path: root/reading/Our expectations in life are that events will occur in a cause-and-effect universe in which it is re.txt

"Our expectations in life are that events will occur in a cause-and-effect universe in which it is relatively simple to trace the beginnings and end of any natural phenomenon. When we experi­ ence an event or feeling out of the ordinary, we tend to dismiss it as unreal, a fantasy that somehow broke into our consciousness.We can­ not explain what we have experienced because we have only this narrow, materialistic framework in which to evaluate what has hap­ pened. In a practical sense, the Newtonian billiard balls that clang together creating events and guaranteeing uniformity are sufficient for us. But what if we learned to have other expectations? Suppose we were of such a nature that we could discern the life force in everything and were thus assured that as we made our way through life, unusual things could happen. What if these events gave testimony that the physical world we know was but a manifestation of a larger cosmos that was beyond our powers to discern and was also part of our lives. We would then begin to attribute the cause of some unusual events as the intervention or intersection of unseen yet powerful forces that played a role in our experience, even if we could not see them. In theory, but not in daily practice, we do live in such a world." (Vine Deloria Jr. – The World We Used to Live In Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men Fulcrum Publishing (2006))