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Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#451

Post by good8675309 »

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…

Raised Christian, became an atheist, then evaluated a bunch of religions for myself. Found Christianity to be the most historically and spiritually compelling but still didn’t believe. After feeling hollow and aimless for years I re-evaluated things, read about Jesus love for me. Really meditated on His perfect life, sacrifice on the cross, and resurrection. He died for me, in my place. It became personal. When I realized that it changed my life. I’ve never felt love like that. It transformed me and freed me. I’ve been following Jesus, praying, and reading the Bible, the inspired and sufficient word of God, ever since.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#452

Post by pmarreck »

embwbam wrote: post #342
hudon wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For forgiveness, you need to actually be contrite and willing to amend your life. God loves you and wants you to heal but you need to be open to it. Also he is just, so he doesn’t exactly let you do whatever you want as you imply. There are always consequences to our actions. Further, I would argue that without living with God, you are actually freed from responsibility in moral judgements, because of the belief that…

I think unless you have been both religious and atheist, it’s hard to compare which results in better morals and values. It’s a common misconception that having a god free life will result in an immoral or amoral existence. It’s simply not true. Leaving religion felt empowering and made me think seriously about which values mattered to me. Humans have always had the capacity to be good to each other inside them. The…

The only data point I've seen that empirically supports religious prevalence is that very christian countries have a statistically significantly lower level of dishonesty. (see: China for a counterexample)

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#454

Post by prometheus76 »

hycaria wrote: post #351
prometheus76 wrote: post #34

I am an Orthodox Christian. My day begins with prayer, as soon as possible after I wake up. Prayer consists of reading (or reciting) prayers from a prayer book, followed by 100-200 Jesus Prayers ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!"), followed by 12-25 prostrations. I then read the daily scripture readings indicated by the liturgical calendar. At noon, I usually read a Psalm in front of my icons (I work from home)…

This sounds crazy to me, mostly regarding the amount of time all this must take.

I didn't address the time component. The morning prayers/scriptures takes about 20-30 minutes. Lunch time Psalms is 5-10 minutes at most. Family prayers after dinner are about 10-15 minutes. Bible reading after that is about 15-25 minutes, depending on how much we discuss what we read. Evening prayers on my own are another 15-20 minutes daily.

Vespers on Saturday night is about an hour (and my wife and I go to dinner afterwards usually, as our weekly date). Church on Sunday is about two hours, and we usually spend time afterwards drinking coffee and chatting for another 30-60 minutes with other members of our parish, but not always.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#455

Post by anon9001 »

bckr wrote: post #238
gavinray wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I'll also do "acute divination" -- my favorite method is fortune cookies, not even kidding. I'm not religious or superstitious, but I get the most unscientific thought that fortune cookies may actually be personal messages from the universe. Don't really put much credence into this thought but I can't help but think it when opening them. Not sure why.

> fortune cookies may actually be personal messages from the universe. Try this next time you get one: Take a few seconds and hold the fortune cookie in your hand. Deeply consider for a moment the comedic possibility that this fortune cookie contains a message from a higher power. Suspend your disbelief, just like you do when engrossed in a work of fiction. Now, the key: ask a question . Questions in the form of "Tel…

> My hit rate for meaningful messages skyrocketed since applying the above approach.

As a skeptic and non-believer of all things spiritual, whenever I have one of those "meaningful messages" moments (we get them too), my reaction is to debunk that feeling by thinking about how others might have interpreted the same event, or how the fortune cookie supply chain actually works.

It's funny that some people lean into that feeling and assign it great cosmic meaning while others rationalize it away.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#456

Post by dr_dshiv »

Fnoord wrote: post #60
mam4 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there not physical damage to doing it that often ? Ive done it twice in a row 3 years ago and it was fine but i was wondering that b.c. in the community i did that they were literally giving it to children starting 3 y.o.

You need to be careful with Ayahuasca to not have MAOI in your diet or medicine. Things like fermented cheese, fish, wine for example can each be dangerous. Disclaimer: I used Ayahuasca once. If you must use psychedelics, stick to LSD or amanita muscaria / psilos, they are much safer. Its ridiculous Ayahuasca is legally obtainable in The Netherlands, while LSD and psilos are not with the former easy to standardize an…

Have you tried Amanita muscaria? I'm terrified.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#457

Post by dotancohen »

aerodog wrote: post #87

Muslim here. Ritual prayer is the core exercise. Before sunrise, after sunset, and 3 other times during the day. But as important or more so is constant remembrance of God. If that's not institutionalized in one's day-to-day psychology, one will lose spiritual momentum, if we can use such terminology. "Worship" in Arabic عبادة actually means something like "conformity to God's order", as far as I understand. So even…

  > even eating an apple becomes a spiritual exercise
Shall I remind you of the first apple eaten? ))

Though I don't pray five times per day, I agree with every word of this post.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#458

Post by fjabre »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #410
fjabre wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you are right. There are materialists coming out of the Vedas. But what you have just stated here is that you are not an atheist at all. In fact quite the opposite. You are that.

I don’t practice Sankhya. My ancestral / traditional school is Advaita Vedanta which is actually opposed to Sankhya :). My point being not all atheism is recent or non-sprititual. Most eastern faiths have a rationalistic component / school of thought which is atheistic but continue to rely on methods of meditation and logic to better oneself.

Advaita Vedanta believes in the concept of God and cosmic consciousness.

Yes but it is a path equally of the mind and the heart.

You seem to believe that it is only a path of the mind. This is a misconception about Advaita.

The mind cannot reach the goal by itself. The goal is beyond mind.

You will never reach it without the heart. Advaita is very clear on this.

One’s lack of belief in it will pretty much guarantee they never get that invite.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#459

Post by samhain »

scop wrote: post #223

I am a practicing Catholic. I have four kids all under 7. My normal day consists of feeding them, bathing them, calming tantrums, losing my temper, getting bitter at my lack of time for hobbies, and growing resentful of my lack of time for reading the Bible, praying, etc. But then I remember that this is a true dying to self. Not only a dying to self, but a dying to the world too as each of these sacrifices, failures…

It’s funny too, since some of those kids may eventually realize that they were brought here without their consent, and that they don’t actually like working and paying bills. You, suffering for them, then suffering for their existence, and a death of your previous self, in which you draw yourself as a type of martyr. No one’s happy on your road to Damascus, and yet you’re faith and community demand your consent to your animalistic urges to reproduce and maintain face within your community. Having children out of guilt and peer pressure from your religious community is no excuse for their suffering.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#460

Post by icytrumpet »

autopilot23 wrote: post #442
icytrumpet wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even bother forgiving yourself if morality is just a human construct and there is no judgment in the afterlife?

Why even bother "trying to live a good life" if "a good life" is just a human construct and there is no judgement on that in the afterlife? By your assumptions, every atheist should just, like, die or at best, live a meaningless life.

Most anthiests seem to be nihilists, so they're already (claiming to be) doing that.

I just always find it strange the way that "100% athiests" seem to ignore the logical conundrum of "I don't need a God or theology to live a good life" when our constructed definition of "good" comes from religion.

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