Stren #89: Know Your Values; Know Your Religion (part B)
Science, religion and values
In the previous stren, #89, I explained how our faith-based assumptive views create our personal religion and influence our actions. In this stren, I want to consider how science, i.e. the common sense knowledge of the universal laws of cause-and-effect, influences our religion. The word "common" in common sense means it is discoverable by anyone, anywhere, irrespective of their location or religious ideology. Science is based on the universal laws of cause-and-effect, what we call knowledge. It helps us perfect the assumptions upon which we base our religion. Religion is the outcome of the leap of faith we make through our assumptions. Religion may be considered an art form in that it is based on personal meaning we ascribe to information that is not readily provable. In the previous stren I offered an analogy that science is knowledge of the universal laws of cause-and-effect, what is contained within a fence. Our knowledge is impressive and constantly growing, but the area outside the fence is far larger than what our science now provides. Religion is the leap into the area beyond the fence. Science and religion are not only compatible, they are contiguous. As in the prior stren, I offer my assumptions to encourage you to identify and strengthen your own process of becoming your own person, i.e. self-mastery. I am impressed by how much I have learned in 74 years, and how much scientific knowledge humankind has accumulated and shares within an ever-expanding fence. I am even more...Welcome to the "wake-up!" stren, #86. Familiarity with prior strens permits us to create a unified understanding of mental freedom, and we can assume responsibility to make our life joyous and meaningful. However, it's time to recognize that we deceive ourselves in believing we are free to master our destiny while we are still servants to fate and circumstance.
When Abe Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863), he used his martial war power to suspend civil law in order to accomplish two important principles. First, the proclamation freed the muscles of over 3 million black slaves from the control of white masters. Second, Lincoln's courageous act changed the consciousness of the world population. His edict popularized the moral judgment that the abolition of slavery of a person of any color to a self-serving master was, and remains, a correct moral action. In his Gettysburg Address (November, 1963), Lincoln referred to the war's goal as "a new birth of freedom."
While the law established the right of black slaves to direct their own muscle power, their opportunity to free their intelligence from fate and circumstance was initially little improved. Some were even worse off than before because of their lack of education and inexperience with self-mastery. They were suddenly without the support of a "master" whose interest was to protect his "property." Courageous edicts and laws cannot of themselves emancipate the intellectual power of people whose minds remain slaves to instinct, tradition, and human dictators, what we also call fate and circumstance. True self-mastery must include the opportunity to discover and share knowledge, and then use it wisely. Freeing our muscle power...
Welcome again. Stren #85 offers a mental exercise to assist taking ownership of your life's experience. It is part 3 of a three-part stren [the other two being Know your Self and Know your Masters].
Becoming master of our self is like becoming the chief executive officer (C.E.O.) of a corporation. This stren illuminates the process of becoming C.E.O. of our corporation, i.e., attaining self-mastery. You are asked to produce and direct a motion picture of the process of assuming directorship of your own Board of Directors.
Our "corporation" is like many others with some exceptions. We are mental creatures. Our primary product is the thinking that our "factory" produces and the management of will power. We have a personal, unique, and private one-of-a-kind mental existence that "houses" our Board of Directors. It stores vast amounts of information using words and symbols, modifies and/or makes various images, and creates original motion pictures. Our personal "corporation" is unique from those of other people by the degree to which we willfully influence our thinking, feelings, and actions.
Corporations have multiple parts with specialized activities. Each part has workers, directors or "bosses," and a C.E.O. In a corporation, the stockholders "own" the company; they elect directors to manage the corporation. These directors sit on the Board of Directors. They are usually picked to represent diverse knowledge, skills, and interests applicable to the smooth operation of the corporation. The Board members determine overall policy and select the "hands-on" person who actually runs things, the C.E.O.
We, like that corporation, have many parts with specialized...
Welcome. Stren #83 is part 1 of a three-part stren to introduce you to that portion of your mental function that is capable of taking responsibility for the direction of your life, enabling you to create feeling good and "doing good." I suggest you review in succession Know Your Self, Know Your Masters, and Know Your Board of Directors, the three parts of this stren. As you integrate them, you will increase your understanding of the self of self-mastery and facilitate your development of a newer way of thinking.
Throughout the ages, philosophers, theologians, scientists, and people of every type ask similar questions. "What is our purpose?" "What is the good life, and how can we attain it?" Perhaps the most common answer is to "understand oneself." Socrates proclaimed, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Christ preached, "Know thyself." And Freud developed a system of therapy based on making us more aware of our deeper "unconscious" self. I join the multitude of others who elevate self discovery to prime importance. My interest focuses on a specific part of our mental activity that enables us to become master of our selves. It is this "something" within us that enables us to break the chains of servitude imposed by our genetic inheritance (our nature) and the nurture to which we have been fated. I designate this part of our mental function our self, the self of self-mastery. I have maintained a special interest in this self: how to get a handle on it, i.e. how to label it, how to strengthen it, and how to explain it to any willing consumer.
Humankind is...
Welcome to stren # 81, a powerful wisdom worthy of a place among those most productive universal wisdoms that are supported by common sense judgment, such as:
- Love yourself so you have an abundance to love your neighbor.
- Treat others as I want to be treated.
This serenity stren is a modified version of the serenity prayer:
I will acquire the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
The philosopher W.W. Bartley expresses a similar sentiment:
For every ailment under the sun
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.
The Serenity Prayer is the common name for an originally untitled prayer that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote for use in a sermon, perhaps as early as 1934. Niebuhr himself was quoted in the January, 1950 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) newsletter, Grapevine, as saying the prayer "may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself." The serenity prayer was noticed in 1941 by an early member, and adopted as integral to the teaching of AA and other programs offering comradeship and group support. Twelve step self-help programs such as AA are among the most...