A Basic Definition of Spirituality (of True Faith)

[Leonardo17]

GrandNudger:
 

“Modern people frequently report the sense of the numinous. You're just flat out wrong about this. I see a number of your political convictions being used to explain why you feel the way you do. The irony here is that you're talking to very receptive audience if the subject matter was a religion of nature - but I've gotta be honest, my eyes roll all the way back into my head whenever it's clear to me that the sort of "connection to nature" a person is talking about is an effect of the need to sell pulp paperbacks. This is a marketing technique. Mythologizing and romanticizing early peoples and in the process erasing their own fully equal modernity...all so you can be convinced that you're sick and sold the cure. There is no cure, there never was. Those early peoples were extraction and exploitation specialists just as we continue to be. Their gods and goddesses and spirits and rituals and superstitions were already a layer of cognitive insulation between themselves and the natural world they lived in and depended on.
 
What if spirituality supplies no answer to any such questions? What if true faith is nothing more or less than the state in which our convictions are disproportionate to the evidence upon which they're founded?”

 
- I don’t know if this can be described as “romanticizing”. But one example to what I am saying is that we don’t have tribes anymore. We used to have comrades for whom we could go into a fight, all give them half our wealth they needed it. Now we are all in competition to get the most of the material benefits of this world. So this might seem a bit exaggerated. But even our basic masculinity can be labeled as “toxic” when we refuse to fit into some of the unwritten rules of our modern world.
 
I’m not saying that any society before ours was “better”. But there are things even today that I would like to maintain. Like when I see somebody who doesn’t lie / doesn’t cheat, I still sort of respect that.
 
True spirituality can be fun, because it reminds us (both men and women) of our true identity and encourages us to live in a way that is in line with this reality. And I think this is great.
 
Angrboda:
 

“Aside from the fact that your subjective appreciation of this "Inner Knowledge" isn't really evidence, you haven't really answered the question. What does this so-call inner knowledge and knowledge itself that you subjectively perceive correspond to such that it should be appreciated as something valuable and what makes you believe that our access to this inner knowledge is not possible using the tools of reason or mind?
 
When you say inner knowledge or knowledge itself, these are just meaningless labels until you connect them to something real. Until then you might as well say that these spiritual practices bring you face to face with surfumdigious or flumox -- that's just as meaningless. The word knowledge refers to something we have good reason to believe is true, which, again, refers to something that corresponds to something in the real world. What is this inner thing that you are claiming is true, and what in the real world does it correspond to?
 
Perhaps a simpler way of putting this is to ask what is true about inner knowledge, what does it correspond to in the real world, and why is that thing useful or valuable? What evidence do you have for it being true and useful? And what evidence leads to the conclusion that spiritual practices provide access to it, while reasoning through mind does not?”

 
- The final part is very interesting. And I’m going to repeat myself a little.
 

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In my younger years I used to read almost anything I could lay my hands on. I thought I could learn about social psychology just by reading social psychology books. After college I got to understand one important issue:
 
All that knowledge that is being displayed in some popular science book or newspaper article is to be evaluated within its context. I’m seeing articles on the Internet about Neanderthals or early human settlements (you name it). But the main goal of these articles is to captivate your attention and sell you some magazine or newspaper. So you’re never going to learn about Neanderthals just by reading. You need to go for it and study archaeology. Or you need to check if a university nearby will accept you to it’s paleontology class as a simple listener. (And you need to take notes, memorize and do the homework’s).
 
- So back in these year adults were telling me that these books would interfere with my right-thinking. And you know what? – They were correct.
 
Today I’m reading someone called Rutger Bregman (writer of “Mankind, a hopeful story) and I am wishing I could unread all the social psychology books that I have been reading (starting with Gustave LeBon). I am discovering that many scientists who did famous social-psychology experiments have either manipulated the results or have omitted very important elements in these experiments. This Milgram experiment is one of those experiments:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
 
Or the Standord Prison experiment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_p...experiment
 
This final one became a famous movie with Moritz Bleibtreu in 2001:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250258/
 
Mostly done in the post WWII (and discovery of the Holocaust) period. These Ultra Pessimistic “social scientists” have depicted such a devilish type of human. One that is flatly opposed to the picture of humans being good at their core during the enlightenment by philosophers like J.J. Rousseau.
 
/ And Rutger Bregman puts be back on the track after being perceived for some 20 years that human nature is weak and highly corruptible. Which is a total lie according to the more recent studies of the experiments mentioned above. Today’s social psychology has a much better approach and does see us as rather “good” people who like to work together and like to help one another.
 

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And my point is: Before I even laid my hand on Gustave Le bon (which is a BS writer don’t even bother to read him), more spiritual teachings were already telling me that all of this is nonsense.
 
True spirituality is like true psychotherapy. It does liberate us from falsehoods and strengthens us in doing good-constructive deeds.
 
And this is my personal experience of it. I can’t really say that I can prove or demonstrate anything to you
 
BrianSoddingBoru:
 

“FWIW, I don’t agree that spiritual philosophy (or philosophical spiritualism, dealer’s choice) has a ping pong ball’s chance in a cyclotron of answering those fundamental questions you’ve mentioned.”

 
- For me, that’s how I joined the club in the first place. In summary: The idea that each human being has this energy or knowledge that surpasses anything that we could ever hope to learn in a mind-based manner.
 
/ So to you this is null and void. To me it’s just possibilities. We need possibilities here right?