A Basic Definition of Spirituality (of True Faith)

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Leonardo17

-This is an important point. But you can look at it this way:
 
I would not want to be in your car if you are driving after drinking to bottle of scotch or if you have had pills / magic mushrooms of anything like that. But would you be afraid of being in my car if I have meditated for 20 minutes before driving the car?
 
/ So there are some useful stuff there.

I don’t drink or take drugs. But if I did, yes - you should be terrified of getting in a car with me. As for the other, I don’t know how meditation affects you but (again) yes, I would probably be unconcerned about meditation affecting your driving.

I never said meditation can’t be useful. I took issue with your repeated claim that non-spiritual people can’t know anything worth knowing.

Boru

[Paraselene]

As great as knowledge can be, the wisest thing to accept is that there are some things not worth knowing.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

As great as knowledge can be, the wisest thing to accept is that there are some things not worth knowing.

Of course there are, but that varies from person to person. For instance, I find that my daily horoscope is not worth knowing.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

That’s a very serious possibility yes. But if I was convinced of that myself I would simply renounce to spirituality altogether and become an atheist like you guys. 

Judging by your comments about gods...you already are, my man.  We contain multitudes.  When you say that you don't believe that there's some divine person pulling strings in the background you're saying exactly what every single person here is saying when they say "I'm an atheist".  The rest of it is a tossup.  Very Online Atheists are extremely skeptical relative to atheism in general.  It's a product of our belief states (in this and so many other things) being challenged on a regular basis by both theists and other atheists.  That produces a community focused on analytics, hard science, formal logical explication.  However....most people who don't believe in gods do believe in many of the items those three things are very commonly set against.  The supernatural, the paranormal, various mind over matter schemes - the superstitious by any name.  Most atheists (again speaking for no one but myself.... here, we're a weird bunch) believe in something that maps to spirituality in their contexts, too.  

Renouncing spirituality doesn't actually make a person an atheist - consider all of the god believers with a dead faith life.  They strongly believe in gods but not spiritual things™.  In fact, in the us, that is THE context of conservative evangelical belief.  The baptist church explicitly and strictly rejects spiritualism™ as a matter of constitutional organization.  Also women talking to men like they know anything...in the next few days.  They strongly believe in gods but -also- believe that every "spiritual" whatsit is a crock of shit concocted by satan to tempt people away from the truth.  Being strongly predisposed towards some spirituality is, likewise, not an indication that a person is not an atheist.  I don't know if you've caught my many posts advocating for (and explaining all other religion by way of) a religion of nature.  Or the many interactions in which my fellow very online atheists note that the things I say and indicate a ceratin and unshakeable belief in can often (or even always, lol) come across as highly spurious and extremely familiar nonsense. That I talk about morality...just as one example...about is's and oughts and betterment in a way that, to them, sounds as though I'm taking notes from a pulpit somewhere.

Tyng it all up with a bow for you...and I've suggested this many times since you joined us...... alot of what you think you're arguing for (or against) with us..here..is actually a product of the theistic conditioning and framing you were brought up in. There are things you think are "atheist" that are not...and things that you think "atheists" don't or can't be which atheism does do, and we are. Gun to my head, if someone asked me to breifly explain you as you've communicated yourself to us here...I'd call you a progressive but superstitious atheist...and I don't mean that as a dig, just a description. I could probably sell you some crystals and a book on guided meditation, but I couldn't sell you on divinely sanctioned hate. You don't think there's a divine person to have hates to sanction in first goddamned place.....and that's a good thing.

[Ivan Denisovich]

As great as knowledge can be, the wisest thing to accept is that there are some things not worth knowing.

Even wiser is knowing that one knows nothing. Dude who supposedly said this is a symbol of wisdom to this day.

[Leonardo17]

Brian Sodding Boru:
 

“I don’t drink or take drugs. But if I did, yes - you should be terrified of getting in a car with me. As for the other, I don’t know how meditation affects you but (again) yes, I would probably be unconcerned about meditation affecting your driving.
 
I never said meditation can’t be useful. I took issue with your repeated claim that non-spiritual people can’t know anything worth knowing.”

 
I can reformulate this as “the more fundamental questions of life”.
 
Questions like:
 
- What do you do in a world in which we should have started reducing our greenhouse gas emissions at least 20 years ago but instead of investing these huge efforts into this energy transmission that is vital to almost all of us, politicians are doing basically nothing and seem to be focused instead on things like “Which Messiah that is destined to come during the apocalypse is the true Messiah”?
 
Or more simple basic questions:
 
- This life, existence, being or whatever is here. So what do you do with it once it is here?
 
(I mean very important questions with very important answers)
 
The Grand Nudger:
 

“Judging by your comments about gods...you already are, my man.  We contain multitudes.  When you say that you don't believe that there's some divine person pulling strings in the background you're saying exactly what every single person here is saying when they say "I'm an atheist".  The rest of it is a tossup.  Very Online Atheists are extremely skeptical relative to atheism in general.  It's a product of our belief states (in this and so many other things) being challenged on a regular basis by both theists and other atheists.  That produces a community focused on analytics, hard science, formal logical explication.  However....most people who don't believe in gods do believe in many of the items those three things are very commonly set against.  The supernatural, the paranormal, various mind over matter schemes - the superstitious by any name.  Most atheists (again speaking for no one but myself.... here, we're a weird bunch) believe in something that maps to spirituality in their contexts, too. 
 
Renouncing spirituality doesn't actually make a person an atheist - consider all of the god believers with a dead faith life.  They strongly believe in gods but not spiritual things™.  In fact, in the us, that is THE context of conservative evangelical belief.  The baptist church explicitly and strictly rejects spiritualism™ as a matter of constitutional organization.  Also women talking to men like they know anything...in the next few days.  They strongly believe in gods but -also- believe that every "spiritual" whatsit is a crock of shit concocted by satan to tempt people away from the truth.  Being strongly predisposed towards some spirituality is, likewise, not an indication that a person is not an atheist.  I don't know if you've caught my many posts advocating for (and explaining all other religion by way of) a religion of nature.  Or the many interactions in which my fellow very online atheists note that the things I say and indicate a ceratin and unshakeable belief in can often (or even always, lol) come across as highly spurious and extremely familiar nonsense. That I talk about morality...just as one example...about is's and oughts and betterment in a way that, to them, sounds as though I'm taking notes from a pulpit somewhere.
 
Tyng it all up with a bow for you...and I've suggested this many times since you joined us...... alot of what you think you're arguing for (or against) with us..here..is actually a product of the theistic conditioning and framing you were brought up in. There are things you think are "atheist" that are not...and things that you think "atheists" don't or can't be which atheism does do, and we are. Gun to my head, if someone asked me to breifly explain you as you've communicated yourself to us here...I'd call you a progressive but superstitious atheist...and I don't mean that as a dig, just a description. I could probably sell you some crystals and a book on guided meditation, but I couldn't sell you on divinely sanctioned hate. You don't think there's a divine person to have hates to sanction in first goddamned place.....and that's a good thing.”

 
- If you did I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Gandhi once said
"Do you think I am superstitious? I am a super-atheist,"
 
On the first paragraph: I remember an interesting movie in which the man had a daughter dying of Leukemia. Even as she was dying the man (an atheist) refused to let his daughter believe in any idea about the afterlife. After the girl died, he did the same to his wife who wanted to believe her daughter had become a sparrow or some other bird. Even then he expressed his hatred on religious authorities and claimed that without them, there would be a cure for his daughter’s illness.
 
/ So yes: Atheist can be very radical too.
 
On the second paragraph: Many churches have this hatred for new-age like spirituality. They see it as a work of Satan indeed. But the debate is still out. Personally, as someone who believes in “lowers energies” and “bad influences”, I really don’t think I’m under the ultimate negative energy of this level of existence. I can say that as someone who knows what he is talking about.
 
But yes: That’s what I am saying as well. There are these “religious” people who have simply lost contact with all forms of spirituality. Their “Religion” is actually an Ideology. Some archeologists and/or anthropologist use the term “ideology” to describe all sorts of cult phenomenon. But do you know why there is this revivalism of ancient religion (like Norse-Paganism for instance)? According to me: People want a more “connected” (hence more spiritual) relation with the divine. And one of the easiest way to do that is going back to nature and appreciating these various energies that are present within nature (which are referred to by them as Gods).
 
Third Paragraph:
 
- That’s ok with me. And I can re-quote Ivan denisovich above:
 

“Even wiser is knowing that one knows nothing. Dude who supposedly said this is a symbol of wisdom to this day.”

 
I’ve just seen a documentary on how the female cyclist team of Afghanistan was evacuated from there in 2021 by a Jewish (who I am learning is also in the close circle of Benjamin Netanyahu). In this world you have Mohammedans who are willing to murder young girls from their own country because they have committed the sin of riding a bicycle (the ones we all rode at least when we were kids) and a (probably atheist) citizen of Israel saves these 27-40 girls from these "followers of the Prophet" and offers them a free and unrestricted life in places like Canada and/or Switzerland.
 
So it’s not that I am a “this” or “that” it’s just that some of the designations that we all seem to have in this world have simply become empty words in this day

[The Grand Nudger]

You've got the general idea right......but you'd probably be surprised to find out how many of the pagan revivalist types are atheists. There's a broad understanding in the community that religions and spiritualities are (and can be continually) constructed...as ..mostly...quasi-reconstructionists. Certainly no wall between the two, as you would have it. The norse pagan end is usually less about nature and more about heritage, for better and for worse. Whole lotta white supremacists in that sub-group. It seems to me that you just use the terms to denote which x's you like and which you don't. A bad spirituality is a religion, and good spirituality is not a religion. To me, a spirituality is one's personal experience of the sense of the numinous. You can see how the white supremacists fit this because their connectedness comes from their (percieved, alleged, supposed) whiteness. A blood bond. A religion is what the community does about or with their spiritualities....which can be tasteful or distasteful, too.

For me, pagan spiritualities and religions..both decent and not so decent, just speak to my life experience better. I've spent most of it out there in the environment as a fighter or a farmer..and when I'm not doing that I'm dadding or foraging for fun, lol. So my particular brand of paganism is utterly and completely natural - it's how I experience the numinous, it's the way I see us all as connected to each other and to the universe. Not focused with or accommodating to super natures or superstitions or gods. IDK if I'd call it easy. I think it's probably alot easier to pick up a book about fortune telling and crystal healing and whatever flavor of quantum woo is popular on amazon.

It is interesting to note that there's nothing saying those things..as ridiculous and false as they are on their own grounds..can't also produce the sense we refer to as spiritual. Spirituality is truth neutral in that way, making the idea of a true spirituality or true faith a bit of an oxymoron. It's never really hurt religion or spirituality how often their contents prove to be demonstrably false. The point of them not being that they are true, but that we would make them so, if we could.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I can reformulate this as “the more fundamental questions of life”. 
 
Questions like:
 
- What do you do in a world in which we should have started reducing our greenhouse gas emissions at least 20 years ago but instead of investing these huge efforts into this energy transmission that is vital to almost all of us, politicians are doing basically nothing and seem to be focused instead on things like “Which Messiah that is destined to come during the apocalypse is the true Messiah”?
 
Or more simple basic questions:
 
- This life, existence, being or whatever is here. So what do you do with it once it is here?
 
(I mean very important questions with very important answers)
 

How you expect meditation to answer ‘fundamental’ or ‘very important’ questions? People have been looking for the ‘inner self’ since life become more than the never ending quest for the next meal, and these questions still remain unanswered.

I mean, your own navel-gazing and other practices may give you answers that satisfy you, but that really doesn’t begin to approach solutions to real-world problems.

Boru

[Leonardo17]

The Grand Nudger:
 

“You've got the general idea right......but you'd probably be surprised to find out how many of the pagan revivalist types are atheists. There's a broad understanding in the community that religions and spiritualities are (and can be continually) constructed...as ..mostly...quasi-reconstructionists. Certainly no wall between the two, as you would have it. The norse pagan end is usually less about nature and more about heritage, for better and for worse. Whole lotta white supremacists in that sub-group. It seems to me that you just use the terms to denote which x's you like and which you don't. A bad spirituality is a religion, and good spirituality is not a religion. To me, a spirituality is one's personal experience of the sense of the numinous. You can see how the white supremacists fit this because their connectedness comes from their (percieved, alleged, supposed) whiteness. A blood bond. A religion is what the community does about or with their spiritualities....which can be tasteful or distasteful, too.”

 
- Yes. We have our own versions of revivalism here too and yes, some far right people seem to be attracted to that because of the wrong reasons if you ask me.

   But that’s not what I’m talking about. I recently found this Norwegian historical novelist who made some 100 self-portraying videos on the subject. What he is talking about is something I can easily relate to as someone who like history and especially ancient history.
I mean yes, we are probably the luckiest generation ever. There are no barbarians trying to shoot us with their arrows, no wolf pack we need to keep away with our fire, no forced duty or Great-Wall building project that has been ordered by our emperor, we don’t need to be in the mud all day, food is available at the restaurant or in the grocery store. Etc. etc. but what this Bjorn Andreas (the name of the youtube content producer) is talking about is how we lost contact to our land, contact to our tribe, how we became slave of a system that seems to be entirely focused on the material and less on the human aspects of life.

   Of course this is such a stoic approach to all of it. I mean we have artistic expression like never before, we have science producing universities and places of learning and political parties and other civil-society organizations. There is a lot of meaning in this modern capitalist society too (no matter what they say). I mean if you are married, isn’t it a great thing that your wife’s suffering will be minimal at child birth and that science will do all it can so that that tiny creature will grow so fast and become as tall as you are within two decades?

- These are all great things. And they are here thanks to science.

But still: The man is not wrong. We need to reconnect with nature and we need to reconnect with ourselves. And this is important because our civilization is heading straight to the abyss. We are still a society that’s basically ruled by profit and big corporations who are doing everything so that our politicians (who know about climate change at least since 1989) don’t / cannot do anything concrete on the issue despite the fact that we have crossed several threshold that were not to be crossed if we wanted a sustainable future.
 
So I’m open minded on this.
 

“It is interesting to note that there's nothing saying those things..as ridiculous and false as they are on their own grounds..can't also produce the sense we refer to as spiritual. Spirituality is truth neutral in that way, making the idea of a true spirituality or true faith a bit of an oxymoron. It's never really hurt religion or spirituality how often their contents prove to be demonstrably false. The point of them not being that they are true, but that we would make them so, if we could.”

 
- I can relate to that too. That’s not the issue here. You seem to be perfectly connected both to your inner-self and to nature itself. And that’s good.
 
But on a societal level, I think there is a need to understand the bigger picture. Other that the climate issue I’ve mentioned above, how is it logical and positive for us if a country like the US has built a huge industrial military complex that seems to need to create wars to sustain itself even if this means putting billions into completely sterile efforts or sending very young people into harm’s way (for no reason at all).
 
See: Science (or the mind in general) is like a scalpel. It cuts and divides everything so we get to see what inside. But for each problem we solve, we get 10 new problem that we need to resolve as well.
 
So in this particular age, we need something that can work with our incredibly increased mental capacities. And I don’t know if the newly released smart watches and eye-glasses is exactly what we need.
 
As I said, I believe in these stuff. And before me the French philosopher Blaise Pascal has said:
 

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

 
- So if we can learn to find these place of quietness within us (with one method or another, as long as it works), we should be able to turn this whole thing around at some point.
 
No one can deny this: There is a lot of dysfunction in this world (both on a social and individual level). And I wish science could be the answer to all of these problems. But obviously: It isn’t.
 
BrianSOddingBoru:

 
“How you expect meditation to answer ‘fundamental’ or ‘very important’ questions? People have been looking for the ‘inner self’ since life become more than the never ending quest for the next meal, and these questions still remain unanswered.
 
I mean, your own navel-gazing and other practices may give you answers that satisfy you, but that really doesn’t begin to approach solutions to real-world problems.”

 
I think I already answered to this in the previous part of my post.
 
But don’t get me wrong. To get a vaccine against Bundibugyo Variant you need real scientists doing countless experiments in very well equipped and money-consuming virus-research laboratories throughout the world. Only then (hopefully) there will be an end to the epidemic.
 
It’s not like I can mediate 2-3 years in a cave in the Tibetan mountains and then I will come out with the right formula to cure the disease. The world doesn’t work that way.
 
But on the other hand, if (for instance) you feel a little overwhelmed by your duties and responsibilities in this highly industrialized and individualized world, why don’t you check if there is a tai-chi group near you that you can join after work on during lunchbreak? (You know)
 
Personally, I value this “connection” or “reconnection” element a lot and that’s my main object of focus whenever I do anything that I see as spiritual.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Personally, I value this “connection” or “reconnection” element a lot and that’s my main object of focus whenever I do anything that I see as spiritual.

(bold mine)

The is the crux of the nub of the gist. Your spiritual journey is personal and what matters to you. That's perfectly fine and it would be crass of me to suggest otherwise - you do you.

But you've implied many, many times that spirituality is somehow going to answer the very fundamental questions of existence, and that's simply not possible since there are roughly as many varieties of spirituality as there are spiritualists. That would be like me claiming that all types of wood have identical uses and properties, or that copper and steel are structurally the same. Spirituality is many things but one thing it is not is universal.

And for what it's worth, 'duties and responsibilities in this highly industrialized and individualized world' overwhelm me not even a little bit

Boru