[Oe List ...] The New Global Myth and The Event and the Story

[Charles or Doris Hahn]

Great ruminating, Rod. My guess is that practices are the most helpful keys, so 
long as folks don't think they have THE key.

I just read Huston Smith's autobiography, Tales of Wonder. He spent 10 years as 
a practicing Hindu; 10 years as a practicing Buddhist; and 10 years as a 
practicing Muslim. Oh, yes, and all that time, he continued as a practicing 
Methodist. I learned something about Huston Smith, but little about 
consciousness. My guess is that he learned a great deal about consciousness.

Doris Hahn





________________________________
From: Rod Rippel <rodrippel at cox.net>
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>; Colleague Dialogue 
<dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Mon, May 16, 2011 8:08:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] The New Global Myth and The Event and the  Story

 
Keenan
 
            Your guild’s topic, consciousness, is certainly a current cutting 
edge  concern of philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists, poets and the  
thinking-curious in general.  Neuroscientists especially are very interested in 
the phenomenon of  consciousness and its relationship to our brains and the 
mind.  I hope your group is reading everything  you can get on the subject.  
Here  are a few random thoughts.
 
            I like Gene Marshall’s first paragraph where he uses poetry to 
address  the issue of consciousness and goes on to say we don’t know anything 
about what  it is.   All we human beings  have is our language and we are both 
enabled and frustrated by it.  It sets the possibilities and the limits  of our 
thinking and expressing our thoughts.  It (language) has shaped our culture,  
sciences, and how we find and express meaning.  It does this through the stories 
and  metaphors which have become attached to words, metaphors being the 
inherited  baggage each word carries which relates that word ultimately to some 
concrete  object or sense perception.  The  word becomes a shorthand code for 
all its attached stories and  relationships.  Overtime we have  become used to 
using the word for complex meanings and abstract concepts without  referring 
back to the concrete metaphorical underpinnings.  Take for example the word 
‘justice,’ or  fairness.  We don’t have to repeat  the story of the Vineyard 
Owner and the Day Laborers each time we use those  words.
 
            My point is this:  Consciousness is a word, an experience, without 
an adequate metaphor or  none at all.  No one has any idea  what consciousness 
is in itself.  Using another word doesn’t help.  Awareness is just another 
word.  It doesn’t describe the nature of consciousness, its origin, how it  
arises, its essence, if you will.  We are very adept at describing our 
awarenesses and the impact they have  on our lives, behaviors and 
interpretations but all this tells us nothing about  the nature of consciousness 
itself.  Like fish in the ocean we use it without any idea what it is.
 
            Neuroscience works on what part of our brains is consciousness 
associated  with.  How do we measure  consciousness?  Does cognition  precede 
our consciousness?  Does  consciousness create the external world we perceive 
exclusively, or just to some  degree?  Why is the perception of  our individual 
consciousness so apparently uniform?  Are there degrees of consciousness (say  
between H. Sapiens and other animals)(is it arrogant to say we have a higher  
degree)?  Is there a reality  external to our perceptions (thoughts)?  Are we 
creating our world totally?  New models and hypotheses are possible every day.
 
            Poets and artists are the experts at tweaking new metaphors out of 
their  media (ie. Words, paints, sounds, etc..).  They are coming at this from 
their angle.  Poetry may be a great avenue!  New myths will emerge.
 
            This is not the first time humankind has been confronted with the 
Mystery  (or as DHL has said, the unknown unknown).  This is a diversion: but I 
think of the ancients who ‘invented’ the  character of YHWH and began to tell 
stories of their encounter with this  One.  This irascible, jealous,  
intemperate, flamboyant, arbitrary, demanding, judgmental, merciful, hands-on  
warrior-god who changes his mind and makes bargains.  Imagine later when they 
looked back at  their stories and they said,  “How creative of us, we have made 
YHWH in  our own image, we have chosen Him and He has made us His chosen 
people!”  The entire Tanakh (Old Testament)  has become a meta-metaphor about 
God (The Mystery) a meta-metaphor which can  hold meaning even in the face of 
such an Unknown Unknown.   “Let us covenant and agree to tell This  Story, it 
shall be our Reality, and we will remember it and tell it  to our children, and 
observe it with feasts and dancing and singing and cleaving  to it, forsaking 
all else.”
 
            Such is the nature of mythology.  And how did it collapse.  Someone 
had the idea that it was literally the truth!  

             Myth is so deep that we know it true but we must Decide that truth 
and  not rob it of the Mystery. 

Rod Rippel
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