Doubt and Reassurance Volume II

By Don Ray

We know too much to believe, too much of science and suffering, genes and genocides, DNA and disasters. Old answers and even old questions seem irrelevant. But still we want to understand, though understand we know not what. The time has come again, that ancient time of wrenching change.As Aztec gods burned at the hands of the Spanish, as telescopes and microscopes unmasked the facades of myth and magic, again our gods fall. The shiny baubles of possessions that have held our transfixed attention, as a dangling mobile entrances the infant in a crib, are torn down by our own greedy grasp.The sparkling trophy-houses and SUV's, the hedge funds and stock derivatives, lie shattered on the floor. We stand in the crib of this world, look around at the gods and spiritual pacifiers lying on the floor, and realize we are left with...only each other...and the God revealed in the infant eyes peering through the bars of our individual cribs. Designed for the limited reading time of the modern lifestyle, the "moment for reading" format of Doubt & Reassurance weaves a continuous tapestry of deeply personal spiritual relevance by employing threads of bite-sized entries of thought provoking insight, encouragement, enlightenment, inspiration, and the occasional kick in the spiritual backside. With no institutional corner to call its own, Doubt & Reassurance calls to every corner, rattling liturgical cages and invoking surprising science. Doubt & Reassurance appeases the gnawing spiritual hunger of the modern world by addressing everyone's personal experience....the experience of the individual intellectually torn from their fundamentalist background by education; the orthodox atheist raised on science yet feeling an inexplicable sense that there must be more; the modern Asian on the way to their high tech job while commuting past the temples in which their family still worships...these diverse paths converge onto a commonly shared, universal human awareness of...?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Ray
• Release date: Dec 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466042070

Don Ray

Some degrees in physics, some time in research laboratories and thatched hut villages, some teaching in universities and management in international technology: all sound like credentials to lend credibility to the role of author. But such experiences provide only tools and terminology and opportunity, not wisdom and insight. You and I share the same foundation for whatever wisdom and insight we may glean out of life, the joys and grief, the celebrations and hunger that make up daily living. I hope through this book my knowledge of physics and funerals, science and spirit, quanta and cultures, can help you bridge the illusory gap between intellect and heart. If so, that will happen not through transfer of wisdom, but through an opening of windows to allow realization of your own wisdom. Questioning "what" and "how" led me to universities and degrees in physics. Questioning "why" led me to cathedral and temple and mosque. I have been blessed to learn from a winner of the Einstein Award and from village shamans. But such learning seems inconsequential in comparison to life's lessons: the grim look on the face when after the wreck you ask "will she be OK?"...the feel of the hospital sheets after the stroke...and every warm embrace and authentic smile and sincere welcome. I am grateful to professors and priests, research centers and jungle shrines. But they provide only the paint color to be applied to the structure built of the scope of real life, built of pets and people, love and loneliness, homes and hospitals. I pray my degrees and travel, survival and losses that led to my books can bring a little light to your very real life and reveal to you the brightness of your heart's wisdom and the Source awaiting our discovery.

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Doubt and Reassurance Volume II

(Also available in soft-cover print editions)

Dr. Don Ray

Don Ray's work published by Quantum Embrace Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright © 2011 Don Ray

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this e-book. Even if you received a free version, it remains the copyrighted property of the author. But since the author’s intent is to spread a reassuring message, you are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Guide tips for this journey:

You should know what you’re getting into, so here’s an overview.

In looking at the nature of the entries in this book, to include some contrived list of chapters just seemed like deceptive advertising, implying far greater organization and rational planning than I could ever muster.

Instead of distinct elements and topics conveniently lending themselves to a socially acceptable compilation of chapters worthy of a passing grade in English class, the entries are arranged in a progressive direction. They grimly start out heavy on the doubts. But then, in the spirit of a climbing expedition in which you have to start the summit ascent in the middle of the night, about the time you feel you can’t stand stumbling through any more darkness you seem to notice that just maybe you can discern a little bit more light, and soon, although the darkness still surrounds, you can see beyond the attenuated beam of you headlamp, and your spirits lift with the reassurance that warming sun lies just over the horizon.

So if in reading you begin to doubt you can handle any more grim assessments of the state of the world, fast-forward to the sunrise and reassurance by skipping to the later sections. Within those later sections you reach the summit for this climb, a feeble stab at a summary of the Purpose that the condition of the world and humanity so majestically fulfills.

Whether you take the long technical route or a shorter, more scenic trail, I pray the burden of your doubts is somewhat lightened, and the waxing glow of reassurance assists your route finding.

Of course on any trail, landmarks and mile-markers can provide some reassurance that at least you’re not totally lost. So here are some things to watch for along the way. It seems more accurate to call them landmarks and milestones, but editing software insists I call them:

Table Of Contents

* Part I: The world’s a mess. We’re a mess.

No point pretending otherwise

*Part II Physical brains, disabilities, guilt, confession,

Whoo hoo! Now we’re having some fun!

*Part III: Hints of growing light and approaching spring.

About darned time, huh?!

* Part IV: The metaphysical structure, purpose, and ontological foundation of existence and eternity.

Say what?!

* Part V: Corollaries arising from the metaphysical structure, purpose, and ontological foundation of existence and eternity.

Say what again?!

**********************

Part I

Got doubts about the world in which we live and the lives we lead? When doubts are well placed and justified, at least some reassurance is to be found in knowing that someone else shares those doubts.

Part I

(back to table of contents)

Why our morbid fascination with mass shootings, the shooters, and the next disaster?

Look at all those hits on my website in the twelve hours after posting an essay about the Virginia Tech massacre! (April, 2007)……Such a fascination we have with disaster and evil.

Why should bad news, disaster, evil, mayhem, war, murder, and violence so capture our interests?

Is it simply because such events pose a potential threat to us? If it happened to them, it could happen to me, so I better stay informed. Or does our interest in these events reflect some innate interest in evil itself?

No doubt, psychologists have published volumes on this subject which I have no qualifications to discuss.

But I can at least consider the source of my own curiosity.

Does this curiosity about evil arise from the same source as my curiosities about the baffling behavior of physics at the quantum level, the bizarre life forms living equally bizarre life cycles in coral reefs, and the mind boggling variety of planets and nebulae and moons that inhabit this universe?

Does this curiosity about evil ironically stem from a desire to know God, whether we believe in God or not?

Somehow it’s hard to ignore tales and rumors of entities and events that just might shed a little light on the mysterious, hidden workings of the universe that shapes our lives. As kids we gathered in macabre reverence around the dead cat in the empty lot, morbidly intent on learning what did happen to the dead, which was really to ask, what does happen to us?

Finding a few animal bones in the woods is always worthy of a pause for inspection, for after all, aren’t there bones in us, though we can’t see them, and here before us is a chance to see the un-seeable and extrapolate the discovery to understanding our own makeup.

Tales of ghosts in the bed-and-breakfast in which we spent the night, an article about an Unidentified Flying Object, the mystic’s description of visiting avatars, all such things arrest our attention, and arrest it to a greater degree than the astonishing and verifiable discoveries of science.

We gape in insatiable curiosity around any liturgical hawker’s booth that purports to unveil some aspect of the reclusive creator of that universe.

The itinerant avatar, the tale of reincarnation, and the paranormal event, all provide tantalizing hints of that which we suspect, and perhaps hope for, that there is more, something beyond this material world we see, something more profound than our daily routine and physical body and common death.

And finally, in the unspeakable acts of Jack the Ripper and Cho Seung Hui, like the animal bones that grab our attention in the woods, we see exposed something that might reveal some aspect of the inner workings of a vaguely discerned realm of evil and good that might underlie this temporal world.

Do we see exposed in such acts the bones of something that resides in each of us, or some aspect of an eternal battle between good and evil, or some dark past from which our souls are trying to evolve, or some glimpse of the demonic forces that battle the good God that we hope also exists?

We don’t even understand enough to know why we are curious, intrigued, and irresistibly drawn to those reports about the mind of the killer. But we know we are drawn. There is something we want to know, we need to know, and chance discoveries of a dead cat, or bones by a trail, or news of a horrific exercise in evil might reveal to us a little of what is usually kept as mystery and secret.

We will peer into the reports and articles that direct their analytical light into the shadowy depths of the mind and soul of the mass murder. But we will never see very far into that abyss.

Yet there is something else to be learned from our watching the news and reading the reports. Our interest and curiosity themselves can teach us a lesson.

In our interests we cannot deny an instinctive awareness that there is something we should understand, something about that dead cat and those bones and that demented mind that can teach us something about ourselves and the unseen influences that shape this worldly life.

We need not wait for the chance childhood discovery of the deceased animal to learn about bones and biology.

And we need not wait for the breaking news event to ask questions about the nature of good, evil, and their manifold manifestations in human life.

In following our curiosity about what lies within, we ask what invisible bones underlie our life structure. In asking what lies without, we ask what forces and mysteries and mystical influences shape behavior and events. Perhaps we will discover those questions come together and arrive at the same answers.

Perhaps we should let the chance discoveries and