The Experience of Clarity

A Human Strategy Toward a genuine spirituality second edition Our minds are circumscribed by our immediate reality, but we stop short at the thought of it. by Matt Berry An attempt to find a positive orientation toward life which does not deny reality.         copyright © Matt Berry Table of Contents  A Human Strategy    1 My Slice of Eternity    5 The Descent of a Realist    9 If God were Permitted to Be Real    10 The Institution    20 Civilized Behavior and the Last Banana    23 The Unselfish and their Charity    25 The Impossible Individual    26 The Public Animal    28 The Error-Making Organ    31 The Irreducible Surface    40 The Written Attempt    45 The Turning Point    49 The Nature of this Book and Some Problems    49 The Impossible Realist    53 Personal Science    62 Resentment    67 Potential    71 A Magnetic North    73 Blind Fate    77 Brave or Fearless    79 From Serf to Middle Class, the Berry Picker    83 Self-Appropriation    87 Amorality    95 Repetition: The Redemp

My Slice of Eternity 1 In life we confuse equation with nature and settle into our recliners, buoyed with incredible smugness by our day-to-day routine.  If, however, this routine were to be unceremoniously pulled out from under us, we would find ourselves prostrate upon the hard earth ... upon the rude truth: we would not know where or how to begin anew, since we had thought that the principle was our comfort.  But what do we do?  We kneel and work out new equations, tearing out pages from our scratch pad as quickly as we fill them with numbers and symbols ... while the natural phenomenon, habit, on its own, slowly weaves out a new fabric for us.  One day the fabric holds, and once again we believe ourselves to float “above reality.”  We are content again.  “The principle!” But what if I discarded all principle from the outset?  Set fire to all the scraps of paper around me?  What if I found it possible to have wicked thoughts even within the sterilized corridor of science?  What if I

Imagine the human task as a kind of game with clearly defined rules:  The only legitimate reality is that which we verify with our senses.  Consequently, reality is nothing more than surface and the relationships between surfaces.   “Mind,” “Depth,” “Meaning,” “Ideas,” “Other Worlds,” are unreal ... errors ... figments of an error-making organ, the brain. In short, wherever we can not reduce something “human” to mechanical explanation what we really have is fear. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

The Mind adds Infinity, then is divided by Reality which must then take away Infinity again to equal the Human Condition.  That is, we are less in mind for wanting to be more than reality ... that is, we are more or less fools. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

And cynicism shall set you free. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Patience is a virtue ... and God has kept me waiting for so long that I have finally had to admit this one gift from and evidence of Him.  I still wait, and he still teaches this last lesson ... this teacher of teachers.  Very soon now, my Patience will wax eternal. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

No hero really wants to die for something as much as he wants to live on in the minds of others.  The contentment of our sacrificial victims, then, requires our assistance: we must not only throw them into the volcano but must always bear them in mind. However, the ultimate sacrifice, from a purely Christian viewpoint, would be to sacrifice oneself for all of humanity without any reward whatsoever — even the endurance of one’s identity in the mind of others.  It is thus that God will soon redeem all and make that final, pure sacrifice ... as only God can do.  It pains me to think about it.  All this while we have been waiting for Him, when it is He who has been waiting for us. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Why I should not have to be an atheist: This is not a God-AntiGod world. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Why I am an atheist: God is a cultural reality ... just as an eye patch is a reality. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Answering the Christian: Why I have not abandoned myself to the Devil: If God is a white eye patch, then the devil is a black one. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Toward a healthier religion: The more authentic the stigmata of our saints the more proof we have against them. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Hell is that place where I have to beg forgiveness in order to enter ... and then apologize for having begged. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

God is not the ripcord I am to tape to my chest, nor is His religion a story of a parachute that will surely open when it is my turn to fall. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

The dishonesty lies not so much in the belief as in the reasons why we have no right to debate the assertion. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Genuine Spirituality: Granted, there exist those rare individuals with genuine fear and trembling before the prospect of eternal consequences.  But could we regard fear and trembling ... this flight away as a sincere attempt at the spiritual goal?  The greater the coward the worthier the spirit?   Beyond the horrors of Christianity, could we not find at least a few attempts which are sincere and courageous?  We protest, for we have seen attempts to rise higher, beyond the drive to dominate other people ... beyond complacency, greed or fear.  Does not this rare and nearly extinct species consistently strive for greater and greater solitary difficulties?  “What could be more difficult than to become a sincere Christian?”  becomes “What could be more difficult than the impossible?”  They seek greater resistance to prove greater ability ... to the point of finding the greatest resistance: “achieving the impossible.”  They want this impossibility even more than the eternal victory.  They wa

God is bold, not weak.  God does not cower before bold and honest questioning.  God does not vanish with disbelief or antagonism.  God does not garner in brow-beaten slaves.  God’s chosen are not the lowly, not the meek, not the sick.  God is the noble in us ... the resistance and not the compliance.  God is this Human Spirit ... that within us which stands up what would otherwise fall down.  So let us never again prostrate ourselves before an institution ... a book ... a history ... another human.  Let us be great ourselves ... for the real God shall only be seen by the godly ... in a glass ... and face to face. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

If there were a God, then there could only be one way to Him — and that would not begin with “God,” but with God’s reality.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

God, truly understood, would “set one free” ... even of “God.” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

I do not know enough about Heaven to speak of eternal consequences.  But in life itself — the one that ends after a few years — I have found an unpardonable sin: laziness, to be inconvenienced by my own reality. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Why are we more concerned with the name “God” than with the reality from which that name springs?  Is it something like a superstition after all to resist an air-vibration? ... as if a Pavlov would take a stand against using a church bell? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

20 Why is “Do I believe in God?”  not synonymous with “Do I know how to live?” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism