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Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#251

Post by bckr »

hackingthelema wrote: post #245
bckr wrote: post #213

I'm into magick. So a lot of what I do is observe my thoughts and intentions and direct my attention/emotion/passion/sexual energy towards the most beautiful and joyful subset of those. When I'm particularly certain of a desired outcome I will "cast" for it, occasionally doing a bit of sorcery: drawing funny pictures and generally doing wizardly stuff. I also do "continuous divination" AKA leaning heavily into apophe…

Fortune cookies are one of my favourites, too. I tend to use coin flips a lot. Occasionally I'll draw a rune or a tarot card, but I find I don't always understand what they're trying to say until after it's happened. > In particular I pray to Ganesh to help me let go of negative things I'm holding onto (this was a beautiful outcome of therapy mingling with my spiritual life); I always find it fascinating which gods m…

> Pop goes Ganesh

I don't know but now I need to know

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#252

Post by flanbiscuit »

nathias wrote: post #80

I am a nihilist, my spiritual practice is to live without lying to myself.

Hi, I would not call myself a full on nihilist because I've never read any nihilist literature. All I know is the most basic definition, and from discussions with friends who are more knowledgeable on the subject, but I do feel like this aligns with my way of thinking.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#253

Post by sshlocalhost98 »

I haven't seen anyone mention Hinduism. I am a Hindu and belong to Advaita Vedanta school of thought.

I begin my day my saluting to the One and the Only Brahman reading Bhagavad-Gita.

meditation on the mantra 'Satyam Jnanam Anantam Brahma'

and trying to realise that everything is Brahman, there's nothing apart from Brahman

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#255

Post by natch »

My entire spiritual practice, if you must call it that, is just living life.

I think of the afterlife as the life of people (and other sentient creatures) that will live (or live on) after me, and every day I try to do what I can to make my life AND that afterlife better.

I won’t be there for that afterlife, because I will be very dead, but I believe it is real :-).

Thinking about things this way makes life meaningful and fun.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#256

Post by learner007 »

I am Muslim and pray 5x a day. Prayer is the remembrance of God (Allah) and expression of gratitude and love.

Every morning I spend some of my wealth in charity. The Quran puts great emphasis on helping others and on being a good human being. My father used to say it's not the amount, but consistency that matters. I try to keep to that.

Apart from that, I read / listen to the Quran. This is what makes me the happiest spiritually.

simple translations of the Quran: https://beta.quran.com/1

overview of Islam: https://www.javedahmedghamidi.org/#!/mizan (English on top)

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#257

Post by cvwright »

Recent convert to Anglicanism here. It’s a lot more formal than the Baptist tradition that I grew up in.

There are a lot of rote prayers for every occasion - morning, night, etc. When I was younger I would have found this inauthentic, forced, and fake. But now I find that it sort of fills a gap. It provides some of the ritual and meditation that I had admired/envied in Eastern traditions like Buddhism.

I’m still sort of easing my way in to all this. So far I’ve been enjoying listening to morning prayer on The Daily Office Podcast [1] with my morning coffee. It’s a great way to start the day.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-office-podca...

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#258

Post by tomrod »

scotty79 wrote: post #219
nottorp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they need not be tied to morality. Is morality a monopoly of religion?

Religions usually usurp the role of being the source of morality. It's a necessity for them because that's the only way they can cover up their deep and vast immorality. You can't be evil if people believe you define what evil means. This way omicient, omnipotent God can still be most moral being in existence while allowing babies to die of cancer.

Nice way to use divine command theory to reconcile theodicy.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#259

Post by stuporglue »

I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I read scriptures every day (Book of Mormon, Bible, Doctrine and Covenants) for 10-30 minutes. I turned 40 this year and have a goal to read all of those scriptures cover to cover before my next birthday.

I pray every day as well, at least at night, often when I wake up, and almost always before meals (unless I'm at a restaurant or something).

Weekly I go to church, and go help with the youth activities. I also go visit families and widows regularly — or at least I try to.

I try to worship at the temple (different than the regular weekly church) about monthly.

And I pay 10% of my income as a tithing and give some each month as a "fast offering" to help the needy.

Back to the day to day stuff, I try not to swear, try to be kind, honest, and all the other things Christ was and would be.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#260

Post by krohling »

I don't consider myself religious. Like many folks here (I assume) I've had a strong physicalist lean for much of my life. I've found great joy in the study of math, physics and of course computers.

The pull towards a more spiritual understanding of my condition has been heavily motivated by the mystery of my own consciousness. By consciousness I refer only to pure awareness. This moment in time with this collection of protons and electrons and complex field fluctuations is being experienced. And I find that so incredibly truly strange an inexplicable by any physical description. To carry out this dance of wave function evolution it does not seem that experience would be required at all. Yet it's there. Furthermore, when I'm quiet and my mind settles I can become acutely in touch with this pureness of experience and it appears to transcend mental processing, thoughts, memories and all of the things that are typically used to describe "I".

My story for what the universe is, is something along the lines of a Maxwell Tegmark level 4 multiverse populated with all possible mathematical structures and infused with a panpsychism quality of fundamental experience. Yes, I suspect that even electrons are experienced and I know that's weird lol. In the end though I know this description is just a story that my ego mind needs to make sense of all this stuff and I try not to place too much stock in it.

Practices that I find helpful and meaningful:

-Meditation (I usually aim for about 30 minutes a day)

-Listening to and reading Alan Watts

-Listening to and reading Ram Dass

-Semi-regular psychedelic experience (psilocybin primarily)

-Listening to East Forest's music

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