How we live our lives? [ As I see it the most important question for all people, religionists or not, is how we live our lives; not what we are. In which case all the mystical aspects are totally academic. ]
I would imagine that many people might agree with you; for a while. But I don't. What factors are involved in how we live our lives? Why are those factors the way they are? How did those factors become the way they are? Is all that totally academic? As far as I am concerned then the question of how best to live our lives is one of the four or five main perennial questions; but it is only one of them. Can one really isolate one of them to become dominant and disregard the rest when in fact they are all linked up in one mysterious web of causal process? It could well be the case you know that I am even more concerned with the question of HOW we live our lives than you are :- ) And have been so for a very long time. But I have no intention of throwing any of the pieces of the jig-saw out of the equation and thence ignoring them. You bring up the `mystical aspects'. Do you know them? If you did then you would know the effects of them, and those effects come to dominate the way we live our lives. You seem to be ignoring that totally :- ) So how would that be totally academic in the question of how we live our lives? If one could isolate just one aspect to make it the dominant one then that would be it knowing what you are and where you come from. Ipso. Health is another of the major factors in how we live our life. So too is politics. So too is age and maturity. The chance to live here long enough to establish maturity. But the mystical life dominates those two factors. Tell me that it isn't so when you know it and live it. Take such things as love and beauty for example (essential qualities found in the Ground of our Being of what we are a mystical experience) are they not important in how we live our lives? Are they totally academic? No sir; knowing what you are and where you come from and how you fit in with it all are NOT academic, let alone totally academic. And they DO come to dominate the way we live our life; by effect. One day you might come to agree with me, but there will never come a day when I will come to agree with you. Judge a meal after you have had it, not before you have had it. Dick Richardson
