What are your spiritual or religious beliefs?

Or beliefs about the nature of reality.

 

Modern Day Mystic Agnostic

 

I believe that there is suffering and the cessation of suffering is possible.

 

I believe that man created religion to control and to ease fear of death(heaven).
Something that makes the most sense to me would be reincarnation but not the Buddhism interpretation that if one lives a good life they will be rewarded in the next. When a person dies their spirit or soul leaves they body and wanders until it finds a new home (not always another human).

 

we came from a pool of unconditional love and consciousness. that pool became aware of itself and asked it self what it was. and thus a great vibration took place, resonating on the frequency of creation. then the great fractal of life was created, we were broken up into individuated conscious pieces , so that we could learn and understand ourselves and grow. hopefully one day returning to that pool of unconditional love and consciousness.

there are trillions of dimensions, universes, times, and life forms. there is the good, the great, the bad, the ghastly, the weird, the inexplicable, and much much more. there a supreme god and their gods below the god. every religion has some amount of truth in it. every idea is valid somewhere. every creation has a purpose. every purpose has its creation. we are nothing, and yet we are everything at the same time.

 

I believe there is a universe that is seperate from our mind, and it is being experienced... somehow

 

I believe in intelligent design, I believe in a higher power, I choose to call it "God"..I believe "religion" is of man though. I'm not a big fan of "religion"

I think people can have a relationship with "God" without the trappings of churches and organized religion. I think Jesus was God on earth for awhile.

 

Whether you are going or staying or sitting or lying down,
the whole world is your own self.
You must find out
whether the mountains, rivers, grass, and forests
exist in your own mind or exist outside it.
Analyze the ten thousand things,
dissect them minutely,
and when you take this to the limit
you will come to the limitless,
when you search into it you come to the end of search,
where thinking goes no further and distinctions vanish.
When you smash the citadel of doubt,
then the Buddha is simply yourself.
Daikaku

 

i believe there is nothing. Or at least that we are wrong about everything 9reality, the universe, everything.) The chances that our brain are observing the "truth" about reality and the world is very slim in my opinion. In order to understand the world around us one must assume that what they are observing is truthuful. Then again the entire idea of truth is reality is a human made concept, so you cant believe that either. My two cents.

 

...I see what you did there.

 

its kinda like the circles to squares thing. in nature there is no squares at all everything for the most part is based off of circles or fractals but the human mind and our reasoning invented the square because it is perfect to us therefore i believe we will never know the truth because we are thinking in squares in a reality or world full of circles

 

I believe there is a greater consciousness that we could not possibly fathom, and space and time are its imagination, or dream, for lack of a better word. I call it "God," though mainly to myself, I believe it is Love, I do not believe it has will.

I believe that in everything that is, is part of this consciousness, and when something that is ceases to be, that consciousness is returned to God to rejoin the whole, and when something new becomes, a tiny part of this divine consciousness is imparted onto it.

 

I believe God is the totality of existence, and that there's no separate entity overseeing things. God is not far out there, in fact we are what is far out, we are alien. The universal consciousness is within or underneath us.

I believe this essential awareness wanted an "other" or a separate, fragmented consciousness. It divided its own consciousness to beget an other, and it was a simple and absolute opposite, viz the yin yang. The creator needed an opposite in order to create, a counterentity, and the friction that ensues because of the dualism is a fundamental creative force in the universe. Being a fragmented entity has its consequences: the being does have an "other", but it also has the frustration of being a severed whole. At an underlying level, all matter and consciousness is "trying" to become the whole it ultimately is. Our version as humans is loving and procreating...it's our "project" as fragmented consciousness. We continue our separateness, and do what the original did and divide our consciousness for the sake of creation (offspring).

Man needs Woman, light needs dark, everything needs nothing, all things need their counterpoint or else they don't exist. Friction and suffering are necessary to propagate existence, just as logs must be burnt if there is to be fire.

Do I think there is some ultimate destination? Perhaps, but it will be its own beginning. I've just recently appreciated how time is circular, not linear. If anything ends, it is only so it can start again. Maybe there is some "checkpoint" at which our eye is opened and we see the oneness of us all ina state of superconsciousness, having our cake and eating it too, being separate but also being one. Then the process starts again but this time we have all our collective experience to build on. namaste, my family 8^D

 

Beautifull theories.The human mind can certainly come up with some good ones since language evolved.The circles and squares is interesting.I want very much to remain my--SELF after I change from my present form and experience what may be next.However, for me, as an agnostic ,I just don't know what's next and haven't been able to feel faith enough in any particular theory regarding the eternal(?) changes that encompass ALL.Sometimes I feel as if it matters not how we humans act during our short time in our present forms,and I remember what my dear departed grandmother told me-- that the only thing that matters at all is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".I guess that pretty much takes care of the karmic theory,but actually ,I gave up worrying about any of it at about 14 years old when I figured the nature of existence beyond our human lives is not be known by us in this form.It's no use worrying about the beliefs/theories of others because we're all inevitably turning to dust and returning to the stars/cosmos from whence we came.--my nickels worth.-------------(I'm sorry if I insinuated others beliefs are ONLY theories--that's not fair)

 

you're fine scratcho. an evolved human should see his beliefs as theories, and that the ego is what conceptualizes. I consider my beliefs to be in their infancy, and I expect they always will be. we should all allow our beliefs to be open to revision.

after I ditched my judeo-xtian upbringing I did not care about spirituality or belief systems, god was a non issue. The funny thing was, when i stopped seeking, thats when I felt like god sorta found me, or chose me even, but for no other purpose than to be known. I've had visions, on and off psychedelics, that are vivid and undeniable, but all I know for sure is that I am a human and I saw some shit in my head, despite how vastly and impeccably divine it all seems and how real it is to me, even more so than my human reality.

I like this line "Myths are only good or helpful if you realize they are myths."

 

I agree......But i also do believe that the universe could be just a big playground of elements, because earth was once a ball of water meaning thier was a ball of fire = sun, a ball of water = earth so each planet could have been just a different element being represented

I big on elements and energies and stuff....We are creatures of water, like walking water ballons, everything consists of water

But our minds are something that comes from earth/universe so most definatly their is a higher power or something along them lines

:cheers2:

 

I Believe

 

{edit: i originally posted the following in the mushrooms forum version of this thread, but that as yet has only 4 comments or something...so i'll just post it here, since this one is doing well}

i believe that what we perceive of reality on a day to day basis is only a small segment of what is actually objectively there, whether or not what is objectively there is empirical, observable by humans.

i believe in various vaguely defined spiritual entities, not necessarily corporeal or incorporeal. i believe a multitude of entities likely exist, and do not necessarily believe in one personal god which rules them all, but i do believe there is a creator.

i believe that firsthand religious/mystical experience is a necessity for spiritual growth, and that one-sided prayer and the most rudimentary meditative techniques are useful in one's life, but not to this end necessarily. i believe that fully psychedelic doses of substances such as magic mushrooms, DMT, salvia divinorum, ayahuasca, and mescaline bearing cacti, among other substances, most reliably and conveniently are able to confer a genuine religious experience upon a human being. by what means i am not certain - i call them visions, but it may simply be divine ecstasy with no further message, may be a revealing of other dimensions, may be simply shifting the scope of what we are perceiving, or it may reveal divine truth inherently embedded in either human beings, the environment in which we are surrounded, or both.

unlike deep meditation and other more orthodox religious practices, psychedelics on their own will not promote discipline or understanding. revelation without comprehension is meaningless, and it takes either a rather wise person or a person who will accompany use of psychedelics with such practices as prayer, meditation, fasting and so on, to fully integrate the meaning of the visions.

i believe that psychedelics are one of the ways to potentially come into communion with the gods, and that if it is gone about correctly with proper worship and devotion that, at times, these gods/angels/whatever may influence the world of normal reality, such as acts of healing, miracles, etc.

i believe also that psychedelics, as a sacrament, have little to no place in the realm of recreational drug use, and that people should approach them with extreme caution and care. if people are willing to do this, i would advocate everybody try them. if they just want to get high, i would suggest not taking them.

i believe most orthodox religions are well intentioned and are elegantly crafted social structures which have, at least among their followers, largely been sources of good. i believe further that arrogance and xenophobia has caused these same beautiful social structures to commit acts of unspeakable horror against one another. i believe that god and reality are far to complicated for us to fully understand as humans.

i believe in the value of science, but also that not everything in reality is empirical, and that science has limits which may not be overcome. i believe in "magic" to some very limited extent.

i believe that we must strive to reach fundamental goals of liberation, revelation, kindness, love, and acceptance. i believe violence should be avoided whenever possible, and that people should make wise decisions regarding their sex lives so as not to damage their lives or the lives of their partners. i believe that good people should have the right to be who they truly are, without shame or fear, without governments or cultural norms declaring them base, immoral, or otherwise atrocious.

i believe humanity has reached extremely advanced states of existance, cultural and "scientific" complexity, only to be all but destroyed and lost to antiquity. i believe it has happened at least once, that people were virtually wiped out at the end of the last ice age, and that it will happen again by different means in the near or far off future. i believe when this happens the fate of humanity will rest on us, but that no matter how much we fuck up life will go on, with or without us.

i believe in existance beyond our corporeal existance, but what shape that may take is unknown to me.

i believe that ultimately heaven is the void, and this is what all creatures should strive to reach.

 

Nice post Nesta.It does seem ,in a logical way of thinking that creation needs a creator.But then you get into the chicken--egg deal of who created a god and who (what)created that which created a god and who(what)created that which---ad infinitum.Perplexing and as I averred before ,unknowable by us in our present form.Or we could be freaks of nature alone in all of existence.The possibilities would seem to be infinite,at least to an agnostic such as me.I have had some mysterious things happen to me in my life,but maybe they were possible because of some rudimentary knowlege buried deep in the brains all of us lingering from eons ago,that slips through occasionally.It's a trip isn't it?I read the bible years ago to try and see what all the fuss was about--never could figure it out,but one great set of words I remember was this="all is given".Now to me that means that the right questions just need to be asked regarding most anything.At least relative to our subjective world.

 

And I certainly agree with you that psychedelics are in a class by themselves and it's a damn shame they are not being used for the advancement/enlightenment of all.I must say I certainly miss the completely open and loving smiles and hugs we gave and received from brothers and sisters that were most often complete strangers back in the day.