There’s a lot of talk these days about the possibility of the world coming to an end in the year 2012.  Specifically, either on December 21st or 23rd.  Personally, I haven’t paid much attention to it.  I heard about the 2012 “doomsday” prophecy back when everyone was worrying about the year 2000.  Maybe it helped that I’m a computer programmer (and even know a little COBOL) but I didn’t worry about the world ending that time, and I’m not worrying about it this time.  I didn’t think anybody really did, but today I learned I was wrong.

I was visiting my Mother and she asked me what I thought about the whole “World ending in 2012″ deal.  I told I didn’t think much of it at all.  I heard about it ten years ago and never worried a bit about it.  She doesn’t either, but she has a coworker who is seriously freaked out about it, citing all this scientific information she’s seen.  And it hit me: There really are people who are worried about this.  There are people who really do believe the world is going to end in 2012.  Honestly, I hadn’t really considered that anyone would take any of this seriously, but there it was.  Her coworker is absolutely frightened.

I seriously do not understand how anybody can believe this, especially after we survived Y2K unscathed.  Remember all the hoopla surrounding that?  People forget so quickly.  And so we’re doomed to repeat the past it seems.  Some people will be so convinced that the world is going to end in three years there will be no consoling them.  I’m not well read on the issue, and I can’t create a convincing argument against the idea.  I think the best words I can offer are those I found on Wikipedia’s page concerning the 2012 Doomsday prediction.  This sentence sums it up pretty nicely:

The idea of a global event occurring in 2012 based on any interpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is rejected as pseudoscience by the scientific community, and as misrepresentative of Maya history by Mayanist scholars.

There you have it.  People have been interpreting history and its documents to meet their own ideas and aspirations for a long time, and this is no exception.  Consider the Bible: how many different ways have the writings in it been interpreted, misrepresented and misconstrued?  Too many to count.  That is the problem when people seek authority in the words and teachings of others.  We all interpret things differently.  As Frederich Nietzsche put it, “In the end, nobody hears more out of things, including books, than he knows already.” It is all too easy for people to make very convincing arguments for their concepts of things under the veils of pseudoscientific and religious authority.  And the problem with authority is that authority itself is granted by those who accept it.  It means nothing beyond that.

Even if one does truly believe the world is going to end in December of 2012, then so what?  That’s three years from now.  The best thing you can do then is live the next three years as the best three years of your life.  That’s more than enough time to mend broken relationships, make new ones, get in shape, see the world, earn a college degree, climb a mountain, and do many other worthwhile activities.  You have three years!  Make the most of it.

With that said, I don’t personally believe the world is going to end in 2012.  It certainly may, but not because of the Mayan calendar or anyone’s misinterpretation of it.  We cannot know these things, and to concern ourselves so much with them is a waste.  The past and future do not exist but are only ideas and concepts.  We are here right now, and right now we are alive and the world is still here.  Make the most of it.  You don’t know when it will end and you can’t.  You could worry about the world ending in three years, and a month from now die in a car accident.  What value would there have been then in worrying about the end of the world?  Even if we could know it was coming for certain, we couldn’t change it.  Make the most of your life everyday, and know that right now, you’re still here.

(Photo credit: flickr user sy parrish, used under CC license)

I picked this book up at a library rummage sale today for a quarter.  It’s called Are You Running With Me, Jesus? and was written in 1965 by Malcolm Boyd, an American Espicopal Priest.  It is a collection of prayers, written by him, all very personal to him.  The thing that caught my attention right away was the cigarette in his mouth on the cover.  A priest smoking a cigarette?  Very unpolitically correct.  I found out very quickly though that the book was very non-PC, and that this priest was willing to deal with issues that were very touchy in the 1960s, and in some cases still are.  His prayers cover such topics as racism, pre-marital sex, homosexuality and films.  If the priest at the church I was raised in ever talked about homosexuality, I really do believe that at least one of the older members of the congregation sitting in the back would have to leave in an ambulance, assuming they heard what was said.  Malcolm Boyd has no problem discussing such topics.  It is apparent from reading this book he is a very nontraditional priest, and would be even today!  He is still alive, and he is openly gay, a fact about himself he revealed in 1976.  I think the image of him on the cover, dressed as a priest, with a cigarette in his mouth really sums him up quite nicely: A man of great faith, a true son of God, but an individual too; a man with his own thoughts and ideas, unafraid to stand for what he believes in.  His prayers have a very personal, existential quality to them, and he himself knows this and states in the book’s introduction:

I have not attempted to root out the person of Malcolm Boyd from these prayers, for it was Malcolm Boyd who prayed them.  Prayer must be personal, imbedded in the ground of one’s own being as a person meeting God.  These prayers are not intended as impersonal exhibits in a vacuum.  They are the prayers of one man.  It is hoped they may be useful, as signposts, to other men and women.

To me, this shows a very deep, personal understanding on his part to his relationship with God, one that goes well beyond reciting memorized prayers and going through the motions of religious traditions.

Malcolm has a very interesting idea of prayer, one that goes well beyond simply speaking to the Almighty, but instead encompasses all aspects of life.  Earlier in the introduction, he states  “…I have come to learn that real prayer is not so much talking to God as just sharing his presence.”

The following is a prayer from his book, titled On Work.  Malcolm discusses the idea of finding prayer in everyday activity.  I find this very interesting as there are similar themes in Buddhism, in how work can be a form of meditation, when one “just works” and takes to the task.

David says he prays without being aware of it when he paints, Jesus.  He says this is the real link which keeps him creating and able to function as an artist.

Is this true, Lord?  Can David’s painting be praying?  If so, is it possible Richard prays in his Social Work studies, and Henry when he edits his magazine… Ruth while she types letters, and Stofer when she cleans people’s apartments?

Help me to pray that way too, Lord.  I want to pray in my doing and being, Jesus.

I find these views of prayer to be much more relevant than what I was taught is prayer as a child.  This view of prayer, as something individual and unique for each person that encompasses their entire being seems to me to display a very close and meaningful relationship with God.  The more traditional concepts of prayer and worship have struck me for some time as being largely meaningless, as so many (but not all) people are simply reciting words from memory and badgering God with there various earthly concerns.  Some are sincere, yes; others, not so much.

For me personally, I do not view the collected oneness of our universe in the image of the traditional Judeo-Christian God.  But at the same time, I will not say that God does not exist, or that the image of that which that there is no whicher as God is wrong.  There is nothing wrong with God, or with believing in him.  So do I pray?  Yes, though rarely.  I can’t really say why.  It might come out of childhood habits, I’m not sure.  In any case, I find nothing wrong with it, and so I do it.  Personally, I feel it probably does more to comfort me than anything, and whether it increases my connection with God, or Tao, or whatever you would like to call it, I cannot say.  In his book Cloud Hidden: Whereabouts Unknown, Alan Watts writes regarding the supreme being:

This Happening may be called God, or the Tao, or the All-ah!  You may even think of it as a conscious being, but if so, do not place upon it the burden and the bore of holding perpetual court to be flattered, petitioned, whined at, wheedled, apologized to, and howled at with hymns.  Saint Paul ordered that women should be silent in church, but he himself prayed without ceasing.  If you were Jesus, wouldn’t you have turned to him and said, “Can’t you be quiet for a while?”

Now, I think Watts makes a good point here, thought I feel he was too harsh.  There is a lot to be said for silent contemplation and meditation, and certainly many people who are bored themselves with hymns and prayers run the risk of boring God right along with them.  However, there is a lot to be said for the power of prayer as well, and for many with a true faith in God, it provides the ultimate connection between them and the Almighty.  And when it is personal, and meaningful such as the prayers of Malcolm Boyd, then I think it is a wholly acceptable way of making that connection, just as much as meditation is for others.

If you pray, then I encourage you to pick up this book (it has been reissued and is still available) and if you’d like to learn more about Malcolm Boyd, you can check out his official website.

“Seeing is not thinking.  The sun rises there… if you think about it, you miss it.  Because while you are thinking about it, you are going away from it.  and in thinking you can move miles away; and thoughts go faster than anything possible.  If you are seeing the sunrise, then one thing has to be certain: that you are not thinking about it.  Only then you can see it.  Thinking becomes a veil on the eyes.  it gives its own color, its own idea to the reality.  It does not allow reality to reach you, it imposes itself upon reality.  It is a deviation from reality.  Hence, no philosopher has ever been able to know the truth.  All philosophers have bee thinking about the truth.  But thinking about the truth is an impossibility.   Either you know it, or you don’t.  If you know it there is no need to think about.  If you don’t, how can you think about it?”

-OSHO

To see things without thinking about them or judging them is a difficult task indeed.  Many find themselves unable to, and many more never even try.  But this is the root of meditation: being in the now, in this moment; taking it in fully without thinking about it.  I myself have what some would call a rather nervous constitution, and it’s because I am constantly thinking about things and making judgments about them.  This is good for me, this is not.  Worse yet is judging that which has yet to come: this may be good for me, but it may not.  To overcome this constant analysis of everything is what has drawn me to meditation.  To just be in reality, and set my thoughts aside.  To just sit, or just walk, or just work.  To just relax!

“So here you have an absolute conflict.  Here’s the potential, the possibility, the natural growth of that particular unique individual; and here is how that individual is expected to be, is persuaded to be by parents, teachers, the society; all with the best intentions.  Nevertheless, that inevitably causes conflict.  And all conflict, which is in the mind, is bound to be reflected in conflict in the body, all conflict creates disease; prevents the individual relaxing into their own self which is where true relaxation can happen.

Meditation by contrast allows a gap, allows the individual to get a space from on the one hand all the expectations of people around them, and their inner-self; something which is uniquely them which is the space where they can develop their own potential.  Ultimately, where they can be themselves and inevitably, we’re going to be more healthy; a better sense of well-being.”

-John Andrews, M.D., from the above video

“The body is the servant of the mind.  It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed.  At the bidding of unlawful thoughts the body sinks rapidly into disease and decay; at the command of glad and beautiful thought it becomes clothed with youthfulness and beauty.”

-James Allen, from As A Man Thinketh

“It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.”

-Carl Sagan, from a public lecture given on October 13, 1994 at Cornell University

If you’ve never heard or read Carl Sagan’s reflections on the NASA photograph known as The Pale Blue Dot, you owe it to yourself to do so.  I feel it brings into light our incredible smallness in the vast universe better than anything else I’ve ever heard, read or seen.  When I think of the many horrible things that happen on our small planet everyday, and I think of this photo and Carl Sagan’s words, I just can’t fathom the reasons that so many people have for the horrible things they do.

The quote I included above came from this page, where I originally learned about The Pale Blue Dot.  You can read the entire thing there, which I suggest you do.  Wikipedia has a similar talk given by Mr. Sagan, taken from a different speech in 1996.

Finally, the following video from YouTube features Carl Sagan’s words in his own voice, taken from the audiobook edition of his book, Pale Blue Dot.  I have not read it, but it’s on my list to check out some day.

See the rest: God texts the Ten Commandments from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

(found via Fark)