Wednesday, March 30, 2011

March 24, 2011: Gary S: Parapsychology meets Freud and Quantum Physics.

     On this date, Gary S presented a review of the book Extraordinary Knowing by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, PhD. Hit Read More below to see Gary's review of her book. The group was able to provide some discussion on this topic. Many attendants applied their knowledge of mindfulness practice, meditation, compassion, loving kindness, and other elements of spiritual tradition to the elements in this book. As is often the case with a presentation by Gary, this was one of the more intellectual of our spiritual quests.

March 17: Todd presented thoughts from Karen Armstrong's "A Case for God"

     Todd Davison presented to us some ideas from the book "A Case for God" by Karen Armstrong. She hopes in this book to deal with some of the difficulties that this post modern society has with religion. And we certainly do have problems. To do this she goes back to our origins to show what religious faith was like then and how mankind lived in many ways better with that faith than with for example what fundamentalism has brought to religious experience.
     In her introduction she speaks of logos and mythos. When the modern scientific method took over many of our thought processes, it was by way of logos. The ancient Greeks knew these two words and the difference between them. Logos, another word for reason, was "forward looking, continually on the lookout for new ways of controlling the environment, improving old insights, or inventing something fresh." Thus logos was "the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled people to function effectively in the material world." Therefore it had to correspond accurately to external reality. But our modern society in believing that everything needs to have proof of existance including our transcendent beliefs, we have lost something. Logos does not assuage human grief no help us to find ultimate meaning in the viccissitudes of life. The something missing that can provide ways to accomplish these two latter goals is mythos, another Greek word. In today's world myth has fallen into disrepute. In today's parlance, a myth is untrue. But when this word's origin mythos was considered, myth was not a made up fantasy. It was a different way to look at the world and at our life. One of mythos' necessary ingredients was ritual. Myths were focused on " the more elusive, puzzling and tragic aspects of the human predicament that lay outside of the concept of logos. Being able to listen to and tell stories that help us see the world in a way that is not as threatening is what is provided by myth. "A myth was never intended as an accurate account of a historical event; it was something that in some sense happened once, but that also happens all the time."
     Looking at events in life with mythos instead of logos, allows us to not feel we have to have an answer of how, why, when, etc. We are allowed in fact we may benefit from the unknowing, by recognizing that God or the force that is beyond ourselves is something that can not be understood by humans. That unknowing is actually able to provide us with  a sense of satisfaction, rather than the constant seeking to have an answer to everything. Because there is a demand for an answer from any or all current faith traditions, and therefore a feeling of necessity in those faiths to provide that answer, religion necessarily becomes contentious. Each faith strives to prove itself the best and the correct one. Perhaps we would all benefit from removing that sense for a need to answer, and replace it with mythos. In current society "we are seeing a great deal of strident dogmatism, but there is also a growing appreciation for the value of unknowing. ...There is a long religious tradition that stressed the importance of recognizing the limits of our knowledge, of silence, reticence, and awe...One of the conditions of enlightenment has always been a willingness to let go of what we thought we knew in order to appreciate truths we had never dreamed of."

March 10, 2011: Tim: Satisfaction and Joy at Work!

     Tim has worked in industrial psychology and understands what workers need at the workplace and how they need to view their work in order to be happy there. He now is teaching the necessary elements to students at MSOE. Today at our meeting Tim provided the handouts he uses to outline steps that can make us all happier at work. He uses a lot of Mihalyi Csikczentmihalyi' principles outlined in several of his books starting with one eentitled simply "Flow". The hand out from Tim will be posted on this website when available.

March 3, 2011: Bake Off