Here is a question I overheard leaving an AA meeting. The speaker revealed an experience of a spiritual nature that was of God and left him without a craving or obsession to drink from that moment since. After the meeting, someone asked in passing, "Do you really think God talks to people?"
I've been curious about this phenomenon since I first encountered Bill Wilson's story (the founder of AA,) What does it mean to experience God? Is this experience valid? How can this be understood? Is this a healthy delusion or an incomprehensible extraordinary experience without a prior context? How can this experience be effected?
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ReplyDeleteI disagree. Or, i'll draw a distinction between self-doubt and doubt. Doubt per se, as I want to use the word, is a simple blank starting point of taking and holding nothing for granted. Is there a better word for this?
DeleteSelf-doubt, I hold, is a sub-specie of cynicism which I agree is a conditioned, negative expectation (or something like that.)
I think your distinction is spot on. I don't know if there is a better word for the "simple blank starting point of taking and holding nothing for granted" than "doubt per se".
DeleteIt's more than a word, but how about this: settled occupation within the unknowing aspect of the cloud.
So how about simply "unknowing" in place of doubt. It's like arationality occupying the space between rationality and irrationality. It is something you do continually - it is an activity. But the activity is that of acceptance - a reception or an undoing.
When he writes "doubt always "knows" that nothing is possible" I think he refers to the sort of doubt that you rightly distinguish as unnecessary and conditioned self-doubt.
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