The Atheist’s Guide To Christmas is the ideal Christmas present – it’s funny and thoughtful and full of your favourite atheists, and with 42 contributions there’s something for everyone. Amazon are currently selling it at 35% off (just £8.44 for a hardback with free delivery). It’s fairly clean and friendly too, so is suitable for almost anyone, and it’s also full of jokes from page 1 onwards, as well as quotes from great atheists throughout history.

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• Do I please my partner?
• What is lacking in me that they have to do x, y, z?
• Why won’t anyone love me?
• Why won’t anyone see something worthwhile in me?

There are many more, and each one of them are valid concerns to the people that profess them, but I have decided that, in my next relationship, I don’t want them to apply to me.

A lot of my thoughts when it comes to relationships are what I like to call non-standard. The standard, or so it seems to me, often comes down to one a famous scene from the motion picture “Jerry Maguire,” when Tom Cruise states; “You complete me.” It wasn’t the first time such a phrase has been uttered in romantic fiction in any format, and it likely won’t be the last. It’s been a common theme for many years; idealising love to become something where person A can’t live without person B, and that they somehow are two halves of the same being. This incessant campaign has, in my view, caused more problems for budding romantic couples than it has inspired them to be together. Yes, there are couples out there who complement each other very well, some by a convenient, and elegant matching of neuroses, and others who are simply well matched personalities, where a deficiency in one is matched by a strength in the other, but those are not by any means the norm. People in such relationships are extremely fortunate, and are often the ones that are written about, with an author throwing in a good measure of angst for entertainment, and to maintain the illusion that these things have to be hard work to achieve.

When it comes to most relationships, I think Eddie Murphy said it best: “Find somebody perfect for you. I’m not saying they’re perfect people. I’m saying we ain’t perfect. Find somebody just as f***ed up as you are and settle down.” This isn’t perfect, but it’s much better advice than any romantic fiction will give!

In my humble opinion, the best relationships, including the ones mentioned above, happen when there is no dependence on validation from one another; where both partners are complete as individuals, where they accept each other as is, including habits or quirks that may be disliked. That is what should be the romantic baseline measure, but, ultimately, it doesn’t make for a good story; there’s no angst or pleading that one will change to please the other, and there are no glib little statements that make others dream of hearing the same words spoken to them, but that is a small price to pay in reality for a happy and peaceful coexistence.

In the end, nobody should have to wait to be completed, or wait to be appreciated. I’ve come to the conclusion that if I see myself as someone whole and worthy of companionship and love, then so will others. A good side effect of that means I’m also happy enough to wait for the right person for me, or be fine if she never comes along.

I complete me.

Or so they tell me.

Personally, I feel that life is not a dream, but it is shaped by perceptions.

What forms perceptions? Where do they come from? Why is my perception of the universe different from one person’s, yet remarkably similar to that of another?

Perceptions are like lenses. Some are there to protect, and some are there to clarify. When an event is observed, a series of lenses will re-shape that event in the mind. If, for example, I’ve survived a certain type of crime, then I will perceive that crime on another person through the lens of my experience, and it will appear a larger event to me than it would to someone who may not have been through what I have. This leads me to observe that the lenses of perception are born of experience. But how is it that two people will experience the same thing and come away with a different perceptions? This is because each experience is seen through pre-existing lenses. Prior experiences shape our view of the universe.

Because everyone has a unique set of circumstances, it’s nearly impossible to predict when a new lens of perception will be formed. Sometimes the lenses will be unchanged by an event, because there are sufficient perceptions built up for the mind to handle it, even though that experience has not happened before, and yet sometimes a seemingly trivial event will generate a whole new perception. These lenses are unique and personal. I can’t see the world through the eyes of another, and moreover, the language they use to relay their world is also translated through my own lenses. These lenses fit around all of the senses, filtering the world, altering it, brightening or darkening it.

There are, of course, some things that may be viewed as common lenses: faith and love are the ones that spring to mind most readily. The person I love will look more beautiful and wonderful to me than they will to another. If I were to follow a faith, any logic that goes against it will seem strange and alien to me. Many people have these lenses. I feel it is possible to consider these lenses as part of the self. That would explain people perceiving an opposing view as a personal attack, which is something that happens way too often.

It is also possible that a combination of lenses for me, and a completely different combination for someone else, will lead us both to see an event in the same way. Different experiences, different journeys on the path, leading to the same point is surprisingly common, I feel.

Now, to get back to dreams, there has been a lot written about changing the dream, or about sending a message to the universe to make something happen. There’s even the idea of writing a promissory note to oneself stating that the goal will happen. These things work for those who are willing to work towards their goals. If I promise that I will be published in the next few years, then I will have to finish writing a book that I feel deserves publishing. Saying that I will, but not doing the work is not going to get me to my goal. I feel that the people who write these promises, or send messages into the universe, are using these concepts not as a way to absolve them of the responsibility of doing the work, but more as a way to change their perception of the future. From a certain point of view, these methods help to remove a lens that may be holding a person back, or adding one that they needed to move forward.

Is it possible to take better control of the lenses of perception? Can they be seen as a route to self improvement and growth? That has to do with knowing where the perception came from. I was taught as a child that my writing was a fun pastime, but never something that I could earn a living with. This gave birth to the perception that I can only work on my book in my free time. This clouds my view, and leads me to do things that I perceive as more important as opposed to just writing. If I remove that perception, then I suddenly have more time to write, because writing then becomes more important in my perceived life.

This leads me to consider the concept of happiness; is it possible to shift perceptions to be responsibly happy? I’m not talking about rose coloured sunglasses, but just a more positive perspective on the challenges ahead. With the right lenses in place, any challenge can be realistically possible. And if all of life’s challenges, perceived or otherwise, are possible, then happiness is also possible.

But is there a way to remove all of the lenses, and observe the world as it truly is?

Of course, the question that immediately follows is; why would you want to?

Because the truth of life can only be seen with the naked eye. It may be a scary truth, and it definitely involves letting go of a lot of the views that have formed through the years. But then, is not the lack of perception a form of perception in itself?

Ultimately, life just is, but how it is experienced it is down to perceptions, and if those can be controlled, anything is possible.

Pardon me for rambling… It’s just how my thought processes work

Morality is subjective. While one person may believe monogamy is morally right, another may not, as an example. Of course, there are people for whom morality is not important, but I’m not thinking of extremes or criminal behaviour in this case.

What I’m trying to understand, and I hope I can with a little bit of good natured discussion, flame and drama free, is why it does not seem morally questionable for some people to impose their morals on others.

I have my morals, and I live by them. Some things I do, others would not agree with, of this I am positive. Others also do things that I don’t agree with, but I can’t seem to connect in my own head, a reasonable and moral train of thought that will allow me to tell them that they shouldn’t do the things I don’t agree with, unless there is a law against it, and that too, it has to be a law I agree with… Yes, I’m quite nuts, sometimes…

So, I open the floor to you, my wise and educated friends, to help me with this particular quandary

What if the Nazis had won?

They say history is written by the winner, and to a great extent, that is true, but if they would have won, one of the things that would have happened is that there would be no acceptance of another colour, race, religion, or lifestyle. We would all be straight blue eyed blondes, or dead.

Many men and women died to prevent that.

They died in preserving the foundation for our way of life today.

We must remember those men and women who are always on active duty. Those who laid down their lives to help form the world we live in today.

Spreading the blatant prejudice that is inherent in trying to ban marriages for those who are not like you, does not honour the fallen, because any statement that gives one human being more rights than another is the beginnings of selecting a new master race.

We are not all the same. And those who want everyone to believe the same thing, and be the same? Well… It’s been tried, and too many have died to stop it already.

Unless, of course, you think Hitler should have won, and we should all be Aryans. And yeah, if you do, then you are allowed to think that, because of the freedoms you enjoy.

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind…War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
~ John F. Kennedy

Of course, there is more to this, in history. There are things the Alliance didn’t do properly at the end of the war, and I am making this very black and white, but, as it is my journal, and these are my opinions, I can do it, again, because of the freedoms I enjoy.

And I was struck by it because to me, the Empire and the death star was always a right wing symbol, and a very left wing symbol superimposed on it made me laugh…

But the person who posted it seemed to think that the Empire and the Death Star embodied liberalism.

So I’m going to put this to the vote, to see what others think:

View Poll: Star Wars Geeks

Your face before you were born.

In my quest for an emancipated mind, I found this Koan. It stopped me, figuratively speaking, mid-stride. My mind flew directly to the works of Don Miguel Ruiz, and the word “Agreements” appeared before my eyes.

I interpret the “birth” in this question as the forming of a personality. The emerging of a mature person from a childhood they had no control over. The birth process began the first time right and wrong didn’t make sense, but had to be adhered to.

As an example, imagine the child of a religious homophobe. That parent will teach the child his or her own prejudices, even though they make no sense to the child. So the child, most often, grows up with the same unreasoning hatred as the parent.

To find my face before similar (but not as extreme as the example) lessons were taught to me by the world, is the starting point of my journey. Re-learning right from wrong is my re-birth. I want to keep that face. That mask-less visage that loves freely, and lives joyfully, secure in the knowledge that right and wrong are not fuzzy constructs imposed by ancient texts that seem to change based on interpretation and translation, or social norms that have not evolved with society.

Of course, that last bit is just my opinion

But I digress.

This question is now my purpose. To emancipate my mind, and find my original face. The tricky part, however, comes in keeping it while the world around me continues to dance to its own tune.

That step is often visualised as placing a foot on a road or path of some sort. I like to be a little different in my visualisations.

The first step, for me, comes long before my feet go anywhere. It’s the preparation for the journey I have decided to undertake. Packing, reading maps, that kind of thing. For this journey, though, the idea is to tear up the map of neural links that are in my mind.

But how do I do that?

The first step is to ask “Why?” at every step of my day.

“Why did I say that?”

“Why do I feel that way about this person?”

“Why do I like this food?”

“Why do my feet go that way when I walk?”

All of these are valid questions, and need to be asked if I’m going to figure out the details of where I came from.

But why am I so interested in where I came from? Because without that information; without those buried details that tell me how the neural links were formed, I have no idea how to break them.

As an example; I recently asked myself why I’m so interested in doing this. Why would I want to break out of such a safe comfort zone. After a lot of bravado, followed by honest soul searching and analysis, I finally came to a conclusion that mirrors my professional views: Just because I’ve done something that way for years, doesn’t make it the right way.

So I’ve started to abandon all of my little rituals. The kind of thing I’m talking about isn’t religious. It’s the order in which I may do things when I go to sleep, or when I wake up in the morning. I’m mixing it up, and proving to myself that the way I’ve been thus far may not be the only way there is. If I discover that I was doing something the best way, then I’ll resume that ritual, but if not, then I’ll try until I find a better way.

Of course, this is the beginning of a journey. The difficult part will come when I examine my beliefs and opinions. Those things will be harder to change, if I feel they need to.

This is my path, my route, my journey, my first step. I’ve made it tangible, something I can do physically, rather than something purely in my head. Why have I chosen this as my first step?

When a person is released from prison, they may walk free, but often they carry that prison in their mind for years. Freedom, after a life of enforced order, is a very scary thing.

Yes, it’s a scary journey, but it’s the one I’ve chosen. I will be happier in my own mind when I know that the thoughts are mind, and that all of the neural links in there are approved… I like a clean map

So many people claim to have it.

But what is it, really?

More to follow…