Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

I'm an atheist, and don't believe in the supernatural per se. To me, the supernatural is best described by Harold Abelson in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs:

> We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.

> A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.

> A computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes programs precisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer's apprentice, novice programmers must learn to understand and to anticipate the consequences of their conjuring. Even small errors (usually called bugs or glitches) in programs can have complex and unanticipated consequences.

I do think the supernatural exists but simply as perceived emergent properties of natual systems. For example, most of us have experienced love and might describe it as a supernatural experience. That is a real experience to most of us. Yet we know that in reality, the experience we had emerged from a complex set of natual systems (hormones, brainwaves, etc) that are far beyond our understanding.

So to answer your question, my spirital practices are things that increase my wellbeing and bring about these supernatural experiences.

Regularly: breath-focused meditation, time in nature, swimming laps, sex, burning incense, journaling/reflection.

Occasionally: fasting, ayahuasca, solitude retreats.

Do you ever struggle with the parts of the bible that feel outdated in the modern context? I never read the bible by myself, but I went to Sunday school for 9 years and I remember struggling as a child to conciliate what I was being taught at school and at chruch, and specially ignoring the hipocrisy of the people lecturing the bible stuff not practicing any of that. I don't remember specific examples, as this was 15 years ago and I've since become atheist.

I'm not sure I agree with this take.

> It is not composed of matter at all.

Is this not false? Maybe not at the level we can see with our human eyes, but any computer process does exist as matter, in the bits of code stored on the disk and the electrical circuits that execute it