What the hell am I?

My friend Grindelwald asks a question in the prior post that I will answer (or attempt to) here. To repeat the question:

Okay, Lizard, I don't get you. Clearly you are not anti religious, because more than half of your posts are about religion, in a sense. Obviously Christianity has annoyed you, so it is a good guess that you aren't one.

So, what are you?

I know you wargame, I know you do drugs, I know you can play Russian WW2 combat strategy better than anybody I have ever met(digitally), and I know you know a lot about the bible and the occult. What does all that add up to?

There is no formal name for what i believe. I have tried several times over the past few years, and have come up with: Rational Animism, Animism, Anarchist Animism, Gnostic Animism, Gnostic Shamanism, Tribal Mysticism, Mystic Animism, Chaos Animism, Chaotic Gnosticism, Rational Mysticism.

(The reason for the chaos theme is that I have a working theory that attributes much of what I consider my mysticism is to a chaos-theory interpretation of the sufficient complexity that gives rise to intelligence. I am fairly convinced that sentient identity some sort of emergent phenominon of the neural net, and by wierd permutations in chaos mathematics, we share things in common that can be changed, with the results also in common. It is kinda complicated)

I like Rational Mysticism most, but most people who groove on rationality consider it an oxymoron (I obviously disagree), and most people who are into mysticism misunderstand it's usage.

I think there is enough evidence of mind-to-mind communication that it cannot be ruled out, and must be considered and studied.

I believe that science does not understand intelligence at all well. I think that there is considerably more going on in the universe than science can yet see. I believe that if we survive long enough as a species, science will see most of what is, but never all.

I read Tarot cards. I started it to try to get laid, and I kept it up because it worked, (for doing readings, not getting laid, altho it is how I met my wife) much to my shock and surprise. I do not use the cards to tell the future, I use them to explore different vantage points on the question, using the symbolism of the cards, and project several possible ways of handling said question.

Because it worked, and because I am a rationalist, I refuse to believe that it has anything to do with the 78 pieced of cardboard, and had to have something to do with my perception of the question when exposed to the symbols. I am sure some would argue that it didn't work, that it simply seemed that way. That depends on what you think "worked" means. Since I was not 'reading the future', I told nobody what would happen. But suddenly, because I had these cards in front of me, I could see their question clearly, and suggest things they, almost ALL of them, found useful.

I also felt something happen, as soon as I started to really examine what I was doing (It is very hard to overstate how shaken I was at the results I was getting) and I started noticing differences. My breath came slower and deeper, my eyes never quite focused sharply, my heartbeat slowed and I lost track of time.

The act of performing a tarot reading was putting me into an altered state of consciousness.

I have digressed, in a desire for clarity, but to answer the question: I am a mystic, because I use altered states of consciousness to investigate both the world within me and outside me. I am rational because I acknowledge that i can't prove any of it, and therefor, it may not be true or real in any objective sense. I am sure that I am exploring myself. When I think I am exploring or effecting the space outside my head, I might be completely and totally wrong, and deluding myself at every point.

Why explore if it might all be delusion?
Because it is truly an unknown, and I want to find out.
And it can be fun.

I will go into why Animist is appropriate in another post.

Good enough, Grin?