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Feb 20, 2023Liked by Suzanne Taylor

Clearly, to me and many others, the problems we now face in the world have existential roots. They stem from an increasing loss of meaning in life along with the assumption that meaning can be found only in organized religion and that existential thinking must necessarily begin with a belief in God and, concomitantly, a worship of that God, whatever He, She, or It might be. The belief that Science has impeached Religion has encouraged an abandonment of such thinking and led to a nihilistic mindset among many people, resulting in a loss of hope and lives of melancholy or despair based on fears of eternal extinction. Such fears are generally subconscious but they constantly seep into the conscious mind and significantly influence our behavior and mental state.

Those who live more hopeful and positive lives fall into two basic categories: 1) those who have succeeded in embracing life through basically meaningless activities grounded in escapism while blocking out any attempts by the subconscious mind directed at existential thought; 2) those who have succeeded in open-mindedly recognizing that the evidence strongly suggesting that this life is part of a larger life, one not necessarily requiring the God of religions or worship of that Being. That is, those who have developed a conviction that consciousness survives death in a greater reality that is beyond human comprehension but is not the humdrum heaven and horrific hell of orthodoxy. However, humanism ultimately fails in this regard.

The basic paradox here is that finding or identifying God is not a prerequisite to accepting the greater reality, but that in accepting the evidence for consciousness surviving death does lead to a Creator or Supreme Being of some kind, not necessarily an anthropomorphic one. That Creative Force or Supreme Being need not be worshipped in the normal sense of the word.

The evidence comes to us through Science, though inexact, in such fields as near-death studies, credible mediumship, past-life studies, instrumental trans-communication, deathbed phenomena, and other paranormal phenomena. No one study or case will provide absolute certainty, but the cumulative evidence, closely examined, will provide a strong conviction for the open-minded examiner. Some doubt is necessary for the "Divine Plan" to effectively work.

Unfortunately, few are those who can separate religious thinking from the metaphysical or existential thinking, and therefore a Wisdom Council would likely fail. The only person who comes to mind as a candidate for this council is Robert Bigelow of the Bigelow Institute in Las Vegas.

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Right on for how good Jeffrey is. He's is a longtime ally of mine. He won half a million dollars in that Bigelow essay contest!!! He has been putting out interviews, as New Thinking Allowed, for decades: https://www.newthinkingallowed.org. That's his gig and he wouldn't be an employee of anyone's.

He's not so available right now for thinking about anything except the writing he's doing for entering another contest!!!!

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