More protests Against The Theocratic Regime in Iran

[Angrboda]

My proposal is that, these core ideas that are present within all main spiritual traditions in this world are actually correct. If we learn to discern some of these core ideas and “grant to Caesar what belongs to Caesar” then we get to a completely new level of discussion with these corrupted minds that I am talking about.

What core ideas?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Leonardo17

I’m not sure I’m understanding all of your comments either.

If you meant my most recent one, it’s because you used the phrase ‘the evolution of our specie.’ 

‘Specie’ means coins used as currency, as opposed to banknotes. The singular of ‘species’ is ‘species’.

Boru

[Leonardo17]

My proposal is that, these core ideas that are present within all main spiritual traditions in this world are actually correct. If we learn to discern some of these core ideas and “grant to Caesar what belongs to Caesar” then we get to a completely new level of discussion with these corrupted minds that I am talking about.

What core ideas?

There is only one way to be an atheist. There is also one way to be a philosopher or even a true scientist.
 
I think there is 2 or even 3 types of spirituality in this world.
 
1) The traditional way: You pick a dogma, or the dogma picks you when you are a child. And the dogma dictates everything you do and how you think and how you behave in general. This includes the belief in a cosmic persona (or several of them) who tell you how you do things. The ancient Greek mythology states that humans had it at some point and ended up chasing these “beings” away from their lives.
 
2) The extremist way: Here I am talking about war of religion, approaches stating that one cosmic being is the true one and all the others are fake. Mankind seemed to get over this egocentric madness toward the middle of the 20th century, than it made a spectacular comeback. And this is the reason why in many South-Asian nation people are making the choice between eating or buying some fuel for their cars this evening.
 
3) The more mystical / spirit centered approach. In the east you have Zen - Buddhism, schools of Yoga, Siberian shamanism some schools of Native American spirituality and approaches like the ones in Carlos Castaneda’s books. In the west there is (was) Mithraism, Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, mystical Christianity, freemasonry, Sufism (not all Sufi sects of course: The one mentioned by Rumi for instance).
 
/The principles mentioned in the first two groups tend to be very contradictory, very ego based and very conflictual and ethnocentric.
 
/ The core principles of the approaches mentioned in the third group tend to be almost identical. Which is why some people have been willing to invest time in this just to try to understand what several or one of these approaches is trying to tell.
 
- Being a part of this third current of thinking, I am taking the liberty of being critical toward some approaches that do not have a place in today’s society anymore.
 
I still don’t know if I got the joke properly. But you don’t pay people with salt or sesterces anymore. You either need a credit card or some sort of cash if you need something right?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^There is more than one way to become an atheist. In fact, your three, let’s call ‘em ‘paths to spirituality, could just as easily apply to atheism as well.

For the record, Carlos Castaneda was a fraud.

You’re so silly.

Boru

[Thumpalumpacus]

Shit fire and save matches, someone's trotting out Carlos Castañeda as an example of "spirituality"? He's a much better example of reincarnation of a sort ... like PT Barnum separating fools from their money. I had a friend in middle-school who was into that tripe. I tried to read it as I was losing my Christian faith but refusing to give up magical thinking for the moment. Even with that desire for magical thinking, I could tell that Castañeda was full of shit.

[Angrboda]

What core ideas?

There is only one way to be an atheist. There is also one way to be a philosopher or even a true scientist.
 
I think there is 2 or even 3 types of spirituality in this world.
 
1) The traditional way: You pick a dogma, or the dogma picks you when you are a child. And the dogma dictates everything you do and how you think and how you behave in general. This includes the belief in a cosmic persona (or several of them) who tell you how you do things. The ancient Greek mythology states that humans had it at some point and ended up chasing these “beings” away from their lives.
 
2) The extremist way: Here I am talking about war of religion, approaches stating that one cosmic being is the true one and all the others are fake. Mankind seemed to get over this egocentric madness toward the middle of the 20th century, than it made a spectacular comeback. And this is the reason why in many South-Asian nation people are making the choice between eating or buying some fuel for their cars this evening.
 
3) The more mystical / spirit centered approach. In the east you have Zen - Buddhism, schools of Yoga, Siberian shamanism some schools of Native American spirituality and approaches like the ones in Carlos Castaneda’s books. In the west there is (was) Mithraism, Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, mystical Christianity, freemasonry, Sufism (not all Sufi sects of course: The one mentioned by Rumi for instance).
 
/The principles mentioned in the first two groups tend to be very contradictory, very ego based and very conflictual and ethnocentric.
 
/ The core principles of the approaches mentioned in the third group tend to be almost identical. Which is why some people have been willing to invest time in this just to try to understand what several or one of these approaches is trying to tell.
 
- Being a part of this third current of thinking, I am taking the liberty of being critical toward some approaches that do not have a place in today’s society anymore.
 
I still don’t know if I got the joke properly. But you don’t pay people with salt or sesterces anymore. You either need a credit card or some sort of cash if you need something right?

You didn't answer the question.

[Leonardo17]

BrianSoddingBoru + Thumpalumpagus:
 
- It’s still a classic among books on spirituality. I’ve only read the first book of the series. So you may be right. There are more interesting and “to the point” books on the market anyway
 
Angrboda:
 
- These are entire systems of spiritual growth and something called conscious living. There are entire books that are written on these subjects. Yet one of these principles is to assume responsibility for your actions and for your life. I’m not saying that atheists cannot understand such principles. In many cases they understand it more than us. But that is still one form of universal spiritual principle. And that’s “Being responsible for your own life” or “”Being or acting like a grown up”.
 
/Today everyone is on the back of D. Trump because of the war he started together with Netanyahu:
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/iran...53931.html
 
- I’m not saying that these people are wrong. I never said that.
 
Still: The principle I am talking about applies to nations as well. Why does a nation not act so that it and its people are not involved in such a catastrophic / destructive situation? What would King Solomon do in that situation?
 
/Vietnam was a different situation. Yet people like Kaddafi, Saddam, Bashar al Assad or the IRI they all saw it coming. Why didn’t they act on that and try to avert all of this destruction? In sum, why is the state apparatus not doing anything to keep bombs from falling on their cities? (Israel does try to minimize losses from missiles falling on its own people – Teheran doesn’t. Why is that so?)
 
- Another example is being logical. Being rational.
 
And because these things are usually easier said than done, most of us are involved in one or more of these systems of spiritual growth, just to try to get there rather sooner than later in our lifetimes.
 
But this is group 3. I’m not talking about 1 and 2.

[Paraselene]

Things are not easier said than done. Rather, bureaucracy loves its excuses. And to that, I state, "remember what Ike told Tina?"

[Thumpalumpacus]

BrianSoddingBoru + Thumpalumpagus:
 
- It’s still a classic among books on spirituality.

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Journey to Ixtlan made Castaneda a millionaire when a million dollars was worth seven million dollars. It earned him a special dispensation PhD under the title Sorcery: A Description of the World. In 1973, Castaneda was both a cultural phenomenon acclaimed by John Lennon and Joni Mitchell, and an academic superstar recognised by Mary Douglas. Time introduced him as “the godfather of the New Age” and an “enigma wrapped in mystery wrapped in a tortilla” but still described him as an anthropologist.

Doubts were mounting about the academic status of his work, however. In the five years since Castaneda had first introduced don Juan to the public, nobody had succeeded in tracking him down. Though apparently a Yaqui, don Juan did not participate in Yaqui ceremonies or exist in a Yaqui community. The psychotropic plants which Castaneda describes don Juan administering were not known to be used by the Yaqui, and Castaneda’s account of his method of smoking powderized mushrooms would have had no psychoactive effect, since the alkaloids would be destroyed by combustion.

“Is it possible,” novelist Joyce Carol Oates wondered in a November 1972 letter to the New York Times Book Review, “that these books are non-fiction?” Time sowed further doubts. Whatever the truth of his field work in Mexico, Castaneda had been less than straightforward about the facts of his own biography. The author hadn’t been born in Brazil in 1935 as he claimed, but in Peru ten years earlier, and his father wasn’t a professor of literature, but a jeweller. “We all liked Carlos,” his Lima schoolmate Jose Bracamonte told Time. “He was witty, imaginative, cheerful — a big liar and a real friend.”

Castaneda imperiously rejected this demystifying approach. “To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics,” he told Time, “is like using science to validate sorcery.” Don Juan himself had instructed him to erase his personal history. Was don Juan a Mexican sorcerer version of Ossian, the ancient bard concocted by his ostensible translator? Castaneda denied it. “The idea that I concocted a person like don Juan is inconceivable,” he told writer Sam Keen in November 1972. “The truth is much stranger. I didn’t create anything. I am only a reporter.”

In some sense Castaneda was telling the truth. Seven years after the Time cover, psychologist Richard de Mille’s 1980 book The Don Juan Papers completed the destruction of his reputation, with a 47-page glossary identifying sources of don Juan’s quotations in dozens of authors including C.S. Lewis and Wittgenstein. Castaneda hadn’t created don Juan; he had composed him from the scattered wisdom of the dead. Although in breach of modern views of authorship, this form of syncretic activity is typical from the perspective of religious history: versions of this procedure have defined the composition of sacred books at least since Genesis.

https://thecritic.co.uk/castaneda-the-sorcerer/

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"Spirituality" -- for you. My take on the spiritual is clearly very different.

[Paraselene]

Also:

While Castaneda's work was accepted as factual by many when the books were first published, the training he described is now generally considered to be fictional.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda