outside the camp

I am a phenomenologist -- I must experience a phenomenon before it makes sense to me. This is why I have so little patience with dogmas, doctrines, and creeds. I cannot belong to any organization that requires adherence to a structured world view regarded as sacrosanct, the inviolable truth. Such scaffolding is anathema to me.

I follow the example of Jesus here: "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Thus I comprehend christianity but am no "christian," understand buddhism but am no "buddhist," open to the tao but am no "taoist," and so on.

To throw another fifty dollar phrase in here (one coined by Ewert Cousins), I follow the methods of a shamanistic epistemologist, in which "the mystical structures of reality are discovered through entering into the religious consciousness of other traditions" (Beverly Lanzetta).

There has always been a conflict between the orthodox ("straight thinkers") and the mystic. The orthodox love the scaffolding and the mystic ranges "outside the camp."