Silence reveals the supernatural reality

'You begin to hear things that only silence can reveal to you'. Photo from Jamberoo Abbey

To live in a way that rejoices in silence rather than in noise is to live a life that is countercultural and radical, as my previous post demonstrates in making introductory remarks on the profundity of silence. 

So, that people are prepared to give up what is normal in all human cultures - a job, a family, and the ability to determine the details of their life - and commit to a life of near silence in a community that has as its centre deep communication with the one who is love, is firm evidence of the reality of the non-material world. 

Monks and contemplatives are not crazy. They tell us that the impact that the trained use of silence has on a person is profound. For good reason, silence remains part of the young set's practice of yoga and meditation.   

But this is where Christian monasticism is so different from that practised by Buddhists; its in its understanding that God is among us and is inviting us to develop an intimate relationship.

Monastic communities such as the Carthusians, Trappists, Carmelites and Benedictines, along with the Orthodox monastics, have existed for hundreds of years, with Anthony of Egypt offering his monastic rule to his desert companions, both men and women, before he died in 356. 

"Silence is not just an absence of noise," says Sister Hilda Scott, the abbess of 24 Benedictine nuns at Jamberoo Abbey in rural New South Wales, Australia. She continues:

You begin to hear things that only silence can reveal to you. You begin to hear the movement of your own heart. You begin to hear your own motivations.

Scott, who has lived there for 30 years, says:

[Silence is] an extremely significant part of our life.... Indeed, our life wouldn't be possible without it. It's essential to our way of living.

She then highlights how silence rids a person of their blinkers, the mindset they are often unaware of but which controls their view of themselves and others, in fact, reality itself. She says: "Silence removes the filters that we put on life." 

There is a clearing of the mind - new thoughts emerge, and old ones become clearer.

Building on that, the community's silence is closely connected with prayer and with a continual communication with something that is "deep".

Their life of prayer is "not about us personally" but "for the rest of the world, too". It's a sacrificial offering of themselves in order to serve the whole world:

On our mountain at Jamberoo, there we are trying to live a deeper life. We believe while we’re trying to do that, then something's being breathed into the world that hopefully makes a difference.

In an environment that fosters silence, it has been said, it's easier to "benefit from striving for a connection to something bigger than one's self".  

Therefore, organise a quiet time of prayer, a small moment every day in which to experience silence. Scott advises:

For five minutes, every day, just five minutes, give yourself a time when there isn't any noise. Don't turn the radio on the minute you get into the car. Go and stand in your backyard, and listen to everything that's going on around you.

You begin to crave more and more. And you begin to crave the clarity of life that comes with it.

Those Christians whose heritage starts with Christ and not in the 1500s have great respect for those who are prepared to enter a community that praises God as its 'work", because that has proved to be the source of God's bounty to the Church and to the world.

Benedict, who inspired others to join him in what became known as the Benedictine order, was shocked by the poor moral and living conditions of the people in the decades after the sacking of Rome (in 410). His monasteries gave strength to the still struggling Christians and kept learning alive, teaching all sorts to read, to plant crops, and to build structures that would last for centuries.

Abbess Hilda Scott and her 23 companions are there to serve today's needs. Her comunity members bind themselves through the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to providing care and cabins for people to come for quiet, to pray and for counseling. 

The radical nature of their undertaking and their profound insight into the concrete reality of the supernatural (yes, a contradiction but true) is shown by the fact that the community's life most clearly espouses Marx's dictum: To each according to their need, from each according to their ability. The members are not consumerist borgs, nor emotive, personal brand promoting individualists, but servant followers of the God who is love.

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It's a 'radical act', but silence is the door to the soul

Erling Kagge - 'we don't wonder so much anymore'. Photo: Simon Skreddernes

Erling Kagge, 58, is a Norwegian explorer, publisher, author, lawyer, art collector, entrepreneur and politician. In 1993, he spent fifty days walking solo across Antarctica, a trek of 1300 kilometres, becoming the first person to reach the South Pole alone. He has also trekked to the North Pole and climbed Everest.

Drawing from his life, he wrote a "transformative meditation" with the English title Silence: In the Age of Noise (2019). The publisher's blurb states:

In this book. Kagge explores the silence around us, the silence within us, and the silence we must create. By recounting his own experiences and discussing the observations of poets, artists, and explorers, Kagge shows us why silence is essential to sanity and happiness—and how it can open doors to wonder and gratitude.

With the great Antarctic expanse surrounding him in all directions, he wrote in his journal on day 26 of that journey:

Here stillness is all-absorbing. I feel and hear it. In this endless landscape everything seems eternal and without limit.

For sure, over the eons of human experience silence has been known to be a portal to the supernatural.

In the world's wild places on land and at sea, Kagge gained a profound appreciation of silence. "Developed" societies have it that silence is "something that's empty, and amounts to nothing", according to an interview  last year on Australia's ABC Radio National. But for him, the opposite is true.

Silence is something, and it's rich; it's a quality. It's something exclusive and luxurious and a key to unlock new ways of thinking.

New ways of thinking! Yes! Get rid of those mental filters! But there is another matter of importance, as Kagge's interviewer writes: 

It's also something that can seem out of reach in the modern world, where switching off and slowing down can feel like radical acts.

It's important to acknowledge those "radical acts" and how such a commitment amounts to being "countercultural", which takes guts.

But Kagge gives us some leeway with his style of silence: "He discovered it's something you can find anywhere. ... It's there all the time — even when you're surrounded by noise. It's something we all have inside ourselves, waiting to be explored. It's an inner silence, a sense of deep stillness, which Kagge says has a lot to teach us about who we are." 

Kagge puts it this way:

I think most people are underestimating themselves in terms of silence and the possibility to get to know yourself. Some of the oldest advice throughout history is to get to know yourself, and I think any advice that has lasted for more than 1,000 years you should take seriously.

[Also,] most people have all this noise in our heads. Even if it's quiet around us we have noise in our heads, thinking too much.

Noise is always an easier option than silence. I think we are afraid of it because to explore your own silence is about making life a bit more difficult than it has to be, in the sense that the present hurts. It's easier to think about the past, about the future.

Silence is very much about being in the present. It's about getting to know yourself better. Sometimes that can be not very comfortable; it can be disturbing.

However, the interviewer reports that Kagge believes the rewards are bountiful - "His own inner silence has unlocked a deeper sense of gratitude for life, taught him that the simple pleasures hold the key to happiness, and helped him tap into a sense of wonder about the world."

Kagge says:

We were all born explorers, and if you look at kids, they are wondering all the time. But I think today we don't wonder so much anymore because if we are wondering about something we Google it and we find out right away. I think that's a pity because to wonder is one of the most beautiful things you can do in life.

The step-by-step approach to life is another element that he recommends, especially in this time of pandemic:

It's very much about pulling back, it's about cooling down, and it's also about being reminded about the secret to a good life is to keep your pleasures simple.

You can find the silence anywhere, wherever you are. And I think that's really important because you can't wait for silence to come to you, you have to invent your own silence. It's easier to find it in nature, at least for me, but you can find it anywhere. 

So, the message is to no longer be a "consumerist borg", but to be countercultural by focusing on the reality beyond the material and enjoying the bounty of the world instead of racing past it with headphones on. 

Ω For ideas on meditation, go here  

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Homosexuality as a fad; the sex-drenched society

The Netflix film Cuties - sexualised depiction of women starts young

Nothing is more passé than being straight these days: Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, the 23-year-old daughter of the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, said as much in an Instagram interview in which she spoke about what it meant to her to announce that she is queer.

In the interview she said her main concern when coming out was not with negativity from the wider society but that her own circle might think she was just trying to be trendy.

She said this fear arose because it’s “hip or cool to be not hetero in my liberal bubble”.

What! That young people make decisions on their sexual orientation for life on the basis of what is the latest fad! How sick is that? But it fits the pattern of the "transgender craze" that has erupted and the cluster phenomenon of a group of girls suddenly declaring they want to be male, going on to explain themselves with an outpouring of the "internet-speak" they have absorbed.

New York-based Guardian columnist and lesbian Arwa Mahdawi, whose partner recently gave birth to a daughter they will raise together, reacted with amazement at the nature of Kennedy-Cuomo's fear for her reputation.

Mahdawi said that when she came out 20 years ago she was afraid of being assaulted for being gay. Now, instead of inciting "widespread slurs", being gay is "something that the privileged offspring of politicians reckon is a badge of honour".

Homosexuality as purely a status symbol!

Not taking away respect for homosexuals, if this is how young people make their decisions under the macabre influence of social media and the mainstream media's delight in highlighting weird self-invention,  then they are bound to suffer the death of their psyche, given how they have adopted the lie fed them by the elite who often create, certainly cultivate, the latest fashions in lifestyle as much as in entertainment or clothing. There's no fun in such fashions, however, as by their warped nature they eventually kill their followers' spirit - we all pity the ill-fated follower of fashion!

Kennedy-Cuomo also revealed that she had experimented with several flavours of sexuality (such as bi- and pan-) before deciding that hers is of the demi- variety.

That was another element that jarred with Mahdawi:

Last time I checked, demisexuals weren’t exactly an oppressed minority fighting for equal rights. They are just people who aren’t sexually attracted to others unless they form a strong emotional bond with them first.

Furthermore:

Acting as if needing to get to know someone before jumping into bed with them constitutes a marginalised sexual orientation that needs a flag seems to play into the hands of rightwingers who are desperate to argue that liberals are narcissists with a victimhood complex.

That said, I don’t think demisexuality should be written off as attention-seeking. Indeed, I think it’s instructive to look at what the rise of demisexuality says about sexuality more generally; Kennedy-Cuomo, after all, is just one of a growing number of (mostly) young people [my emphasis - BS] who have latched on to the label in recent years.

Note "latched on to"! Hardly, language to confirm that the state discussed relates to a innate personal attribute.

Then Mahdawi gets to a second point of importance when discussing sexuality today:

The fact that there was a need to come up with a term like “demisexual” (which was coined in 2006) shows how sex-drenched society has become. The portrayal of women in the popular media has become increasingly sexualised. Porn has never been so accessible. Dating apps such as Tinder mean it has never been so easy to hook up.

It all starts young, especially for girls, as was highlighted earlier this year when Facebook announced Instagram for Kids. In a letter to the company, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an advocacy group that often leads campaigns against big tech and its targeting of children, wrote of Instagram: 

The platform’s relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation, and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and wellbeing. Younger children are even less developmentally equipped to deal with these challenges, as they are learning to navigate social interactions, friendships, and their inner sense of strengths and challenges during this crucial window of development.

A coalition of 35 consumer advocacy groups along with 64 experts in child development co-signed the letter, which also stated: "Adolescent girls report feeling pressured to post sexualized selfies for attention from their peers". As well:

Citing public health research and other studies, the letter notes that excessive screen time and social media use can contribute to a variety of risks for kids including obesity, lower psychological well-being, decreased quality of sleep, increased risk of depression and suicide ideation, and other issues.

By their fruit you will know them! Another impact on young people's lives from corporate profit-seeking and the slavery of consumerism is stressed by Mahdawi:

Here’s the funny thing, though: while pop culture has become more and more sexualised, statistics show that young people are actually having far less sex than previous generations. There has been a lot of hand-wringing about hook-up culture, but it may be more of a media invention than a reality.

Indeed kids these days seem to spend more time describing the exact specifications of their sexuality and where it sits on various spectrums than they do actually having sex. Sex is supposed to sell, and it’s being sold to us willy-nilly – but as the rise of demisexuality shows, fewer people seem desperate to buy into what we’ve been told sexuality is supposed to look like.

The harm here comes in the form of young people turning to temporary sexual relationships - plural - and putting off a healthy search for one partner in life, in marriage, with a willingness to commit to the fruitful outcome that is children.

Especially, Mahdawi, as a new mother and obviously endowed with moral seriousness, is disturbed by the mental and emotional massaging of a sexual nature that goes on in the West, and increasingly in other societies, through all media and their accomplice, the entertainment world. Her terms, "sex-drenched society" and "increasingly sexualised" and "[sex is] sold to us willy-nilly" convey to me that this New York resident is very worried at the direction of society.

Rightly so! How can young people see the video of Cardi B's WAP, and note the awards given the song, and not have a shamed (girls) and scornful (boys) view of women? No wonder girls want to shed that female persona!

A second case of a woman letting down the side comes with the predicament that Billie Eilish found herself in after posing in a set of corsets. She had to withstand some disappointment from fans, even ridicule, but retorted with cussing repeating, "It's all about what makes you feel good".

Eilish is only 19 and so we can give her some leeway in sorting out what's important. Reportedly she told British Vogue:

My thing is that I can do whatever I want. It’s all about what makes you feel good. If you want to get surgery, go get surgery. If you want to wear a dress that somebody thinks that you look too big wearing, f**k it – if you feel like you look good, you look good.

New York Post also quotes a sympathetic fan:

“Guys, can we please realize that Billie is finding herself and that she is happy with the way she is and that is all that should matter. Billie is only 19 years old. She’s been [in] the public eye since she was 15 and she is finding herself. She don’t [owe] us anything.”

But the ET outlet identifies the contradiction of a young woman showing off her assets in a sexualised manner while campaigning for a positive view of women in society:

Eilish's new music also tackles the idea of men taking advantage of underage girls. She knows that this message combined with her more mature look will raise eyebrows.

Obviously, Eilish did not learn from the earlier instance of misuse of a photo - she has reported how her "boobs were trending on Twitter!" - or from the mockery that Emma Watson encountered after baring her breasts in - again - a women's fashion magazine in 2017. The mockery arose because Watson's interview had dwelt on serious topics like women's empowerment whereas she was seen to have let herself be milked by the magazine for greater sales.

A wag put these words into Watson's mouth: "Women's rights! Feminism! Social justice! Hey, look at my tits!" For both Watson and Eilish, certainly be proud of one's body, but don't let yourself be part of the abuse of women by the corporate elite in their profiteering by broadcasting sexualised images of girls and women. Learn the difference between liberation and objectification. It can come down to the question: "Who makes the money?"

This post has given attention to the diverse sources of concern about how the soft oppression of young people bolsters the malaise that is building in Western society, and rapidly elsewhere. The manipulation of the young and innocent by promoters of a set of false principles relating to sexual orientation, and feminism, is causing harm on a personal level and it is destroying the health of society as a whole.

The solution is to take stock, to start from the fact that young people are trapped in a toxic culture that prevents them from knowing the joy that flows when a person has learnt to be self-disciplined enough to be in control of their own intellectual and emotional life.

For that, they need goals and the support along the way that Western society no longer provides. Western society needs to return to the basics of our civilisation and learn again that God made us, and in opening up a relationship with us, makes it possible for us to know ourselves, how to be the best person we can be. That's the kind of self-invention we need.

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In the prison of my subjective feelings

A prison of our own making - photo by Enrico Hänel from Pexels

One time when the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was at a magnificent waterfall that many people were admiring he overheard one visitor describe the scene as "sublime" whereas another called it "pretty". Coleridge decried the expression of "pretty" as failing to match the reality of the sight.  

The academic and writer C S Lewis explains Coleridge's disgust:

The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions. ...  'Can you be righteous', asks Traherne, 'unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.'"

When people are in a group where there is an argument going on, each of those arguing looks for support on the basis of what everyone should agree to, what is logical, what is true to that which exists in the real world, and akin to that, what is the God-given reality. In other words, each party in practice points to some objective moral or intellectual value that the other side has violated. Each side ought to know, but often doesn't, that it is pointless to say "I don't care what you say, I have my own opinion - [or worse] - I have my own facts".

To speak about the objectivity of moral and intellectual values means there's something outside of what I think or I feel - my subjectivity - and things are right and wrong or good and bad in reality, for reasons that everyone must agree to because, on consideration, those reasons can be arrived at logically or because they can be observed and their meaning agreed to.

We have our own feelings and emotions but we have to live in the real world. Therefore, we have to train ourselves to react in an appropriate manner to what we encounter. The child has to learn "to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful", as Plato wrote. Teachers help the young learn of the richness that lies in Shakespeare's lines, or in the works of other writers or artists that have lasted the test of time - esteemed because they are seen as being true to life and therefore valuable in understanding the human experience.

Some in education, especially, come up with methodologies or concepts they want introduced into the curriculum. They often shy from expressing an objective value for their innovations but say they are important because they are "necessary" or "progressive", or "effective". However, Lewis states:

They could be forced by argument to answer the questions 'necessary for what?', 'progressing towards what?', 'effecting what?'; in the last resort they would have to admit that some state of affairs was in their opinion good for its own sake.

Objectivity relating to intellectual and moral values is not just a Western concept. Lewis refers to the principle being the basis of the Tao, the ultimate reality,  and acknowledges Hinduism's focus on what is known as Rta:

In early Hinduism conduct in men which can be called good consists in conformity to, or almost participation in, the Rta — that great ritual or pattern of nature and supernature which is revealed alike in the cosmic order, the moral virtues, and the ceremonial of the temple. Righteousness, correctness, order, the Rta, is constantly identified with satya or truth, correspondence to reality. 

Unfortunately, what worried Lewis, Coleridge, and Plato, is now widely accepted, namely that values such as what is good, what is beautiful and what is true "are just expressions of my subjective point of view, my subjective feelings". This means there are no principles outside ourselves that determine how we should behave or what degree of respect we should give to others. Here is where we pick up the content of a talk given by Catholic Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles.

He expresses what is the common sentiment of younger age groups: 

"Don't tell me what to think; don't tell me how to behave; don't tell me what's beautiful. My subjective feelings determine value and what's the matter with that?"

That attitude of a young person going into life draws a heartfelt response:

Do you see everybody how it locks us into these little prisons - the little prison of my subjective consciousness of my immediate feelings, and how the realm of objective value breaks us out of these pathetic little prisons and allow us now to explore worlds beyond my little arena of feeling and subjective apprehension?

To be drawn by a great master [artist] into the realm of objective value - it opens my life in such a wonderful way.

Another problem with this hyper-subjectivism is we're locked in our little prisons affirming our own feelings all the time - it sets us necessarily against one another if my feelings are incommensurate with yours. My feelings have no real reference to an objective value. All I can do is fight with you. We can't appeal together to some transcendent "third" by which our feelings are measured. No, we're just now in a war of feeling against feeling, this little prison that leads to warfare. I'm afraid that's where a lot of people find themselves today. That's the default position of a lot of people.

Break out of the prison! What gets you out is objective moral, intellectual, and aesthetic value. What opens the door toward real communion [is that] together we fall in love with Shakespeare, together we fall in love with Dante.... Good, now we've transcended this little petty world.

I know you hear this all the time, but don't let them seduce you with this suffocating subjectivism. Rather be open to the realm of the objective.

Michael Sandel, a political philosophy professor at Harvard, says in his book What Money Can't Buy, "We need to reason about how to value our bodies, human dignity, teaching and learning." He means we ought to use our intellectual powers to arrive at principles that allow us to agree on the reality of all that is important. The purpose of that is to create a harmonious society. For example, we need to go beyond scientific findings and find the deeper values of matters like patriotism, family, solidarity and justice. 

In an interview on that book, he is asked if there is "any downside to engaging with the world through the eyes of moral philosophy, rather than simple market logic?"

His answer is: "None but the burden of reflection and moral seriousness."

Rather than charging into debates on important issues flailing about with hot emotions or pure assumption, we need to identify values that are relevant to the context, that provide essential meaning. Sandel gives a topic related to his book's subject matter to illustrate his approach and he points to the goal of social discourse:

"Consider the language employed by the critics of commercialisation," he writes. "'Debasement', 'defilement', 'coarsening', 'pollution', the loss of the 'sacred'. This is a spiritually charged language that gestures toward higher ways of living and being." 

Those "higher ways" point to the importance of understanding the distinction between subjective and objective values. Lewis and his short work The Abolition of Man (see here) states that emotions "can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it". Further: 

Either we are rational spirit obliged for ever to obey the absolute values of the Tao, or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own natural impulses. Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery. 

All the more reason to escape from the horror house of subjectivity, that small prison of self-invention and emotional self-absorption. 

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Christian meditation app fills the gap

Jump into this video here for insight into a richer experience

Sam Harris is a writer and podcaster with a background in neuroscience. His is the youngest face of the "New Atheism"  brigade, which we don't hear about so much now because it has become clear that it is a touched-up version of traditional atheism.

However, Harris has gone on to promote Mindfulness, a well-meaning fad that has a business side attracting products such as Jimmy Kimmel's Mindfulness Coloring Book or the emag, 108 Mindfulness Lessons, which offers advice on surviving test stress and other student difficulties.

Harris' interest in mediation dates from his college days and his Waking Up app has been well-received. However, he has given his attention mostly to the Hindu and Buddhist strain of meditation, ignoring the riches of the Christian experience.

This is where those who want a more complete form of meditation, one that aligns with the hunger for a relationship with the deepest element of reality, that is, God, need to turn to groups such as the long-established World Community for Christian Mediation. This is "a global spiritual community united in the practice of meditation in the Christian tradition. It shares the fruits of this practice widely and inclusively, serving the unity of all and building understanding between faiths and cultures."

The community serves people in all kinds of situations, including business people and physicians."Members of WCCM span more than a hundred countries. There are about sixty-seven national coordinators. Its international centre is Bonnevaux – an ancient monastic site now dedicated to global peace and dialogue around the daily practice of meditation – near Poitiers in France."

For the latest community news on its website have a look here, and jump into the mediation page here. 

Watch the video titled The Pilgrimage - The Way of Christian Meditation here. Access the WCCM app here 

Sam Harris is right that we must do something to rid ourselves of the "habitual distraction" that contends with us for control over our time and mind space -  "your thoughts are incessantly appearing and capturing your attention and deluding you", he says.

But you can see how more profound  the Christian experience is when meditation is regarded as the pathway to deep attention to God, leading us to "feel the feelings of God". That is the path to follow!

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All belief points to a spiritual capacity

Detail from art by Lia Halloran A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader.

New Scientist magazine has a series of articles on the topic of "Effortless thinking". One is titled "The god-shaped hole in your brain". 

The profound implications on the issue of the mind having a spiritual capability beyond what the brain produces are clear when the author writes:

If God designed the human brain, he (or she) did a lousy job. Dogged by glitches and biases, requiring routine shutdown for maintenance for 8 hours a day, and highly susceptible to serious malfunction, a product recall would seem to be in order. But in one respect at least, God played a blinder: our brains are almost perfectly designed to believe in him/her.

This is akin to the point of the famous passage from man-of-the-world Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions in which he states:

Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we men, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you – we also carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. 

The New Scientist writer also goes into the kindred matter of " the powerful and very human attribute we call belief":

Beliefs define how we see the world and act within it; without them, there would be no plots to behead soldiers, no war, no economic crises and no racism. There would also be no cathedrals, no nature reserves, no science and no art. Whatever beliefs you hold, it’s hard to imagine life without them. Beliefs, more than anything else, are what make us human. They also come so naturally that we rarely stop to think how bizarre belief is.

In 1921, philosopher Bertrand Russell put it succinctly when he described belief as “the central problem in the analysis of mind”. Believing, he said, is “the most ‘mental’ thing we do” – by which he meant the most removed from the “mere matter” that our brains are made of. How can a physical object like a human brain believe things? Philosophy has made little progress on Russell’s central problem.

The writer of this series reveals in one article that he is an atheist, but he does his readers a service by stating clearly key elements of what humans have experienced of the spiritual world.  

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When the front door of the mind is locked

What's allowed in? Kevin Bidwell photo - Pexels

J R R Tolkien wrote, “Myths, fantasies, and stories can open the heart’s back door when the front door of the mind is locked”. Already around the middle of last century he had recognised that the common mindset had become "If I can't see it, it doesn't exist". That "front door" is often the "plausibility structure" that individuals unconsciously construct in their way of thinking, and these days many commentators have expressed dismay at the shallowness of thought generally - typical examples here and here. 

A second element that impacts our pattern of thinking - what we accept as plausible - is the lack of ongoing contact with a rich variety of people outside the "we" group determining our reactions. Therefore, there is a lot of "emotional" responses to stimuli as against calmer reasoning as to best behaviour or where the truth lies.

In this connection, longtime readers of this blog will know that one area of interest of mine is how the supernatural realm is sometimes unveiled, but the wonder can be glossed over because of predetermined habits of mind, or simply by the distractions of this digital age. 

In my previous post, the experience of one survivor of the Florida apartment collapse is highlighted because the chain of events that led to her survival readily prompts recognition as a reality that prayers are effective. As she told reporters who took her account, she felt it necessary to thank God for keeping her safe, given she had lit a prayer candle before an icon of Our Lady of Guadelupe, signifying her belief that God answers prayers made through the intercession of other Christians, on earth or in heaven.  

Further, in a post here I report an account of a father who was part of a series of miracles in bringing an adopted son from China and seeing the boy's medical problems overcome. 

Now, I want to offer two more cases of people whose experiences are inexplicable other than that they arose from an encounter with the spiritual realm. The source of this information, the same as above, is a trustworthy author and journalist. He writes:

 A] I know that the divine is truly present in some things and places, and not in others. I also believe that the demonic is likewise present in some things and places. I once interviewed a woman who could not get books to stop flying off her shelves in her house until she burned and buried the ashes of two little humanoid wooden figures she and her late husband had bought at a bazaar in rural Indonesia on a vacation. She had not imagined it, but those objects had been used in some kind of wicked ritual. When she placed them on her bookshelf, she would wake up the next morning to find all the books splayed on the floor. 

B] If you have ever been part of an exorcism or a deliverance rite, you know that holy water is not the same thing as water that comes out of the tap. People who are demon possessed, it burns them. A couple of years ago, I was in Manhattan visiting friends. The wife of the family is possessed, and under the care of an exorcist. When her husband brought out a blessed object he had concealed, she reacted badly, her face changing, and a voice not her own coming out of her, cursing the presence of this object. I saw this with my own eyes. The poor wife apologized, and said, “I’m sorry, that’s not me.”

Store these accounts in your heart. They are not "stories" in Tolkien's sense of being fictional but they can contribute to a deeper mindset, one that accepts that there is a greater richness to life than meets the uncurious eye or the distracted consumerist world view. Each of us has a responsibility to form our "plausibility structure" in an independent fashion in order to better know the truth when we meet it, the truth that will set us free.

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