Okay, I Admit It…

I’m a sucker for the logical fallacy.  Not necessarily commiting them, but identifying them and debunking them whenever possible.  Which is why this website makes me so freaking happy!

I like this one a lot! I’m afraid I have done this one in the past, but now I giggle at it [don’t you?]

I have seen this one used a lot in church.  Dr. James Dobson tends to use this one a LOT in his arguments against homosexuality.  He seems to think that if same-sex couples are given the same rights as hetero-couples, then some day pedophiles wil be allowed to abuse children in freedom.

I’m fairly certain that’s a big fat fallacy, especially when you realize that gay and lesbian people are no more likely to be pedophiles than hetero- adults [in fact, I think the opposite may be true, but I’m too lazy to go look it up.. anyone with a link to that?]

Oy.

Here’s one that I am currently guity of when thinking about Dr. Dobson, though:

Since Dr. Dobson is wrong about homosexuality, none of his other beliefs are true either.  Therefore, everything he says about raising children is crap.

Can you figure out which fallacy that is?

I’m thinking it might be ad hominum abusive [or personal attack] or maybe poisoning the well?

I dunno, what do you think?  What’s your favorite logical fallacy to use?  Favorite one to catch others in?

How I’m Doing

Really well, actually. I’ve been working on getting rid of my unneeded stuff, inside my house, and my mind as well. I’m finally at peace with my religion [which is more in line with what Unity Church teaches as opposed to the Nazarene church that I attend].

Unity church is kind of an amalgam of a bunch of different philosophies, including, but not limited to:

“Spiritualism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, New Thought, Christian Science, and other Mind Science religions, believing that there was some good in every religion.”

I’m all about that whole ‘there’s some good in every religion’ thing. I also love the fact that they don’t claim to have the monopoly on truth, and that they aren’t necessarily the ‘final revelation’ of God. What I’ve found is that our ‘image of God’ tends to be a mirror of ourselves.

I find it fascinating that so many people have a god who believes exactly what they believe [and that s/he hates the same people the individual does] that they can find scripture to back up whatever they believe [and that the scripture one person uses to justify hating one thing, another can use to justify loving the exact same thing…]

I feel free knowing that I am doing my own research and taking responsibility for my own beliefs, and I also feel that I’m closer to God because of it. He’s real, and although I continue to use the Male pronoun, I’m fully aware that God is just energy [as we all are just energy] and that he is neither male nor female, but spirit, [or energy, as I said before].

We are all evolving at our own pace, and since no one is in exactly the same place as me, I no longer feel the need to judge their actions. My desire for this life is to continue to grow, change, and evolve to ever higher states [sounds woo woo, but it translates to ‘I want to get closer to God’ for the Christians out there, and ‘I want to be a better person’ to everyone else].

Which leads me to another thing. We all use different filters and terms to say/experience the same things. For a Christian, if I talk about evolution [the theory of which I believe in, by the way] or positive thinking, or ‘The Secret’ they [c]lose their minds and refuse to hear anything I might say because they believe that those things are contrary to what the Bible says.

But what I’ve found is that the Bible only confirms these things. How is it possible that I can read the same words as another person and get a completely different idea of the meaning?

It’s all about the filter, people. We all have one [or lots of ’em] and everything we experience is sifted through our filters, and whatever our filters consist of affects our perception of what the world is like, and what our lives are like.

The coolest thing that I am learning, though, is that we get to pick what our filters are. Up until recently, mine have been pretty negative, sad, and depressing. But starting about two years ago, I began to realize that the negative, sad, and depressing thoughts were just one possible interpretation of my life.

I have the power to choose different thoughts, and I have the power to see things differently, and only I have the power to choose for myself what thoughts, feelings, and filters I want to have.

Here’s a neat thing, though [and maybe something to think about if you think I’m full of crap]. We have in our brain a thing called the Reticular Activating System

The reticular activating system (RAS) is involved in most central nervous system activity, including control of wakefulness, sleep and part of our ability to direct attention toward specific areas of our conscious minds.

Okay, you know how when you buy a new car, all of a sudden you see every car just like yours that’s on the highway? That’s your RAS. Because you’re focusing on your car, you see every car that’s just like yours on the road. The same is true with everything, including your belief system.

If you believe that the world is a scary place, you will focus on everything scary that happens in the world [and there are a lot of scary things to choose from, aren’t there?] but if you believe that the world is a good place, that people are basically good [but sometimes make bad choices] and that there is beauty all around you [regardless of where you live] then you will see the good things and people in the world [and I’d wager to say that there are even more good things than bad… if you choose to look for them].

It’s also true with religion. If you believe in a God, then you will find evidence of him everywhere. If you don’t, then the things I see as evidence to prove his existence, you will see as coincidence, or something that is explainable in some other way.

And here’s the deal. We’re both ‘right.’ At least in our own personal world, we are. And really, if you think about it, we all live in our ‘own little world,’ don’t we? Some of us have worlds that are more interesting, unorthodox, scary, or ‘weird’ than others, but no two worlds are exactly the same because no two people have exactly the same perception.

It’s like we’re all running around on this planet, living in our own parallel universes, which bump up against each other from time to time [which happens with the big galaxies in space, too..fascinating].

I saw a thing on the discovery channel called the Cosmos, or something like that, and they were showing pictures of galaxies that come together and then go apart [or swallow each other up] and when they separate, they each take a part of the other with them. Isn’t that how relationships are on earth, too?

I dunno, that’s just neat stuff to my mind.

Okay, Michaela’s got a messy diaper, so I gotta go!

The House is Still Clean!!

And not only that, but it’s staying that way, with little effort from me!

Yes, this is significant, because it’s a little more evidence that this new thought process is working.  I will get into what the new process is, but later, because right now I have to go start fixing dinner.

More later, I promise!

Miracles Do Happen!

Yes, it’s true. Steve was off work yesterday, and we got busy and cleaned our room! You cannot fully appreciate what that means until I tell you that we’ve lived in this house for two and a half years, and our bedroom has been the ‘catch-all’ room because we had no space to put anything.

Our current house is a whopping 927 square feet. We are a family of five [not counting the dog]. While this family of five can easily fit into a three bedroom house that is only 927 square feet, all of our stuff cannot.

We’ve had stuff we’ve been saving ‘for when we have a bigger house’ since 2000. We’ve been carrying boxes from place to place [and we’ve moved five times since then], using nothing in those boxes, but carrying them just the same, in the hopes that one day we’d have room for the stuff in them.

You know what? When we get a bigger house, we’ll be able to more than afford to buy NEW STUFF TO PUT IN THE DAMN THING!!! Okay, I fully admit we’ve been a bit slow in figuring this out, after all, we’ve been doing this for over seven years now, but we’ve had an awakening in our household, and now we KNOW.

“If any of you should desire wisdom, you should ask for it [and it will be given…]” Sometimes it takes a while to break down the subconscious barriers to true wisdom, but once you do, things become much more clear. You’ve literally got complete access to all the wisdom in the universe. If you can convince your mind of that fact, you’re limitless, aren’t you?

I’m not where I intend to be, yet, but the floodgates have been opened. I’m excited beyond belief to see the new and wonderful things that are coming into my life. If you doubt that you can have a really good, abundant life, read some of my old depression entries. Some of them are under the category: unbearable.

My outward circumstances appear to be much the same as they were a few months ago, but the truth is: they are on their way out [like the junk I’m getting rid of in our house, which is only possible because of the subconscious junk I’m getting rid of] and will soon be replaced by circumstances so wonderful that I can only dimly imagine them [and I have an incredibly vivid imagination!]

One example of a shift before I go: I made up my mind a while back that we were really going to clean out the excess junk from our lives, and we’ve been working toward it since then. We all know that if your life is completely full, there’s no room for other stuff, so you have to prioritize and get rid of some stuff to make room. It’s true in spiritual terms as well as physical, and one generally affects the other [because everything is connected].

So anyway, my example of what can happen when you take care of business and begin to ‘clean house.’

We were driving down the street a few weeks ago and I saw some bedroom furniture in a display window. I remember thinking that I’d really like to get some new bedroom furniture for the kids [up until then, we’d been using white plastic boxes to store socks, underwear, and shorts under their beds].

I didn’t worry about the fact that we didn’t have any money to buy furniture with, I just thought, “Hmm. I want to get some bedroom furniture for the kids.”

Well, a couple of weeks later, one of Steve’s zone mates called up and asked if we wanted his wife’s bedroom furniture she’d had as a kid. There were two dressers they wanted to get rid of and a bed frame. We didn’t need a bed frame, but our friends did, so we said we’d love to have it.

There was also a desk that went with the rest of the bedroom suite, but the lady wanted to keep it [Shaya’s been asking for a desk for years]. A few days later, we got the furniture. Including the desk [which has a bookshelf on top of it… something we’ve also needed but didn’t have room for]. They also gave our friends a night stand that we hadn’t known about.

So now, our kids’ rooms look better because there’s real furniture in there now, but also, we’ve got enough room to store their clothes in real life drawers! Which is really, really cool!

Took a Day Off

From the computer yesterday.  Steve and I cleaned house and made the kids help us.  They’re old enough to start cleaning up after themselves.  And we’re starting a new process here at home.  The one where we keep a clean house and have a peaceful atmosphere inside and out.

It started off pretty good.  I need to go through the cabinets in the bathroom and re-organize them, but other than that, the only room that still needs to be cleaned is Steve’s and my bedroom.  Soon, we’re going to tackle the garage and get rid of everything in there that we don’t absolutely need [like the deep freeze and Steve’s motorcycle, the lawn mower and tools.  That’s it, honest!  Everything else is getting donated or thrown away].

I know that we need to get our house in order so that the good that is on its way will manifest more quickly.  If you keep all the old crap, how is any new stuff going to have room to enter your life?  I’m ready:  Out with the old; in with the new, Baby!

Actually, Steve’s on days this week, and although he doesn’t know it yet, we’re gonna clean out the garage this week.  It’s supposed to be 76 degrees on Tuesday here!  That’s the perfect temperature, don’t you think?  This year is going to be a record year for temperatures at 76 degrees in Missouri.

After we get the garage cleaned out and organized, we’re going to tackle the junk in our room [and get rid of half of everything, don’cha know?]

It’s time to go through our clothes and decide what we actually need, and get rid of the rest.  Our closet is so jam-packed we don’t even know what kind of clothes we still have!  Again, how can we get new stuff when we don’t have any room for it?

So there’s the plan for the week.  It seems mundane on the outside, but it’s a direct result of the inner work I’ve been doing, and it’s a vital part of this process.

The Tooth Fairy

My six year old son lost his first tooth today.  He was in the lunch room at school and was messing with it.  Apparently, he hooked both of his thumb nails on each side of the tooth and accidentally shot it across the room.

The tooth is truly lost, but I assured him that the Tooth Fairy will find it in the lunch room, and bring him money for it.

Did you know that teeth in our house are a dollar a piece?  What was that damn Fairy thinking?  I’ve got three kids!

Oy!

Down the Rabbit Hole

I’d say I’m about six to eight feet down the Rabbit Hole, and since it’s probably endless, that’s not the greatest, although I suspect it’s about seven feet nine inches farther than 90% of the population.

That doesn’t mean I think I’m superior to anyone, only that a lot of people have no interest in what’s down the hole, others are afraid of what they’ll find, so they avoid it. Some don’t even realize there is a hole, and others know it’s there and are genuinely happy and feel no need to explore any further than what they see from the surface…and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Every person must find their own path, and I’m not here to judge anyone. I can only speak for myself, and I know that living on the surface is a miserable existence for me, so it’s down the hole I go.

I’m identifying with the Matrix a lot these days… you remember, right? Morpheus says:

You take the blue pill and the story ends.
You wake in your bed and you believe
whatever you want to believe.

You take the red pill and you stay
in Wonderland, and I show you how
deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Well, the red pill is a doozy, but it’s definitely worth it.

For me, the rabbit hole, or the red pill, has meant that I’ve stopped taking anyone’s word for it. No one is always right, so when I hear an opinion, I’ll listen to it, do some research for myself [looking at all sides if I can find them] weigh it against what my heart says, and develop my own opinion.

This way means spending significant amounts of time doing research, looking at different points of view [understanding that chances are better than good that everyone is wrong about something] and then thinking about it for a while before making my own decision about what rings true for me and what doesn’t.

I don’t really have the desire to go into all the negative things out there, partly because I’d rather spend my energy talking about the good stuff,  and partly because talking about the negative stuff just makes everything more negative [ick].

I am an adventurer, and nothing is sacred [nor is anything taboo]. I’ll go where ever the Rabbit Hole leads me, with joy, gratitude, excitement, and love.

Care to join me?

My time is up for today, but tomorrow I’ll share where the (w)Hole has led me so far!

A New Beginning

I’m leaving the past entries on this blog, even though my focus has changed dramatically.  My past experiences won’t change even though I am not the same person I was when I wrote them.

I have no interest in my past, but maybe someone else out there can find a bit of hope by reading it, so I’m leaving it there ‘for posterity’s sake!’ Enjoy!

As for me, I’m moving on, eh?

I’m thinking about my first ‘real’ entry on my re-vamped blog.  Right now, though, I’m hungry and my husband just got home from work, so I need to spend time with him, don’cha know?

I’ll be back soon [probably tomorrow].