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Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#751

Post by ripsawridge »

eatYourFood wrote: post #308
kirse wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 free…

I worked with a pastor in the Philippines doing charity work a number of years ago, he outright said that his good deeds were all to spread and grow the religion, not because doing good deeds is a good thing to do. I did not like that one bit but it’s hard to argue against given these Filipinos really did need food parcels. The Japanese mafia also give out charity to get people inside. Putin used to drive around rura…

I don't think the pastors admission is as bad as it sounds at first blush. A religious man is likely to believe that the best "food" is the knowledge of God. That is, if the spirit is fed, and the mind looks to higher things, then order is restored in the organism. That being will begin to act rightly somewhat more often. It will use the food packets to add to an ordered life, and eventually become a source of food packets or other good things.

Viewed with the worst glasses, this motivation can be viewed as "growing the religion," as if its a pyramid scheme with no other motivation than its own growth (ie, cancer). I'd just like to add that it is possible to regard the growth of the religion as a truly high aim.

I'm not saying any one thing is true, only that it is possible that the pastors aim is high and heartfelt.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#752

Post by zelon88 »

I usually start out by reading the "Just for Today" meditation at [1] which changes daily. Then I read [2] and spend a couple minutes contemplating how the 12 JFTs apply to the day I'm going to have. Then I usually spend a few minutes planning my day.

[1] https://www.jftna.org/jft/

[2] https://emotionsanonymous.org/eai-literature/ea-program-basi...

I am an atheist bus as a recovering alcoholic I've found that having a spiritual routine to be very beneficial. It helps me stay honest with myself and identify thoughts and feelings that I would otherwise have no visibility into.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#754

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

cogman10 wrote: post #655
lab14 wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little off topic, but it's mesmerizing to me to see hordes of intelligent people, completely renouncing to reason and talking to imaginary entities.

To me, it serves as a warning and a life long lesson. I was formally mormon and didn't get out because the thought of a all powerful man in the sky made me extra special was silly. I got out because I looked into the history of the church and found that the founder and his successors were obvious con-men. Like, so obvious that years of indoctrination ultimately gave way. Had the founder any moral character and I fran…

The translation of the Golden Plates has always struck me as insane. And that people would take a man at his word on all of the details… even more insane.

> Smith said that he found the plates on September 22, 1823, on a hill near his home in Manchester, New York, after the angel Moroni directed him to a buried stone box. He said that the angel prevented him from taking the plates but instructed him to return to the same location in a year. He returned to that site every year, but it was not until September 1827 that he recovered the plates on his fourth annual attempt to retrieve them. He returned home with a heavy object wrapped in a frock, which he then put in a box. He allowed others to heft the box but said that the angel had forbidden him to show the plates to anyone until they had been translated from their original "reformed Egyptian" language.

Oh and the plates have never been found or seen by anyone else.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#755

Post by kukkeliskuu »

cogman10 wrote: post #661
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Wikipedia is not a great starting point to approach spiritual things.

Bohr, the Nobel-winning physicist, had a horse shoe on top of the front door of his country cabin. When he was asked whether he believed it brings him good luck, his reply was "I was told it works regardless I believe in it or not."

There is no need to believe in such things, and belief -- in the sense you are using the word -- does not "help" you. It may even be a hindrance.

More interesting question could be: can I find useful things about myself that I can personally verify that would be difficult or impossible to learn otherwise?

A book called Inner Game of Tennis (not related to Gurdjieff) talks about the inner game that elite athletes need to learn. For example, if you are practicing how to make the perfect tennis forehand hit, you are struggling with a part of yourself that tries to control your movement. However, you need to learn to let go, and let the body to do the movement. The part that wants to control the movement is very poor in doing that. So there are these various parts in myself, and it is essential to learn how they operate.

If you are intrigued, reading "In Search of the Miraculous" by Ouspensky or one book from "Psychological Commentaries" by Nicoll could be a better starting point than Wikipedia.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#756

Post by dragonwriter »

Clubber wrote: post #748
JackGreyhat wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name one war, that has no religion involved.

>Name one war, that has no religion involved. US Revolutionary War War of 1812 US Civil War Spanish American War WWI WWII Korean War Vietnam War GWI GWII WoT Nearly all of them really. Wars are fought over resources and pride of leaders. Sometimes religion can be used as a recruiting tool, but the war isn't really about religion. You can argue that since people who fight in wars have religious beliefs that religion i…

> WoT

If you mean the war between the US on one side and al-Qaeda and various other Islamist groups on the other, that’s…a pretty bad exampe of a war that doesn’t involve religion.

> Korean War > Vietnam War

The US’s global war on Communism, during and as a symbol of which it added religious languge to the pledge of allegiance and replaced its diversity-endorsing de facto model with a religious official motto is, while less of a clearly bad example than the “Global War on Terror”, not a great example of a war not involving religion.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#757

Post by ajuc »

Barrin92 wrote: post #743
ajuc wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Catholics treat sin as a static field and any sane person treat it as an instance field. Why do we need to baptize infants? Because they have original sin. How could they get it if they haven't done anything? Because Adam and Eve sinned and their sin is shared with all of humanity. How are we responsible fot their sin? We aren't but God still had to kill himself to forgive us. Cause reasons. It ge…

> Why do we need to baptize infants? Because they have original sin. How could they get it if they haven't done anything? Because the idea of original sin doesn't, or only superficially, has anything to do with wrongful acts. What the idea of original sin is about that humans, by their very nature and in their being are confronted with evil. Or if you want a secular version call it injustice, or the ethical and the u…

> What the idea of original sin is about that humans, by their very nature and in their being are confronted with evil.

This is the kind of poetic language behind which people hide confusion so that they can still believe in this. I did the same. I understand the reflexive "let's not think about this too much in case we stop believing".

What does it actually mean to be "confronted with evil" and why is it a problem requiring Christ to die before people with no personal sins could be admitted to heaven?

> I did not need Catholicism to see that humans are, by virtue of simply being human, not 'sinless'.

Clothes by virtue of being clothes are not "dirtless". Dirt exists in the world. Does it mean that before any clothes can be worn to a ball we need to metaphorically wash the generalized dirtiness out of everything? Or do we wash the clothes that are actually dirty and don't wash the clothes that are actually clean?

This confusion of static and instance fields is the main issue with Catholicism.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#758

Post by drekipus »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #463
nogridbag wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven I still remember the day at Sunday school when we had to confess. I was a good kid. I had absolutely no idea what to confess. I consulted my Mom who told me to "make something up". And thus my first sin, that I can remember, was lying to the priest.

In hindsight, it was definitely the concept of original sin that got my young mind spinning, not understanding how for example a newborn baby could be innately sinful. All downhill after that.

> for example a newborn baby could be innately sinful

This could be likened to "all people are assholes" or "think of how dumb the average person is and realise that half of them are dumber than that"

They are both "sins" (dumb,assholes) from being born (average-joe, all of them, etc)

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#759

Post by nie100sowny »

mboperator wrote: post #329

I’m thankful for the openness and respectfulness of this discussion. 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 ostentat…

> 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.

It's very difficult to understand it alone. And that's the reason why Jesus created the Apostolic Church and all of its tradition. To save people from this World and lead them to God. That's the goal number one for the Church and Christians as well.

Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

#760

Post by hitekker »

sam0x17 wrote: post #723
skinkestek wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no "fact of sin", and you certainly can't use the claim of a "fact of sin" as a justification for the idea of original sin. So, what do you call me the thing that drives otherwise reasonable humans to hate each other?

Genetics, cultural values, chemicals, hormones, electrical impulses, all conspiring to create the illusion of objective morality

We pretend to seek out reasons, when we're actually just looking for excuses.

"I didn't actually do anything wrong, something outside of me made me do wrong, you can't prove it wasn't chemicals"

"There's no such thing as a shared moral code ,it doesn't exist, unless someone hurts me and then suddenly, they did something horribly wrong"

Our ancestors are fortunately a bit wiser than we are, they know there are things that cannot be excused, swept under the rug of moral relativism. They can only be "forgiven" as C.S Lewis explains in https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/webfm_send/111

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