Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts

Wednesday 30 January 2019

The Psychology of Mythology


Psychology is ultimately
mythology, the study of 
the stories of the soul. 

Written by Mathew Naismith

Mythology is about how we react and think within a world or environment, of course how we react and think in relation to an environment, comes down to our own psychology. Our own psychology simply determines the way we think, this is anything from science to religion or materialism to spirituality, etc. Of course one’s own psychology can be influenced by a number of different variables such as the different variables of science to religion for example. Often we judge a variable as mythology through one or two other variables such as science and materialistic ideologies. To me, it is a huge mistake to judge one variable by another variable, especially if we psychologically see another variable as an opposing variable. I cannot see any sustainable viable logical reasoning in this kind of bias by the psyche.

The psychology of mythology is all to do with good against evil, the difference to night and day, male and female interactions, how the weather determines our mood, moral and immoral behaviour, life and death etc. Mythology is to do with all of what life is and how we interact within this environment. Anyone who has conducted any kind of research on mythology impartially, realises that mythology isn’t simply about story telling as the following will clearly show.


Extract: Many years after the course was over, I would learn why. Apparently, narratives (stories) represent a particular way of constructing knowledge that comes naturally to us.
One writer has even gone so far as saying "Remembering is narrative; narrative is memory."

Research indicates that remembering a bunch of new, unrelated elements is difficult. But if the elements are part of a structured story, they are more easily remembered. That’s just the way the mind works. Research also indicates that memory is not a literal replaying of experienced events, like replaying a recorded video. Rather, it is a reconstruction of significant elements in a way that makes sense to us. We remember the past by making up stories in which the events relate to each other in a meaningful way.

My conception of science has changed over the years, partly because of my experience in my mythology course. I used to think that science was a way of establishing with certainty facts about the world, what is absolutely true beyond any doubt. As I read more about science and began to do science myself, I came to realize that in science we often attempt to model reality rather than establish indubitable facts. Scientific knowledge claims are always tentative and subject to revision. We strive for better models of reality, not just by looking for more facts, but by improving our insight and vision. A good scientific model is not one that attempts to capture every factual detail about reality, but is able to identify key variables that allow some accuracy in making predictions about the world. Just like a good myth provides enough insight about the world to help us navigate life's journey.

__________________

Being variable in thought is to do with diversity or difference. What if we only looked at our environments scientifically or religiously, viewing our world through one or two variables only? Our whole reality is built upon one bias or another which is anything but of self-honesty. Of course there are ideologies that do incorporate various variables, even supposed opposing variables such as science and religion. In a reality conditioned to self-deception and self-dishonesty, any variable, such as isms and ideologies, too variable in thought are not going to be very popular. How popular are people like me today!!

How many of us looked and look upon mythology as something irrelevant in the modern age or have disdain for mythology period due to our own biases and self-dishonesties? This is while totally ignoring the obvious psychological importance of mythology. Is human consciousness evolving by not being diverse and different in thought? It is obvious, to consciously evolve we must be diverse in our thinking but many of us are doing quite the opposite at present. Of course psychology is only one variable that observes mythology as being worthy of consideration.

If you are interested in researching this further, the following should assist in this. Remember, like any variable, they all only answer one part of an answer as no variable on it's own has the answers to everything, only one part of the answer.                         



Wednesday 16 January 2019

Helping the Empathic



Written by Mathew Naismith

If you only relate being empathic to the spiritual or spiritually aware, bare with me as this is not the case. Psychology recognises the existence of being empathic for a very good reason but before we go into this, I think we need to define what being empathic is.  

Empathic; showing an ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

It is important not confuse being empathic to being of empathy. "Empathy is the ability to comprehend or imagine what another might be feeling. Whereas, the Empath can literally feel what another person feeling." It is also wise not to only relate being empathic to being spiritual, in actuality being empathic has nothing to do with being spiritual or spiritually aware, you are either sensitive to other people's vibrations or your not. This is like my wife can't hear a mosquito in the room but I can, my ears are obviously more sensitive to the vibrations of the mosquito flying than my wife. At other times my wife can hear/feel vibrations I can't.

Look at it this way, how many people are more sensitive to what is going on in the world to other people, other people who are far less emotionally involved to what is occurring in the world. Yes, I am relating being empathic to our emotions therefore vibrations for everything that is of energy vibrates. A less emotional person is not going to feel what is going on in the world to the same degree as an empath. Yes, certain atheists, materialists and scientists, are more objective, a state of mind not influenced by emotions, than spiritually aware people. This does not mean that spirituality brings on feelings of an empath but it can certainly help. Spirituality simply works by teaching or conditioning a person's consciousness to be more subjective, a state of mind influenced by emotions.

Sadly, a lot of objectively minded people only see being empathic as a bias, a mind influenced by our emotions giving us bias evaluations of ourselves and our environment as a whole. You could put this another way, giving subjectively minded people a distorted sense of reality. Yes, this is what objective people think, which is also of a distorted reality based purely on objective thinking, one way of thinking and being. This is while none of us are truly unemotional or unbiased by the way we think, either it be objectively or subjectively of mind. Yes, objective minded people think they are not biased by the way they think, even when they primarily think objectively!!          
               
Everything is of energy therefore everything vibrates, so if my wife doesn't hear or feels the mosquito's vibrations in the room, the mosquito doesn't exist? The same is with ghosts, they don't exist because we are unable pick up on a ghosts vibrations. Yes, some people are more sensitive to certain vibrations than others, just because certain other people are insensitive to these vibrations, doesn't make them unreal. The question is now, is an objective mind, conditioned to certain vibrations only, less sensitive to other vibrations outside of objective thinking? To a person like me who subjectively and objectively thinks, the answer is too obvious.    

Now, how do we help a subjective mind cope better with being empathic? I should point out our objective part of our mind copes a lot better with being empathic. 

As the following will show, there is a psychological way of dealing with being empathic, however, if you prefer to do it another way, my suggestion is through a sense of unconditional love. This does not mean you have to force yourself to love everyone and every situation you find yourself in, this is highly impractical in a reality such as the present reality. All you have to do is have a sense of unconditional love, in other words a general conscious awareness of the existence of unconditional love. Of course if your mind is conditioned to being primarily objective, even a sense of unconditional love doesn't exist, very much like the mosquito in the room.

In a state of unconditional love, it is impossible to feel negative or toxic vibrations, for the love of being unconditional in your thoughts dispels, negates or neutralises the affects of negative/toxic vibrations. Think of it like neutralising the mosquito in the room, dispelling any vibration that is not in tune with your own vibrations. Yes, often I have heard negative /toxic vibrations being expressed while at the same time being expressive of the existence of a sense of unconditional love, which of course is impossible. Make no mistake, being aware of a sense of unconditional love doesn't dispel negative vibration but it does take the toxicity or the ill affects away from negative vibrations. The negative vibrations simply become nullified or neutralised, for one has no sense of conditions. Basically, a sense of unconditional love releases our mind from the numerous conditions we put upon ourselves and the rest of our environment.

I have simply lost count in how many conditions there are on being spiritually aware these days!!               


Extract: The trademark of an empath is feeling and absorbing other people’s emotions and/or physical symptoms because of their high sensitivities. These people filter the world through their intuition and have a difficult time intellectualizing their feelings.


Extract: It’s perhaps not the first accolade you would think of when think of the UAE, but it is an accolade none the less.
A study looking into the psychology of countries and their residents revealed that three countries in the Middle East – the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – are three of the most empathetic countries in the world.


Monday 6 July 2015

Do the Laws of Attraction Belong in Spirituality 2?


Written by Mathew Naismith

Sorry people for the mix up, I woke up this morning and had to revise my post I posted on my blog yesterday, I was somewhat rushed yesterday and not in my normal space as such. 

It's approximately 36 hrs after I first posted this post on my blog, this is my third revision, this time mainly to do with with syntax errors. No one is perfect but what better way to learn than through actual experiences. No matter how imperfect you are, express yourself, actually, the more imperfect you are, the more you have to share because the more you have experienced, in other words, never try being perfect as you are a reflection of perfection by being imperfect through your valued imperfections!!          

The way we use the laws of attraction: Again there is an ambiguous answer to this question because the question itself is ambiguous, is the question referring to the laws of attraction defined by a controlling ego or not?  This makes a huge difference in the way we use such laws, to me a controlling ego doesn’t belong in true spirituality/religion, but at times the ego is needed to grow in awareness, this is of course only viable if we don’t become too fixated to such traits in the first place.

I will again use doctors and nurses, in opposition to multinationals and politicians, to explain this topic, this is due to certain groups of people using the laws of attraction in quite a different way to other groups of people.

Could you imagine multinationals and politicians attracting what nurses and doctors attract? We certainly use the laws of attraction in different ways, this I feel is due to how controlling the ego is, could you imagine a doctor only attracting a certain clientele?  Actually this does happen but only when such people are primarily controlled by the ego, most doctors and nurses use the ego to help all who are ill, not just the one’s they desire to help.

When religion/spirituality becomes destructive, what happens to cause this?  At the moment we are experiencing religious fanatical fundamentalism, we can certainly say in this case such religious people  have become fanatical but why have they truly attracted such traits?  The law of attraction is defined by how we think, or more precisely, what we have allowed to control us to attract such extremist ideologies, what actually creates/attracts such extremism in the first place?

You cannot have extremist ideological views unless you are controlled by the ego, it’s the controlling factors of the ego that creates such extremism, a non-controlling ego cannot create or attract such traits, this is natural law. It would be nice if more of us were aware in how the controlling ego influences us to express such extremist ideological views but that isn’t the case. This is due to us being quite unaware in how such controlling egos influence us in how we use the laws of attraction.

An example; you have multinationals westerners on one side who express high degrees of egotism and on the other side you have religious extremists doing the same, everybody else is what’s called the meat between the sandwich, in other words everyone who isn’t controlled by the ego is between these two, what is called egomaniacs, thrashing it out. In this case, the law of attraction on a collective human scale is defined  and primarily influenced by controlling ego’s, this is all about the laws of attraction being used to influence/control the collective.

Using the laws of attraction egotistically in this way, in my mind, never belonged in spirituality/religion, it’s always attracted destruction. Now lets look at doctors and nurses again or even shamans and spiritual healers as a whole, they use the laws of attraction in quite a different way, this is all due to being aware of how controlling the go can be.  Yes, at times some doctors and spiritual healers can become primarily influenced by the controlling ego, however, it’s usually less likely for a true spiritual healer to be influenced by such egoistic traits than a doctor, this is primarily due to such people being aware of how controlling and influentially destructive the  controlling ego can be. 

Now is a doctor or a spiritual healer  attracting ill people to primarily serve there own desires and even needs?  No, this is why the laws of attraction don’t belong in spirituality if influenced by a controlling ego, the ego will always influence us in this case to serve ourselves, to primarily serve our own desires. I see this happening so much in Westernised spirituality these day it’s not funny.

To me we need to be more aware in how we are using such laws, the new consciousness is to me all about being aware in how to constructively use such laws instead of misusing them, on the other hand the old consciousness is about demonizing everything not of our own personal ego.



How consciousness works: This brings us to how consciousness works, as a whole, and how the laws of attraction has everything to do with this consciousness, meaning, you can’t attract anything without consciousness. 

Consciousness I feel works in this way,  the way we look at the world defines what reality we will create, by judging a wrong or a right, worthy or unworthy, only enhances such unworthiness, in other words it’s our reactions to anything we are  ignorant too that defines how unworthy or wrong something is going to be. Demonizing the controlling ego, for example, only enhances it’s effects, the controlling ego obviously has a place within consciousness otherwise it wouldn’t exist, so it’s worthy, this however doesn’t mean me shouldn’t be aware of it’s destructiveness.

Another good point to be aware of; is destruction less worthy than being constructive? Most people would probably say yes but it’s not, the destruction of our body when we pass on is as much a natural occurrence than being born. Basically everything  and everyone is worthy no matter how they express consciousness, things become more destructive only when we react and judge an unworthy. Could have Hitler or Genghis Khan been so destructive if they didn’t judge something unworthy, once the ego takes control, we attract destruction, this is natural law for all living things. This might sound stupid to some people, but could you imagine the sun being egotistical, it would try to take over the universe and destroy everything else within this process, even itself. In  other words the sun would only attract destruction by destroying everything within its path by seeing everything else as being unworthy to itself.

In the West, we see religious extremists as being unworthy, has this not enhanced their destructiveness?  This is how consciousness works especially when controlled by the ego, we will only attract what we see and judge. The funny thing is, consciousness works in a simular way to psychology, you create what you think and feel.



The psychology of the collective consciousness; is worth being aware of through observation as opposed to judgment, this is due to judgment being created through  bias observations instead of unbiased observations. This is like how helpful it is being  aware of our own mind psychologically without bias, as we become more aware of the collective mind/consciousness, the healthier we will become and the more constructive the reality we will create. Basically, by becoming aware of the collective mind/consciousness, the more we are treating the illness that creates such realities. Being aware of how the controlling ego influences in how we use the laws of attraction, is a good step in the right direction in my mind.                                                    

Friday 5 September 2014

Subjective and Objective Analysis


Written by Mathew Naismith


Extract: Objective analysis

“The testing procedure that attempts to eliminate emotion and feeling, and analyze facts and quantitative comparisons among subjects.”


Extract: Subjective analysis

“Testing that attempts to measure the otherwise unquantifiable. These tests would analyze likes, dislikes, and otherwise subjective intangibles.”

Can religious/spiritual people, who are anti-science and fixated to their principles, question and/or judge science principles unbiasedly and objectively? I would think the answer would be no.

Can anyone in the science community, who are anti-religion/spirituality and fixated to their principles, question and/or judge science principles unbiasedly and objectively? Again the answer would be no.

The reason for this is anyone who is anti-anything they are analysing, will only analyse through subjective reasoning, not objective reasoning, which of course will only give us a bias/subjective evaluation not a true evaluation.  A religious/spiritual person who is anti-science will evaluate science and the science community using subjective analysis giving us a bias evolution not a true evolution.  This is of course the same with science minded people who are anti-religion/spirituality; their analysis is governed by subjective analysis which is more emotional than objective analysis.  As soon as you bring emotions into the equation, any final evaluation is likely to be flawed even though we have supported our claims with evidence. This is due to being subjective instead of objective within our analysis of anything we are anti to, due to our emotions.  

If we subjectively analyse anything we are anti to, we will only find evidence to support our emotions, we will not look for any evidence to support anything we are anti to, but if we do, we will discard or ignore such evidence due to our emotions.  As soon as a person who is of an ideological principle we are anti to points out evidence to support their claims, we will ignore or discard any such evidence of being of evidence, this is again due to the way we subjectively analyse.  

What this is saying is try to be more of an objective analyser than a subjective analyser unless we don’t want a correct evolution of course, but a bias evolution that supports our dislikes.  A correct evaluation can only be sought through objective non-emotional analysis, once we bring in such emotions; our final analysis is liable to be incorrect and bias.

The strange thing is the bellow article, on subjective and objective analysis in psychiatry, tells us that psychologists needs to bring this divide between subjective and objective analysis together to give us a truer evaluation which I totally concur with.  So should we be using both subjective and objective analysis together as equal partners to give us a more precise evaluation?  I would agree with this however if whatever we are evaluating we are anti to, any kind of subjective analysis isn’t going to give us a true evaluation, this is due to our subjective emotions. If we are evaluating anything we are anti to, we must be totally objective within our evaluations otherwise we won’t get a true precise evolution, it will be bias and untrue.  


Extract:

“In the mental state examination, a standard method of describing the clinical encounter is to contrast the patient's supposedly ‘subjective’ account with the doctor's ‘objective’ description. In this model, the doctor is granted a privileged position: the clinician's perspective is taken to be superior to that of the patient. The doctor's objective approach is considered neutral, scientific and representing the truth of the matter. In contrast, the patient's subjective report is regarded as unreliable, distorted and potentially false. The lowly status of the subjective perspective is further emphasised by the frequent use of the accompanying prefix, merely.”


So in all the use of subjective and objective analysis’s at the same time gives us a more balanced view however, we must at times realise the ideological principles we are anti to, we are likely to be subjective within our analysis, therefore there is a need to be more objective within our analysis in these cases rather than just being subjective.  It all comes down to being more aware when we evaluate everything within our environment.    

Thursday 24 July 2014

Science/Spirituality as One


Written by Mathew Naismith

I came across a couple of articles that interested me recently on the reasons why science and spirituality belong together as they once were.  I don’t think any singular ideological principle should become dominant of our lives, once this occurs; such ideologies can become destructive as human history quite plainly shows. Separating science and spirituality only gives us dualism (separation) of our thoughts and once this is done both these thoughts become enemies when they were once allies. I hope you enjoy and please log onto these links, in my mind they are worth a read.

A psychological look at science and spirituality: I do find the ideological principles of psychology being far less bias than certain religious and science ideologies; it’s no doubt why I use it so much.  


Extract: When I was at school, people often asked, “Are you an artist or a scientist?” This was the 1960’s. “Why restrict oneself?” I always thought. “Galileo and Da Vinci were both artists and scientists, so, why not both?” Likewise science and spirituality need not be thought of as separate for, it seems to me, they are also highly compatible. They are complementary, needing each other to make something whole, something bigger than either of them alone. Properly integrated, they permit a level of understanding that amounts to much more than their sum.

To give another example, Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar Mitchell, returning to earth from the moon in February 1971, “Was filled with an inner conviction as certain as any mathematical equation he’d ever solved. He knew that the beautiful blue world to which he was returning is part of a living system, harmonious and whole – and that we all participate, as he expressed it later, ‘in a universe of consciousness’.”

Both these men of science were deeply affected. Mitchell’s experience too was obviously life-changing because in response, in 1973, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences.


The following link will sends you off to a site I think is worth browsing with numerous articles to peruse.  


Extract: Do any of the following questions arise in your mind?

Is there truly a way to get rid of my anger and worries permanently?
How can I get permanent peace and not just temporary peace that prevails when I meditate?
Besides living a happy and successful life, I also want to realize my true Self, is it possible to attain this?
Is it possible to live a spiritual life without compromising my worldly life?
If yes, then all your problems can be solved through Gnan (True Knowledge).

The darkness of ignorance can be instantly dispelled by the light of true knowledge. True knowledge is result oriented.


By brining science and spirituality together again, we will cease the never ending push and pull effect between science and spirituality thus reducing the chaos in the world quite dramatically.  All ideological principles belong together as one not just science and spirituality for in this will we only obtain true peace and serenity.  It’s quite funny because it’s only in this separateness can chaos exist, once we stop separating these thoughts/ideologies, chaos will no longer exist for it needs separateness to exist, it needs duality.  

Sunday 13 July 2014

A Collective Psychological Illness


Written by Mathew Naismith

I have touched on this topic about the collective being mentally ill before in past posts but my recent post titled, Saviours and Prophets, our Psycho Therapists, has brought this up again.  I can’t insert these replies to my last post into this post as they are way too big for a single post.  I also don’t like cutting other people’s replies down to fit within one of my posts so instead I have only used portions of my replies with additional material.

Our great psychotherapist teachers of the past, like Jesus and Buddha for example, saw an obvious illness that needed attention within the human race, what if we listened to Jesus or Buddha for example, all our problems we have now wouldn’t have occurred I believe.   It might be a strange way of looking at it but to me they are indeed our psychotherapist teachers, it is obvious they tried to influence the way we were thinking to save ourselves from ourselves!!

Because we didn’t listen to such teachers, we have become even more mentally ill at the collective level, today human depravation shows this quite clearly.  I feel a lot of empathy for the collective because it doesn’t realise how ill it is, mental illness can be like living in hell but at the same time not knowing how ill we really are while living in this hell. Yes it’s a strange way in looking at the collective at the human level but to me it’s obvious that the collective is psychologically ill and if left, like any psychologically ill individual, all hell will break loose obviously and obviously that is what has happened.

I see the collective as an individual and by doing so can see it’s illnesses like it’s fixation to the ego for example, any such fixation will of course cause problems in any individual.  How am I actually looking at these fixations? Addiction, obsession, complex, paranoia, neurosis, psychosis and so on can all have a detrimental effect on our psyche individually and collectively. All these symptoms are of a fixation of one kind or another, so how do we fix such illnesses?    

Firstly what I find so strange is we don’t collectively see the collective as an individual that needs psychotherapy to help it cease such degenerative behaviour.  We are so much into separateness, which is driven by the ego; we are blinded by such ego. The ego just doesn’t allow us to see how individual the collective is at the psychological level.  Once we start to look at the collective as one individual we then can see it as one mind and once we do this we are then able to use psychotherapy to fix our illnesses at the collective level.

We already have the tools to fix such illnesses at the collective level, religion, meditating, praying, chanting, singing and so on are tools that we can use effectively to heal our mental illnesses at the collective level.  There is problem in using these tools however, a problem we have produced ourselves as of any of our problems are, we allow the ego to influence the way we use these tools.

Another tool we can use is political ideological principles like communism for example, communism, as a whole, is supposed to dissipate ego human tendencies but again this hasn’t worked because once again ideological principles like this were influenced by the ego in some way.  Actually we can use any ideological principle that will dissipate our illnesses.  The point is, could we give the learning skills of an actual psychotherapist to a mentally ill patient and expect the patient to heal themselves?  No of course not but basically this is what is happening at the collective level, we have these tools but because we are ill we can’t of course heal ourselves.

So does this mean we can’t help ourselves individually and collectively? Not exactly, if we are aware of our own mental illnesses, at the individual and collective level, this will help us to resolve our illnesses.  If we are aware of our illnesses, these tools will assist us but if were not aware of our illnesses, we haven’t got a chance in helping ourselves obviously.


We might not have an actual Jesus or Buddha for an example to help us with our therapy but we do have people in the world who are aware of our illnesses at the collective level who aren’t as ill as the rest of us are but of course as always we need to be aware of this!!   

Saturday 12 July 2014

Saviours and Prophets, our Psycho Therapists


Written by Mathew Naismith

I love it when I’m enlightened by others, it allows me to think past my known and unknown boundaries.

While in discussion with another person about my last post titled, Overcoming a Collective Trauma, it was suggested that saviours like Buddha are, what we would deem in the modern age, psycho therapists but on a collective scale.  When you think on this, these people (therapists) taught us how to forgive and be accepting of others thus helping us to release any said trauma at the personal and collective level.  Now the way I look at the collective is as one consciousness so if it’s one consciousness it’s one mind. If this one mind, on the collective scale, is traumatised by past deeds it will react accordingly to the said trauma just like an individual would.  

These traumas on the collective scale can be something like the Dark Ages or famine for example. All these traumas at the collective scale can scar us at the individual level even though these traumas happened some hundreds or even thousands of years before commencing our present life. This is usually done through various ideological beliefs and disbeliefs at the collective level. If our present belief or ideological principle was traumatised in past human history, we tend to take that trauma on as well most often unbeknownst to us.   This of course isn’t the only way we take on this collective past trauma, just like our human selves, I believe the collective has a subconscious and within this subconscious lies these traumas from years ago in human history. This seems farfetched until I remember the saying, “what is above is also below”.  

The strange thing is we, at the individual level, don’t see ourselves, our body and mind, as a collective in our own right, we don’t see ourselves as made up of individual vibrational frequencies  which make us who we are. This is no different to the collective at the human scale, the collective is made up of various vibrational frequencies in a collective form, human and other animal species are a good example of this. When we look beyond the human collective we see ourselves being a part of an even bigger collective, various vibrational frequencies existing in one form or another.  The point is, we are never really an individual entity, we are a part of the collective no matter how you look at it so our traumas are a part of the collective either it be conscious or subconscious trauma.

  
These days we don’t have a physically alive saviour or prophet as such, we have people like gurus, pops or some other saviour like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra but we don’t have a saviour or a psycho therapist at the level of Buddha or Jesus for example.  What was given to us however was their teachings which we usually carried through in various religious and spiritual rituals like praying, meditating, chanting and so on.  Science has proven all these rituals are psychologically beneficial by no mistake because these rituals are meant to psychologically ease our traumas at the collective and individual level.  Our minds react quite differently when practicing in these rituals to everyday life easing our traumas which of course are all ego based. Knowing that these traumas are ego based helps us to release such traumas, traumas just can’t exist without a controlling ego controlling us.

We may not have an actual living psycho therapist like Jesus or Buddha but we do have their teachings which were supposed to help guide us to our own salvation from such traumas. Why hasn’t this worked at the collective level? We just didn’t take note of these psychotherapy teachers in how they actually lived without an ego being in control; we just allowed the ego to take control giving ourselves more traumas to contend with not less……


Note: I apologise if I have offended anyone calling saviours and prophets psychotherapy teachers, to me personally, calling these people psychotherapy teachers is a huge reassurance to me, it allows me to understand them better in my own way…….

Thursday 10 July 2014

Spirituality v Psychology/Science?


Written by Mathew Naismith

We can quite easily judge that spirituality is in opposition to the sciences, even though many of the ancient eastern religions also incorporated science within their religion to one extent or another,  so really spirituality should not be seen as in opposition to the science but it is by many today.  The strange thing is both spirituality and the sciences are about awareness so what’s the problem?

Because I am also into the sciences, like psychology for instance, this to a spiritually aware person seems contradictory for the main reason a psychologist uses the mind to think more not less plus a psychologist has to judge to evaluate. The psychology I am into is to do with analysis not the therapy side of psychology which is all about evaluating and judging, so doesn’t this clash with my spiritual perspectives?

If I was to sit there and judge that I am thinking too much then I would be thinking too much, we need to be careful in how we judge, is it wrong to be spiritually aware and have an interest in the sciences?  To a true spiritually aware person who believes one should not judge a wrong or right there could be no wrong in this even though I am thinking more while using psychology.  The point is it’s not how much we are thinking but how we are thinking!!

Scientist have proven, even under the most deepest meditative states, we still have brain activity but this activity is different to thinking scientifically, when we think scientifically we use the brain differently to being in a meditative state.  It all comes down to how we are using the brain not how much we are using the brain.  Being spiritually aware, am I going to judge thinking too much is wrong? If I did judge this wrong or negative in some way I would be a hypocrite so what is so wrong in thinking period and when do I judge when I am thinking too much?  Actually there is no such thing in thinking too much, especially to a spiritually aware person because they can’t judge accordingly.

The reason my science interests don’t always interfere with my spiritual interests is one, I don’t judge when I’m thinking too much and two, when I judge at times I don’t judge  a right or wrong, if I was to judge a right or wrong then I would  be judgmental  within my opinions which does happen at times.  Being in judgement is only an observation like when a spiritually aware person judges when they or someone else is thinking too much.  Being judgemental on the other hand would be like a spiritually aware person judging a right or wrong of thinking too much.  


To me it comes down to how we think not how much we think but of course to a science minded person they would judgmentally see the lack of thought as being so and so, in other words wrong or negative in some way however to a spiritually aware person thinking too much can be seen as negative or wrong in some way. To me it really doesn’t come down to how much we think but how we think but I suppose I could be wrong!!!!! 

Tuesday 8 October 2013

The Psychological Benefits of Spirituality


Written by Mathew Naismith

In the following link there is some info on the positive attributes on being spiritually aware plus there are some interesting little quizzes & surveys to fill out. I only completed the first quiz scoring high on self-direction 5.8, universalism 5.2 & benevolence 5.2. My score in power was zilch.


It matters not if we gain or enhance on our spiritual abilities because the psychological benefits alone are world changing on their own. If everyone or even if the majority took up some form of spirituality that wasn’t preferably dogmatic this world would obviously, just at the psychological level, be a lot better off. The link above & below tells us why scientifically. The link below, specifically, goes into the nitty gritty of why & how spirituality is so beneficial psychologically.   


With the obvious psychological benefits of being spiritually aware & with our own ideological principles & practices one can’t help but not miss the mark in improving on our own lives & the lives of many around us.

The following link takes a different psychological look at how spiritually aware people can suffer more with mental health issues than religious or non-religious people. They of course can’t see why this would be but I’m going to make a stab at it.


Spiritually aware people, unlike religious people, delve into different aspects of spirituality to a greater degree than religious people because usually spiritually aware people have no boundaries or doctrinal inhibitions & because of this spiritually aware people can connect quite differently with the universal consciousness I believe, so what’s the problem with this? A lot of spiritually aware people already well connected realise how difficult it can be in becoming spiritually aware, it can bring out a lot of gremlins in the form of the ego for instance for which our brains have to  psychologically sort out usually without assistance unlike religious people. Reprogramming the brain to accept a lot of human faults as being a flaw is harrowing in any circumstance, we can at times expect too much from our human psyche. There is something in spiritually aware people forming groups to support each other psychologically.  

There is another reason why spiritually aware people can suffer with mental traumas, ESP is one. While becoming spiritually aware we don’t just have to deal with our own psyche but the psyche of others we can automatically pick up on through ESP for example. I could at one time pick up on what the victims & perpetrators of crime were going through physically & mentally & yes this did affect me mentally, I was quite emotionally ruffled/upset at times. But of course this isn’t all what a spiritually aware person has to go through mentally. Our experiences in what we pick up on vary greatly from person to person but of course the up side is, as we become more experienced the less traumatised emotionally we become. Like I said before, I think it’s important for us to think seriously in getting into groups of people with the same spiritual interests either on the net or one on one for our own psychological wellbeing.


I would also like to add here a little more about myself. I don’t have a problem in expressing my ego like becoming involved in verbal conflicts for instance; I accept this as being a part of me. I accept a lot of my human vices & attachments as this is a reflection of my life which wasn’t pretty at times. I just don’t, at the spiritual/soul level, have a problem with this & I do understand why a lot of other spiritually aware people do but we are not all the same nor are we meant to be in this human reality. We are supposed to learn from diversity as only through diversity can our souls learn more about our whole selves.  I would also like to say, please don’t be too hard on yourselves if you can’t or don’t want to stop being your human self, warts & all. 

Friday 5 July 2013

Seeing Past Our Fixated Attachments


Written by Mathew Naismith

Below is an interesting exchange between myself & another person on the discussion of atheism & spiritualism on Linkedin, I find it really funny how when one person is fixated on one belief or concept that is the truth over anything else, this of course relates a lot to what I have just been writing about on my blog in relation to fixated attachments & how they can hinder our conscious growth personally & collectively.  

Associated link:


I don’t won’t to crush anyone’s beliefs here but going into deep meditation & feeling oneness & unconditional love of everything is of our human emotions, science has proven that we are still thinking while meditating however we are using different parts of our brain, so if we are still thinking we still have emotions & emotions of any kind can be quite delusional at times. Psychologically the reason we feel unconditional love is it’s in reaction to our physical world, any feeling of any opposites can be quite extreme thus emotional to the extreme.

 Once we go past this extreme emotional conscious state we see it for what it is, you still feel unconditional love however it’s not as emotionally extreme. Feeling harmonious & at pure peace can to a human feel like unconditional love which makes perfect sense because our world, especially at times, can be quite harrowing, it’s just a counter reaction to this. Once you get past this point of counter reaction one becomes a lot more accepting & clear as you see everything for what it truly is. Psychology should play a huge part in spirituality I believe; it would make us see spirituality in quite a different more accepting light which would make us less conflictive.

 Love
 Mathew



Mathew: "" Psychologically the reason we feel unconditional love is it’s in reaction to our physical world, any feeling of any opposites can be quite extreme thus emotional to the extreme"".

 I would say that any who experience the UNconditional Love that I did, and they don't equate it to GOD (not God nor gods), then they never felt it.

 IMnsHO and E.




G’day Jerry

Are you saying I never felt it, are you sure of that? Your own attachments are telling you that I have never experienced such occurrences.  Our own modes of thought tell us what we want to hear especially in regards to our own ideological concepts & especially when questioned, in this case your mode of thought is telling you that I have never experienced such occurrences if I don’t equate it to some God or deity. Do you know how many modes of thought there are out there? If you count how many different personas there is you would be close so who’s mode of thought is right over another?

I got caught up in a conscious state of unconditional love & harmony but I went past that & at that time I didn’t equate it to psychology but from the act of actually going past this point of consciousness.  I feel unconditionally loving all the time however I don’t allow it to rule my entire life as I realised one can only know of one’s true self through diversity not just being fixated to one mode of thought or concept.

Have you heard of the double slot physics experiment where once observed one can change the outcome of the experiment to what one expects to find? Everything is consciousness so when one is expecting a certain outcome that is exactly what they will get & of course anyone being spiritually minded will expect to experience unconditional love & harmony in certain states of consciousness, we are taught & conditioned to expect this through various spiritual writings so that is exactly what you will experience in these states of consciousness. It all comes down to one vibration reacting to another!!

If you are saying God is just consciousness as we all are I agree.  

Love
Mathew


This all comes down to if we equate unconditional love to just a God or deity, everyone’s experience would be exactly the same in these conscious states but they are not for the main reason we perceive something different to someone else so the outcome or experience is going to be of that difference to others. Yes we all feel unconditional love & harmony however these feelings are slightly different plus our visualisation is somewhat different but it shouldn’t be if it was equated to God or deity.  As for what I felt, it was far more than just feeling unconditional love & harmony so even the feelings we get from such conscious states can be quite different, it’s obvious the feeling of unconditional love isn’t just equated to a God or deity but of course that depends on one’s own fixated mode of thoughts at the time!!

No one with a fixated attachment is going to be able to see pass their belief system however just having attachments without being fixated is quite different as one is then able to see outside the square & not be blinded by living within the square of any such fixated mode of thoughts.  

Love

Mathew