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My personal created religion: New Age Hedonism (revised)

The Transcended Omniverse

Well-Known Member
Since the previous topic I made that attempted to convey my religion/worldview did not work out and was one big incoherent mess, then let me try again one last time:

(Note: Psychologists divide emotions into a positive category and a negative category. I am firmly convinced this division is true based upon my own personal experience. The concept of inner light and inner darkness is all well too known in movies, anime, art, etc. So, that is why emotions would have to come in two categories: positive and negative. The positive emotions would be our own inner light and our negative emotions would be our own inner darkness just as how we have positive thoughts and negative thoughts).

My positive emotions are like the inner light of god in my life. Without them, then my life can only be empty regardless of what I were to think or believe otherwise. The rest of humanity needs this inner light as well. Otherwise, their lives and artistic endeavors would be empty, too. Our negative emotions would be the inner darkness and a life of no emotions would just be a blank life. Don't you hear depressed and miserable people claim their lives are a drag, not worth living, and devoid of any joy and beauty? This is a common complaint that depressed patients report.

I think this claim reflects our need for the inner light. When depressed people recover, they say it's as though they have crawled out of the darkest pit and regained the light back to them in their lives. This is my own personal created religion which is a hedonistic religion. I call my religion "New Age Hedonism." Hedonism is the philosophy of maximizing pleasure (positive emotions) and minimizing pain (negative emotions). Although, as I explain later on, I am undecided when it comes to the existence of god, the afterlife, and the paranormal. If these phenomena do not exist, then my hedonistic religion would instead take on a secular form.

As for what type of environment or artistic landscape I would use to convey my worldview, it would not be the fear mongering images of unsaved sinners being thrown into the lake of fire which is often conveyed by religions such as fundamentalist Christianity. My image would be a beautiful and tropical paradise. This symbolizes being happy, wild, free, and not having to adhere your life to any such horrible religious doctrines. It is looking forward to an afterlife of eternal bliss where you can finally be free of all depression, unhappiness, and misery. The New Age spiritual beliefs adhere to the doctrine of an all loving god who does not condemn people to an eternal hell or expect others to serve their lives to him. That is why I call my worldview/religion "New Age Hedonism."

The Missing, Higher Component: We have biological components to our human existence. We have sight, hearing, smell, breathing, and we also have the ability to think, imagine, and reason. If we were living a life of misery and unhappiness, then we could certainly think and believe that our lives are beautiful. But that wouldn't be enough. We need a higher component to make our entire world and atmosphere something truly beautiful, good, worth living for, happy, etc.

That component is something I metaphorically describe as the "divine light" or the "life of the cosmos." That component would be our positive emotions. Yes, we could certainly acknowledge certain things and situations as being good or bad and make wise decisions accordingly even while feeling miserable or hopeless. This is something I would still highly recommend. But it is our inner light that allows us to truly perceive our lives as good and beautiful and it is our inner darkness that allows us to truly perceive our lives as horrible, disgusting, etc.
 
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The Transcended Omniverse

Well-Known Member
There is a difference between what is and what it's like. If a person saw the color red, then he could report back to you that it was like a trip to a paradise. This would be what it's like. But what is would be a different question. Seeing the color red would be a state of visualizing a certain color. This would be what is. A blind person cannot know what it is to see the color red since he can't see it.

Now, here is where my worldview comes in. If you were in the most hopeless state of your life which would be a negative emotion and you believed that your life was still good and beautiful, then you could say that this thought is something good and beautiful since it is the words "good" and "beautiful" being spoken in your mind. From there, if you felt a positive emotion later on which would be an emotional value judgment of good value and beauty rather than a thought form of value judgment, then you could also say that this positive emotion is good and beautiful as well.

It's the same scenario with the thought form of good value and beauty, but, this time, with the positive emotion. Now, here is the question. If you were blind and you thought of the color red, then what would that be for you? Remember, this is asking the "what is" question. The answer here would be that it would just be a thought. There is no quality of red there being perceived at all. So, it's not actual red, but just the thought of red. The same idea would apply to our emotions versus our thoughts.

You could think to yourself that your life is still beautiful and good during your worst miserable moment, but there would be no quality of good value and beauty being perceived. Therefore, your life would be empty without your positive emotions. So, what it all comes down to here is what it is for you. Rather than just being the miserable soul who drags his life on believing it to be the good and beautiful life, actually focus on what it is for you and I think this will enlighten you to the truth of my worldview. Hopefully anyway. If I were to summarize my whole entire worldview in one sentence, then it would be:

"You can only acknowledge the good and bad values of things, moments, and situations in your life. But you need your positive emotions to actually see the good values and you need your negative emotions to actually see the bad values. When you feel the most profound and powerful positive emotion of your life, then that is literally the most powerful and profound beauty, good value, and joy being perceived just as how it would literally be the color red being perceived by a person who saw the color red. The same idea applies to negative emotions."

If my sight analogy is not a good analogy for emotions, then just get the idea that I was trying to convey anyway. I was simply saying that it can only be our emotions that allow us to perceive the good and bad qualities of our lives. I also talked about the idea of consciousness based values versus value judgment based values in my other packet which explains those horrible nightmare states I've had. Consciousness based values are values that focus on what is. I know I said they focus on what it's like, but that was actually a mistake I made. One last thing here.

You could either perceive the values that situations and things have or you can perceive your own created values. For example, if a mother was feeding her child vegetables, then the vegetables would be good. But the child would be perceiving them as bad since he felt a negative emotion from them. So, even though the vegetables are good, the child saw them as bad which would be his own personal perceived value. This means that things and situations hold their own value and that the only way to perceive their value or our own personal created value would be through our emotions.
 
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