Downturns of the Soul

I finished reading "The Existentialist's Survival Guide" (How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age) by Gordon Marino, PhD, 2018. It delves into the lives' of persons who are sad, moody, discontented, anxious, depressed, despairing, guilty, self-hating, fearing death, sorrowful ... and how they might bravely deal with these darker conditions according to various Existentialists, especially the Christian apologist, Soren Kierkegaard.  These Existentialists are typically quite critical of comfortable contentment, bourgeois conformity, and ordinary "happiness." Mr. Marino is knowledgeable, a skilled writer, down-to-earth, and offers numerous good insights into these themes. 

"After a public fray with a popular newspaper, Kierkegaard, an inveterate walker, would be stalked by Copenhagen street urchins, teasingly yelling at him "Enten/Eller"---Either/Or. Either faith or unbelief.  According to Kierkegaard, the choice between the sacred and the profane is not one that reason can make.  Put another way, if you put all your faith in reason, you have made your choice.  Conversely, where faith is concerned, it involves a terrible clash.  This is the proverbial fallen tree on the path Kierkegaard repeatedly stresses."  - Gordon Marino, p. 237

"In Kierkegaard's time and much more so in our own, there is a tendency to reduce religion to either a gauzy form of spirituality or to something akin to philosophy for dummies --- good, uplifting, and yet untenable stories that would be better served by science and argument."
- Gordon Marino, p. 238

"The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world."
- Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach,"  

Sincerity and Authenticity by Lionel Trilling

How to Live a Good Life: Advice From Wise and Respected Persons

Virtue Ethics

Mystical Experience and Nature

Common Characteristics of Extrovertive Mystical States
From Mysticism and Philosophy, W. T. Stace (Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1960), p. 79

"1.  The unifying vision, expressed abstractly by the formula "All is One."  The One is, in extrovertive 
mysticism, perceived through the physical senses, in or through the multiciplicity of objects.
2.  The more concrete apprehension of the One as being an inner subjectivity in all things, described 
variously as life, or consciousness, or a living Presence.  The discovery that nothing is "really" dead.
3.  Sense of objectivity or reality.
4.  Feeling of blessedness, joy, happiness, satisfaction, etc.
5.  Feeling that what is apprehended is holy, or sacred, or divine.  This is the quality that gives rise 
to the interpretation of the experience as being an experience of "God."  It is the specifically religious 
element in the experience.  It is closely intertwined with, but not identical with, the previously listed
characteristic of blessedness and joy.
6.  Paradoxicality.
7.  Alleged by mystics to be ineffable, incapable of being described in words, etc."

"Crape myrtle, brilliant red, bursting forth;
Hiding the garden.
Some days, only the Garden, entire, serene;
Yet, hiding from sight, shy, single plants.  
Seeing Both, seldom, but as One: 
Sweat poured from my startled brow,
Dripping on the dry earth,
And all became Sunshine
And shadows of surprise unraveling."    
-   Michael P. Garofalo, Above the Fog

"What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grieving's in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul."
-    Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, 1915

 

"Speaking of today, I do not consider it intellectually respectable to be a partisan in matters of religion.  I see religion as I see other basic fascinations as art and science, in which there is room for many different approaches, styles, techniques, and opinions.  Thus I am not formally a committed member of any creed or sect and hold no particular religious view or doctrine as absolute.  I deplore missionary zeal, and consider exclusive dedication to and advocacy of any particular religion, as either the best or the only true way, as almost irreligious arrogance.  Yet my work and life are fully concerned with religion, and the mystery of being is my supreme fascination, though, as a shameless mystic, I am more interested in religion as feeling and experience that as conception and theory."
-  Alan Watts, In My Own Way, p. 61, 1972

Nature Mysticism: Quotations, Links, Books, Resources
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

 

Belief in Telekinetic Minds

 

“The idea of God as telekinetic mind with intelligence, knowledge, plans, preferences, control over events, etc., is completely unacceptable to me. This is obviously human projection taking thousands of highly elaborated cultural forms. Yet I have, in dire straits –in foxhole conditions you might say—experienced the feeling that I can only describe as my life or fate being in the hands of God.  Like William James, I think there is religious experience and related forms of so-called mystical experience that are moving and meaningful. I just don’t believe in supernatural persons, and I think the forms of fear, hope, antipathy and confidence that the major world religions stimulate in people are more destructive than constructive.”
-  Catherine Wilson

Epircureanism

Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity By Catherine Wilson. Oxford University Press, 2008. Index, bibliography, 304 pages. A study of Epicurean influences on many of the ideas that pervaded seventeenth and eighteenth century metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and natural and political philosophy. VSCL.

Turning Away from Useless and Stressful Thoughts or Beliefs

 
Disputing Irrational Beliefs:
Questions to Ask Yourself  

"1.  What self-defeating irrational belief do I want to dispute and surrender?
2.  Can I rationally support this belief?
3.  What evidence exists of the falseness of this belief?
4.  Does any evidence exist for the truth of this belief?
5.  What are the worst things that could actually happen to me if I don't get
     what I think I must (or do get what I think I must not get)? 
6.  What good things could I make happen if I don't get what I think I must
     (or do get what I think I must not get)?" 

-  Albert Ellis, Ph.D.  The Albert Ellis Reader: A Guide to Well-Being Using Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, 1998, p. 140 



The Work: Identifying, Questioning, and Turning Around a Stressful Thought or Belief 

1. Is the thought or belief true?
2. How can I absolutely know that the thought or belief is true?  What evidence or facts can justify saying the thought or belief is true? 
3. How do I react and what happens when I have that thought or belief? 
4. Who would I be without the thought?  How would my life be better or improve without the belief or thought.
5. How can I turn-around, reverse the thought, change the thought, modify the thought or belief, use different language to describe the thought, reverse its truth value, not take it personally, reject the thought or belief, trick myself into thinking otherwise, or go beyond the thought or belief.   

-  Refer to "The Work" by Byron Kathleen Mitchell.   

How to Life a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

Character Development and Virtues

Good Mental Health