Gnwmythr's Glossary: October 2014

Friday, 31 October 2014

Immature Soul / Young Soul

An Immature Soul / Young Soul behaves in ways that cause real - not perceived: no grumbling about alleged problems such as rudeness etc - problems for others, or themself.

To make that clearer, my definition of a Mature Soul / Old Soul is one who is spiritually and generally mature, according to this definition, and ALSO living - or attempting to live, to the best of their ability - with the principles of Balanced Positivity, which is, according to my interpretation of Brendan Myers’ course “Clear and Present Thinking”, a form of Virtue Theory (Wikipedia discusses this as “Virtue Ethics” – and it is actually worth reading that link, particularly for the criticisms … well, it was worth reading it as of 25^th October, 2014). The course describes this along the lines of:

A vice, according to this doctrine, is a case of manifesting too much or too little of the particular quality that a situation calls for; And a virtue is the ‘right amount’ of the quality which the situation calls for; Courage, for example, goes between rashness or recklessness (which is too much courage), and cowardice (which is too little.)

All of which goes back to the work of Plato and Aristotle, who, interestingly, are discussed in Chapters 11 and 13 of Mr Myers’ book on pagan philosophers: “The Earth, The Gods and The Soul” (which I bought and read as part of my preparation for my interview on “Harmony in Diversity” - see here and here; Pub. Moon Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1-78099-317-1).

A Mature Soul / Old Soul behaves - particularly spiritually - appropriately, in a way that is balanced, and fundamentally (or overall) constructive.

Hence, an Immature Soul / Young Soul behaves in ways that cause real - not perceived: no grumbling about alleged problems such as rudeness etc - problems for others, or themself.

As with the topic of maturity generally, this has nothing to do with chronological age.

I have touched on this topic in many posts, most of which have been summarised in a particular section of the "key posts" section of my blogiography, which is copied below (as it was at the date this definition was first written):

Balanced Positivity, Spiritual Maturity, Peace and Personal Conduct

222. Personal Responsibility (this post is - effectively - the start of my Balanced Positivity theme); 061. Maturity; 227. Old vs. Mature; 062. Perspective; 115. “Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth" and "Aliens Among Us": a Personal View; 196. The Only Planet of Choice, Star Wars and Kung Fu; 132. Ethics; 150. A Word Both Over-Used and Under-Used: Sorry; 153. Honour, mistakes, and forgiveness; 184. Meditation and the Purpose of Evolution; 205. Taking Action or Not, Plus Vengeance and Other Thinking; 149. Updates: Healing, World Peace, Vegan Witches, Crop Circles and Memory; 168. A Miscellany on Leadership, Growth Orientation, Charmaine Wilson, Acne and Security Theatre ... ; 213. A Sunnudagr (Sunday) Miscellany; 216. Virtues and Faults: a Matter of Octave? And Dreams vs. Responsibility ...; 248. Want to be a Knight in Shining Armour?; 270. Sugar'n'spice and hero/warrior stereotypes/archetypes; 279. The theme of the coming world religion/leader; 288. The ancient Spartans were NOT honourable; 289. Deity; 291. When you die, how do you want to live in the astral?; 325. Terminology; 330. Reflections, reading and how NOT to do a "rescue"; 335. Helping those who are disturbed; 347. Maturity: a refinement; 364. The Origin of Evil; 368A. This week's speculation, reading and other stuff; 380. Naiveté (inappropriateness); 391. Lessons from the world of ... money; 393. More Sunday thoughts ...; 396. Negative learning and Mediocrity; 400. Balanced positive; 421. Can one be too positive?; 440. The Magical Battle of Melbourne, Australia and Humanity; 469. A public talk on "Power"; 471. Update and public talk on "the means shapes the end"; 500. Perspectives; 505. Lessons from the past: the film "Kamchatka"; 509. For tonight's meditation: people change; 511. Failure to take action; 513. I am a walker upon the Path of Balanced Positivity, seeking Spiritual Maturity; 519. Why I never claim to like all children, or (blindly) love all humanity; 523. Some more thoughts on Balanced Positivity; Post No. 542 - the Strength Required of a Servant of the Goddesses/Gods/Light; Post No. 546: Some more thoughts on Balanced Positivity; Post No. 568 - Who will step up?; Post No. 571 - Changing the personality of oppressors; Post No. 573 - Post Script to "who will step up?"; Post No. 576 – Activism; Post No. 605 –Balanced Positivity (The History of), Bow Exercise and Reading;

Mature Soul / Old Soul

My definition of a Mature Soul / Old Soul is one who is spiritually and generally mature, according to this definition, and ALSO living - or attempting to live, to the best of their ability - with the principles of Balanced Positivity, which is, according to my interpretation of Brendan Myers’ course “Clear and Present Thinking”, a form of Virtue Theory (Wikipedia discusses this as “Virtue Ethics” – and it is actually worth reading that link, particularly for the criticisms … well, it was worth reading it as of 25^th October, 2014). The course describes this along the lines of:

A vice, according to this doctrine, is a case of manifesting too much or too little of the particular quality that a situation calls for; And a virtue is the ‘right amount’ of the quality which the situation calls for; Courage, for example, goes between rashness or recklessness (which is too much courage), and cowardice (which is too little.)

All of which goes back to the work of Plato and Aristotle, who, interestingly, are discussed in Chapters 11 and 13 of Mr Myers’ book on pagan philosophers: “The Earth, The Gods and The Soul” (which I bought and read as part of my preparation for my interview on “Harmony in Diversity” - see here and here; Pub. Moon Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1-78099-317-1).

A Mature Soul / Old Soul behaves - particularly spiritually - appropriately, in a way that is balanced, and fundamentally (or overall) constructive.

An Immature Soul / Young Soul behaves in ways that cause real - not perceived: no grumbling about alleged problems such as rudeness etc - problems for others, or themself.

As with the topic of maturity generally, this has nothing to do with chronological age.

I have touched on this topic in many posts, most of which have been summarised in a particular section of the "key posts" section of my blogiography, which is copied below (as it was at the date this definition was first written):

Balanced Positivity, Spiritual Maturity, Peace and Personal Conduct

Maturity (non-physical)

I am going to leave the concept of physical maturity to the biologists to argue about, and confine this definition to non-physical forms of maturity - emotional, psychological, spiritual, and any others that may apply.

In that context, maturity is represented by the ability to function independently - and healthily so.

Our time as children is marked by our dependence on our parents: our time as adults marked by the lack of that - but it must be so in a healthy way.

Someone who can only function emotionally by propping themselves up on others, is not healthily independent. Someone who can only arrange things by whining or blackmailing others into helping them, is not functioning with healthy independence.

On the other hand, someone who is stubbornly independent to a fault (like me, some would say :) ), would also have trouble, perhaps, claiming to be healthily independent.

This definition of maturity is NOT related to chronological age. Some people in their 80s would count as immature under this definition, and some young people in their teens may count as mature, or mature in some aspects. I personally do not count an individual as physically mature unless they have moved out from the parent's/carer's house/home - or an institution, if they have been raised in an orphanage - and are financially supporting themselves. Someone who does have to work for a living may not meet my definition of maturity.

Spiritually, someone who is dependent on a religion or a priest or someone else is someone who is possibly not functioning independently, and thus may be immature.

There is a further subset of this topic, or perhaps it is a related topic, one that many people conflate with maturity: the topic of Old or Young Souls - or as I term them, Mature or Immature Souls.

My definition of a Mature Soul / Old Soul is one who is spiritually and generally mature, according to this definition, and ALSO living - or attempting to live, to the best of their ability - with the principles of Balanced Positivity, which is, according to according to my interpretation of Brendan Myers’ course “Clear and Present Thinking”, a form of Virtue Theory (Wikipedia discusses this as “Virtue Ethics” – and it is actually worth reading that link, particularly for the criticisms … well, it was worth reading it as of 25^th October, 2014). The course describes this along the lines of:

A vice, according to this doctrine, is a case of manifesting too much or too little of the particular quality that a situation calls for; And a virtue is the ‘right amount’ of the quality which the situation calls for; Courage, for example, goes between rashness or recklessness (which is too much courage), and cowardice (which is too little.)

All of which goes back to the work of Plato and Aristotle, who, interestingly, are discussed in Chapters 11 and 13 of Mr Myers’ book on pagan philosophers: “The Earth, The Gods and The Soul” (which I bought and read as part of my preparation for my interview on “Harmony in Diversity” - see here and here; Pub. Moon Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1-78099-317-1).

A Mature Soul / Old Soul behaves - particularly spiritually - appropriately, in a way that is balanced, and fundamentally (or overall) constructive.

An Immature Soul / Young Soul behaves in ways that cause real - not perceived: no grumbling about alleged problems such as rudeness etc - problems for others, or themself.

As with the topic of maturity generally, this has nothing to do with chronological age.

I have touched on this topic in many posts, most of which have been summarised in a particular section of the "key posts" section of my blogiography, which is copied below (as it was at the date this definition was first written):

Balanced Positivity, Spiritual Maturity, Peace and Personal Conduct

and also
Post No. 620 - Magickal maturity;

Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Syncretism

Now, this word is one that I use differently, so I may yet add more or write my own definition. (In the interim, you could read this article of mine.)

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and you can also find the online Oxford Dictionary's definition here.

Henotheism

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and you can also find the online Oxford Dictionary's definition here.

I may well add more at a later date, as the concept is one that I find interesting.

Animism

Panentheism

Pantheism

Monism

Unitarianism

Omnitheism

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary. In that post she thinks the word should be attributed to Anomalous Thracian, but hasn't found the exact post as yet. I found a definition at Wiktionary here.

Polytheism

Now, this word is actually one that I have planned on doing my own definition of for some time, so this should be regarded as a somewhat interim definition.

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and you can also find the online Oxford Dictionary's definition here.

Trinitarianism

Duotheism

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and, although the online Oxford Dictionary's definition doesn't have a definition, you can find another definition here.

I do have some strong thoughts on this, however, so may well add more at a later.

Monotheism

Agnosticism

Nontheistic

Atheism

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and you can also find the online Oxford Dictionary's definition here.

I do have some strong thoughts on this, however, so may well add more at a later.

Deism

Theism

Thursday, 16 October 2014

(human) dignity

From my post on the topic:

human dignity is the inherently cumulative holistic combination of human rights, wellbeing and potential, and all actions or interaction which promote, realise or facilitate same. The converse also applies: whatever degrades, diminishes or robs humans of dignity, is inherently undignified.

Refer to the post for more.

Wednesday, 15 October 2014

evolution (PARTIAL DRAFT)

The “purpose” of spiritual evolution is not the attainment of “spiritual perfection” - not in the sense of not having to evolve further, at any rate, since there is no such thing. We need to evolve in order to grow - but we can take rest breaks (hopefully well earned :) ) along the way. No, the “purpose” of evolution is, rather, to perfect our ability to learn, and thus grow. Since we are discussing spiritual evolution, this “purpose” relates to spiritual learning, and spiritual growth.

If we were talking about physical evolution, we would be talking about the development of adaptability, as it is the strength of a species’ adaptability that often dictates whether or not it will survive, not necessarily the perfection of its physical being. After all, the dinosaurs were perfect physical beings for their time, as too were mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, and Neanderthals, but things changed … and here we are, despite being a tiny little mammalian creature at the time of the dinosaurs, and smaller and less strong than mammoths, sabre tooth tigers and Neanderthals at the times they were more “perfect” than us :)

And, if we don’t learn and adapt to the challenges of the monster we’ve created called “climate change”, we won’t be here much longer, as has happened to some of our past civilisations already …

So let’s go back to spiritual evolution. What does the ability to learn look like, and what does spiritual growth look like?

Well, in brief, the ability to learn looks like reflection upon what one has done, an understanding that we are all capable of mistakes (no matter how “evolved”), and the willingness to correct the harm caused by mistakes. To an external observer, some of this could well be perceived as humility, but, given the aggressive nature of our society in the West, it could well be disguised to quite a degree - although someone who genuinely has this ability will not go into an investigation seeking to apportion blame, but rather, to find out how to heal, and how to prevent those mistakes happening again - whether that is a post mortem of a failed attempt at a spirit rescue, a reflection to see how one can develop the ability to (say) heal (or astral travel, or meditate, and so on), or an investigation into a plane crash. It is worth watching some of the TV programmes about those, and see, for instance, how mistakes such as pilot error, which may be the immediate cause of a crash, in turn have more subtle and more profound causes elsewhere, such as the need for Crew Resource Management, poor airline training, or a need for industry wide improvements to training.

Don’t mistake any of that for weakness, though: such a person will criticise when necessary (e.g. in relation to avoidable mistakes), and such a person acknowledges the place of due legal process - such can help heal victims, as well as - potentially - sending a message more generally that society disapproves of harming others.

The other issue here is that the dedication to learning will not be fanatical. Such a person will recognise that people learn and grow at different rates, there is a time to push that rate along, and a time to rest, and that others will only rarely - if ever - have any sort of right to comment on another’s rate of learning and growth. I’ve come across many who are new to this concept in their current life but, often in reaction to past lives where they were too slack, make a big noise about being eager to grow and learn, and push other people in ways that they have no right to do and are often harmful.

That is not spiritual evolution, it is a child bragging about how much better they can use a new toy than anyone else - with an implication that they should have more, or perhaps even sole, use of said toy.

The principles of Balanced Positivity will give good guidance as to what is appropriate for a given situation (including a specific combination of people at their current states of being).

So what about spiritual growth: what does that look like?

Well, unconditional love is often cited as the ideal here. For my part, I would rate compassion as a key issue (the word love is fraught with inappropriate responses), but I would rate other issues at least equally important, including:

seeking to “be all that one can be”, and

respecting others’ and maintaining one’s own dignity.

As with the issue of what the ability to learn looks like, the principles of Balanced Positivity will give good guidance when trying to decide for oneself (since others cannot decide for you, although some people may be able to give some good, BPLF guidance) as to what spiritual growth looks like for oneself at a given time, place and state of being. Perspective helps with trying to make this sort of decision, I find, and, in my personal case, I find past life regression particularly good at giving me a good perspective.

Talking to experienced, trusted and competent people can help as well. As an example, many years ago, when I identified as Buddhist, I had a series of really good conversations with a work colleague, who came from Thailand and was Buddhist, about karma. This particular gentleman (who also got me interested in bonsai) was the eldest son in his family, and, as he explained it, wound up agreeing to spend three weeks as a Buddhist monk when he turned twenty one - “for the sake of the family’s honour”, and against considerable resistance on his part. He said this duty was traditional, but it was also traditionally for a month, not three weeks (his story about the negotiations was quite entertaining). As it turned out, he spent six months in that role, including three months “living in the jungle”, because of what he found he was learning. His explanation of “good karma” was that it was largely about the good feeling one had as a result of doing good deeds. Now, some 30 odd years later, I see that as part of it, but I also consider there is more to karmic return than only one’s feelings - but I needed to hear that point of view at that stage of my evolution, for the sake of having a more rounded view on the topic of karma, and to start thinking more consciously about the importance of doing things for the reason that they are right to do, rather than thinking about future rewards (or punishments, if one is thinking of “misdeeds” or inaction).

It is also worth thinking about the fact that evolution is not always smoothly forward. If you want an example of that, have a look at my main blog, where you will see my bad moods, some of my mistakes, and my increasing struggles with life in the inner city.

Hopefully, you will also find the rewarding moments when I feel good, develop something, or overcome problems as I stubbornly persist :)

As of the time this definition was written, I’ve touched on this idea in the following posts:

Post No. TBC