What is logic?

[emjay]

See, I agree with your logic here but I see no need to call it 'spirituality' just psychology. Realising that everything is impermanent/transient, and therefore chasing it is ultimately pointless and will lead to inevitable loss (ie suffering), leads to one logical conclusion that attachment (to these impermanent things) is the cause of suffering, and therefore the solution that eliminating attachment, eliminates suffering. I just see that as a psychological theory that makes logical sense, but nowhere does it need to be called 'spiritual' for it to be put into practice in life. All it needs is mindfulness and awareness. So if I were to go into it fully, I don't ultimately see what difference would be between you and me... both striving for non-attachment but with you believing in an afterlife/reincarnation and me not. If that full state of non-attachment was reached, then if true, eternal life would just be a continuation of the state we had reached... which, being non-attachment, would be just a state of peace without want. So what I'm saying is if we got that far, there's not much difference between ceasing to exist and living on in a perpetual state of not giving a fuck about anything So basically ultimately I don't see what the notion of God offers to the equation or how it would make any practical difference even if it were true.

Your analysis badly miss something.
Psychology can only reach a certain point.
The mind is like an iceberg.
We can only see the above part.
If we want to see the part below the water we have to go under the water.
The mind is not all the same.
There is the conscious mind and the unconscious mind.
To understand the conscious mind is not a big deal but to see the unconscious mind it is.
Psychology is not the best tool to see below.
All psychology can do is to see the above part and guess what lie under in the unconscious mind
but guessing is not good enough that is why I wouldn't take for granted what psychology say.

To know what lie under in the unconscious mind a person must undertake a lot of hard work.
Is not so simple.
It takes practice and a lot of it.
Psychology doesn't undertake practice so there is no way that psychology will ever be able to understand the mind in full and here I mean the conscious and the unconscious mind.  

Ultimately I don't disagree with how you view the mind. I agree with your analogy of the conscious mind being the proverbial tip of the iceberg, which does not, normally, have access to what's below the water.

The difference though I guess is I don't see quite such a strong boundary line between conscious and subconscious... so I'd use a slightly different analogy. It's not a perfect analogy but I think it's good enough to make my point. I'd liken normal conscious awareness to a raging storm, where the wind is conscious attention, and the waves are things on which you can focus your attention. In everyday life you deal with these waves as they come at you, focusing your attention where needed (i.e. in this analogy blowing a wind), and that keeps the storm raging. But meditation deprives the waves of wind, and thus allows the storm to start to calm. The bigger waves disperse leaving smaller and subtler waves below them, which are now available to focus attention on. Deprive them of wind and they disperse, leaving even smaller waves. Deprive them of wind and there may only be ripples left. So at the end, according to this analogy, the perfect state... the state of an arahant... would be no waves at all, just a perfectly clear and still lake, as if it was ice.

That's roughly how I view meditation and what is going on during it. But I still don't call it spiritual, only psychological. But then, I use the word psychological to refer to anything of the mind, so it may or may not be the case that we are referring to the same things, just using different terminology.

All that said, I'm not that accomplished in meditation... the longest I've done is about an hour and I've never reached states like that. But I freely admit I'm not fully committed to Buddhism (I know you're not a Buddhist... but there are similarities) and therefore that, as you say, I'm only scratching the surface of what's possible with my level of involvement, but that's enough for me; as a perspective on life, even 'Buddhism-lite' has improved my life hundred-fold, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, so I'm happy with where I am, and all this recent discussion of it has sparked my interest again because I'd let it slip a bit.

But you do sound like you are an accomplished meditator? If you don't mind me asking, how long do you do it for and how frequently? And what sorts of experiences have you had in meditation?