Mitakuye Oyasin

[Tanya]

"Each of us is part of ALL of us"

SO that's my siggy, and that's what I'm working on.

if we take as a given that we are all connected (which I think can be verified scientifically through quantum physics)


then... with all our varying traditions... heck within many of us... our variety genetics... how do we find a way to unify it all into some General theory of spiritual relativitiy?


for instance... anyone read any Charles De Lint lately.. with his attempts to unite.. or at least tie together North American shamanic traditions with Celtic ones?

can they work together?

do we as a species hold certain spiritual truths to be self evident?

what are they?

the one I see most starkly is chaos vs. order....

that there is not a right or wrong to it.. but a homeostatic balance to the two useful but also dangerous forces.

[TygerTyger]

Spiritual relativity? An interesting question!

Personally, I'm with Blake on this one, "without contraries is no progression", which is probably why I avoid attempts to unify things. There is value in diversity.

However, it is an interesting question as I've already said and I think that there is room to look at it from the various ways in which different cultures have answered certain spiritual questions, especially where those answers were believed to have been found prior to the growth of a priesthood and/or institutionalised religion.

There must be similarities in the answers found by respective cultures even if there is a diversity in how they went about it.

[Tanya]

you DO Know I love Blake with his Satanic Mills.


I think all of us bein human.. well there are certain core human experiences that we have to form a mythos around....

birth, death, love, good v. evil, why am I not perfect.... questions and confoundings that confront us all and that all humans work through to become adults...

[TygerTyger]

And I would certainly agree with you there, in fact that's what makes studying other cultures interesting, to me at least. We have the same questions but how we go about answering them and the answers we reach are not always the same.

However, that answer implies a degree of similarity too, which is what I suppose you intended! Heck, now it is getting interesting!

Perhaps it would be a start to pose one question and then see if we can all find examples of how it has been answered by various cultures?

[Brightshores]

Interesting... but in a meta-analysis sort of way, can't unity and diversity be found at the same time? Think of a jigsaw puzzle. None of the pieces are identical, and if they were, nothing would come of them. But, together, each of the different pieces produces a unified whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts (which would be a big pile of bits of cardboard).

In the same way, perhaps all of us with our individual paths and our little bits of cardboard, produce a greater unity, perhaps greater than we can normally see with our individual perspectives.

Just a thought. :)

[RainInanna]

Joseph Campbell writes about the myths surrounding core human experiences.

Self-evident truths? The only one I can think of is the golden rule. ie. Where possible, harm none. Obviously it's expressed in various ways, but the general idea is to live as a creative individual and harmoniously within society it's a good idea to avoid hurting others unnecessarily. If nothing else it's self-evident only because using it as a guideline allows the group to continue living. Even in the cells of our body, we see it in cancer. In society we see it as sociopaths.

[Cassie]

"Each of us is part of ALL of us"

SO that's my siggy, and that's what I'm working on.

if we take as a given that we are all connected (which I think can be verified scientifically through quantum physics)


then... with all our varying traditions... heck within many of us... our variety genetics... how do we find a way to unify it all into some General theory of spiritual relativitiy?


.
I think it is a bit as Brightshores describes...


Interesting... but in a meta-analysis sort of way, can't unity and diversity be found at the same time? Think of a jigsaw puzzle. None of the pieces are identical, and if they were, nothing would come of them. But, together, each of the different pieces produces a unified whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts (which would be a big pile of bits of cardboard).

In the same way, perhaps all of us with our individual paths and our little bits of cardboard, produce a greater unity, perhaps greater than we can normally see with our individual perspectives.

Just a thought. :)
I like that analogy and I think it is probably correct to a large degree but it does seem to me there is a big flaw in it though...
The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle require an outside force to realise the bigger picture they could make; without that outside perspective they remain meaningless bits of cardboard in a state of chaos.

As spiritual beings I think we all have various degrees of insight into what the bigger picture is, but that picture is vague and incomplete. I don't think we have enough information yet to come up with a unified general theory of spiritual relativity; but if we ever do I suspect the results will mirror scientific unified theories.

What we can do though is compare and learn from the spiritual teachings and experiences of people on other paths and in this way begin to draw a better map of what the bigger picture may be.

[TheWomanMonster]

"Each of us is part of ALL of us"

I like that, it is much the way I see things.
Everyone and thing contributes to the whole,
every action balances out the action of another.

No good, no evil, no right, no wrong...
it all just IS.

:)

[childofbast]

I've always been fascinated with the work of Campbell and Jung in terms of archetypes and such... It's all very interesting, and comparative religion is a very interesting field - one I considered studying for a degree. Yet I find a danger in trying to unify everything. Sure, it's fun to pick out the similarities and, yes, perhaps they do say something about humanity. But, as someone else said, I really do value diversity. Just because culture A and culture B share a couple things, or even a dozen things, in common, doesn't mean they are the same.

That said, I do believe in a unifying energy that is within all things, but I don't really think much about it except when practicing magic or considering that everything is linked in some way. I think differences are more interesting in the long run, but that's just me!

~Melanie

[RainInanna]

In the interest of stimulating further discussion...

For those to whom this applies, why do you value diversity over unity?

I'm sure we can all agree that diversity should be respected and is valuable, and that we don't need to rehash the old arguments on whether everyone's beliefs are valid and whether people should be allowed to have diverse beliefs (we're Advanced Pagans, right, we can assume everyone knows that everyone can have their own beliefs and that we're not talking about forcing unity, right?), but I'm interested in the opinions of those who would choose diversity rather than unity?

[Zephyrstorm]

I think by placing it as and either/or diversity or unity that it sets up a false dichotomy.

Nature seems to thrive best in environments of diversity, the whole forest functions best when the local diversity is maintained. The unity of the entire system is maintained by that very variance in type that the duality of diversity/unity denies.

The potato famine of Ireland was a result of a lack of diversity - they were all raising the same species of potato, and the blight had carte blanche to go to town because of it. The same danger exists in the corn fields of the US today.

Each of the cell types in your body serve a unique purpose - they function differently, behave differently and they vary in appearance and all else, but they are all still you. There is a diversity of cell types - sometimes even in the same space, but together they are all you.

I'm not sure if that makes sense or not - or if it really gets to the point, but there you have it.

[thought_on_a_wind]

This is a question I've been asking myself as of late... I'm still struggling with it, there are some major logical flaws that I'm in the midst of working through/chewing on...

I keep seeing the picture, but can't see the forest for the trees so to speak. I know that all religions are linked in some way, at the very least the word religion could be a common link. I suppose one of my efforts to accept this is based upon the Uncertainty Principle...

[omar]

Was Mitakuye Oyasin or Mr. Eastman a Native American writer from about 1900?

[omar]

Was Mitakuye Oyasin or Mr. Eastman a Native American writer from about 1900?

The name was Ohiyesa or Charles Alexander Eastman went to Beloit College & medical school at Boston U. graduated as a Doctor in 1890. Was a doctor at Pine Ridge Res. and wrote several books. Mostly about the early frontier. The one I read was "Indian Boyhood".

[*~Amora~*]

"Unitarian Universalist Perspectives
Unitarian Universalism is a centuries-old, free thinking liberal religion guided by shared values. At its core, this faith emphasizes the worth and value of every person and the interconnectedness of all things."

http://www.uua.org/visitors/uuperspectives/index.shtml