Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

Yeah man... I'd dare to say there is some kind of religion in that.

I could not have said it better than you did. I think that the real power is in your own mind and that most religions or "spiritual practices" are just ways of tricking your mind into solving your problems. You don't need religion once you realize that and then just use your mind.

I'm mostly atheistic and, in my understanding of the world, once my consciousness ceases to be functional within my body, i'll be forever gone. So that's what i center my contemplation of life around. There will be a day which will be the last for me, a thought that i'll have, which will be followed by eternal non existence. No matter how good or bad the things that will come after will be, i won't be able to experience them, even my awareness will no longer be here in any form, the concept of time breaking down because i won't observe it. In short, i have an expiration date, so it would be nice to do what i can to put it off for a bit longer. Furthermore, it's nice to make the days leading up to it meaningful, if i can and feel like doing so.

Framing things like that really makes most things seem rather meaningless and thus absolves me of worrying about the daily minutea too much, or getting too emotionally invested in any of it. For example, right now i'm stuck in the middle of conflicting value systems in my country and social circles. Not necessarily nihilism or even anti-natalism either, just the realization that i have a finite amount of emotion to feel towards the world around me and care to put in it.

DISCLAIMER: the following is highly polarizing and one example of things that i've seen consume people's time, identities and lives. Things that are better to avoid in my eyes, offered as an example. Skip to the end of italics if you'd like to skip this part.

On one side, there is a large part of my current culture that's oftentimes mean, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, racist and so on, which would have me act a certain way and uphold both their traditions and stereotypes in some sisyphean pursuit of a conformative national identity, in a world that's becoming more and more globalized and where many of these concepts of old aren't always relevant.

Then there's a different part, which perhaps leans too much in the opposite direction, not realizing how dangerous expressing themselves freely can be in a society where the former group is not viewed as a credible threat, a disconnect between what should be and what actually is, and sometimes just want to react to things purely based on emotion and not explore the finer points and nuance (e.g. how RMS was "cancelled" some time ago, despite possibly not being neurotypical and lacking compassion where some could have been useful), sometimes desiring to break down systems for no good reason.

Then there are the corporate interests which view me and others as expendable resources and members of society that should be freed from their financial burden of having disposable income, and who'll go to great lengths to achieve that, anything from intruisive ads to trying to convince me that i need things which i don't, the greater systems at play essentially ensuring that i'll receive only a small percentile of the income that i actually generate with my work, even home ownership currently being out of reach, as is financial independence of any sort.

I guess i could also throw in organized religion or other groups that exploit people's need for belonging, from social media, to multi level marketing - oftentimes spouting their own values and beliefs as fact, typically with certain non-publicly expressed goals in mind. Groups that would be quick to indoctrinate me in their midst and make me lead my life in better alignment with their values.

On a grander scale, one can even talk about things like environmentalism here. On one side, you have outright denial of what's going on with the planet and a desire not to change anything from how it was, to go far beyond the "business as usual" scenario for the economic and environmental outcomes. On the other, you sometimes have crafty entrepreneurs, whose promises are detached for reality, or activism to the degree where the individual action is far beyond what any human being would reasonably do.

From every side, there are groups of people and ideologies that try to get me to align with what they want me to align with and believe what they say, yet none of those really matter. I'll just tell each group what they want to hear so they don't end my existence or make it worse, and apart from that i'll just continue my life one day at a time. Why? Because after the aforementioned contemplation, there's no reason for me to throw my life away while attempting to follow any of their teachings, nor is there a reason for me to try to oppose them and ruin my life that way.

Instead, i should care about myself first and foremost. Get enough sleep. Eat reasonably healthily. Get some fresh air every day. Do some light exercise. Learn a skill, ideally something both mental and also something else that can be done with my hands. Play with my pets to feel better. Read what i want and entertain myself however i please. Learn something new to put myself in a better position in the future. Build relationships with the people who can make me enjoy a friendship with them. Avoid or cut out those who won't be healthy for me in the long term. Be nice to others so i can feel good about myself, or count on them to do the same. Just generally make existing more pleasant. Don't buy too much into what anyone says, but instead occasionally pause and take apart their arguments and reasoning to see how mine aligns or conflicts with theirs.

My life is too short for me to stress about those things, or to get too invested in social constructs. It is also probably too short for me to reap the benefits from life extension tech or viable cryogenics. Alas, i'm probably born to die. So why not make my life and myself better until then?

So, in short: a form of mindfulness/contemplation that's born out of needing to cope with various stressors in life.

As I said before, the traditional view is that the Bible is free of error, but that this refers to its intended moral message, not historical or scientific truth or any other alternative purpose one might apply to it.

Given that, you must be asking for not someone who sees it as containing error but instead factual inaccuracy, and for that, well, a good place to start is Origen of Alexandria (c. AD 184 – c. AD 253), who succinctly lays out both the traditional view of the purpose of scripture and the manner in which it encompasses and is unshaken by (and is even be served by) the presence of factual error in the Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book 10, Chapter 4, which opens:

“In the case I have supposed where the historians desire to teach us by an image what they have seen in their mind, their meaning would be found, if the four were wise, to exhibit no disagreement; and we must understand that with the four Evangelists it is not otherwise. They made full use for their purpose of things done by Jesus in the exercise of His wonderful and extraordinary power; they use in the same way His sayings, and in some places they tack on to their writing, with language apparently implying things of sense, things made manifest to them in a purely intellectual way. I do not condemn them if they even sometimes dealt freely with things which to the eye of history happened differently, and changed them so as to subserve the mystical aims they had in view; so as to speak of a thing which happened in a certain place, as if it had happened in another, or of what took place at a certain time, as if it had taken place at another time, and to introduce into what was spoken in a certain way some changes of their own. They proposed to speak the truth where it was possible both materially and spiritually, and where this was not possible it was their intention to prefer the spiritual to the material. The spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in the material falsehood.”

Is “before the First Nicene Council” enough “before 1600” for you?

Prior to my conversion I’d identify myself largely with new age spirituality and stoicism. They were pragmatic in that they seemingly satiated the need for the divine and encouraged behaviors that were productive from a societal perspective.

I was saved in January of 2019. The early days of walking with Christ were beautiful. I sold my most ostentatious worldly possessions, bought a motorcycle, and would ride into the mountains to find a patch of grass and read the Bible to learn more about God.

God is gracious. The more I earnestly sought Him, the more He revealed Himself.

Nowadays, I start my day with prayer and usually a brief study in the Bible. I like to focus on what the passage conveys about God’s character. Afterwards I pray for His guidance as to the tasks to carry out for the day.

I try to pray throughout the day but I’m most deliberate about praying during transitions (ie: from hands on work to taking a meeting)

I end the day with a prayer for wisdom as I open the scriptures again, then finally a prayer of thanksgiving before bed.

I’ve found that Jesus is less about religious tradition and more about understanding who God is and what He has done, what His Will is, and doing it. In the heart of one who truly believes in Christ, this order increases our love and joy in God.

Everything else — church, serving people, acting morally - is downstream from loving God and our neighbor as ourself.