What are your spiritual/religious views?

[Bigred]

Well its a long story incog but its with the uniting church , A lot of people mock me straight up about it.

So it is hard to really go into detail about it . But to say a little we do prison ministry and help with post release

prisoners getting them back into work and housing . So I have a lot of conflict in myself about the task as a lot of

people just take the piss out of it and just end up back on hard drugs and in jail.

[bogfrog]

Good on you man. Even the ones who take the piss out of it probably deep down really appreciate the effort.

[gtarman]

Edited August 9, 2013 by gtarman

[SunChaser]

What are your spiritual/religious views?

Oh, so what your saying is, just because it doesn’t involve blind faith, supernatural entities or have some petty title (which would be used to define who I am and my status within society), then it couldn’t possibly be a spiritual belief? I actually find that quite offensive and to be honest rather narrow minded.

Although I’m sure quoting the OP in a manner that implies I have missed the point and gone completely off subject, may make you feel really clever. In fact, in reality it is anything but clever and merely gives a perfect example of why humans are still just a useless blob of energy who worship mystical creatures to give there empty meaningless existence a sense of purpose and then condemns or kills any other form of life that has a different title to itself.

Imo, my spiritual beliefs are very relevant thank you very much! They are as described in my previses post, which is that we are meaningless forms of energy who are currently in the process of evolving (via the scientific method) into something that will have significance within the universe and one day be in full control of our own destinies.

Though on another note, I am starting to gain a mutual respect for the mainstream religions, I must admit. I mean, no matter what you believe, I doubt most people would argue against the idea that the most important thing in life is to be happy and content. So if I’m walking around constantly miserable in a reality that has no real purpose, secretly always in fear of my mortality and how short my existence will last. Then you have some Christian living out there life though a bliss of ignorance who is happy and comfortable in there own perception of reality because they truly believe they are going to live forever, really who’s the stupid one?

The one who wastes there short little existence constantly being angry & miserable about the reality of what is, or the one who just excepts a clear myth as reality and lives out there life happy and with a constant sense of safety and security?

As much as no one ever likes to talk about it, having a conscious and having no control of your destiny is a very scary thing that we all must deal with at some time. So if having a religion helps people get though there days with a genuine sense of happiness, then I think that’s cool.

Soon all the religious people will die off and disappear as free energy within the universe never to feel existence ever again anyway. Then we will finally be able to start advancing ourselves and create technology that we can download our consciousness into. But for now we are just scaffolding to a giant building, vital to building the structure, yet completely insignificant to the finished product. Our egos have grown far larger than any actual purpose we may have.

Edited August 10, 2013 by SunChaser

[ballzac]

quoting the OP in a manner that implies I have missed the point and gone completely off subject

lol, it had nothing to do with your post. I simply quoted the question and then listed every single one of my religious and spiritual beliefs underneath.

[Amazonian]

Although Im sure quoting the OP in a manner that implies I have missed the point and gone completely off subject, may make you feel really clever.

I got the impression that Ballzac had quoted the opening poster to prompt the opening poster to share his spiritual beliefs?! *shrugs

Edited August 10, 2013 by Amazonian

[ballzac]

I got the impression that Ballzac had quoted the opening poster to prompt the opening poster to share his spiritual beliefs?! *shrugs

Wow, I never realised there were so many ways to interpret an empty post.

[bogfrog]

Lol thats what i thought too.

Blank space leaves sooo much room for reading in between the lines, even if it is done falsely

[ThunderIdeal]

 

Though on another note, I am starting to gain a mutual respect for the mainstream religions, I must admit. I mean, no matter what you believe, I doubt most people would argue against the idea that the most important thing in life is to be happy and content. So if I’m walking around constantly miserable in a reality that has no real purpose, secretly always in fear of my mortality and how short my existence will last. Then you have some Christian living out there life though a bliss of ignorance who is happy and comfortable in there own perception of reality because they truly believe they are going to live forever, really who’s the stupid one?

they're both stupid, we all are a bit, but one of them at least questions his stupid view. absolutely any fool who gives any of their dribble a score of 'absolutely certain, beyond doubt' must surely be a cretin and if you question me on this......... be warned that to defend such a solid argument i start doing stupider and stupider things. leave my fortress alone cunts. so long as i hide in here i can ignore my strange unexplored surrounds, and nobody remind me my castle is sinking,

"The one who wastes there short little existence constantly being angry & miserable about the reality of what is, or the one who just excepts a clear myth as reality and lives out there life happy and with a constant sense of safety and security?"

i'd say the latter is likely dumber because his position is the least verifiable. a constant sense of security? from an individual point of view, relying on supernatural protection is surrendering the opportunity to observe, analyse, and act. if god gave you eyes it was so you could try to watch your own step, but i can't argue if your life experiences led you to believe that walking with christ is the best protection. my experience tells me australia is fairly safe but i have to look out for myself and others to minimise situations i deem bad.

one of the 'bad' situations i'd prefer to avoid, especially with children, is encouraging them to shovel garbage into their mind, or to help with the shovelling myself. i won't go around judging, especially since religions can be followed in various manners, but forcing dogma into a child's brain (by adults who probably know that it's dogma, but it's their dogma) is hard for me to comprehend. same goes for atheism. atheism, the flying spaghetti monster, or any myth detailing the creation of the universe, are all on similar footing. none. a lot of subjective experiences and questionable interpretations of fuck-knows-what, recorded by fuck-knows-who during fuck-knows-when for fuck-knows-why purpose and fuck-knows-how they decided which sequence of mumbo-jumbo merited recording. i'd rather develop my own flexible set of theories and techniques, taking my constant stream of inputs, filtering out what seems either beneath me or beyond me, mixing what's left and seeing how it goes. your own subjective experience of life is all you have, it probably differs greatly from what objective reality is (or isn't) but it's the best picture you've got if you treat the senses with suspicion, and obviously anything that arrives via the senses (opinions, facts, stories, figures, that thing that just happened or you remember happening, but are you sure it wasn't just nothing? NO PART OF YOUR SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE IS COMPLETELY RELIABLE!!! objective reality (if it exists):, the mind-blowing occurence whose various features splash bits of whatever around, the ACTUAL phenomenon which your ACTUAL sense organs fax to your ACTUAL brain. objective reality, if it could be utterly investigated might have bewildering traits, bewildering to our minds ability to understand and believe integrate with all the other crap in the mind, and bewildering because they show subjective reality to be a mockery. if reality itself has spooky vague bits then NOBODY HAS THE MASTER COPY, you couldn't describe the spooky bits, and even before they came along your concept of reality was a toddlers orange crayon scribble that veers off the sheet of paper and had boogers wiped on it. this human experience thing, collecting in our brain then filtered into one tiny stream of stuff for the conscious self (whatever that is) to "experience" (however that happens, possibly including input from non-physical sources. IT'S LOOSE. your ACTUAL existence may be a seemless, smooth flowing actual thing in actual reality but that body you're seeing, feeling, moving is a shitty fax.

you can't even witness yourself and that's where all this bubbles up from. this isn't new to anyone but imagine that i could keep expanding on these points and make a case that questions go for a long way, and all we can really do is drool. brain drool in our psy-ops compromised brain matrix cells, except even you're a smart, eagle-eyed lookin motherfucker now, your matrix brain has the dumbest face i've ever constructed and added to my little draft-copy universe.

i met morpheus once and he told me your actual, non-matrix face looks even dumber

my parents shared info and opinions with me growing up, they told me that their position is atheism but i get to choose my own position. if they had told me that there is no god and that i am an atheist i'd be bitter about it. i decided that atheism is just another unfounded made up guess, which like many religious/spiritual views claims it's speculation accurately answers unanswered questions. atheist doesn't mean "probably no god", these kinds of standpoints look at huge mysteries in the far distance and say they are small, compared to this big tablet of symbols i found (nobody would lie on a stone tablet. it says so, on this other stone tablet. derrr.) so you've decided that a sense of certainty is more valuable than a chance at truth, that's fine we all do it. and there's nothing wrong with saying 'i can have any opinion i wantj of course you can, if you even could unprogram assumptions and decrees you might act like a baby.

various dogmas become a blight on humanity when people decide their accumulated shit is very useful, important, valuable, needs to be shared/imposed, and they decide their opinion is quite nifty and they ought make a twat of themselves it at least as

shortened version. you've never even experienced your own face, and how dumb it looks, but i suppose scoop some of that dust out of your mind, all the stuff collected for every other reason BUT an honest quest of discovery, and pour it right into your kids brain. it was good right? yeah all good mate, religion didnt hurt me, yeah, yeah, its good mate. sweet mate you've set a child on the righteous path, undoubtedly. safety in numbers certainty in numbers, and it's easier to play peter pan when there's more of you.

[indigo264nm]

Since childhood I had this feeling I couldn't shake that I was reliving the same life over and over because I took a wrong turn somewhere along the way - leading to a very active pursuit of occult and ritual magic in my late teens... but science shifted my focus away from spirituality to a large extent.

The concept of an afterlife to me is something I don't dwell on because I'm never going to know for sure, but even if there is nothing out when I die I take comfort in knowing that matter that composes my body will ultimately end up dispersed among the air, earth and inside other life forms.

Besides that I think people should work out their spiritual beliefs themselves and not let other people's ideas dominate personal philosophical development.. just because someone wrote a few fucking books doesn't exclude the possibility that everything they came up with may just be total bullshit!! *cough* McKenna fanboys *cough*

I'm willing to believe that things I've experienced through ritual or psychedelics might merely be a construct of my own brain, and I'm open to the idea that there is some greater cosmic significance, but if I can't know for certain then I'm not going to waste my time contemplating it.

The pursuit of happiness and knowledge is all I really deem important for me, and trying to be a better person... doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

[Bigred]

With a lot of Christians its all about belonging not believing. They will join a church really out of a identity crisis

rather than a spiritual journey. Most people will believe there ultimate truth the way they have interpreted the bible

( a lot of people call them selves Christians with out reading the bible) So when you see these massive churches

like hillsong brisbane ltd who profited 55 million last financial year . Which are full of very easy led people who believe everything they

hear . It's become like a entertainment rather than a group dedicated to understanding god and the universe .

So what did they do with that 55 million well they paid the pastor 875 grand tax free and then pay for a lot of champagne

tastes for the church elite . At the end of the day they will pay a few charities money which then is cut up again through

admin so by the time it gets to the poor it is basically 2 maybe 3 million . I am not saying anything bad about the followers of
hillsong but more the management . So many mainstream religions are so guilty of this . Jesus was all about sharing and love

I believe that every person has there own spiritual journey and the bible is just there to help you on your way i dont believe it

word for word . Rather use it to find my soul and to help me love and treat others with a respect we all deserve

[whitewind]

Besides that I think people should work out their spiritual beliefs themselves and not let other people's ideas dominate personal philosophical development.. just because someone wrote a few fucking books doesn't exclude the possibility that everything they came up with may just be total bullshit!! *cough* McKenna fanboys *cough*

McKenna "Question authority and think for yourself!"

Fuck you, McKenna, how dare you tell me what to think? If I want to blindly follow dogma I will!

LOL

[whitewind]

( a lot of people call them selves Christians with out reading the bible) So when you see these massive churches

The Bible is incomprehensible gibberish to the lay person. You need degrees in philosophy, history, psychology and language to get anyway near halfway to getting to grips with what it is actually "saying", even then you are left with the facts that many of the texts have been deleted or removed and may be written by people who have an agenda you might not know about or even understand. From what I understand, most scholars who study it KNOW all this but it's not acknowledged by anyone who clings to the belief that God is real, or who has faith in the church. My Uncle is one such man; privately he admits all of the above, but is clever enough not to say so publicly or to anyone who might affect his career in the church. He is well versed in all the major religions and binds them all together into his own philosophy. Going up against that huge corporation called The Catholic Church and it's numerous offshoots would mean excommunication and the loss of everything he has, besides I'm fairly convinced he does actually believe in God. Or he has convinced me he does.

I think most people don't have the intellectual capacity to understand much of this, or the education (we aren't as intelligent as we'd like to believe, and I count myself firmly in that), and it would take a lifetime to study all this nonsense to prove it so (at which point you realise you have probably wasted your entire existence) so why bother?

Quite honestly, the older I get the more the idea of a beardy man in the sky is increasingly bizarre. Relying on a bunch of old texts from people who have the intellectual capacity of the average person is next to insane. At least science doesn't claim it's got all the answers, even if that is discomfitting to so many.

I think the basic tenets of Christianity come down to the Ten Commandments, which to me can be summarised by the simple phrase "Do not do unto others that which you would not wish upon yourself" or however it goes. I live by this rule, trying to do no harm. It's REALLY FUCKING DIFFICULT sometimes but I think I've managed it so far in my limited capacity as a human being. It's also an incredibly rational rule in a world where there are so many other people in addition to oneself, and has got absolutely fuck-all to do with whether there is an all-powerful being watching my every move to decide whether he gives me eternal damnation if I make a single mistake.

I also think it's what many of our laws are based on, weird though they get, so I tend to follow them as much as they make sense to me. I think laws get into weird territory when they interfere with decisions that affect us personally but don't seem to impact on others around us, such as the drug laws, and the ones that allow capitalism to control our economy where it's clear that amassing vast personal wealth clearly impacts the ability of others to take care of themselves.

Good morning everyone.

[weedRampage]

I went to a catholic school but was baptised a lutheran.

The 20th century saw a concerted effort to extinguish christianity from western society.

Why?

I think atheists are easier to control.

Surely the antithesis of religion is communism, but ironically communism grew out of

radical puritanical christianity.

Whether you admit it or not your mental sphere is colonised by some holy canon or another.

Modern physics is a blatant attempt to limit the minds perception of the infinite universe.

It is cheap and cheesey religion with a jellyfish in a wheelchair as the supreme deity.

Most of the relevance of christianity has been watered down and obscured.

When I read about Steve Job's zen buddhism I did feel inspired because it seems he

found some tangible framework of beliefs and values that helped him to have a better life

and reach out to so many people. Would anybody have a smart phone if it were not for zen?

Edited August 12, 2013 by weedRampage

[ballzac]

I tried so hard not to take the bait...I swear

 

I think atheists are easier to control.

lol

 

Modern physics is a blatant attempt to limit the minds perception of the infinite universe.

The irony here is that an overwhelming number of religious zealots think they are so important in 'God's plan', that the universe is diminished in size relative to their own ego. Not to mention that, before 'modern' astronomy, humans from many different cultures thought the stars were very close, for example, in Western thought they were assumed to be on the inside of a sphere that surrounds our (flat) planet. It's been less than a hundred years since we learnt that there are galaxies outside our own, and this understanding is only due to the revolution of modern science. Anyone interested in science knows that they are a drop in a cosmic ocean. That's not to say that there aren't religious people with a level of humility, but I hardly think it's the norm.

 

It is cheap and cheesey religion with a jellyfish in a wheelchair as the supreme deity.

Are you referring to Hawking? That is offensive on so many levels. Just the fact that you would refer to anyone with a disability as a "jellyfish" is beyond belief. But you are talking about someone with such an incredible gift of insight that he has been able to solve some of the most difficult problems presented by the natural world without the ability to put pen to paper. He has, against all odds, managed to overcome an illness that leaves most people dead in just a few years, to continue working tirelessly, and found meaning living with an illness that most people would think was torture.

In addition to that, your ignorance betrays you when you pick the 'public face' of physics as a supposed "deity". Truth be told, while he would make many physicists' top ten lists, there are many others for whom Hawking wouldn't even rate a mention on a top ten.

 

Would anybody have a smart phone if it were not for zen?

Yes. Would anyone have a smart phone if it were not for physics?

[Optimystic]

lol...

I just deleted the entirety of the comment I was going to post

instead, i'll just say

HAIL MCKENNA!

 

[bogfrog]

[qualia]

Would anybody have a smart phone if it were not for zen?

indeed, zen buddhism's best contribution to society, imho, is the smartphone,

[qualia]

"what has zen ever done for anyone?"

"it gave us the smartphone"

"oh really? wow thats awesome"

[tedzr]

rofl, love the spiral bog frog ;) I stopped reading at that. GOT IT ALL SUSSED. peace my racially diverse ecologically sensitive brothers and sisters. (cept for the cactus theives, yall can all go fuck yourselves).

[Optimystic]

even if it took the molecules a trillion years to organize enough to form a fricken dingo, that still is really pretty fucking awesome...

how photons of light, warmth, dna strands and all that other shit, conspired to build a machine, that burns the oxygen in the air, and the food in the fields, to make a coat of hair so pretty , as that of the dingo...

But why do dogs have tails? not ready for that higher wisdom yet I suppose...

(when the student is ready the teach appears, but if you want a hint, you can grab the tail and wag the dog)

so moving on...

the way it works is, I breathe out c02, the plants breathe it in, and a Dingo eats the baby

and we breathe in oxygen, to burn up other shit with, to feed these little fuckers:

 

I really don't think meaningless is the right term to explain this phenomenon we call life/consciousness... even if the purpose of life is to eat junk food

or to breath polluted air (so we can filter it out as to provide Zeus with a clean supply of air) ... there is mathematical sequence that is the order of the universe... ALL possible numbers exist in the universe, every expression is out there... if this was truly meaningless, then why would anything evolve out of chaos??? and why wouldn't it have been destroyed by the ensuing chaos after this long??? (or maybe we don't have long to go)....

so that settles it.... The real Gods are..... :drumroll:

NUMBERS! Pick your favorite number...

and then count that many blessings
(they are all around you, some of them are even people you don't like yet)

[gwalchgwyn]

seems to me that it's all about getting food

chrysostomos

[Scrubby]

I don't believe in a specific religion but i am deeply spiritual in a more person to earth kind of way.

I am yet to be convinced that there is a magical fluffy cloud waiting for us after we die and i would like to think that my consciousness is binded to my energy in some way and that maybe that could be past on to some other life form.

i'm gunna get back to my meditation now so i can come back as a cactus.

I know it sounds crazy but what religion isn't...

[bogfrog]

rofl, love the spiral bog frog ;) I stopped reading at that. GOT IT ALL SUSSED. peace my racially diverse ecologically sensitive brothers and sisters. (cept for the cactus theives, yall can all go fuck yourselves).

Lol Gaian I hope you dont think I was saying i've got it all sussed

I truly believe that learning and comprehending the nature of reality never stops, I dont think there is any end-point, just an evolution of ideas.

I still really enjoy reading the conclusion I came to that night, and it still feels right, but I could never say that its true or any better than any hypothesis anyone else has ever come to.

I do like this part alot tho:

"The creator of all experiments with it's creative capacity through the process of of existance that we experience. He/she/it attempts to produce a better creator than itself through the assimilation of all conciousness. We are a divine experiment performed by a wise and loving creator who wishes to relieve itself of it's responsibility, and can only do so by creating a suitable replacement. It does so by creating all that we know, and all that we don't know, everything that exists and has existed as a preliminary requirement to the current and future circumstances. From the smallest matter, to all bacteria, plant, animal and human life, solar systems, galaxies and beyond.

The creator fills the role of the parent, and it's creation, fills the role of the child, perpetually reproducing and building upon the foundations laid by those before. Naturally the creator gives birth to a child (existance) who develops far beyond the parent's possibilities.

The child eventually becomes the creator of all beyond this point, and infinately surpasses the generational limitations of their parent, thus relieving the parent of it's responsibility"

Obviously now a year on all the flaws in this idea sing out to me in an undeniable way.. Thus my point that ideas must evolve.

I think the human desire for stability and security chains us to our beliefs, contradicting the evolution that we want and need.

I also think there are two veins of spirituality.

Spirituality that seeks stability, and relies on a fixed answer, a set of rules and beliefs to live by. (To me, religion is this kind)

And

Spirituality that is emergent within experiencing the flow of life.

This is the kind I am fostering within my own life. I know all experience is a transition, things will never be the same tomorrow as they are today, and I thankful for that. Yes its fucking scary sometimes, and sometimes we all do want something to hold onto tightly to keep our fears at bay. But this cannot last. We cannot stop the flow of life.

We can move with it and be conscious of and listen to the messages, hints and nudges our experience is giving us, those whispers in the back of your mind which say "its time to wake up now and face the real world darling", and accept that we dont have all the answers, but that is okay!!!

Spiritual growth for me, is like breathing. You direct your energy inside (breathe in), you see what issue is there, waiting for you to look at it. You look at it, you pull it apart, you reassemble it (and yourself) in a way that it suitable and healthy for you now. Then you direct your energy out into the world (breathe out), you bring that potential into the real world and you act on it! Engage. Share. Love. And then once you have actualised this change, you go back inside. You breathe in, and you breath out. You go in, and you out.

Interesting to me is that the maori word for spirituality is 'wairua' or two rivers, the seen and the unseen, looking in and looking out, and now that I am truly engaging with this process, opening my self to fluidity of life, I see that this is how we can empower ourselves. Not by indulging duality, jumping from darkness to light, saying we are this but not that, this is good, this is bad, but by balancing and mingling all the dualities of our experience together, in a beautiful ever-changing tapestry of human-being.

I believe that in opening ourselves to the uncertainty of life and the truth that all things change, we can free our minds, our hearts, and our souls.

Peace my friends.

Edited August 13, 2013 by bogfrog

[paradox]

Wow, I never realised there were so many ways to interpret an empty post.

thats funny cause i thought you were referring to your signature thingy: i wank, i think!

i reckon thats a pretty good answer! to be honest