It's funny, but not not surprising, that we seem to have had some similar life experiences. The notion of ownership has been very transformative in my life, too. I can clearly recall several instances of what some might call an epiphany, where I experienced an overwhelming realization of ownership. These instances were all similar -- a sudden certainty, like a light turning on, that I was in the right place at the right time doing the right thing for the right reasons; and the not-unpleasant sensation of a new weight of responsibility settling on my shoulders, a weight I was comfortably able to bear. For the longest time, I had no word to describe these experiences, but I have come to view them as taking ownership. These experiences, and the habit of ownership that arose from them, have been very instrumental in any successes I have experienced in my life.
Every religion on the planet is probably eager to offer an interpretation of these experiences -- to frame them in the phraseology of its doctrines and mythologies. And I'm sure that you'll at least be tempted to interpret them in the context of NE. I will say that I've always been curious about the inner workings of the cosmos, and I would be glad to understand more deeply what's going on beyond the range of our limited senses. When faced with a decision, I often find myself wondering what would be the best outcome for the cosmos as a whole. But having awoken from the sleep of one belief system, mormonism, I am extremely averse to adopting any interpretation of events that cannot be grounded in the demonstrable, testable, falsifiable methods of science.
I have met several religious people who deride this attitude as "scientism." And they are right to criticize our overuse and misuse of reductionism in trying to understand the cosmos. Nevertheless, I strongly feel that the interpretive frameworks of religious, political, and -yes- philosophical ideologies carry risks that often outweigh the beneficial aspects of their claims. So I'm perfectly happy sticking with "I don't know" until I actually do "know." I try to bypass "I believe" altogether. And even then, I like to put an asterisk on "know*."
*provisionally
The risk that leaps out at me from your worldview, where you are the capital-C Creator of Everything, is that it would be extremely easy to mistake the desires and perceptions of your neurochemical makeup for what is "best." The older I get, the more acutely aware I become that everything is like a complex sculpture that you can't really understand until you view it from many angles. Our ideological commitments often have the tendency to lock us into viewing things from one particular, narrow angle. And so we come up with interpretations and solutions that make sense from that one angle, but that can wreak seven shades of havoc in every other direction.
Let me cite an example related to your text: diabetes. I'm also at genetic risk of that condition. If you view type II diabetes only as a blood sugar problem, then your focus is entirely on reducing blood sugar. If you're a doctor, you know that insulin reduces blood sugar, so you administer insulin. The problem is that to interpret type II diabetes as fundamentally a blood sugar problem is to ignore, or to be ignorant of the fact that type II diabetes is not a problem of too little insulin, but of too much. It is the condition of insulin resistance, and the proper treatment is to keep insulin levels as low as possible for as long as possible each day so that the body has time to process the vast oversupply of glucose that our carbohydrate-heavy diets constantly flood it with. Or better yet, reduce the intake of sugar and other carbs to a very low level all the time.
To understand and to cure the condition of type II diabetes, you have to have viewed it from more than just the perspective of the symptom of high blood sugar. If you do not, the treatment you apply -- administering insulin -- while it does lower the marker you're myopically focused on, ends up inflicting terrible damage on the organism as a whole. But the religious devotion to the gospel of Our Lady of Lowering Blood Sugar just keeps pouring gasoline on the already roaring fire of insulin resistance.
So, to bring this rant back around to the original point, when you interpret the notion of ownership in the context of being the Creator of Everything, it gives me the willies to contemplate what evil might not spring forth out of the mind of a powerful person in the thrall of a harmful ideology "owning" an interpretation of the world that seems good from the one peculiar angle of his worldview, but is tragically deleterious in the larger context.
If you haven't already deduced it, I consider that viewing the cosmos through the very Buddhist lens of Nothing and Everything, as you describe it in Paradox, carries with it the real risk of nudging one toward both nihilism and fatalism. Obviously, you find that it has benefits for you, and I can totally understand that viewpoint. But as I feel with all ideological lenses, I hope that you can carry it lightly, and retain the ability to hold it at arm's length so that you do not mistake that worldview for the world, and thereby become blind to its optical distortions -- that is, its risks and costs.
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