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Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#291

Post by hall0ween »

sfotm wrote: post #267
sam0x17 wrote: post #233

100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one, and derived tremendous spiritual and psychological relief when I realized all of that was absolute nonsense at the age of 9. I knew I was gay at the time and wouldn't come out until I was 18 or so, but my life just got a lot easier when I removed religion completely. I also recall discovering increased moral agency -- as a Christian I had been taugh…

I was raised in the Catholic church, and I don't think your take on confession is quite right. The process of confession isn't "sit in this booth and walk out scot-free on all of your wrongdoings". It's meant to be an assisted meditation on what you can do better in your life, and how to do so. The act of confession doesn't help you if it's not done in good faith, and a penance for murder might be a confession to the…

As far as I know, confession is a route for absolution of “sins”. And for some reason this is a power Christian churches give themselves. If it doesn’t result in a form of leverage (moral or otherwise) over it’s practitioners, I’d be surprised. Even more so for children who have yet to establish their own view of the world.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#293

Post by saperyton »

TchoBeer wrote: post #276
saperyton wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Orthodox Jew checking in here. How do you manage to do shacharis in 20 minutes? Do you go to minyan? ;)

Is 20 minutes supposed to be long or short? Without a minyan it usually takes me about 10-15 minutes and I'm faster than average.

Takes me 25-30 minutes on a regular morning.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#295

Post by unixhero »

natch wrote: post #270
mikercampbell wrote: post #244

I used to be devout Mormon, and a hardcore one at that. It was woven so deeply in my reality, that everything had spiritual significance for me. A few years ago, I encountered history, documents, and truths about the religion that were never presented to me. Since then, I've slowly, painfully, removed myself from the religion, and removed the religion from me. It's extremely painful to go from a space where everythin…

>nothing actually matters Maybe it’s just a matter if having a time perspective that is appropriate for what we can possibly get a handle on as humans. In the medium term, as opposed to the heat-death-of-the-universe long term, stuff definitely matters. Also btw that phrase “nothing actually matters” is a little piece of propaganda planted by religion as a false caricature of non-religious thinking. You might conside…

Come watch TV [0]

[0], "Nobody exists on purpose", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_qvy82U4RE

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#296

Post by TchoBeer »

I'm a religious Jew, in a bit of a crisis of faith. I still pray three times a day, I still make shabbat and observe holidays, I even still learn Torah even though I don't really believe in it anymore, because I find being well read useful when I have to explain the times I do break the cultural norms to people. Orthodox Judaism in general has a lot of laws everywhere: what you wear, what you eat, what you put in your house, and a lot of prayer and blessings.

Modern orthodox communities of Jews are very weirdly selective about the things they're ok with modernizing and the things they still hold importance with: listening to secular music is fine, wearing modern clothing is fine, but if you play instruments on the sabbath you're shunned. There's something inherently disgustingly coercive about a society that will treat you like a stranger and disown you if you don't get married, let alone if you have a relationship with someone of the same sex. Every day it gets harder to accept myself living a life where I can't openly love the people I love, but there is also a structure and community that secular society doesn't really have. Part of the draws of acceptance is that the sense of community in religious spaces is built not just out of inclusivity (we have the same religion and values) but also exclusivity (we aren't like them) and this means that sometimes you're excluded.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#297

Post by whatshisface »

BTCOG wrote: post #278
kk6mrp wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might like this poem (from what I can find it is attributed to Bill Britton): When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you don’t sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ. THAT IS DYING TO SELF When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and y…

It's so odd to me that since the dawn of time, humans find this innate need to live in slave morality. Living a life of moral slavery based on stories and tales previous humans made with their own minds. It's a definition of insanity, from my own perspective. To contribute to the discussion: I practice nothing, no religion, no meditations. Nothing. I find peace enough knowing that I'm not morally enslaved and that I…

Moral slavery as you put it is one of those things that's bad for you but good for everybody else, unless you're bad at getting away with things in which case it's also good for you.

Another kind of slavery is doing whatever you want, because you don't decide what you want. What you want is determined by the often self-contradictory brain circuits that sprouted in your head without your intent or permission. That's something from the bible, by the way.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#299

Post by kirse »

pg_1234 wrote: post #282
sam0x17 wrote: post #233

100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one, and derived tremendous spiritual and psychological relief when I realized all of that was absolute nonsense at the age of 9. I knew I was gay at the time and wouldn't come out until I was 18 or so, but my life just got a lot easier when I removed religion completely. I also recall discovering increased moral agency -- as a Christian I had been taugh…

+100% ... well, straight here ... but I was 7 when I realised that religion was not only bullshit but actually dangerous as it represents a way for people to justify reprehensible acts by putting the importance of pandering to the alleged whims of a "supreme" being above any rational standard of decency and morality.

as it represents a way for people to justify reprehensible acts

And in that view, it also represents a way for people to "justify" incredible acts of grace, mercy, and kindness to fellow man. At least in the US, the broad majority of charities and social work organizations that care for others' many needs (both internal and external to this country) have some sort of religious background.

Even further, religious freedom was a core basis for creating the US that - for all its faults - is still one of the greatest civilizations to have ever existed. So your one-sided perspective is arguably just that.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#300

Post by Onewildgamer »

skinney6 wrote: post #119

Not long ago in my new apartment after breaking up with a long time girlfriend I had an amazing experience while meditating. The odd thing was I never really meditated back then. Something just told me to do it. I was led on an internal journey that showed me some things about my self. One, don't turn away from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Two, don't judge yourself. Three, the ego or this idea of myself is an…

I suppose many of us have had such experience one way or the other. My exploration on such path had different phases. One important milestone I felt was, when our angels and demons calm and come to an agreement on some terms the inner spirit or I call the human takes charge. After which I feel free to observe the emotions and carry on with the same things but in a better and a conscious manner. Emotions of sympathy/attachment, anger, greed, envy and pride will all be still there but can be better managed and learnt that it's only necessary in this practical world.

It's been about 3 years and counting since I've had such experience and since then every morning I'm trying to balance my mind like an audio equalizer :)

A good construct I found along the way was to substitute envy with competition, pride with work, greed with giving, attachment/indifference with love. Neither of them too much that it'll consume me nor too little to keep me empty. If none of this works then find something else like a child. Anger is a beast of its own that I someday I intend to figure out.

Cheers and Happy new year everybody

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