Originally Posted by
Darkmatters
No, you don't sound like a smartass at all. I appreciate the very well-reasoned and well-explained post.
I think you're largely right - I do tend towards rational materialism, but I try not to be dogmatic about it, and I also am open-minded toward other views. In fact I've spent a good deal of time exploring other worldviews - looked into Buddhism and did meditation for a few months (but it didn't take), messed with chakras and Kundalini yoga, I've read all of the Castaneda books and really wanted to believe some of it was possible. I suppose eventually though, I always do reject the alternate worldviews because I can't accept the more supernatural claims they make (though I've gained some great benefits from each in other respects).
All that said - I am not adamantly opposed to ideas like precognition, astral projection, telepathy and the like. In fact I want to believe they're possible. But I don't take things on faith alone - that's a good way to get fleeced. I believe a strong skeptical approach is actually the best way to approach these things - if a group of people believe firmly in something that's not scientifically accepted and they haven't subjected the phenomenon to even the slightest testing and they say that the very presence of a skeptic destroys the possibility that it can work, then they're quite rightly seen as crackpots who are entirely too accepting.
And I know - the kind of skepticism I'm talking about isn't about a personal belief in something - nobody's skepticism can destroy a person's belief in something they've actually experienced. My knowledge that I've had lucid dreams isn't phased in the slightest when people scoff and laugh at me (though it might piss me off). I also understand that my type of skepticism renders it unlikely that I'll ever experience anything metaphysical and accept it as such. (People who refuse to believe in lucid dreams could even experience one and still deny it).
In fact, now that you've got me thinking about it - when I started reading Castaneda it was in hopes that it could help me achieve lucidity (and before I found Dreamviews or ETWOLD). But I found it did just the opposite - if I accepted the existence of all these crazy frightening entities and things, then I was afraid to enter into dreams where I might actually encounter them. So for me personally, I think my increasingly skeptical approach helps me toward lucidity. I also read a lot of Freud and Jung before my lucidity quest and now find that it's very helpful to disregard a lot of it - if I analyze my dreams too much they start to take on troubling psychological dimensions and don't lend themselves well to lucid adventuring. So I think I'm closing up my mind to make it more mobile and defensible sort of like a soldier carrying only the essentials on bivouac. Or a better analogy - I once likened the mind to a parachute - you want to be able to open it when necessary, but you don't want to go walking around through your daily life with an open parachute trailing behind you everywhere - would be hell on a windy day or getting on the bus! So I suppose I've been packing my mind up tightly for mobility in my lucidityquest. I've also made the decision I need to stop messing with incubating hot women in my dreams - that works against lucidity too in the beginning. I think once I've made it and can start becoming lucid on a pretty regular basis then I can loosen up my grip on my mind a bit again and then it'll be time to bring on the hotties and start exploring those ideas I'm more closed off to now.
Though you may be right - rational materialism might just be my core belief system and maybe there's no changing that as much as I'd like to. Though I don't think it's strictly materialism - there's definitely a bit of secular humanism in there too.