Spiritual Memes

Spiritual Memes

A meme is an idea, symbol, or practice, transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or any other communication technique. Sounds kind of boring, right? Not after you realize the impact memes have on you.

Think of a meme as something imitated, copied, or passed down through generations, usually without conscious thought. Several authors describe memes are the cultural analog of genes; memes replicate, mutate, spread, and often behave just like a virus you can’t avoid.

Memes are ‘ideas’ spread from generation to generation, from person to person, that we often take as unquestioned truth. We believe them, after all everyone else knows and believes the same thing. Some memes spread and thrive over time, others slowly become extinct. What Darwin learned about survival of the fittest applies to memes.

Here are a few simple examples of memes:

• Eggs are bad for you
• Bottled water is better than city water
• Prejudice is wrong with respect to race or gender, but acceptable in terms of stupidity or social status
• Some sexual acts are moral, some are immoral, and some disgusting; which ones belong to which category changes over time
• An individual’s vote makes a difference
• Puritan worth ethic

Are they true? Not necessarily, yet through whatever mechanism, we start to believe they are and start to act based on those beliefs.

The are many religious memes too:

• God exists, is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibeneficient (at least to believers)
• The Bible (or Koran or Bhagavad Gita, etc.) is the inspired word of God - literal and infallible
• If I misbehave, God will punish me in some way
• Marriage must be sanctified by the church (also birth and death)
• If you pray (in just the right way), you’ll go to heaven or other good things will happen

Become aware of the memes by which you live your life: the ideas, symbols, and concepts that give you a ‘mind-jerk reaction’ to something (that’s like a knee-jerk reaction, only on a metaphysical level).

Here are a few areas in terms of our spirituality where you probably have been imbued with some interesting memes.

• The power you have over your physical body … and over you mind
• Your ability to heal
• Your true nature
• Life after life, or how good, bad, or indifferent things will be after you die
• The nature of this life (e.g., hard, a struggle, something to overcome or rise above)
• Postponement of love and joy (e.g., until I reach some higher plane or meet the right person)
• The luggage I carry in this life based on a former life (the woes of reincarnation)
• The path to true enlightenment and self realization
• The role of your ego versus the role of your ‘true nature’
• The power of prayer or meditation
• Whether the physical world (including the physical you) is ‘truth’ or an ‘illusion’
• Laws of the universe that work constantly (e.g., law of attraction; law of circulation; law of cause and effect)

Are you aware of your memes and how they’ve changed your behavior? Are these the memes you want?

When you become aware, you improve your ability to sculpt your own thoughts and your own life. Aware of what? I think the first step in our awareness is to understand the fundamental memes that have been transmitted to us by society, our culture, and our families. The concept we believe is important rather than how we ended up with it (I like that word ‘imbued’).

Could you list the things you believe? Are they true? How do you know they’re true? What if the opposite was true? How would your life change then?

We often hear the term ‘comfort zone.’ One definition of the Zone is comfort in the memes we believe – whether they be true or not, whether they serve us or not. Starting today, why not discover your memes and get out of your comfort zone?

Namasté

This website is to stimulate your spiritual thinking in the hope that it will contribute to your spiritual growth. The author invites your comments and critiques by reply e-mail to bob@futuremoons.com.