Quote
Stoic
It was not my intention to cause division amongst you but simply to point out that conclusions based on emotion rather than logic have long been used to hoodwink people who have little understanding of probability theory.
Just because it feels right it doesn't necessarily follow that it is right. Our feelings are changeable and easily manipulated.
On the subject of "If it feels right, does that mean that it IS right?", I like what Corboy posted in another forum.
From the Byron Katie thread, "Cults, Sects and New Religious Movements" Forum (posted by Corboy.)
[
forum.culteducation.com]
------------------Beginning of Quote-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Someone on another discussion, wrote 

Quote:
Just because I think or feel something doesnt make it real or true.
It is so common for someone to say, 'But I experienced this' when trying to prove some guru or workshop was the real thing.
Experience, even when intensely felt, does not always mean something exists or is true.
Example:
I had flu followed by double pneumonia some years ago.
According to what I experienced, I was freezing my ass off. Felt so cold my bones felt like ice. I was shivering violently and rolling up in blankets and felt cold, cold, cold.
But when I used a clinical thermometer to take my tempeture, I was actually by that termometer at a body temperature of 104 plus degrees Farenheight--as in I was in a high fever, and though I experienced myself as cold and needing warmth, my body was actually blazing hot and needed to cool down!
Later, I read that the hypothalamus portion of the brain can be confused by chemicals released by the body's efforts to fight fever. Cytokines can confuse the hypothalamus and we can experience ourselves as freezing cold when we are actually running high fevers and are hot.
So that by itself demonstrates that personal experience, no matter how intense, does not by itself prove that something is 'real'.
When someone says, 'That was my experience' that can be a guru induced fever.
-------------------------------End of Quote----------------------------------------------------------------
In my SGI days, I would have insisted that chanting made me feel better, and more focused, so that meant that SGI, or at least Nichiren Buddhism, was the right thing for me. Does that mean that it was? Did I feel better, and have positive experiences in my life because of my chanting -- or because I expected to? Would chanting something else, silent meditation, tai chi, singing, drumming, or reciting poetry have had the same effect?
I suppose I could try something else, but I've just become more skeptical, and maybe that would also have an effect on the results I'd get.