"It's all maya." This has been an ongoing joke between Zach and I and I guess most of the worldview class ever since we began learning about cosmic humanism and Hinduism a few months ago. Allow me to be clear before I begin off on my stream-of-consciousness style writing that is usually incoherent and incomprehensible and leads to or means something that I did not intend for. I am not becoming a Hindu or getting into "new age" nonsense, I am merely learning something from it.
Back to the point..."maya" literally means illusion. What we learned in worldview class is that they view (I am cognizant of the possibility that it could all be terribly misrepresented and misunderstood, I don't mean to portray these beliefs the wrong way )the world only on the spiritual level and only believe in the existence of the spiritual realm, thus all that is material is "maya"...illusory. Personally I do not believe in this, but that God personally created the material for us to take care of and enjoy. I don't want to get all preachy or try to get into some deep theological or philosophical thought or whatever the right word is because I would be in over my head. Anyway, learning about this view of the world that the "cosmic humanists" hold, I couldn't help but admire some of the aspects of this view in its pure form. I guess this is because of my Christian worldview and we are always admonished to not be attached to earthly belongings, etc. (i.e. material stuff) because it is ephemeral. We believe in the existence of both the spiritual and material realms that God created personally, but the spiritual realm is eternal. I realize that this is something that we hear all too often from everyone, but somehow learning about "maya" and how people believe all that we see, touch, feel is just an illusion, it made me admire that view. I admit that I really get caught in the midst of material greed all the time and it just made me wish that sometimes I could live my life as if it were all "maya". If we all lived as if everything is an illusion, would we have better sight of our purpose in life and God's calling? Don't get me wrong, I know everything is real, but sometimes it would be neat if we could live that way. But God did create the material for a reason. Other than that over-examined tiny little point of that worldview, I don't see much truth in the belief.
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