Religion.

he's not telling you anything.. he's just not gonna claim anything happened since we have no proof.

 

what I'm telling you is that people only "know" what they've experienced through their senses. no one has any solid idea of what really is.

 

Sorry didnt mean to make that sound like I was adressing you personally, zen.. I was speaking in general, thats what people need to be asking themselves

 

no problem

 

i dont mean childish as a bad thing at all.....just more like.....

when i think of childish in this respect, i think primarily of a sense of awe and wonder....discovery....playfulness.....many would think of naivete or a blurring of the distinction between fantasy and reality, but....

i guess despite my sort of abstract and elastic set of "beliefs," and lack of serious practice, except occasional meditation and prayer and a few other things, i still dont think my beliefs are more far fetched than any others. just not usual.

i dont mean childish as putting myself down. just sort of....i guess a desire to see the world through the eyes of a child, to look with wonder and joy at all the incredible and improbable things around us. it doesnt really matter where it all came from...its a fascinating world that we've managed to completely fuck over! i mean look at anything out in nature at all.....its incredible...

 

I completely understand what you mean. I vaguely talked about something like that in my personal forum.. Innocence and wonder.

 

i've quit caring about a definite distinction between "truth" and "what i'd like to be truth" (as i take it, reality and fantasy) from my view, our perceptions often deceive us. our minds and perceptions cannot be trusted entirely, and as such, we cannot trust reality. in reality "realistic" is as close as we can hope to be sure of....

thich nhat hanh is one of the most wonderful people to live in recent times. he helps make the world a better place. i may not agree with every last little thing he says, but i strongly believe he is a very strong source of good for being just one person.

i definitely recommend Living Buddha, Living Christ and Peace is Every Step

interesting (though widely commented upon) fact.... martin luther king jr. nominated him for a nobel peace prize during the vietnam war

 

It's not impossible to change someones mind... many people convert from athiesm to being religious.. and vice versa.. it just takes an awful lot of debate.. and research.

I used to be an Athiest.. now i'm Agnostic..

There is no way to prove the existence of God.. but we can't deny the possibility either.

It's logical to only believe in something when we have good enough evidence.. there is no evidence for God.. which doesn't mean there isn't one.. but it means that it's pointless to hold a belief in one until we have enough evidence.

 

to be perfectly honest, there is plenty of evidence that there is more to the universe than meets the eye.

debate virtually never changes the mind of one whose mind is made it. it may sway undecided people, but people with their only beliefs...very rarely.

EXPERIENCE, intuition, logic, and emotion....these are the types of things that change minds effectively.

to me, any true faith must include mystical experiences. this is the evidence you are looking for.

simply because my previous mystical experiences in the past are something i can only describe, not something observable or repeatable, not something i can take out of a box and show somebody....this is why there is very little SCIENTIFIC evidence for my beliefs.

the very nature of the divine keeps it largely (but not entirely) seperate from science.

theres plenty of evidence in the everyday wold, however no solid, hard proof.

the proof people seek may only be found through personal spiritual experiences.

you say we cannot believe something without enough evidence, but spirituality and mystical experiences never will arise in every member of every society in the same way simultaneously....its personal, and individual.

there is a ton of evidence for god out there, and i've only been revealed some of it through a few visions and other occurances.

just because you have not personally found the divine and the sacred around you does not mean that there is no evidence or that it is stupid to believe in a god or gods. i've seen visions of the nothing-heaven i believe in....i've come face to face with, and prayed to, a nameless goddess who healed a loved one of a disease....i've cought glimpses of the spirits and can feel the life energies in the natural world around us.....through meditation and psychedelics i've occasionally been able to view things "behind the scenes" or been given insights i would not have had otherwise....if it is true that all the world is a stage or play, i've seen the angels, the lesser gods backstage which make things happen properly, and if something is going wrong, i've seen them try to fix it....especially when it comes to the souls of the creatures in our reality. but i expect nobody to believe all this, and i expect nobody to agree with it or even really understand it. but these things have tremendous meaning to me.

lots of fantastic things happen all the time. some people are more prone to finding spiritual experiences than others. many people are unable to believe in anything they are unable to see.

but to claim there is no evidence for a god or gods or anything spiritual is to claim a monopoly on truth. saying there is NO evidence for god just because you've got none is the ignorant thing, in my humble opinion.

i don't think i know exactly whats going on. i'll never claim that. likewise i'll never try to make someone believe the things i believe. but just because the incredible evidence i've witnessed in my lifetime is not something i can show you does not mean it does not exist, and it does not mean it is shoddy evidence.

even if many people DO hold beliefs without any real, personal, experiential evidence, it isn't pointless as you claim. science and religion rarely overlap, and do not deal with the same things in the same way. but they do have a lot of similarities. the difference is some scientific truths are known and CAN be proven. scientific theories, of course, have yet to be proven. but with the spiritual world, it must prove itself to you. god reveals god to you. even if a human being may lead another to believe certain things, your correct that no human can prove the existance of the gods or spiritual realms to another. it is something you must find for yourself. its personal, and intimate, and of beauty so indescribable it can often make a grown man weep.

this is the proof, and it may only be given to one person at a time. i cannot give you my experiences, nor can any other person give you their spiritual pasts and experiences.

but to say there is no point in believing something without proof is fallacy anyway. according to the idea that belief without hard, demonstratable proof is pointless does not make sense to me.

it seems to me if nothing can be proven, then all the more reason to believe in whatever makes the world more beautiful and wonderful to you! its not that its pointless to believe in something, its that it doesnt really matter what you believe. everything has essentially equal merit.

you say theres no point in belief, but what is the point in disbelief? it isn't any more sensible, really. it doesnt make you a happier person, it doesnt make you kinder, smarter, wiser, or more correct. it could even be interpreted as simply fear of believing in the "wrong" or "incorrect" thing.

it just seems like a very unnecessarily negative outlook to me. but whatever, disbelief is like a negative number. its the same essential thing....just sort of a mirror image.....disbelief is really belief in a lack of belief.....

farbeit from me to say you're wrong, but i dont think you'll get very far trying to convince people who have a firm belief in something that their beliefs, often grounded in personal spiritual experience to which you are not privy, are not worthwhile and have no merit.

but i fail to see the merit or worth in disbelief, personally. you think its pointless to have belief in what one person cannot prove to anyone else.

i think its pointless in many meanings of the word, i guess. but i think its equally, perhaps even more, pointless to disbelieve completely.

an openness to the possibility is the first step in allowing the spiritual prove itself to you. if you want proof, you may be able to get it some day. but not from any discussion or person or scientific study or measurement....

 

There is a fine line between knowing God and the edge of madness. Fortunatley, knowing God allows one to never fall into the levels of insanity because no matter what the level being shared is, a person realizes that though they may be feeling alone at first, they are constantly reassured that they are on the right path. Eventually the ego is destroyed and no sense of fear or uncertainty remains. But that search to come to terms with one's own actual nothingness is far from easy and few during any one given kalpa take the final steps.
Knowing God is not exactly knowing, because it is a state of thoughtlessness. No opinion, no judgement, no desire, no will power. It is pure, it is beyond the state of the nothing. Nothing, or the hollow state, applies at first only to thought, which of course the external universe is a byproduct of. There is no meaning to life, because a meaning requires a thought, and we all receive different thoughts. Life itself is utterly empty, shallow, pointless, and trying to demand substance and universal truth within it is useless. Stroking one's own ego, building up one's own morality, or finding a solid mental 'ground' to stand on. This is all useless because everything we build up (which comes from a thought initially) is subject to change. Thus, the emptyness of it.
BUT, there is a place, an Essence, of Mind, which we all are formed out of, that is always pure. We have our bodies, right? And we take showers because....? Water does not actually purify the body, nor does it clean anything. Just like our minds, our minds are never pure and can never be cleaned, they can only be reversed to the source.
It is as Buddha taught Ananda about the undoing of the mind's knots. He tied a single handkerchief in 6 knots, and asked Ananda : What is this? And Ananda said : It is a single cloth, tied into 6 seperate knots, but at the same time, they are one entity.
Buddha said : How do I untie the knots? And he pulled at it, only making the knots stronger. Ananda said : You must first study how the knots were initially tied, and then go in reverse order, undoing them one by one as we can not untie them all at once.
Buddha was very pleased with that answer, and said that first we must find out which knot in our comprehension is the last one to have been tied, and start there. Work our way back to the Source and unfold the mind as One complete and pure entity.
The 6 knots represent the six senses :
1. Sight
2. Hearing
3. Tasting
4. Touching
5. Smelling
6. Discrimination
The idea that they are knots means that they have become tied up and isolated because we are attached to external sense producing objects. Take hearing for example, you have the object that produces a beautiful sound, the sound wave itself, and the sense organ that receives the sound, followed ultimatley by the discriminating mind which decides wether it is pleasant or repulsive. When we are attached to, say, our spouse constantly praising us, our ego is built up stronger, the knot gets tighter, and the duality of perception and the object being perceived clouds our total mind. Find out which is causing you misery, unravel them all one by one, and during meditation, start unplugging all of your sense telephones from the operating system wired in the brain. When you have NO connection to your lumpy, bloody body mass, you will see the 'mystical' experience, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Buddhalands, the vision of God. And God, She is always smiling when you find Her.
Namaste

 

man alive relayer....every time i think i've finally come to understand a little more about what you believe, you take it in a similar but rather different direction....i know that while our beliefs are quite different in a number of ways that we find truth (or at least beauty) in a wide variety of religious sources....

but damn, one day it seems like you're essentially a hare krishna, the next day a radical christian, the next a hindu, and now buddhist teachings....

all well and good, of course. its just a consequence of being esoteric, ecclectic or enigmatic that you are hard to pin down and understand

a meaningless commentary...sorry

 

Meaningless commentary or astute observation about the writings of a man who aggressively keeps an open mind to many paths? The more I read of Relayer's posts the more respect I have for him.

 

definitely one of the more mature and thoughtful people here, i'd say.

i'm jealous, actually. i haven't been so passionate about advancing my spiritual growth lately, and i am in need of some scriptural reading and some serious prayer and meditation.

first things first, though, i probably ought to quit drinking, at least for a while.

 

I agree... and don't sell yourself short. I think we grow spiritually whether we like it or not. Every experience, conversation, every life test adds a small swatch to the growing fabric of who we are. I've found that integrating a meditative state of mind into day to day routines can help keep a perspective on things that I would otherwise allow to screw my state of mind up. Limiting how much things out of my control alter my mood can have a very profound effect on how my day goes. People feed off the energy and reflect back to me things I'm not even aware that I'm projecting. Little things like body language and facial expression can either draw people in or repel them... or provoke them to lash out.

People who take up meditation as part of a religious journey may experience the world treating them differently and will attribute that to God blessing them when in fact they simply have stopped projecting bad energy to people around them. This has veered a bit from the flow of the topic but I hope it made some sense. It did to me before I typed it!

 

i understand what you mean, i think, and if i truly do understand than i agree completely

its not that i feel my growth and development has halted, just slowed down.

i mean for a very, very long time my dream was to have a humble but endearing hermitage somewhere far from anyone and to live a simple, spiritual, pseudomonastic life in peace and quiet, or to wander in the wilderness for several years living a similar but nomadic lifestyle. free. and ever learning more and more (knowing less and less)

its in my nature to be a spiritual person, but like all things i am passionate about i still get sidetracked in life for a period, sometimes...

 

Well said. Im with you.

 

i think it would do me a world of good to schedule a week off and take some vacation hours in late spring this year and go out to the woods for a type of solitary retreat...somewhere isolated, where i wont see anyone, and can have peace and quiet and just pray and meditate and unwind and celebrate the new seasons.....

no booze.....a little herb and perhaps a psychedelic trip, though

 

We all get sidetracked and growth is almost never a constant, steady pace. You get sidetracked the same as just about everyone else. Life has a way of distracting one's pursuits but the respite gives an opportunity for the passion to rebuild and in some ways you're actually growing further spiritually by doing this. Stepping back from time to time gives you an outsider's perspective on your own journey... a bit like a painter stepping back to take in the whole canvas of a large masterpiece in progress. The down time is not at all wasted.

 

good point...still, i think i've been too wrapped up in work and alcohol lately.

need a good, refreshing vacation, out in nature....gather my wits about me a bit

 

I had no intention of arguing with your planned get away. It could prove to be a turning point.