Sitting in the vehicle and listen to keygen music.
Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
801–810 of 966 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a direction of prayer, but Muslims do not conceive God to have dimensions, so He is not in any direction.
So literally, when you pray ( if you’re speaking from experience), where does your intention go? If a prayer is an internal call, how is it directed?
When I make the intention, I'm not sending it in any direction, since I don't believe God is in a direction. Rather, since He is All Hearing and All Seeing, it is sufficient for me to make the intention for Him to know it.
I hope that helps answer your question.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#803Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great question. Briefly, the goal is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, in thoughts, words, and deeds. In practice that generally means looking outwards, not being totally self-absorbed (which is my natural tendency), and treating people with kindness and compassion - choosing to see them in the best possible light. The scripture study and related discussion helps me identify the gap between the ideal version of mysel…
Does it include treating yourself with kindness and compassion? I would think that to hold the frequency of kindness you’d need to hold it toward yourself? How does that work for you - when you are challenged? Also, when you pray, what direction does your prayer go into? I mean literally - do you pray toward the sky, or in one of the four directions? Or inside, toward the center of your heart, where the feeling of lo…
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Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#804I'm into magick. So a lot of what I do is observe my thoughts and intentions and direct my attention/emotion/passion/sexual energy towards the most beautiful and joyful subset of those. When I'm particularly certain of a desired outcome I will "cast" for it, occasionally doing a bit of sorcery: drawing funny pictures and generally doing wizardly stuff. I also do "continuous divination" AKA leaning heavily into apophe…
I'm very into Occult topics. I grew up Christian and have come to believe a bit of everything. I believe that everything is both true and false at the same time and it is important to experience different viewpoints in your world. Currently I believe that we are all essentially God, or facets of God, separated by the concept of ego. The entire purpose to life is, therefore, to have a unique experience. I try to incor…
> I'd be interested in hearing more about the public rituals that you attend, or any groups that you are aware of.
Thelema's ecclesiastical arm is called Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, and its main purpose is the public performance of The Gnostic Mass (AKA Liber XV) by Aleister Crowley: https://sabazius.oto-usa.org/gnostic-mass/ It is a public ritual Eucharist intended to communicate the principles of Thelema to all:
> I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.
> And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.
And so on.
You could look up a local OTO chapter and see if they know of any performances planned -- http://www.oto.org/
There are online recordings of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhUpJubHlAc
Local Wiccan or Pagan groups might be willing to allow you to attend one of their celebrations of the times, like the recent Yule or upcoming Imbolc. I'm not up-and-up on how they find local chapters -- my Wicca and Pagan knowledge are stuck in the times of Witchvox!
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#805My wife and I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's far more important to her than it is to me though. For me a large part of believing in something greater in myself is the hope that I simply won't cease to exist when I experience brain death. I pray hoping someone is on the other end at least listening to me, I rationalize life on our planet as some sort of orchestrated miracle, I loo…
I'm an exmormon (thanks to the CES Letter and A letter to my Wife)... This led me to become agnostic mostly, Still have some hope for life after death of some sorts, but without deity as a requirement... i.e. our energy source lives on... However in April last year, I witnessed a Mandela Effect w/ my wife, I was reading about the movie Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks and how he said in the movie: "Houston we've had a proble…
It's just an easily misremembered movie quote. When everybody remembered "Play it again, Sam," being a line from Casablanca, instead of the less pithy actual line, nobody posited that the world had changed around them. It's always struck me as an extremely self-focused view of the world to prefer the explanation that the entire universe has been changed, rather than to believe that you made the same easy-to-make mistake that millions of other people did too.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#806Earlier 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?
>So, what do you call me the thing that drives otherwise reasonable humans to hate each other? Go to Google News and search for the terms 'sectarian violence', 'religious violence' and 'blasphemy'. There are the Sunni and Shia killing each other in the Middle East, the Christians and Muslims killing each other in Nigeria and Hindu religious leaders calling for the mass killing of Muslims in India. In Pakistan, angry…
There is far too much intolerance, violence, misery and death in the world today caused by people acting on or motivated by their u̶n̶s̶u̶b̶s̶t̶a̶n̶t̶i̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶i̶g̶i̶o̶u̶s̶ beliefs.
e.g. USSR anti-religious campaign of 1928–1941:
"The campaign began in 1929, with the drafting of new legislation that severely prohibited religious activities and called for an education process on religion in order to further disseminate atheism and materialist philosophy. "
"The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church and Islam, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labour camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.[1] More than 85,000 Orthodox priests were shot in 1937 alone.[2] Only a twelfth of the Russian Orthodox Church's priests were left functioning in their parishes by 1941.[3]"
"Stalin called for an "atheist five year plan" from 1932–1937, led by the LMG, in order to completely eliminate all religious expression in the USSR.[43] It was declared that the concept of God would disappear from the Soviet Union.[43]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_(...
I used your original wording with strikethrough to make my point, but I think this would be a more accurate statement:
There is far too much intolerance, violence, misery and death in the world today caused by violent people acting on or motivated by their beliefs without any restraint.
This applies to any kinds of beliefs be it religious, political, economic, philosophical, moral, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that people believe stupid things. I also believe that this is evidence that you can't trust your intuition. I think I believed in Santa but I can't remember. I do remember struggling with my intuition of physics thanks to Hollywood movies. I can say this feels different to that sort of belief. Not that I expect that would do anything to convince you of it's validity.
In what way does it feel different and why does this difference suggest a higher probability of truth?
Oh it doesn't
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can relate to your frustrations; what does the term "dying to self" mean to you? (I'm trying to understand the phrase, not questioning it)
I'm not GP but as I understand it most religions contain an idea that selflessness is the highest good that a person can attain. Further they often maintain that only by becoming truly selfless can you make your spirit one with God (I don't specifically mean the Christian God here, just the concept of God). Becoming truly self-less literally means eliminating the self and its wants and impulses (really what is meant…
Thank you - that was very helpful
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#809Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very into Occult topics. I grew up Christian and have come to believe a bit of everything. I believe that everything is both true and false at the same time and it is important to experience different viewpoints in your world. Currently I believe that we are all essentially God, or facets of God, separated by the concept of ego. The entire purpose to life is, therefore, to have a unique experience. I try to incor…
> I'd be interested in hearing more about the public rituals that you attend, or any groups that you are aware of. Thelema's ecclesiastical arm is called Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, and its main purpose is the public performance of The Gnostic Mass (AKA Liber XV) by Aleister Crowley: https://sabazius.oto-usa.org/gnostic-mass/ It is a public ritual Eucharist intended to communicate the principles of Thelema to all: >…
rock on; to wit: YMMV
Re: Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
#810I'm a secular Satanist. I believe Christianity and Abrahamic religions are inherently unethical. I have very strong utilitarian principles that run even deeper, which is ultimately what pushed me to Satanism. I'm a member of the Satanic temple, but in some ways it's more of a political organization than religious. I'm open to the possible existence of the paranormal, but I do not trust it at all and would question th…
Atheist here and I've been pretty impressed with the work of the Satanic Temple over the last few years. What's membership actually look like? I'd consider joining in a secular/political sense, but I have no interest in hanging out with people who believe in and actually praise a "Satan" deity.
I'm not too active in the Temple because of work, but you will only generally find atheists, agnostics, or at worst "woo lords" in TST. Such irrational thought is frowned upon by TST, so it is discouraged. TST does lean a bit left, but as the old offensive saying goes, "reality has a liberal bias". They do not, however, typically look kindly upon SJWs. Someone tried that once and was fired by TST itself.
You will hear people say "Hail Satan!" a lot, but it's meant more in the sense of what Satan stands for from the Satanic viewpoint, which is, among many other things, primarily freedom and knowledge.
I do believe in their tenets myself, I think they're remarkably well distilled principles. I think the first and fourth tenets are especially important for the current times.
I think what you'll find a lot of Satanists believe is "an it harm none, do what ye will", and you'll find that they take that principle more seriously than others who espouse that, such as Wicca.