Imagination Cuts Delusion

Jon Kabat-Zinn describes how people are trapped in a cycle of fear, hatred and delusion. If you look at front page news stories, you can usually find one or more of them very close to the surface.

clouds with a ladder leading to one of themIf these three are negative qualities, there must be counteracting positive qualities. There are obvious candidates like love to counteract hate, but I don’t think love has been very effective. Fear can feed hate and love has no power over that mixture.

In my past couple of blog posts, I’ve described the three qualities as elements of a game reminiscent of rock, paper, scissors. I claim that trust covers fear and curiosity smashes hatred. These pairs of spiritual qualities are mutually exclusive. They cannot exist together.

It is challenging to find the third element of a celestial elixir to replace the last element of delusion. One idea is understanding, another is knowledge. The one I like best is imagination, but none of these three are mutually exclusive to delusion.

A delusion is a fixed idea that stands up despite evidence to the contrary. The mind grabs onto a thought and runs with it. Paranoia which is supported by fear and prejudice that is fed by hatred are two of the strongest delusions. Since they’re both based on the other parts of the trio: fear and hate, it’s understandable that they have such power.

Consider whether imagination cuts delusion. A fixed idea is like the flowing of a river, it has deep banks and a straight path. Imagination looks around the landscape and can see that there are quiet pools and beautiful tributaries. A clump of dead leaves that follows the natural route will never find these bounties..

The application of spiritual principles takes work. If they were easy, people could accept and act on them continuously. Trust, Curiosity and Imagination are three qualities that are positive spiritual principles. They may not be spoken of in the church, synagogue or mosque, but they are still important.

Faith, hope, and love are necessary utensils for the spiritual kitchen. Trust, Curiosity and Imagination are like spices to keep in the cupboard. They can help everyone share spiritual feasts.

Original image: Access to Cloud / Ladder to Heaven. By FutUndBeidl [Image license]

Curiosity Smashes Hate

Just as Trust can cover Fear, in the spiritual game of rock paper scissors, Curiosity smashes Hate.

I was thinking about the cliche of love being the opposite of hate, and that seems silly. Why is there the expression of a love-hate relationship if they can destroy each other?A boy looking at a rock through a magnifying glass

If you hate someone, you want them to be out of your life. You don’t want to think about them, you don’t want to know how they’re feeling. It doesn’t bother you in the least that they had a bad day at work or a good game of golf.

If you are curious about someone, you want to know more. You may disagree, like I disagree with my friends that are pro 2nd amendment. But, if I’m curious I can ask to understand what that actually means to them. I can find the reason that it’s important. I can’t hate them for anything if I’m willing to ask them what the 2nd amendment means to them on a personal level.

Another way Curiosity smashes Hate is that it is respectful which builds trust. The triad that starts with Trust and Curiosity support each other.

Someone you hate, you’re likely to fear. Someone you are curious about, you can accept when they’re honest and it becomes a trust building exercise. With that trust, building curiosity is more successful.

Curiosity is different than inquisitiveness. Inquisitive wants to figure something out. It is limited and only has certain goals. Inquisitiveness can be mocking or insincere. If you’re curious, you truly want to learn something about the person.

I talked to a friend last night and learned a lot of interesting things. She shared with me some stuff and as our trust built, I shared some stuff that she was curious about and I was fearful of sharing with anyone for it being misused. But, as our trust built, the curiosity was rewarded and we talked about things I’d never shared before.

Hate is destructive and black. Curiosity is like shining a flashlight in cave: there’s always more to see. There’s always the next surprise to find. Children are curious, children don’t hate until they are corrupted by others.

Curiosity can become a game and lead to all sorts of joy… a sort of communion between two people so that they can see each other’s humanity and be refreshed by the life spirit within each of them.

Original image: rock hound. By woodleywonderworks [Image license]

ISIS and Radicalization

It would be easy to find people willing to condemn ISIS as evil. They would also prosecute people who are beginning to be radicalized to prevent them from supporting the terrorist organization.

However, that quick leap to judgement is not helpful in eliminating terrorism. Once you label an organization as evil, you can get lazy.

By focusing on the evil of ISIS, you don’t need to understand them. In addition to defeating them militarily, we need to combat the political themes they promote. Without understanding why ISIS is attractive to some people, we can’t deny them the thought-virus that they spread.

I never see the grievances and concepts that nourish the ISIS movement. The public message is that they’re evil and that’s all we need to know. We want to prevent radicalization, but don’t try to understand the process as it develops.

When the news reports someone as being radicalized, we can get lazy again. We don’t have to understand what they believe or how they arrived there. We don’t have to see the reasons that they embraced violence and hatred–there’s no reason to see that because we’ve already cast them out. But that’s too late in the process to make a difference.

David Talbot in “Fighting ISIS Online” (MIT Technology Review. Nov. 1, 2015. v. 118, no. 6) describes that contacts from friends and peers can help the propaganda create new recruits. But he also describes that friends and peers can be persuasive in pushing back. It can take a small intervention to be beneficial. The article describes how one-on-one contact was able to reverse a transformation that the FBI was watching from a distance, yet impotent to change.

Working with friends to help them see a different perspective doesn’t let you release sexy rhetoric about our war with ISIS. However, it does help combat the organization one person at a time.

A sympathetic ear and supportive encouragement can work where the pronouncements of the powerful are failing miserably.