Taylor, thanks for your responses, especially response #1 which was very brief and prescriptive. I believe you are correct in that developing compassion and kindness, both in my thoughts as well as my actions, are the keys to progression. We shall see!
With regards to your second response, I'm not interested in debating a topic that cannot be debated using logic, at least for now. Sure, it would be easy for me to adopt a subjective model of reality and achieve the results I'm looking for, but as I said originally, I do not believe the ends justify the means. I am not looking for shortcuts. Moreover, I aim to be consistent and congruent with my beliefs. Namely, I currently believe that my brain/my five senses are my sources of information about the outside world, and I do not wish to nullify their importance in any matter. To me, this is a proverbial crack in the foundation of my knowledge, thus compromising my integrity and consistency. In short, it can't be proven and it's all a matter of individual perspective, so why bother going through the mental exercise? To what end?
Michael, thanks for the link to your page. I look forward to your response to Taylor. I believe that you can debate this topic much more eloquently and intelligently than I could. The floor is yours!
