-self, it's looking deeply at the computer monitor and wondering about the relationship between you and this piece of matter. Thirteen and a half years ago, it was me walking back to my dorm at Oberlin and being struck, wondering about the relationship between me and this particular tree in front of Spanish House. 

Side story: An assignment for a religion seminar was to bring in an object that made us feel "closer to 'God'". I thought it was the stupidest, flakiest, new-agey assignment ever, and hardly appropriate to the skeptical inquiry process that an expensive liberal arts education was supposed to entail. 

I refused to do it and considered skipping the next class because the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a circle listening to someone explain how deeply they feel about their pet rock. But I went to class, and I just brought in my rumination about the tree and explained that the college grounds department wouldn't approve of me digging up the tree to bring to a seminar, which would have required a sizable crew of landscapers and heavy machinery. 

I don't think we were graded on that assignment, but I do remember the professor, who the Muslims on campus jokingly referred to as "the Sufi", staring at me with a surprised look on his face. 

But that's more what no-self means. It's easing the primacy we place on our ego-selves, it's extending and expanding our idea of self to encompass more, especially other people in our lives and around us. It doesn't mean we suddenly become saints, although it often entails becoming more understanding and looking at things from other people's points of view. 

It doesn't mean that we don't argue or get angry. It means that even while arguing or being angry, and in each moment of arguing or being angry, we are cognizant and not distracted that the other party is part of ourselves. Of course, if properly exercised that usually leads to the end of arguing or being angry, but theoretically, it is possible to do both. But that's non-attachment, another concept altogether. 

The thought that inspired this whole blurb was that entering the monastery should be conceived as the same thing as committing suicide for me, but I don't know how to bring it back to that, so I'm just stating it outright. 

If someone doesn't want me to commit suicide, they shouldn't want me to go to the monastery. If someone has no problem with me going to the monastery, they should have no problem with me committing suicide. If that someone doesn't get this, then I feel that my worth to them was missed. Not that I hold it against them if I'm missed.

The spiritual path isn't about congregating in groups. When you die, you go alone. You and another person, no matter how closely aligned your beliefs may be, will always be able to find something on which you disagree. My eating food will not satiate your hunger, nor my drinking quench your thirst. 

On the true spiritual path, you're in a world of your own. Not unlike certain mental illnesses. You stop knowing what's real. But with mental illness, you see things that aren't there. On the spiritual path, you're not seeing and trying to see things you know are there. 

I never considered going to a monastery because my soul was hurting, but at one of the places I visited, someone suggested the main reason people go to monasteries is to figure out some problem they have in their lives. I always thought my reason for going was an affirmative one, because I want to, because I'm driven to, and when I've gone the energy I got was electrifying. 

Problems notwithstanding. Problems are not a reason to go. That would just be running away or seeking temporary sanctuary. That's a good enough reason to go visit, but that's not what I thought I was doing. It's not an issue. I never even thought of how I keep my monastic aspiration separate from my so-called problems; there is just no connection. 

But recently, sometimes that barrier breaks down and I wonder what the hell I'm doing, riding a wave of my problems to the monastery. I don't want to go to the monastery feeling wrecked. 

Do you want to see crazy? See me talk about suicide. It's an art, and I'll make it look like you're the one that's deficient in the understanding.

I bought my plane ticket today and emailed my contact at the monastery. I fly out on the morning of October 29, scheduled to arrive in San Diego around noon, and then it should take a couple hours by bus and foot to reach the monastery, maybe stop somewhere for a final chicken burrito. Seriously, on the East Coast the best burritos are Taco Bell! Don't get me wrong, I like Taco Bell but prefer it not to be the best option available. 

After two weeks at the monastery, I write a letter requesting to stay on and expressing my intentions in doing so. After an indeterminate time after that, minimum three months, I can get on the path to become a novice to become a monk. Or I can decide it's still not time and, shell-shocked, return to society and start blogging again. OR, renewed I return to society, maybe backpack to Tucson and start blogging again (hey, it's a blog, gotta keep our priorities straight). 

I'm going in with the intention to stay and become a monk. I want the secular part of my journey in this lifetime to be over. But if that's not to be, it's not in my hands, I won't force myself to stay if I'm going to be miserable. 

I still have many attachments to secular life that make me question whether I'll actually become a monk, but I also think once I'm in a monastic setting those attachments will slip away like burnt flesh but without the pain; or like hands slipping off the hull of a capsized boat but without the dire consequence. Riiiight. 

The main attachment I have to secular life is progressive learning. There's still so much to learn and experience. What will I do without PBS, without bookstores, without DVDs and film? I don't believe progressive learning stops at the monastery, it will just take on a different form, I just don't know where the sparks of inspiration will come from. From within me? *yawn*, but maybe. 

But nothing like the emotions and different perspectives of films, the easy access to ideas from books, magazines, and the internet; I don't know how I'll be able to keep up with the latest developments in cosmology and the Theory of Everything unless I can demonstrate to the monastery how it directly connects in with our practice and that I should be allowed to keep up with the latest research. I can do it. I can make that connection. But I can't make them care enough to deem it important. 

No, I suppose much of it will be coming from mindful living and living in the moment. Probing the inner recesses of my memory and consciousness for the spark for ideas. Living in the moment is a nifty thing in itself. But once you start doing it, you realize that it sucks recalling all those past moments when you didn't.

I know what I said, but I'm a liiiar: 

Besides, after driving my parents to the airport yesterday, I'm looking at three weeks with almost zero human contact until I get to the monastery. So unless you want to hear about and decipher my imaginary friends, and you really don't, let me rant what I rant. And since I'm monastery-bound, it just happens to be religion on my brain and why it sucks in general. 

Like faith. Isn't faith supposed to be about something intangible; that you can't prove or argue; that you can't convince someone else of with objective, empirical evidence? Otherwise it's not faith, it's reality. So why are there people who go about like their faith is reality and get all in everybody else's face about it? 

It seems to me that faith should make people humble and quiet about it since it is something that is intangible. How can you convince someone else of something when you have no evidence of it? If you found something intangible to have faith in, great, but the true test of faith is when you can shut up about it. Other people will find it if they were meant to. Show some faith. 

And that includes me. I don't even know who I'm ranting about anyway. My brother doesn't try to convert me. My sister-in-law (wife of my other brother) is what most people probably are, the opposite of what I'm ranting about; that is, she's apparently very religious but you wouldn't know it. Heck, my brother barely knows about it. I think he's kind of agnostic, but I don't know, I haven't asked him.

And people's blogs are people's blogs, they can write whatever they want, and if they're gonna write about their faith, why shouldn't they write about it as concrete? 

I'm closer to a concrete plan. I'm now thinking I won't take a train across the country, leaving on the 25th or 26th, to go to the monastery. Flying is just as cheap if not cheaper, so I think I'll just fly to San Diego the day I'm supposed to arrive, which is looking like October 29, and then take buses to Escondido and then walk or take a taxi to the monastery.

Absolutes

Man, I read a bunch of blogs of various religious content today, and I'm regretting posting anything about religion. I feel like what I've written is exactly like what they've written – just . . . something no one can agree on.

People won't even agree to disagree; they just think they are right and everyone else is wrong. So many people don't even want to accommodate a paradigm within their own belief that is inclusive. You can rationalize anything these days.

So no more anything regarding "other religions" or religions as a general concept for the next two weeks until this weblog goes on hiatus. It's my blog, I'll only write about what concerns me, including maybe what I believe in, but I won't fall into that fray anymore.

I'm going out of town for the weekend. I haven't been out of town since going to that upstate monastery back in August. I'm driving down to D.C. in my brother's Porschy to visit Meghan, and then to Philadelphia to visit my brother and meet my *cough* 6-month old nephew.

Just another blue-haired asshole with a Porshy.

I fully revoke my prior post and interpretation of my parents telling me I don't have to open the door to give out candy on Halloween while they are gone on vacation. This evening, he rambled on about something regarding the mail while they were gone. Basically that when the mail comes, I should take my mail out and put the rest of the mail in a pile. That's already standard operating procedure.

Even I can't find anything to be offended about with that one. It was so pointless, unnecessary and benign that he couldn't have been trying to offend me (which they often do without even trying).

If that is the case with this statement, it makes it possible that no offense was intended by the Halloween candy statement, which was equally pointless and unnecessary. I was reading control into that statement but now I'm thinking it may, too, have been benign.

I think both times he was just rattling off what happened to cross his mind at the moment. Both were considerations about things while they were gone, and all property owners are paranoid in absentia. Maybe in dementia in his case. It very well may be that he's just losing his marbles.

I've been all wiggins the past few days over the monastery decision. I'm better now. I actually think I'll be fine once I get there. I actually think it might be something I'm good at. You wouldn't know it looking into my brain these past few days. 

I was actually thinking of instead of taking the train out to the monastery near San Diego, to jump on a plane to San Francisco. No luggage. No one would be the wiser for at least several months. 

My parents leave for vacation on Monday. They'll be gone for three weeks. I'm planning to leave for the monastery before they come back. (Yes, they know (yet they still have no clue!)). 

My doubts are unfounded. My anxiety is about something totally else. 

Suicide and monastery are basically the same thing conceptually. That's a good thing. That's a good way to look at it. Although "good" is problematic, and betrays my rejection of judgments and what anyone else thinks. 

People read about suicide and insist that at the root of it must be mental illness. It behooves me that they totally ignore how much effort and energy I need to spend to maintain this level of mental illness. It ain't easy.

previous post afterthought: Carl Sagan IV
I feel I should thank Carl Sagan for the influence he had on me, as I realize that there is an aspect to my approach to religion and spirituality that relies on an inquiry akin to the scientific method, and not on a blind leap of faith or a superficial attraction to some unknown.

But that's what religion is – faith! And that's true, ultimately we're dealing with intangibles and unprovables that require a leap of faith. But while I do believe in an ultimate dimension that is the source of religious thought, I also think that it's important to consider the cultural, social, and political contexts of the creation and manifestations of any given religion in human societies. After all, they are applied in a cultural, social, and political context.

So it stands to reason that the background – the cultural, social, and political motivations of a religion – ought to be critically examined to contribute why it resonates and why it makes sense. If the doctrine of a certain faith resonates, fine, it's a starting point, but God gave us the power of analytical, critical thinking for a reason.

And with something as important as the foundational belief system on which we base our entire view of the universe, I think it's fair that every little concept, story, belief, teaching, etc. be scrutinized. Of course, even all this isn't infallible, as there are undoubtedly people who do this, or think they do this, and come to the conclusion that the final truth is the belief they started out with and it is immutable and applies to everyone else.

Carl Sagan III: 

Is it fair to describe him as the scientific analog of a religious fundamentalist? Probably not, the implications are totally unfair. But he was extreme. True to his dedication to the scientific method, he did engage religious questions, but unable to test answers and finding no consensus among the experts, he rejected them. This is my own extrapolation, not necessarily fact, mind you. 

He would have been even less impressed by this website, arguing the validity of the Qur'an by using scientific discoveries!!. Don't go there, I'm only linking it to prove it exists. 

First of all, validating Qur'anic scripture using science, or vice versa, is risky business, seeing as science will be the first to admit that it re-invents itself as more knowledge is gathered. Science understood the universe very differently exactly one hundred years ago, the year before Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity was published in 1905. A hundred years from now, who knows how much of the Einsteinian universe will remain unscathed? 

Second, reverse-engineering validation of the Qur'an using science by saying the Qur'an told of these things 1400 years ago is hardly validating when modern scientific concepts can be interpreted in Buddhism 2500 years ago, and in Jewish scripture and Hinduism even further back than that. 

Third, if the Qur'an has already said 1400 years ago what science is discovering now, why couldn't the Qur'an help science along sooner? We don't expect specifics, just point us in the direction where we might look. 

When physicists draw connections between discoveries and concepts in quantum mechanics with ideas long promulgated by mystics of all religions, the mystics aren't impressed. Science has just found another way to get to what they already knew, but the only reason to be impressed by that is if you enhance the primacy of scientific thought over mystical thought, and fine mystics they would be if they did that! 

Carl Sagan isn't even rolling over in his grave about that website, he's chuckling heartily. 

*incomplete entry*

Carl Sagan II:
Let there be no doubt, Carl Sagan was a hardcore agnostic, and his disdain for mysticism and superstition – practically code for "religion" – was very thinly veiled. Point taken. Not mincing niceties about true spirituality being different from how humans have used and abused spirituality for masked secular (ego-driven) or de facto political ends, religion, on the whole, has been disastrous for the progressive development of humankind and scientific inquiry through the ages.

Carl Sagan is probably one of my "heroes" in terms of the influence he had on my thinking, even though he probably would not have been impressed a decade ago when I was tying in parts of "Cosmos" with the Lotus Sutra that I was reading at the time. He was instrumental in impressing upon me the need for critical thinking when sifting through ideas, looking for resonant personal truths.

More importantly, he emphasized a perspective that looked at all of humanity. An alien visiting our planet might be more likely to hone in on our similarities, rather than our differences. So in developing my own spiritual worldview, it was important to have one that didn't exclude, condemn, or discriminate against other worldviews.

So any spirituality that promulgated an "us against them" mentality went immediately out the door, but paradoxically, one that I adopted also needed to be inclusive about worldviews that did exclude, condemn, or discriminate against other worldviews. That is, they couldn't be discounted on their face, but needed to be examined and incorporated in a functional way.

If I'm calling it a "world view", I want it to be expansive as possible, taking into consideration as much of the world as possible. So if I think my belief covers the world, it doesn't do to automatically eliminate huge swaths of representative views just because they don't conform to mine. Other people feel as strongly about their views as I do mine, so their views must have as much validity as I feel mine do.

The working theory is that if I can summarily, in a furry fit of self-righteousness, invalidate their views as wrong, then my views are just as subject to invalidation. If I can somehow incorporate their views into mine, at least take them into consideration, then my views might be that much stronger. But no summary invalidation, and at least respect that they feel strongly about their views.

It's hard, though, in a reality that is based on duality and discrimination – distinguishing between this and that. When it comes to religions or spiritual worldviews, we like to think our beliefs are taking in the big picture, that they are universal. What good is a God that only holds power and sway over one group and not another?

In order to accomplish our limited human perception of a universal God, we imbue ourselves with the right, in God's name of course, to condemn people who don't worship our God to hell. With that kind of discrimination, division is automatic, respect is impossible, and another person's different worldview is an offense, regardless of how harmonizing it tries to be.