A Basic Definition of Spirituality (of True Faith)

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Leonardo17

- By this I meant the most fundamental questions like “What do we do once we are here? Where the user’s manual? What’s going on here? Why are we even here?” 
 
/No philosopher truly aborts these questions. Spirituality on the other hand, gradually provides answers to that.

I can only reply to what you actually said, not what you meant to say. Like dozens of other people on this planet, I have no psychic abilities.

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.

Boru

[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.
 

---

 
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.
 

---

 
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?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

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.
 

---

 
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.
 

---

 
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?

‘Possible’ doesn’t mean probable. It’s possible that my cats speak fluent Mandarin but I’m not going to expend any effort investigating the matter.

Boru

[Angrboda]

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
 

This assumes there is a true spirituality which you can practice. The reality is you're simply reapplying spiritual techniques and understandings that someone else developed -- you're not creating anything based upon first person examination, you're using existing spiritual ideas as a bootstrap, with much the same problem as you have with reason. The spiritual techniques which, to be blunt, you are borrowing, not creating, are infected with the same viewpoint issues as secular rational bodies of knowledge. As a Hindu, I can tell you that the different Hindu schools all tell the tale of Hinduism and their Hindu rivals differently, reserving the crown jewel for whatever Hindu school the writer happens to subscribe to themselves. And Buddhism is the same way. Christianity, the same. And none of it is original. And this is because while you portray spirituality as something that you can practice fresh, without borrowing from others, you really can't. Sitting alone and contemplating will not get you a worthwhile spiritual practice. You'll simply end up stewing in whatever juices you've mentally accumulated over time. Like it or not, spirituality isn't a solitary practice. Spirituality is a social practice wherein groups, movements, institutions, and societies lay out both the basic blueprint and outline and on toward the details. You like to think that you're discovering and implimenting something authentic, but you're not; you're just combining old parts in your own unique way, without ever escaping the problems with those old parts. You may suggest that some commonality points toward a genuine core existing, but that's just a theory. It's far more likely that common core is simply a reflection of the fact that human nature expresses itself similarly within social processes, and a core of common items represents their greater evolutionary fitness within social process, regardless of whether those parts themselves have any inherent fitness or genuineness.

A good example is Zen Buddhism. The Zen Buddhist argues that by engaging in sitting practice, you are stripping away all artifice. But the theory and technique of this stripping away depends upon large chunks of metaphysical artifice, without which, zazen becomes just daydreaming.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^ There’s a lot to be said for daydreaming.

Boru

[Belacqua]

True spirituality is like true psychotherapy. It does liberate us from falsehoods and strengthens us in doing good-constructive deeds.

I think this is an important point. And the comparison to psychotherapy is on point. 

Psychoanalysis, when it's successful, is extremely self-revealing. The fictions we tell ourselves and the defenses we set up to protect our egos are hard to break through, and psychoanalysis can do this. It's not always successful, of course, but at its best it can be a great benefit. 

Often when people describe a spiritual experience, it seems to me that what they're talking about is simply aesthetic. That is, if you get some numinous feeling in a forest, or looking at a starry sky, it can be very beautiful. And beautiful things can give us pause, briefly taking us away from our normal habits of thought. 

But the way I define spirituality, there must be a lasting effect. And it must be an effect which reveals us to ourselves, and points us in the direction of becoming better people. This happens largely by a dissolution of the protective ego and an epiphany concerning one's real place and importance in the universe. I call this a spiritual epiphany because logically, rationally, we can be aware of our tininess in relation to the Great Scheme of Things, but even so behave as though we were special and specially deserving. It requires something other than a logical argument to really bring the meaning home and make it a part of one's working psyche. 

There are many traditions which aim at something spiritual, but I think many of them have this as their goal.

I have met people who were proud of their consistent meditation habits and general spiritual personality (self-described) who were nonetheless egoistic and indifferent to their influence on the rest of the world. This seems to me like an imitation spirituality, because it doesn't end in the "good-constructive deeds" you mention.

[Leonardo17]

Sorry: Can you erase this post?

[Leonardo17]

BrianSoddingBoru:

 

“‘Possible’ doesn’t mean probable. It’s possible that my cats speak fluent Mandarin but I’m not going to expend any effort investigating the matter.”

 

- As I said: I don’t believe in God as a cosmic persona either. The least we can say about this matter is that there has been no evidence pointing to the existence of such a being so far. This “inner reality” I’m talking about, is still worth exploring because it does not in any way defy any part of our scientific / rational findings in this world.

 

AngrBoda:

 

“This assumes there is a true spirituality which you can practice. The reality is you're simply reapplying spiritual techniques and understandings that someone else developed -- you're not creating anything based upon first person examination, you're using existing spiritual ideas as a bootstrap, with much the same problem as you have with reason. The spiritual techniques which, to be blunt, you are borrowing, not creating, are infected with the same viewpoint issues as secular rational bodies of knowledge. As a Hindu, I can tell you that the different Hindu schools all tell the tale of Hinduism and their Hindu rivals differently, reserving the crown jewel for whatever Hindu school the writer happens to subscribe to themselves. And Buddhism is the same way. Christianity, the same. And none of it is original. And this is because while you portray spirituality as something that you can practice fresh, without borrowing from others, you really can't. Sitting alone and contemplating will not get you a worthwhile spiritual practice. You'll simply end up stewing in whatever juices you've mentally accumulated over time. Like it or not, spirituality isn't a solitary practice. Spirituality is a social practice wherein groups, movements, institutions, and societies lay out both the basic blueprint and outline and on toward the details. You like to think that you're discovering and implimenting something authentic, but you're not; you're just combining old parts in your own unique way, without ever escaping the problems with those old parts. You may suggest that some commonality points toward a genuine core existing, but that's just a theory. It's far more likely that common core is simply a reflection of the fact that human nature expresses itself similarly within social processes, and a core of common items represents their greater evolutionary fitness within social process, regardless of whether those parts themselves have any inherent fitness or genuineness.

 

A good example is Zen Buddhism. The Zen Buddhist argues that by engaging in sitting practice, you are stripping away all artifice. But the theory and technique of this stripping away depends upon large chunks of metaphysical artifice, without which, zazen becomes just daydreaming.”

 

- Are you a Hindu?

- I’m not into the religion thing that much either. I grew up reading the books and listening to the TV interviews of very secular approaches to Islam. As a teenager I was interested in Native American Religion and believed that the more “nature based” Religions like Shamanism were the beast because they had not been contaminated by our corrupt / consumerist societies.

 

   As you can see in the beginning of this post, I am way beyond the “mind-based” / intellectual approaches right now. I don’t care about doctrines because (If I understood correctly – As you have just pointed out) all of the doctrines are basically false. I basically study this and that, without any restrictions. And if it feels good inside, I study the same thing a little more. And what matters the most is this feeling of progress. If I am more balanced / more at peace with myself and if I feel like I understand more about what is going on right here right now, than I feel like I’m not wasting my time.

 

/And this is very different from intellectualism. I like intellectualism too but this is different.

 

   Your point is a point we all must have living in a modern world. There are spiritual narcissists out there who are eager to make all sorts of religious combinations, serving spiritual cocktails to their followers just to be able to control and exploit these naïve / unrespecting people who usually have some psychological trauma that they are not able to work out through traditional medical means.

 

- And (once again) that’s where true spirituality kicks in. What I am talking about here is:

 

1) Free of charge. If God is inside you and is a universal phenomenon the only person you need to pay to access it is yourself.

 

2) No one has a “better” or “greater” access to it. So all the “religions” you have been mentioning plus all the spiritual teachers that are available on the religion-spirituality part of a book store are basically products that I will choose or not to consume. And

 

3) As I said. There has been a lot of progress in social science during the last century and in this century. There are many great philosophical writings out there too. What I like in spiritual approaches is this self-empowering ideas that are based on the first two assumptions mentioned above.

 

/So if I am wrong, I’m just wrong. Many people before me have been wrong about a lot things and that’s just a part of the human condition. But if I’m not, than I might just have discovered a place of peace and silence within the constant irrationality and noise of a human society that is (I believe) completely immature and still a long way from a truly civilized society.

Bellaqua:

 

“

I think this is an important point. And the comparison to psychotherapy is on point.

 

Psychoanalysis, when it's successful, is extremely self-revealing. The fictions we tell ourselves and the defenses we set up to protect our egos are hard to break through, and psychoanalysis can do this. It's not always successful, of course, but at its best it can be a great benefit.

 

Often when people describe a spiritual experience, it seems to me that what they're talking about is simply aesthetic. That is, if you get some numinous feeling in a forest, or looking at a starry sky, it can be very beautiful. And beautiful things can give us pause, briefly taking us away from our normal habits of thought.”

 

- These are ver correct observations. That’s what I am trying to tell.

 

“But the way I define spirituality, there must be a lasting effect. And it must be an effect which reveals us to ourselves, and points us in the direction of becoming better people. This happens largely by a dissolution of the protective ego and an epiphany concerning one's real place and importance in the universe. I call this a spiritual epiphany because logically, rationally, we can be aware of our tininess in relation to the Great Scheme of Things, but even so behave as though we were special and specially deserving. It requires something other than a logical argument to really bring the meaning home and make it a part of one's working psyche.

 

There are many traditions which aim at something spiritual, but I think many of them have this as their goal.

 

I have met people who were proud of their consistent meditation habits and general spiritual personality (self-described) who were nonetheless egoistic and indifferent to their influence on the rest of the world. This seems to me like an imitation spirituality, because it doesn't end in the "good-constructive deeds" you mention.”

 

- These are deep issues. But I believe that we are already “better people”. For instance some Christians might tell you things like “I will pray for you” or “I hope you find this light within you someday”. I’ve been in this forum for 4 years now and I’ve never said anything like that to anybody. Because at some point you get to understand the limits of your human condition too. This is a bit difficult to understand. But you may re-read my post about Aristotle. The core of the idea, is that we can have a very good intellect. That intellect can serve us in many ways and all of us would like to have a strong intellect. But at some point you understand that the Earth is like a particle in this universe and we are a particle in this world. Hence (maybe) there may be other ways in trying to understand those core questions people have been asking since the dawn of mankind.

[Angrboda]

 

- Are you a Hindu?

- I’m not into the religion thing that much either. I grew up reading the books and listening to the TV interviews of very secular approaches to Islam. As a teenager I was interested in Native American Religion and believed that the more “nature based” Religions like Shamanism were the beast because they had not been contaminated by our corrupt / consumerist societies.

 

   As you can see in the beginning of this post, I am way beyond the “mind-based” / intellectual approaches right now. I don’t care about doctrines because (If I understood correctly – As you have just pointed out) all of the doctrines are basically false. I basically study this and that, without any restrictions. And if it feels good inside, I study the same thing a little more. And what matters the most is this feeling of progress. If I am more balanced / more at peace with myself and if I feel like I understand more about what is going on right here right now, than I feel like I’m not wasting my time.

That's fine and I am glad that you find some benefit. However you are here advocating a life answer to third parties and thus you have a responsibility to vet your ideas or include appropriate disclaimers. You have not done this. Instead you've been Pollyanna and promoted what at the end of the day may be false hope.