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I've been heavily dealing with the existential questions you are referencing but it only gets worse. What helped you in resolving those issues or come to terms with them?
I find that Islam has the most satisfying and complete answers about these existential questions.
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I don't like idea of only one religion getting it right. There are multiple paths to truth. Pretending only one religion has it is ignorance and lying and not truthful. And truth is what we should strive for. Irrespective of which society you were brought up in.
He didn’t say that had the answer, just the most complete one. Sorta makes sense when it’s the youngest religion I suppose? They wouldn’t make the same mistakes they made 600 or 4000 years previous.
You would think that, except that an "extremist" Christian who only interpreted the New Testament literally would be a forgiving, loving, peaceful ascetic.
> While I do read articles here and there, it’s far less than I should.
Formulating it as a "should" abstracts away who wants it, and makes an artificially abstract norm out of it.
But what is actually? It's probably just something that the author wants. Not doing something I want feels less bad than not doing something I should. There are lots of things that I want and don't get or don't do, I'm already used to that.
It's a bit like the passive voice in writing, it hides who does something, or should do something.
Some "should"s are also what we think that others want us to do, often just assuming that without asking.
And so on. If you assume that every "should" is a thinking error, some go away, some become "want"s. It's a good first step, I recommend it.
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I find that Islam has the most satisfying and complete answers about these existential questions.
All the books contain beautiful wisdom. For me that's what is so stirring about their lasting poetry -- you can hear the long echoes of human truth. However, I don't know Islam very well! Do you have any suggestions for where to start? A specific translator? Thanks in advance.
Please note that if you ever leave Islam, you are considered an apostate (similar to Christianity, but to a much more severe degree I'd say) and about 10% of the Islamic population are literalists and would consider the penalty for leaving, death.
I'd look into meditation. I discovered something called "Simple Meditation" created by Babaji (the O.G. Babaji, not the copycats), and it's the only time I've ever had an experience I would call "spiritual". I have an audio I produced of it here: https://soundcloud.com/peter-marreck-fb/simple-meditation-ai...
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Did you experience this or are you guessing? Because I think you are thinking this again through ego. I don't have a thought that I appreciate sunset when I see one. The sunset looks magical. There is a shift in experience. Before watching sunset was like watching in 420p. Now it's 4k. The consciousness is heightened. You only see the sunset. You don't think of old memories of sunset. Or random events from past or th…
I'm guessing but it's not without some experience. I feel like I trick myself all the time - to guide myself towards becoming what I want to be. There was a time when I felt unintelligent and incapable of great, technical things. So I kind of just did things that it seemed capable people did. I felt like people who are smart, capable, and rich now, hacked things when they were young and were rebellious and broke the…
This is the central principle of human psychology and interpersonal behavior, IMO.
Kurt Vonnegut nailed it: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about what we pretend to be”
That racist jerk? He’s probably not really a racist jerk, he’s just pretending to be one to fuck with people. Except! That is no different than “actually” being a racist jerk.
Same thing with compassion or anything else, including intelligence. When a stranger is helping you pick up stuff you dropped, or a coworker is reasoning thought a complicated problem, it doesn’t matter if they’re “just pretending”. That is who they are, to them and to you.
My personal formulation has evolved into a small riff on Vonnegut’s insight: I think that our entire personality is simply the sum of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Change the stories you tell yourself, change yourself.
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Wouldn’t it make more sense to suspect the account with hundreds of thousands of karma points to be the karma farmer?
You should always be suspicious of anything that you have not experienced yourself. I used to care about HN karma a lot before spiritual awakening. Had 2 accounts with 2000+ karma before. It was one of those things that helped in building a grand ego for myself. Now I just prefer to post from randomly created HN accounts. You can probably come back a few months later and see this account to be no longer active.
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Sorry. I can't write it down because I think what I did was reckless and stupid and I don't want to give any ideas in a high visible thread like this. For a lot of people this is triggered by something unexpected happening in life which breaks the narrative one has been building their entire life. You can search for Spiritual Awakening and find a lot of examples. Buddha at the Gas Pump is a great podcast to listen to…
Isn't this just another meta level of ego? Now you're elevated above everyone in the rat race because you "dilluted" your ego. But that's still the voice in your head controlling you, it just convinced you it doesn't anymore. Buddhist philosophy always failed to click for me because of this.
Since both got lowered in intensity , I now have to rely on Intuition to make decisions. And not recollection of what I did previously. Which makes things new. And sometimes give an almost child like curiosity. Even doing something as simple as going for a walk is amazing. Since the mind is not constantly trying to predict what is next and characterising things as I have seen this or not. You notice things you have never noticed before. The awareness is heightened.
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All the books contain beautiful wisdom. For me that's what is so stirring about their lasting poetry -- you can hear the long echoes of human truth. However, I don't know Islam very well! Do you have any suggestions for where to start? A specific translator? Thanks in advance.
The Islamic holy books have many (actually very many) passages that would not line up with Western values at all. The crazy thing is that if I cite both the good ones and the bad ones, and the list of bad ones is much longer, I would get into trouble for citing any of them at all. The most common reasoning around this is that you should not read them directly (!) and should consult an imam instead. As a rationalist,…
My cultural background originates in the east. But I do not have any familiarity with Islam or with the Russian church, and I want to remedy that.
Some of my interest is aesthetic / intellectual - the bible and the Bhavagad Gita are beautiful! Long told poetry. But I'm also just curious, it's a blank spot in my understanding.
I don't have a problem editing out contradictions in the text, most of old religious books are mixed with that. But you're right, I wince when coming across discrimination based on group. The Bhavagad Gita dwells too much on caste.
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The Islamic holy books have many (actually very many) passages that would not line up with Western values at all. The crazy thing is that if I cite both the good ones and the bad ones, and the list of bad ones is much longer, I would get into trouble for citing any of them at all. The most common reasoning around this is that you should not read them directly (!) and should consult an imam instead. As a rationalist,…
I meditate, but thank you for sharing the link, I will listen. My cultural background originates in the east. But I do not have any familiarity with Islam or with the Russian church, and I want to remedy that. Some of my interest is aesthetic / intellectual - the bible and the Bhavagad Gita are beautiful! Long told poetry. But I'm also just curious, it's a blank spot in my understanding. I don't have a problem editin…
One of my favorite classes in college was actually Religious Studies 101. (Mods who are already side-eye'ing me, take note.)
I hesitate to joke that the vast majority of moderate Muslims also do not have any familiarity with Islam (similar to Catholics and the Bible!). I quoted some questionable Quran to a Muslim woman on Twitter and she said "don't be silly, only apostates, atheists and extremists quote our books back at us", which I found to be a fairly curious statement, maybe even an unintended confession...
There are Russian Orthodox folks in my extended family, the whole christian-schism thing just screams to me that when 2 people disagree on a holy book, there is no choice but to split since you cannot argue rationally about it (with the assumption that rational argument brings people into the same viewpoint, which is of course often a stretch)
Here is another curious thing I noticed- If you ask ChatGPT about the "controversial" Islamic passages, it will initially refuse to. (It will NOT treat the Old or New Testament in this way, by the way, or any other holy book.) If you press it and say that you need them for an academic or high-level discussion reason and not to (mis?)represent it, it will cave, but the conversation will get flagged and you won't be able to re-share it. Here is an example of that https://x.com/pmarreck/status/1855353599880056896 where I had to export the whole thing to PDF since sharing got disabled.
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>Lol I was just about to say this. It seems unlikely that someone that has transcended their ego would choose to spend their free time telling others what an accomplishment it has been. Currently I’m reading "La marche à la lumière – Entretiens du Bouddha"[1]. What is laughed at here precisely describe what the Buddha is making through the whole book. While apparently, just like Socrate, Buddha didn’t let any directl…
That's exactly why I called it grandiose. Imagine reading about the Buddha and thinking you're able to just unlock the Dharma as if it were a StackOveflow badge, and then brag to people you got it.