Spirituality Without Religion

I don't mean faith in that dogma, I just mean their faith on itself. Just because someone is part of a religion and they accept a dogma or two doesn't mean their faith is based or focussed on those dogmas of course It can be faith in God or whatever.
Emotional experiences on itself are not spiritual experiences (maybe if people would insist then in a certain way but not nearly always). But that doesn't mean emotion isn't connected or present in a spiritual experience.

I'm getting stoned so (talking about spiritual experiences )

 

I'm always hesitant to attempt to explain Eastern spiritualism with a lot of words, because that's more of a Western approach. If an Eastern truth or teaching is not immediately clear, the next step is generally to spend more time contemplating what was said, turning it over in your mind to see if it relates to your own life experience in any way, and reveals something true to you. If not, maybe you just aren't ready to understand that concept and absorb it into yourself just yet. Patience in such matters is not a Western virtue. We want to keep digging, keep pounding away intellectually until we get the answer TODAY, no matter what it takes. This is pretty much the opposite of Eastern thought. Or at least, that's been my experience.

 

Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism - at least in their higher manifestations are much more focused on spiritual experience than western religions in general. It's not that they lack ,logic, but they try to point at what is beyond logic and the rational mind to grasp. A more direct and intuitive way of knowing.

 

Exactly.

 

They are highly empirical; the entire spirit of buddhism is "try this at home, kids!"

 

does spirituality necessitate faith? one may become enlightened and choose to change their spiritual direction. On the contrary, religion typically discourages or outright forbids this type of thing.

 

That's why I said following in line. That is what religion does. If you don't follow there way, you will choose your own highway. I don't go to church. Never have on my own decision, only if a family member asks. I don't need to share with people in a church to feel accepted in the spirit for finding god.

The word Faith may be takin differently. It shouldn't be for the word, is still a word and for what it represents.

Some find faith though life experience, some are taught to follow because of growing up as child in it. My parents told me don't steal, don't lie, and don't stick needles in your arm and you bbetter care for others. I choose my own path and I don't follow those who preach. I do however follow those who practice what they preach

I might go though some shit where I can't think of believing in god, but I have not lost my faith. Its a principal on living I believe.

If I go to church and am told what the word of God is, not experience but told I will walk out. I am told by human, God if you will, does not talk like human does.

No matter what you tell me in the book (bible) you cant prove to help me. I enjoy reading the bible for knowledge though.

If I learn through life and keep my faith that im doing the right thing without greed and if something sucks I have to deal with it because if I don't something else will show up later and hurt more.

I'm not walking in line. Ive chosen my own path.

Kind of a long answer....

 

What do you mean by mundane stuff?

If you are talking about bacteria living in our digestive tract then I agree with you...

But a skeletal system holding our bodies together, a beating heart and a Central and Peripheral Nervous System communicating with itself and allowing for interaction with the enviroment as well is far from mundane.


It's interesting you mention how big the the universe is, yet feel the need to go on entertain ideas like we have spirits in us or that we are avatars?

You're not the only one I've seen do this also, it is an interesting phenomena to me. Like how do you formulate these ideas... Something like a physically big universe suggests a conceptually complex universe?

 

I appreciate the addition on the other post, MeAgain! And it makes sense, except I don't think that because the religion is removed from the original spiritual experience (of the prophet or central figures from a religion, or its founders), which indeed is often if not always the case, by definition also means that this also counts for the spiritual experience of their followers.
It is of course true that a lot of followers of most religions do so out of cultural/societal/family tradition or because they grew up with it or because it's the easy way and are perhaps not even looking for the spiritual experiences their religion may have to offer. But as pointed out: that doesn't have to say anything about the actual spiritually inclined people in that religion (perhaps a minority) and their spiritual experiences

 

I agree with that as regards most eastern religions. I'm not sure it's really true in the case of Islam, Christianity or Judaism. Maybe I'm wrong, and they just didn't explain the non dual experience in a way I can comprehend.

If I think hard, the only Christian mystic I can think of who talks about anything resembling non dualism is Meister Eckhart.

 

I'm not sure if the experiences have got to be non-dual. Can't they still be pure or sincere when they are? Just wondering/pondering!

How does it not count the same for islam and his prophet Mohammed who got supposedly a very spiritual experience in solitary in a cave. Or some of those early christian hermits that later became saints, or some of those gnostics (perhaps a bit less organized in the religion organisation sense but still fall under christianity and religion methinks).

Maybe I'm missing something too here

 

To my understanding, Mohammed didn't say a word about any kind of non-dual consciousness, nor did Jesus, and I can't recall much in Judaism other than the Qabbala where anything of that nature is indicated.

It seems to me that there's always a dualism in those religions between the human consciousness and the divine. The general idea is that after death you will continue to exist as an individual and suffer reward or punishment in an afterlife. In teachings which stress non-dualism it's more a question of merging back into the original One from which all is said to have sprung.

There are also eastern schools that are dualistic, such as Krishna Consciousness.

Does it have to be non-dual? I think if you thought that this is a real possibility, and the highest experience available, then it would have to be, as any other kind of experience would have to be seen as only partial at best, and illusory at worst.
Are Christian saints (all of whom were Catholics BTW) sincere? Maybe. Probably they were caught up in the web of Christian doctrine which as I said is more about a relationship between the human being and a largely external deity. At least that's my reading of it.

 

Very well put
pretty much how I feel about it as well.
often folks forget that religion has it's genesis in personal experience/revelation.
Religion is an attempt to "live" according to those revelations and experience by those that have not had it.

Over time the personal revelation that was the seed of the religion gets lost and it's import diminished, and adherence to dogma and ritual supplant personal revelation.

 

Well, you have to keep in mind those early christian hermits that became saints in the catholic church didn't aim to be saints or became saints during their lifetime. I was mainly talking about those before the 4th century so I'm not sure how 'catholic' they exactly were! To assume by definition that they most likely weren't sincere (for what reason??) seems definitely an approach that will cause one to end up with a guaranteed very subjective and distorted view. Not saying you're doing so btw.

 

a little off-topic, but I find it immensely intriguing that in research into speaking in tongues, one of the revelatory experiences in the NT and experienced by many, and meditative states it has been found that they are as different as night and day.
Meditative states rely on focused control of awareness and is very much "working at spirituality" whereas being "filled with the spirit" and speaking in tongues is entirely effortless and in fact relies on a relinquishing of control, not a focusing of it.
this is based on scientific studies of both phenomena.

Just throwing that out there to tickle your brains a little.

 

Should y'all get on with speaking in tongues then I will have a spiritual experience . And if
you do that and can't remember even the essence of what you said - there is your duality ,
and your schiz . But , I know alas , this is writing ... more-so , rationalized writing ...and it
relies on an established , institutionalized context of understanding . Writing is religious .
And then some people believe that talking in the style of writing is an articulate virtue .

Our irrational writers who obviously mean no harm are spiritual ? And some people are
very rude to them .

 

To some extent, all our views are subjective. But OK, in the early days they weren't catholic in the modern sense. But I strongly suspect that most were dualists, which is the point I was trying to make.
Early Christianity was influenced to some extent by neo-platonism, so maybe some of those early Christian mystics had some idea of the One from which all emerges and to which all returns. Origen had a very neo-platonic view for instance.

I'm not saying they weren't sincere - just that they were limited and mainly had a dualistic view of things. God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell, God and the worshipper.

 

Interesting. They're also finding that changes in the brain are similar in states of deep meditation and under the effects of psilocybin and LSD.

My guess would be that because speaking in tongues is an active thing, different brain networks would be involved than in meditation where it's more a turning inward and a state of physical inactivity..

 

I'm not sure if you misunderstood me. I think we're saying the same thing. I'm saying that there's really no saying that the stuff our world is made of is ordinary, because we cannot fathom the environment it exists in. It's fine for science, but what it really means we won't know until we can really understand our place in the cosmos. And I don't think we'll ever understand that.

When you really consider how large the universe is, you come to realize that we are so small we're something even weirder than invisible. What is our world, then, really, and what are we? That's all I'm saying -- that it's impossible to say at the present whether this is all totally spiritual or not.