Our Personal Cosmology

2015-02-02

During our discussion in the online study group on Tuesday we talked about the fact that we each have a cosmology. This is sometimes called a world view or paradigm. Or put more simply, it’s our picture of how the world that we experience from moment to moment really works. Sometimes this cosmology is arrived at through years of study, contemplation, experience, etc. But often it’s just an unexamined collection of assumptions and conditioning. Upon further reflection we might identify three main sources for our cosmology as shown below:

The difficulty, as noted in previous posts is that our cosmology has a significant influence on our reasoning process, because it essentially defines how we think things happen and what we think is possible to happen in a given situation. When I use the term ‘difficulty’ it’s because all three of these elements contain certain limiting or misleading influences. For example:

The unexamined and unconsciously adopted elements can sometimes contain a significant amount of wisdom and intelligence derived from our culture and traditions. But it can just as easily lead us astray with promises of heaven or threats of hell depending on whether we follow certain arbitrary and even bizarre ‘rules’.

Fabricated and invented elements in our cosmology can, on rare occasions, prove useful, but usually they are a collection of expedient wishful thinking designed to avoid the hard facts of reality. Even an examined and consciously adopted cosmology cannot wholly escape the possibility of error, bias, and self-will. Nevertheless, because of the profound effect that our picture of how the world works has on our reasoning process, we are obliged to be cognizant of all three of these areas as we evolve our own personal cosmology.