Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 966 posts

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#661

Post by cogman10 »

kukkeliskuu wrote: post #654
cogman10 wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all come by it by different ways but I'll share my story. I was mormon up until around 30ish. However, researching the history of the mormon religion ultimately led me to completely disbelieve the faith claims of the church. From there, atheism was just sort of natural. Why, for example, would I suddenly believe that any other religious sect got it's supernatural claims correct when the one I was raised with, got…

Look into teachings of Gurdjieff. Having similar background as yours, I was interested due to the fact that there is no need to believe anything from anybody else, and you should test everything you believe by yourself.

Just read the main wiki blurb on him and my main question is "Why should I believe in the existence of the unified consciousness or higher levels of consciousness"?

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#662

Post by kukkeliskuu »

memonkey wrote: post #420
BTCOG wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You know, I think you can interpret Nietzsche's slave morality as the process to master morality. For example, the enlightenment was supposed to free society up from faith-thinking and introduce rational thinking, but (and he right criticizes it) it did not. I think the movement instead brought society out of older slave morality institutions into master morality and which are now considered slave morality again. You…

I am not Nietzsche expert, but from the little reading I have done it appears that in many context resource poor people have "slave morality" and resource rich people have "master morality". For example, in partner dances, people who are not very popular dance partners argue that "everybody should dance with everybody", whereas people who are very popular dance partners argue that "i did not train 10 years to dance with beginners". And you can see this in almost any human endeavour.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#663

Post by ashton314 »

I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I pray multiple times a day—either to express gratitude or ask for strength to weather whatever struggles I’m facing. I also pray to ask for help and insight so I can do well at school and work. I exercise and try to eat healthily, because I believe my body is a gift from God. I cherish the time that I have with my family, because it is in my family that I feel the purest expression of God‘s love.

In my local congregation, I teach a biweekly class on family history. I love learning more about my ancestors! If you are ever curious to learn more about your heritage, I highly recommend checking out familysearch.org— it is an amazing program, and you do not have to be a member of the church to use it. I know several people who are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ who still like using familysearch.org because it is free and works very well.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#664

Post by gremlinsinc »

pmarreck wrote: post #470
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…

> I encountered history, documents, and truths about the religion that were never presented to me I encountered something like this but wasn't able to find it since; I think it was called something like the "blue document" or the "blue papers"; basically a very intelligent Mormon came up with a document with all of his very reasonable but quite heretical questions, and it caused quite a stir. Would love to track it d…

As someone else mentioned it's probably the ces letter, but it also could be this one: https://www.letterformywife.com/the-letter

http://www.mormonthink.com/lying.htm is another good read.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#666

Post by fc373745 »

Agnostic.

There could be a creator out there that never made itself known to us.

Also, my experiences with Sleep Paralysis makes me feel like something is out there.

I went from a devout Christian (7th day adventist) for 20 years of my life -> to atheist -> to agnostic.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#667

Post by Oaknice »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #545
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…

When you say “God” - where do you perceive it to be? When you pray for example - do you pray toward a certain direction in space?

Quran 2.177: Piety does not lie in turning your face to East or West: Piety lies in believing in God, the Last Day and the angels, the Scriptures and the prophets, and disbursing your wealth out of love for God among your kin and the orphans, the wayfarers and mendicants, freeing the slaves, observing your devotional obligations, and in paying the zakat and fulfilling a pledge you have given, and being patient in hardship, adversity, and times of peril. These are the men who affirm the truth, and they are those who follow the straight path.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#668

Post by gremlinsinc »

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…

You sound exactly like me... it definitely was rough, though I wasn't as active in the end (got tired of right-wing viewpoints from the pulpit, so started staying home more and more)...

In many ways my shelf-breaking liberated me, in others it crushed pieces of me. In the end I'm probably more spiritual, if agnostic (though I do believe the universe could have some sort of universal consciousness, or be a simulation, or something along those lines and an afterlife is possible -- we are energy after all and perhaps whatever consciousness is - gets another purpose after it leaves...but none of the requires a deity, and I'm pretty sure all deities worshipped are man made, and even if there really were a GOD we're too insignificant to matter much to him, we're one tiny planet in a universe with billions of galaxies, probably billions of civilizations spanning eons, etc... )

I'm often inspired by the beauty in the universe, or the things my children do, etc... or just humanity. Not having church context surrounding those things has made them even more enjoyable.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#669

Post by garbanzoXDP »

fjabre wrote: post #385
garbanzoXDP wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot be Spiritual without belief in Spirit How would you define "Spirit"? Languages evolve over time and I'd argue the word "spirituality" is morphing into something with a very broad definition of "spirit", one where, for example, an atheistic Buddhist can practice and still be considered "spiritual".

You yourself are Spirit now. You just think you are a body. Buddha was not an atheist. The belief is the other half of this thing. Your benefits of practice will be very limited if there is no belief in it. It will be mechanical Buddhism which isnt really Buddhism. It’s just someone making the motions. There is deep meaning there and I have a feeling that you in particular are closer to it than you think. Call God an…

You touched on a number of interesting topics and I'm sure we could go down a rabbit hole of tangents : ) It sounds like you have come to some sort of understanding of how the world and "God" works.

Myself, I find the concept of an omni-powerful "being", "God", force exceptionally far-fetched, without any concrete scientific evidence that I'm aware of. I'm ok with the understanding that humans are simply animals that evolved exceptionally large brains. It was inevitable that we'd use start using those brains to ask, "Why the fuck are we here?" followed by the birth of thousands of various religions and beliefs over the millennia.

Yes, I could be wrong but this general philosophy makes sense to me at this point in my life. I don't believe there is any objective meaning to life aside from creating my own meaning, and so far it's working out well.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#670

Post by xinuc »

dotancohen wrote: post #457
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.

Interestingly, it's not an apple in muslim tradition. We just call it "khuldi" or forbidden fruit.
Post reply on HN