Why do we like what we like? Because it is what we like. Why do we dislike what we dislike? Because it is what we dislike.
Facts require reasons. Preferences are just what they are. I like vanilla ice cream more than chocolate ice cream because I like vanilla more than chocolate. Sure, we can dress up our likes and dislikes in fancy clothes of reasons, but really, likes and dislikes simply are naked preferences if we’re honest with ourselves.
For 35 years I preferred to believe in God, eastern religion variety. Then my preference changed. Not all at once. Just steadily in the atheist direction. I’ve tried to explain on this blog why that happened.
I’m pretty adept at using words. So those explanations can seem like they make sense. However, in truth I started to dislike my chosen religion before I came up with reasons to explain to myself and other people why I felt that way.
It isn’t that reasons play no role in our preferences. I prefer a gentle massage to being clubbed in the head with a baseball bat because one is pleasurable and one is painful.
All I’m saying is that whatever reasons we can offer for our likes and dislikes, they usually aren’t the complete picture, just a single piece of the explanatory jigsaw puzzle.
The other pieces are hidden from view in unknown sources, such as the unconscious aspect of the human brain.
This may sound overly abstract. Agreed. Such is to be expected when we’re speaking of abstractions like God and religiosity, since there is nothing here that we can point to with the same direct precision as, say, coffee pods. Which I’ve spent quite a bit of time with recently.
I used to be an avid coffee drinker. Four or five cups a day. Wasn’t great for my sleep, but I adored caffeine’s energetic buzz.
Then in 2017 I had a serious bladder problem that required me to use an intermittent urinary catheter. Caffeine wasn’t an absolute no-no. But I found that it irritated my bladder and made it more difficult for me to self-catheterize. So I gave it up. Reluctantly.
Fast forward to January 2026. I was able to have prostate surgery that resulted in normal bladder function again. Huge relief. I’d gotten my peeing life back on track.
After the prostate surgery recovery period was over, I started to experiment with drinking coffee once more. My wife boils water and pours it over ground coffee that leaves the paper filter and enters her cup. I favored a simpler approach: a Keurig coffee machine.
Pop in a pod. Add water to the reservoir. Choose the number of ounces you want to make. Decide on extra strength or regular. Press start. Bingo! Coffee. Throw the pod in the trash.
I did this two times a day for months. Regular coffee in the morning. Decaf or half-caf in the late afternoon. I was a happy Keurig user.
Early on, my wife had said something about the Keurig pods being made of plastic, so hot water was being infused over coffee in a plastic container, then into my cup. Her comment had zero effect on me. I didn’t even remember it until a few weeks ago, when I told my wife that I’d decided to ditch the plastic K-pods because now I was worried about ingesting microplastic particles. She said, basically, “told you so.”
Why did I decide that? Don’t know. I’d been reducing my exposure to plastic in other ways, such as by removing the plastic that covered frozen dinners, using a microwave safe cover over the dinner instead.
All I know is that one day I changed from liking the Keurig coffee pods that I’d gotten from a variety of sources such as Alex’s Coffee (great taste), to not being able to put a plastic pod into the Keurig machine even one more time. Which didn’t make rational sense, given that I’d been using the plastic pods twice a day for quite a few months.
What difference would one more day make? Very little, if any. Especially since Claude, my AI friend, informed me that while there’s no evidence plastic K-pods are bad for you, there’s also no evidence that they are harmless. Didn’t matter. I’d gone from liking the plastic pods to disliking them. I could make up reasons why this happened, but in reality, I didn’t know why.
It just happened. So now I’ve got three ways of making coffee. One is bad. One is good. One is a bridge from bad to good. Of course, “bad” and “good” simply are a reflection of my current like/dislike. This is more obvious from a side view of the pods rather than a top view.
Alex’s Coffee, on the left, comes in a plastic pod. Bad! Just looking at it makes me feel my arteries are full of microplastics. But since I don’t like throwing good coffee away, I got a reusable metal pod that fits in the Keurig machine. I cut off the top of an Alex’s Coffee pod, then carefully pour the coffee into the metal pod, which serves as a bridge between bad and good pods.
On the right is a non-plastic K-pod from Tayst Coffee. I like the taste just as much as Alex’s Coffee. And the pod is fully compostable, though we don’t compost, so I throw the pod away after brewing.
Yeah, way more than anyone needs to know about my coffee brewing habit. I’ve just used this as an example of how it is not only possible, but customary, for people to like something for a while (like God, or plastic pods), then dislike the same thing, for reasons that spring from unknown sources, even though reasons can be given if someone asks. (There’s no evidence for God! Microplastics from pods!)
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Brian,….congrats on getting your prostate surgery done. Peeing naturally again, is only meaningful to those of us who once had to use catheters to drain our bladders. I am now 4-1/2 years post surgery ,and am still peeing like a teen ager.
As for your non ability to believe in God, I am curious as to weather you might accept that you really do have a Spiritual Guide that has been watching over you, which very likely is your own Higher Soul Self? I know you’ve rejected having a soul, as well, but if you have watched any of the thousands of podcasts of people’s testimonies of having had near death experiences and out of body experiences, do you really believe so many people are all liars?
Even Sat Mat teachings say we are at least a Trinity, of physical, Astral, and Causal bodies, where our Causal Body is actually our Higher Soul Self, where 90% of our archived Consciousness resides, watching over the 10% allocated consciousness loaned to each of us, in these impermanent, temporary physical lives, in order to do, and complete what ever missions our Higher Soul Selves sent us here to accomplish.
I think mine is almost finished. At least, I hope it is. Unless some thing new is revealed to me soon, I am anxious to be called back to my Higher Self.
Mr. Sutherland
Allow me the to answer your unasked questions.
The answer to the questions to him as far as I am concerned is a simple ..no …!!
Surrounded by people and books that speak about the experiences of closnes of the things you write about, I thought , humans can have them and even should have them …after all I consider myself to be human.
Not having them in the .idst of people that do makes one wonder what could possible the cause and even seek for remedies.
In my own way I have been preoccupied almost my entire life, day in day out, with no avail.
Today I have come to accept it as a fact of life without blaming my self or anything else.
In the same way there is no reason to call others that have these experiences liars.
These people, I believe, I do at least, tell their truth. and should be listened to too, as they have many things to say of meaning an value
BUT ….
there is no reason for me to believe that the authority that spoke them has an existence of its own besides and beyond the person having such an experience…. that said … I fully understand that given the experience THEY cannot but accept that authority as real
… if such an experience would befall me, I too , probably will react as they all did.
You see … only Abram was made that promise in those days … that authority failed to inform the other leaders in the world until this very day….with the effect you can see unfolding in the middle east and the world at large
Because we are having this dialogue through mind, at best we are exchanging ideas. But when Brian Ji speaks of coffee, there is a platform of personal experience.
It will be difficult to relate to that experience if you have never tasted coffee.
Can a serious coffee drinker, who once loved coffee and made it his companion give it up? Yes, when his health is jeopardized by it.
And once his health has been restored, then, perhaps he can return to it, if there is still an interest, a strong impression, a powerful memory of how wonderful it once was, and it can be experienced in safety and health once again.
But negative impressions also leave a mark. And we rarely return to things we experienced as toxic. We are trying to live healthy, after all .
We do what we choose to do, what we are conditioned to do, each in their own time, and what we must do to survive and grow.
In youth, coffee becomes a necessity to get work done. A means of surviving the demand of the world.
But it may just be that only later in life can we savor it, and appreciate it for its own taste, not merely what it does for us in a competitive world, once that is no longer relevant.
Alex’s low acid coffee is a favorite, fresh ground.
I must be such a boring chap, rarely drink coffee, perhaps a weak, milky cappuccino if I’m out, usually I drink tea, decaffeinated tea. Having read that Brian’s coffee pods are plastic, I checked up on my tea bags and saw that they were plant-based and recyclable. Never had any addictive substances in my life so don’t know what it is to crave something – well, perhaps a cream cake or a Danish pastry – or even sex, but that’s mainly biological.
I understand that my preferences come from my conditioning. If I choose something then that arises from a catalogue of past experiences – and that’s not actual choosing, more to do with my brain automatically presenting something from its reward centre or something it recalls favourably from its past repertoire. Obviously, it won’t choose something it (I) don’t like or want because that’s not favourably indexed in its biological or mental repertoire.
As far as I understand from my own experiences, I don’t seem to choose at all. In fact, I’ve never encountered a chooser, a ‘me’ that does the choosing. The idea or sense of a chooser always appears after the event – and claiming the credit for having chosen.
So, whether it’s tea, a belief, a moral stance or a preference to read and appreciate the likes of Alan Watts, J. Krishnamurit or the Tao of Pooh, it always seems that my choices (or predilections) arise from the source of past experiences that I may or may not be aware of.
I may be quite happy or even proud of the choices I make, but the reality is that none are ‘my’ choices describing a ‘me’ making them. Nothing is new or creative; everything is dependent on previous experience, absorbed information, thoughts, feelings, etc., etc.
My beliefs, views and opinions may be permanent or transitory. I tend to believe (think) that all that we experience, all our wonderful states of mind, are just what brains do and I can’t allot them special significance. Which for me is fine, others respond differently; it all depends on the time, place and people we have been subjected to – and biology.
Interesting chain of beliefs in Sant Mat: Jesus Christ was a bright shining Source and the Way but only during his lifetime and then one or more of his apostles took the teachings and spread them. No books to burn for centuries , only Word of mouth. ( Even Jesus had to be baptized by John and that’s what initiation is ) 2. The Sound is the Word ( how sweet to save a wretch like me. ) 3. Angels and other gods and goddesses envy us humans for it is only in the human form can God be realized ( in the vibration of Sound and Light) .4. It took the human form of a present day Master such as Charan Singh to attach souls to the Source and guide from within to the destination that I’ve arrived at. ( And awaiting on you all to join me. This ” awaiting” could be exactly why I am a living representative of God ( Nature’s messenger). Four lifetimes should pass by in four blinks of the eye. We only need adorn and maintain the health of the physical , mental and causal bodies in as much as possible to serve Nature. Anyway elect me next guru and I will reduce the daily meditation requirements to 45 minutes ( more is allowed but not required ). I’ve been chosen but my flock needs to see it in Gurinder’s Last Will and Testament. But don’t worry because the true believers will be saved regardless of what he says! Or what I say ! Just don’t expect me to curl my mustache or march around like a C licker. 😂
” I ” do nothing. For further explanation refer to Johnny Cash . How can anyone look at those floods and believe that life is fair .
If Gurinder Singh dies and doesn’t leave me in his Will then many will remain guruless and of many will also become guruless, disregarding Mr Gill. He’s been disregarded in advance.
If I look onto nature than it seems that ALL living forms are given the means to survive.
Someone once said,: ” if the lord had wanted us humans to smoke, he would have build a chimney on their head.”
Like wise:
If the lord had wanted us humans
beings all to meditate and live a certain way of live he would have made it known to ALL of them from within and not left it to mystics and certainly not to “explainers” that speak unasked for and unappointed as his representatives
… the theologians, the clergy etc
It is said that Akhtar conducted an cruel experiment by letting babies be looked after by nanies that could not speak.
now think about our language our culture and how that effects the way you think about yourself, the world … everything actually you think of … are even ABLE to think of.
You can have an idea about what I am pointing at when I remind you to the fact that before 1960 people had no idea of meditation etc .
We are so trained by language an cultural concepts that we are totally conditioned by religion and science … and …the common man is no longer able to stand mentally on his own legs … he has become the SLAVE of religious and scientific though in the same way that het has lost …. All ….skills and knowledge to keep himself alive as a natural being in a natural world …. you have become a slave of the supermarket ….a slave that lives to consume.
The way to live a natural life in a natural way is lost and with it your mental an physical freedom … so much so…. that you have become slave of managers that tell you how to produce and consume …. haha … in the name of … GOD
Gurinder’s favorite song My Way by Paul Anka. You know Sinatra did it too. ” I did it my way “.. And so anyone with that kind of talent might be mistaken for an egomaniac by a jealous talentless sort of person. And Gurinder Singh will try to get even with every man of average height who kicked sand in his face . I think Freud was an ego maniac. Please, the rest of you be quiet while I’m talking. After all Gurinder personally started a whole new world religion. He will be remembered much like Jesus was.
.
Coffee, tea or pee? It blows my stomach out so gave up the caff., even the half ass caff. variety nukes my guts so what the fuck…”Life, it’s a goddam life riot” Harold said so ponder all you want and gaze at your navel until your eyeballs pop out for all I care. Oh, and blow it out your arse, motorcycle man!