Gloria Taylor Brown, president of the American Women of Wisdom Foundation, affirms:
“The shift in paradigm will require that men and women see each other as we really are. We will both have to step into who we are for the good of all concerned. If I want a positive relationship with a man, then it is necessary for me to see the good in him. We will have to support one another completely, both as individuals and as a couple.
We will have to honor the God and Goddess in one another. It’s what the Hindus are doing when they say, “Namaste” – I bow before the Divine in you. That is the way we must learn to see one another. We will have to learn to see the best in each other, to say, “The God in me honors the God in you.” And this means redefining our concepts of what constitutes a relationship.
There are many kinds of relationships. For many, sex is simply an animalistic urge to reproduce, but we can look beyond the body and simply have a spiritually based relationship” [15].
You’ll agree that this is a distinctive worldview, but it doesn’t simply fall from the sky; it can only be acquired by studying the corresponding books or attending seminars of such people as Gloria Brown.
Scholars define four basic types of worldview: religious, scientific, philosophical and skeptical. They’re probably right; among people you can find representatives of all these types. But we don’t plan to study them in detail; we’re more interested in knowing, what are the proportions between them? We came to the somber opinion that no less than 90% of people are skeptics.
We already showed that practically none of those people who count themselves believers know even the fundamentals of their religion. A scientific worldview is held only by scientists, and philosophical only by philosophers, who together with scientists make up an insignificantly small layer of society. There are so many skeptics that they even form their own societies and take great pride in their skepticism, considering it, to all appearances, a sign of great intelligence. They proclaim – we won’t be deceived or cheated; we aren’t gullible simpletons, easily sucked in by any old drivel.
The basic principle of skeptics’ thinking is doubt, the notion that everything which lies beyond the bounds of one’s personal experience is unreal or fallacious. More often than not, elementary ignorance is hiding behind skepticism, and skeptics, ashamed (or not ashamed), hide this with a proud denial of everything they cannot comprehend due to the limits of their knowledge. And all the skeptic’s knowledge, as we already revealed, flows from his or her personal knowledge, which is often highly insignificant – it’s all just like in one famous parable about twins.
The Parable “The Twins’ Discussion”
“Two twins held a discussion in the womb of a pregnant woman. One of them believed in the combing life, the other was a skeptic.
Second Twin: You believe in life after birth?
First Twin: Yes, of course. Everyone knows that life after birth exists. We’re here so that we can become strong enough and ready for what awaits us later on.
Second Twin: That’s stupid! There can’t be any life after birth! Can you imagine what such a life would look like?
First Twin: I don’t know all the details, but I believe that it will be brighter and that we might walk on our own and eat with our mouths.
Second Twin: What foolishness! It’s impossible to walk on one’s own and eat with your mouth! That’s just ridiculous! We have an umbilical cord that feeds us. You know, I want to tell you: there can’t exist life after birth because our life is our umbilical cord, and it’s far too short.
First Twin: I’m sure that it’s possible. Everything will simply be a little bit different. That’s conceivable.
Second Twin: But nobody’s ever returned from there! Life just ends with birth. And in general life is just one big instance of suffering in darkness.
First Twin: No, no! I don’t know exactly how our life after birth will look, but in any case, we’ll see Mom, and she’ll take care of us.
Second Twin: Mom? You believe in Mom? And where is she?
First Twin: She’s all around us, we reside in her, and thanks to her we move and live; without her, we simply can’t exist.
Second Twin: Complete foolishness! I haven’t ever seen any Mom, and as such it’s clear that she simply doesn’t exist.
First Twin: I just can’t agree with you. Sometimes, when everything quiets down, you can even hear how she sings and feel how she touches our world. I firmly believe that our real life will begin only after birth.”
The discussions in this book are about things that are just as strange for many people as life after birth for one of the twins. For this reason, the question of faith and of its formation, on which is based our specific worldview, which then affects the form of our entire lives, demands detailed examination. We’ll immediately take a moment to make a very positive note: faith and worldview can change, drastically and quickly. So the skeptics and ignorant who are mired in their prejudices do not face a fatal diagnosis. Full emancipation (in other words enlightenment) from these grievous ailments is possible for everyone who really wants it. Those who really want happiness must first cure themselves of ignorance. This is possible under the following set of circumstances:
First: strong dissatisfaction with one’s life.
We emphasize the word strong. Almost everyone experiences simple dissatisfaction, but it’s not enough to start change.
Discontent with one’s current situation must be so sharp that it at least leads to sleeplessness.
Second: admission that one’s personal experience is too insignificant to reveal the path to life change.
Third: understanding of the fact that if there are after all happy people in the world, this means that in principle it is possible to achieve happiness.
Fourth: rejection of fatalism, the feeling of resignation, the opinion that some prewritten fate rules over the will of mankind.
We are sure that the facts presented in this book completely suffice to fulfill this condition.
Fifth: agreement that people are not born happy, but become happy, and that this means there is some sort of concrete recipe (unknown to the majority of people) for achieving this condition.
Remember that there are thousands more well-known “rags to riches stories” than stories about those “born with a silver spoon.”
Sixth: understanding that if recipes for a happy life exist, then they are written down somewhere and this information can be found.
Seventh: preparedness to receive new knowledge; rid yourself of any fear of it.
Eighth: rejection of the concept that everyone around you is a self-interested cheat and put your skepticism to rest at least while reading this book.
Our experience shows that change in worldview proceeds along two paths:
First path: natural, slow change in understanding as the result