William,
Back from a good walk.
I doubt there is anything that will impel a lot of people to drop belief
systems and suddenly "evolve" to a mentality which is closer, or even MUCH
closer to reality, much less live from their original nature, or "Buddha"
nature, or awakened nature.
Things could happen which are not of an evolutionary nature, though. They
would be EVENTS. But make no change in consciousness, per se.
One I can think of is the event of the discovery of current life or fossilized
life-signs on at least one other planet, even microbial life. I think that,
for perhaps three weeks, people would feel a little woozy and jazzed about it.
Scientists and artists and religionists would perhaps remain in a high state
about it for as much as a year, until it had dawned on just about everyone that
a new paradigm had entered and was in sway, but is also now hum-drum and in the
past. Next! entertainment, please! But I don't think it would affect the
Stock Market, and I would not make investment decisions based on it. Unless
the organisms were viable, and could make good new needed safe drugs, paints,
plastics, foods, or fuels.
But consciousness? No. I don't think it would make a dent. A different spirit
might dawn. As dawned during the Age of Exploration in Europe of the New
World. I do not think that that changed consciousness: but it changed people's
activity and the venue of their wealth-mining and population-spreading
enterprises.
Consciousness is something we have in abundance and in potential, and I think
its full compliment and full array is very much covered-up in almost everyone,
while it's quite easy to uncover the full deck of our inheritance if we set
ourselves to it ...*effectively*.
Now, to say "effectively" is indeed to speak just of the end result: I say
nothing of methods, here. You already know my method(s) of choice, or which
have been foisted upon me, or given as a gift by conditions and the facts of
life, and this or these are the simple and direct methods developed by Ch'an-,
Zen-, Son-, and Thien-Buddhism, commonly known in-sum in western countries as
"Zen"-Buddhism. The methods can usually be accepted and applied even in a
secular, non-religious, practice setting, such as that devised in America by
the successful and outstanding Zen teacher, Joko Beck, who is a pioneer in
doing that, after practicing religiously herself with her teacher, and finding
it's possible to pare elements off, to suit students who find them too akin to
elements of traditions they have willingly and willfully left.
Well, to each his or her own teach'.
You may have further thoughts on your final two sentences, too. I'm hoping so.
--Joe
> William Rintala <brintala@...> wrote:
>
>Secondly, what does it take to get people to drop all
> of their conventional, rote, belief systems and question things like the
> existence of God and the meaning of Life? Can't we equate this last part to
> an
> Evolutionary process?
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