But many of us are out of touch with this fact, so we have desires, such as the desire to be “happy” or “quiet” or “enlightened” or “balanced.” But it’s possible for human beings to get to the point where we naturally realize that these desires appear WITHIN something that is ALREADY present. The depression, the desire to be happy, etc., appears within a more fundamental context: the context is the feeling that we are already connected to Being. That connection to Being already exists before anything else. Thus in a healthy person it supersedes everything else. It’s a touchstone, a wellspring. It can be used to alleviate the desire for enlightenment or happiness. After all, those things are only ideas and desires, and they aren’t enlightenment or happiness!

But what does it mean to say these desires of wanting to be happy, etc., appear within the more fundamental context of Being? It means this: We are always immersed in the present moment. The present moment is the only thing we have control over, and no matter how things may be screwed up in our life story, no matter how bad the problems in our life, the present moment simply IS. Period. It’s not a problem, it IS. It is a solid, brute existence that we can shape in the immediate moment. We can make the right decision, NOW. The present moment is abundantly full, and we can be fully and consciously present in it.

How do we do this? We have the power in the present moment to put less emphasis on the content of our experience (e.g., our desire to be happy or enlightened). We have the power in the present moment to focus our attention and our awareness on the simple FACT THAT we experience the world–we flow–we are already connected to Being or the universe. How do we do this? One way is by letting go of the past, and not giving into worry about the future, and putting our attention in the Now only. Surrender. Let it all go. Once we truly realize this, then when depression arises, or a desire to be happy, quiet, or enlightened, it immediately falls away because through surrender we are convinced that we are “already there.” If we’re convinced that we’re “already there” then we are, in fact, “already there.”

We can become convinced that we are “already there” by realizing that our desire to be “enlightened” or “happy” itself is only an empty idea generated by those very desires. Once we realize this and surrender these desires, we ARE enlightened, or happy, or satisfied! Yes, this is question-begging and a bit like a dog chasing its own tail. If you realize this, welcome to the club.

Nevertheless, we can be awed by existence! It’s an amazing mystery that we are here and are connected to Being. What came “before” the Big Bang? It’s miraculous that we get the chance to exist, and to put less and less identity and attention on the passing forms and ideas and ego, and put more and more attention on simply letting go and surrendering in the present moment and experiencing that sheer fullness of existence, that connection with Being.

Classical Theology is what we’re all familiar with: God created the world from nothing, controls most things (“What did we do wrong to deserve this…?”), judges souls and sends them to damnation or paradise, is all-powerful (omnipotent), is all-knowing (omniscient), is all good (omnibeneficent), knows the future, in fact, God DETERMINES the future, etc. God runs the whole show, and our role is to try to figure it out God’s will, and hope God is on our side in the end, and hope that God doesn’t have a bad road in store for us in the future. God puts huge obstacles on some people’s paths, while God lets others sail along smoothly. We can’t know or figure out why. That’s just how it is.

But Classical Theology leaves an entire universe of questions unanswered, and even worse, leaves these questions unanswerable even in principle.

One such example is the “Problem of Evil:” It’s a LOGICAL CONTRADICTION to believe that there is an omnipotent and omnibeneficent God, and that evil befalls innocent people in the world. If God was all-powerful and all-good, there’s no way God COULD LOGICALLY permit evil things. And when we say God could not “logically permit” such a thing, and when we say it’s a “logical contradiction,” we mean it in an absolute sense. God cannot logically create a square circle, regardless of God’s infinite power, infinite intelligence, infinite ability and skill, etc. It’s illogical and simply can’t be done by God or anything else. It’s the same with the “problem of evil;” it’s logically impossible for evil to occur, given the meaning of the words “all-good,” “all-powerful,” and “evil.” But clearly evil does occur.

There are a dozen or more fundamental problems like these. These problems are the main cause of atheism today.

Process Theology, on the other hand, conceives God differently from the start, and thus the problems in Classical Theology aren’t found in Process Theology. Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne (and some others throughout history) set this theology out most clearly. The basic idea is that God is not omnipotent. Rather, God genuinely “surrenders” some power to creatures. And because of this, God thus “co-creates” reality along with creatures. This means that God and creatures determine reality together; God doesn’t solely determine someone’s fate. So when someone gets into a car wreck it’s not God’s fault. God is all-good, and all-knowing, and thus God knows you have to replace your windshield wipers. Thus God bombards you with guidance (“replace your windshield wipers…”) and the person ignores it, thus eventually the distorted visibility in the rain causes an accident. God didn’t cause the accident.

God communicates with creatures through what Whitehead called “the divine lure.” At the base of reality, at the sub-sub quantum level if you will, God is continually “feeding” God’s perfect vision of the world to creatures (humans, animals, etc.). We have the ability to pick up on this lure or guidance. “Replace your wipers…Take that job…Don’t take that job…Eat healthy food…Take Elm Street…Treat your co-workers with respect…” Each creature is free to tune into God’s will or to tune God out. In my opinion, the latihan is a way to tune directly into this guidance that Whitehead and Hartshorne talk about.

God isn’t “a being,” but like everything else God is “a becoming.” God is ubiquitous and not locatable in spacetime. God is everywhere, all the time, at the base of reality. This is not Pantheism, BTW. The closest theological view is called Panentheism.

On Process Theology, God didn’t create the universe. The “stuff” of existence (whatever that is) has always existed. Science is a good explanation (although a very limited explanation) of what happened. Our current universe big-banged into existence 15 billion years ago. The wider stuff, “before” our universe was born, and “after” our universe finally dies out, has always existed. Nothing was ever ultimately “created” thus God doesn’t create from nothing (again, it’s entirely illogical and impossible for anything or anyone or any God to create a thing without something with which to create it). There’s no damnation or paradise model, and God doesn’t sit in judgment. God doesn’t control things but guides things and it’s up to creatures to respond to the guidance or not. God is the source of Order and Value in the process. That’s why it’s called “process” theology and “process” philosophy, because there are ultimately no “things” and no “beings” but only “processes” and “becomings.”

God doesn’t know the future because there IS no future to even know. “The future” as an actuality doesn’t exist. All that exists is past and present. God and creatures, together, create the present. The word “future” is just a word and doesn’t point to any kind of reality.

On Process Theology, our task is to be fully in the moment, feeling the divine lure, and dealing with the elements in our experience that work against us actuating that Divine vision. What a HUGE task!!!

Technically speaking, what human beings call “God” is what Whitehead called the three “Formative Elements:” Creativity, Potentiality, and God. The Formative Elements can’t exist apart from each other. But they are not “actual” thus they don’t “exist” like a chair or table exists. (Thus, arguably, there is no issue or dispute about “whether God exists” like there is in Classical Theology.) The Formative Elements are non-actual and non-temporal. Again, I can’t argue this here, but when you do a deep logical analysis of what is actual and temporal, you see there must be something which is non-actual and non-temporal. Whitehead does most of this analysis in a small book called “Religion in the Making.”

Just some thoughts this Saturday night.

Aloha!

“Socrates: …[do] you think that a State, or an army, or a band of robbers and thieves, or any other gang of evildoers could act at all if they injured one another?

Thrasymachus: No, indeed…they could not.

Socrates: But if they abstained from injuring one another, then they might act together better?

Thrasymachus: Yes.

Socrates: And this is because injustice creates divisions and hatreds and fighting, and justice imparts harmony and friendship; is not that true, Thrasymachus?

Thrasymachus: I agree …because I do not wish to quarrel with you.

Socrates: How good of you…but I should like to know also whether injustice, having this tendency to arouse hatred…will not make them hate one another and set them at variance and render them incapable of common action?

Thrasymachus: Certainly.”

SO:

It seems that the Bad must be parasitic on Good. Good must be more fundamental because it has to be there, in place, in order for the Bad to even function. Someone had to work, do well, and gain valuable material in the first place before a thief can come along and steal it. Total evil and/or Disharmony is self-destruction.

The phrase “Honor among thieves” also discloses this same idea about the Good being fundamental. E.g.: Organized Crime is so powerful because it is set up against a backdrop of cooperation and trust. It’s parasitic on COOPERATION, CREATIVITY, HARMONY, EXCELLENCE. Without them, Organized Crime couldn’t exist.