It was in contemplation of the expression, matter is neither created nor destroyed, and it’s apparent implication of a finite rather than infinite origin, particularly in its apparent contradiction of a biblical-creationist perspective (i.e. God bringing forth/creating something from nothing) and therefore the further implication of God as exercising merely transformative rather than purely creative power (i.e. transforming preexistent matter into a new form/expression of that matter versus bringing [non-preexistent] matter into being), that I realized—via further research—my perception of an evident conflict was a direct result of:
1. insufficient information
2. miseducation
3. an inclining towards a particular prejudiced point of view in consequence of the preceding (i.e. #’s 1 and 2)
4. a desire to resolve an apparent conflict in such a way as to maintain a preconditioned perspective, irrespective of the actual quality of that solution (i.e. whether the solution had merit beyond its ability to satisfy that preconditioning).
It became clear that I was poised to champion and defend a cause that I associated as my own, when in actuality it was essentially and fundamentally a cause that I had unwittingly adopted (with all of its shortcomings), and that cause was external to the essence of my being, person and identity; meaning, forfeiture of the issue would or could neither define, determine or destroy who I am (i.e. my existence—I am/I yet remain, with or without connection to that cause/point of view).
It was pause for a moment of sobering reflection.
That we, so automatically, engage experiences as a consequence of having fused such a connection with an ideology, assumption or tradition that it becomes, to our own mind, our identity—having been superimposed over the very fabric of our being, becoming, as it were, the very skin we are in—can only be said to be an evident demonstration of the degree to which we have been manipulated and conditioned against our own best interest, and in purposed obfuscation of our own self-knowledge/self-being.
We are almost wholly automatons, being driven by the machinery of our own compromised minds to fulfill the interests of external entities whose purposes trump our own self-interest. It is as if the natural mechanisms that govern realization of self have been replaced or re-programmed with “software” that permits a surrogate self total control of our being: in a word, identity theft. Our consciousness is tuned (re-tuned) to a frequency that substitutes our desire for self-realization with the imposition of an externally directed realization of self, of which we are almost wholly unaware. It is as if we have been lulled into such a deep sleep that our only awareness of experience happens in dreamtime. Our whole “reality” is in actuality at that point merely a dream. In those rare, and all too brief, moments of actual awakening (and/or “lucid dreaming”) it is the best we can muster to ascertain some sense—nebulous, invisible and fleeting though it may be—of some directive agency, some dominant entity, some driving energy, to whose interests we make involuntary concession, and whose predisposition is not our own. Yet, we return, almost immediately, to a protracted and deep sleep, our only experience of life being a dreamtime reality.
Certainly science and religion are causes presented as if in perpetual conflict, one with the other. Certainly there is the juxtaposition of both, where there are practitioners of science as religion and practitioners of religion as science. Certainly there are those who, whether for resistance to authority on the one hand or simple apathy on the other, entertain no conflict between the two. In all this the question, to whom do those issues/concerns belong? must be answered. It is in this process of determining an answer that a distinction between self and subject (i.e. the question) becomes apparent. It is at the point of that distinction, that separation, that self-realization (i.e. the awareness of an independent self) begins. Self-awareness—the emergence of the unclothed and untethered self, a self identifiably and wholly distinct from issues, causes and conflict—is birthed in the revelation of that moment.