Outtake #1
What if there is only mud and rock? What if we drive through a mountain and find nothing? What if there is no spirit and spiritual is just a made up concept? What if dirt is dirt, and there is only body and no soul, no essence nor higher being?
If there is only body and no soul, then there is only this life. There is no great beyond. Nor, is there a so-so beyond or beyond of any sort. This is it.
Now, hold your horses a second. Before embracing hedonism and self-indulgence as a life-style consider this: those are not the only options, nor are they even the most logical options. There are other perfectly valid answers to “this is it, you only have one life to live.” And, as far as that goes, the existence of a soul or higher nature does not negate the notion of “this is it.”
Without a soul this is it because there is no here-after.
If you consider the existence of a higher self, then this still is it. In the sense, that you have incarnated into this “it” and while you are here “this is it.” Your fundamental behavior should not be changed based on your belief in a spiritual nature. Morality and ethics should not depend on the existence of something higher. That kind of behavior simply means you are only adhering to your morality when you suspect you might have to pay for your transgressions. If there are no repercussions you will abandon your morality. Well, if that is true, I say to you: “You are an ass-hat.”
If an action is wrong, it is wrong whether you can get away with it or not.
If there is no soul and you lead an ethical, full life that you can be proud of — then what have you lost? The soul is not a Santa Claus watching you checking to see if you are being naughty or nice.
Your higher self is an additional aspect to your life that you can either declare to be a thing. Or, you can choose to declare that it is not a thing. Either viewpoint should have no influence on how you live your life.
Outtake #2
Try this. When solving certain problems (such as a cryptographic puzzle) sometimes the best approach is to try solutions then see how things work out. For example, consider the following cryptogram:
“giuifg cei iprc tpnn du cei qprcni”.
What if cei was the word “the”. Then c = t, e = h, i = e. Making these substitutions we have:
gEuEfg THE EprT tpnn du THE qprTnE.
It is not uncommon to see the constructions “of the” and “in the”. Let’s guess du = of.
gEFEfg THE EprT tpnn OF THE qprTnE.
Scanning all the words of the form “_efe__” in which the first and last letters of the word are the same, we come up with “defend”. This does not directly help with the remaining words. But, “defend the e__t” looks to make sense if “e__t” is “east”. With these two changes we have
DEFEND THE EAST tpnn OF THE qArTLE.
From here it is not much of a leap to “defend the east wall of the castle”.
In this simple puzzle, we make guesses, insert the substitutions and see if the results pan out. This is a little like solving Sudoku.
Out-Take #3
Is there a bearded, white-haired old dude hanging around somewhere “up above” that is running the whole show from start to finish? Not so sure about this.
Is there a group of ascended masters hanging out in an astral boardroom plotting the spiritual development of seekers? Not so sure about this.
Did the sun and moon hook-up giving rise to the earth as a love child? Not so sure about this.
If I keep adding items to this list, I’m sure to offend pretty much everyone. No need to jump to the defense of your favorite thought-form, notion, or belief. Yes, it is probably not meant to be taken literally, or it is being taken out of context, or it is allegorical, or perhaps a metaphor, or blah blah fill in the defense here.
Here’s the thing, there is no need to defend when there is no attack.
There’s no need to take my lack of certainty about your treasured belief as an affront. Just pointing out that there are many things to which one can exercise belief or uncertainty.
By the way, even those notions I choose to believe in there is the ever present codicil of “subject to change.”
Out-Take #4
I very much expect that there is more to all of this than the mundane Newtonian tinker toy world embraced by dogmatist. There is another orthogonal layer to reality that we might as well call spiritual for lack of a better word. And that is very likely not a single smear of sameness from top to bottom. It it most likely heterogeneous — differentiated into regions or bodies of functionality. Perhaps one of these corresponds to this angel stuff.