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Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
531–540 of 966 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#532100% 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…
How does this inform your experiences and choices on a daily basis?
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#533I 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…
I'd love to hear more on the history, documents, and truths you found. Would you consider emailing me (it is in my profile)? Summary and jumping off points super welcome.
The CES Letter is an excellent jumping-off point.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
It certainly doesnt mean believing in nothing.
Also, being an atheist does not mean you lack any belief in the supernatural. For example, if I believed in ghosts but have no belief in god, I could still have spiritual experiences with my ancestors.
So you believe in little green men instead of little blue ones and that makes you an atheist?
If you see the experience as nothing more than a dream then that’s what it will become.
If you see it as something at least as real as this waking reality then the experience has impact.
Without belief in it, your experiences are meaningless. You will learn very little from them.
They are invitations that you have outwardly rejected in labeling yourself an atheist.
Atheists would take a research paper as truth over their own direct experience. They hold Science as most dear and most important and they label faith and beliefs and spiritual experiences as make believe or pretend fantasy.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#535Atheism. downright non-believer. Grew up by a deist family. they were not really religious. I do remember hearing praying every now and then from my childhood but it was not something that's reflected to me as important part of life. Later on met lots of religious people but did not find them interesting. After learning more about science and technology, the unresolved facts started to disturb me while I was still yo…
If religion is the dogmatic structure around spiritual practice, are you spiritual to any degree outside of the dogma?
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At least there is a vast area of things not yet understood They key is to accept that there are phenomena we don't know enough about yet. There's no supernatural, just stuff that needs a couple more hundred years of research :)
If you don't understand it, how do you know it's natural? Not saying it has to be supernatural, just that if you think it's not yet understood, being sure it's not supernatural seems like unfounded confidence.
That question is a pandora's box that can't be given the nuance it deserves in an HN comment so I'll leave you with the Plato encyclopedia entry on naturalism [1] which was a philosophical debate which wrestled with this very topic in the first half of the 20th century. The vast majority of scientists and philosophers default to the definition from physicalism [2]
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#537I sporadically listen to a guided meditation apparently inspired by a Hindu mystic named Babaji; a while back I uploaded them here: https://soundcloud.com/peter-marreck-fb/sets/meditation
I've had two separate experiences from this meditation that I'd like to talk about, and I want to preface this by saying that I'm a very rational person (because some of my descriptions, as subjective as they were to me, may be off-putting to some). Generally speaking I find it very relaxing most of the time, so at minimum it gives me that. But about 1/4 of the time (and it would probably be more if I did it more consistently, I noticed that it happened more when I was doing it more consistently), I experience something subtle but definitely unique that I'd call a "thrumming" throughout my body, almost like an electrical sensation but more subtle and definitely not something I've sensed in any other context. I have no idea if it has a name due to other people experiencing it; the meditation itself tells you to look for a "rhythm that isn't your heartbeat" but this felt much higher-frequency than that would indicate. You know how when a limb "falls asleep" and then it gets flush with blood again and it feels tingly? Kind of like that, but more subtle, and in my whole body.
And yeah, I know how crazy that probably already just sounds. But one time it went way beyond that.
One time, something completely unique happened. I came out of the meditation and sensed immediately that something was different but I couldn't immediately identify what. So I did kind of an introspective inventory of my own psyche, and suddenly realized with some shock that all of my fear of death had vanished. And the thing I want to convey is this, because the words can't really describe this part: I realized that we ALL have an ever-present fear of death, even right this minute while you're reading this you do, it's just sitting there like background radiation and you don't notice it literally because it's always there. And I have to emphasize that even that was taken away from me (temporarily, for I'd say about 2-3 days), which is how I realized it even existed in the first place! And it wasn't like, you know, "ok, so it's cool if I suicided now", but if death "had to" happen to me, I wouldn't be afraid. At all.
This last experience was so jarring, honestly, that I've been a bit afraid (ironically!!) to repeat the meditation as consistently as I intended to. (And yet, so few people have a "real" experience like this, from meditation, to the best of my knowledge!)
Of course, speaking as a rational person, it FIGURES that it was entirely subjective and that I can't point to anything to show you that this was completely real to me. But it has certainly made me value people's claims of their subjective experiences more (albeit always with a grain of salt!)
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you believe in a God whose morality isn't superior to yours? Conversely, if you care for those around you and you knew God's will was ultimately better for them, why would you not obey Him over your own judgements?
I'm not arguing that God's morality is somehow inferior to mine - I'm arguing that by trusting and obeying Him over my own moral judgement (I know murder is wrong, yet God tells me to kill someone), I am shifting responsibility for my own actions onto Him - Abraham's greatness is that he does not doubt the Lord. The ultimate accountability to God is inherently at odds with my responsibility for those around me. "He t…
> The ultimate accountability to God is inherently at odds with my responsibility for those around me.
If you believe that God is more loving than you are, it is not at odds at all. In fact, if you want what's best for those around you, you are responsible to obey the Lord first and foremost, as he loves those around you more than you do. He also loves you more than you love yourself.
If, however, you don't trust in God's love, then you're totally right. You'd be obeying someone who you're not sure has your neighbors' best interest at heart, and thus abdicating your duty of care.
God ultimately saved Isaac so I'm not sure why Abraham's sacrifice would be a counter-example to God's love here. We can talk about all the people who actually died, seemingly by God's orders, in the Old Testament, but we don't know what happened to these people ultimately, given redemption and salvation by Christ. Death itself being conquered and eternal happiness being granted makes death a poor example of injustice.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#539100% 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…
Why even bother forgiving yourself if morality is just a human construct and there is no judgment in the afterlife?
"There is no justice in the laws of Nature, Headmaster, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don't have to! We care! There is light in the world, and it is us!"