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On Jan 1, 2012, Baha'i Studies digest <[email protected]> wrote:
Baha'i Studies List Digest
BAHAI-ST Digest for Saturday, December 31, 2011.
1. inner unravellings
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Subject: inner unravellings
From: "Mark A. Foster" <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2011 20:45:49 -0600
X-Message-Number: 1
Here is another brief part of my Heartfulness Inquiry book:
The Great Unravelling of the old order is universal, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. Beginning in 2010, after starting my meditations, I began to unravel. I have witnessed my inner being as lower than the sands. Piece by piece, my self and my ways of looking at the world have continued to be torn apart. Most of my points of view, including on the Bahá?í Faith, which I have professed and discussed openly for years have been somehow lifted from my awareness. These humbling experiences intensified during a period of reflection over the three-day 2011 Labor Day weekend here in the United States.
The changes began with my Marxist sociology. That perspective is not uncommon among sociology professors. On the first days of classes, I actually introduced myself as a Marxist. The two textbooks for my Social Problems course, I told my students, are also Marxist. In no more than a second, on the afternoon of September 4, 2011, there was, while my eyes remained wide open, a flash. It was the first of many visionary lightening bolts. Instantly, I somehow knew that I had made a mistake. The Marxism was gone. There has been no mourning for the loss, and I never looked back. That is just one example, in my own life, of what some legends of demonic exorcism might have described.
On the afternoon of the next day, five minutes after a telephone call with a good friend, which I took as a sign, I decided to change this website from an informal, non-Muslim ?ufi path (the mysticism of the heart) to Unities of All Things. I started practicing a ?ufi-type meditation, more than a year earlier, while working on the resource, ?ufi Information Central<http://sufi.religionsnet.com/>. Being very grateful for my personal encounters with ?ufism, I began an informal, online ?ufi contemplative activity. I am now, however, thankful only to the Divine Physician, Bahá?u?lláh. ?ufism was, I feel, His chosen instrument of healing for me.
Late in the morning of the next day, I rejected nominalism, a view of human knowledge and its limitations. To nominalists, universals, such as "homo sapiens," are no more than convenient names or categories. There is no underlying essence connecting individual beings or things. Then, in the afternoon, I rejected much of social constructionism, a sociological approach which considers social reality, such as groups, to be willful and with no shared essence. I had taken an eight-year detour as a nominalist and social constructionist. Similar to my earlier experience concerning Marxism, each of these intuitions was clear and immediate.
On the day that I recognized the inadequances of nominalism and social constructionism, I returned to critical realism<http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/criticalrealism.pdf>. Enriched through experience, my critical realism has been modified by aspects of the other two perspectives. Fortunately, I no longer need to tactically maneuver around the ever-present essentialism which I would constantly observe within many Bahá?í Sacred Texts. Since the heart matters most, however, I am not, God forbid, trivilalizing or, worse, condemning the sincerely held viewpoints of others, but for me, personally, each of these experiences felt like inspired acts of repentance.
Somehow, I have also found, I am now able to see into the hearts of people. Much as one might distinguish a pen from a crayon, I can, often rather quickly, discern attributes in souls. Although others might consider this proficiency to be unremarkable, my entire universe, as an Autistic man, has been transformed. With my new perceptiveness, I am more assertive and socially adept. When people attempt to push me around, I will not allow it, or I go away. When they push others around, I calmly push back. There was, however, some resistance to these quiet revolutions. Long-term friendships evaporated. As throughout my childhood, I became the target of intense bullying.
http://heartfulness.bahaifaith.info/
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Mark A. Foster, Ph.D., sociology of religion, theory, and clinical sociology
Portal: http://markfoster.net * Critical realism: http://structurization.com
Two books: http://bahaifaith.info * Clinical: http://fosterservices.com
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