Belief and Spirituality, or lack of...

17th Angel

17th Angel

לבעוט את התחת ולקחת שמות
Messages
9,437
Reaction score
10
Points
0
Location
Have you seen the little piggies crawling in the d
For those who do not have what you have, a firm faith, an idea of a spiritual realm that comes after (or exists) this physical realm.. How would you suggest a person who probally isn't likley to believe your faith, can maintain a more caring and loving lifestyle.... ?

I would assume most of what of your kind, merciful and loving lifestyle comes from what has been taught to you... And that you have a strong grip on what is promised to you will be yours... But if you have no motivation... And no one who you believe is laying laws down upon you... How can you become like that?
 
Free will and choice my brother!

Somewhere along the way, with or without religion we can determine that we choose our choices but cannot choose the consequences.

We come to understand we are not punished for our sins but by them.

That our thoughts, words and deeds put the cosmos in motion and karma is meerly that big pendelum swinging.

One can live a life blaming others for every little thing....but it never ends and most of us tire of it sometime or other, or drowned ourcellves in a substance to numb...this substance may come from a bottle, a needle, a pill, a weed or be self induced/created through anger and pain

Somewhere along the way, we become sick and tired of who we are and what we sow and reap and decide to change...

Religion. belief, faith isn't always the impetus, it wasn't for me, but it did validate what I was seeing.
 
For those who do not have what you have, a firm faith, an idea of a spiritual realm that comes after (or exists) this physical realm.. How would you suggest a person who probally isn't likley to believe your faith, can maintain a more caring and loving lifestyle.... ?

I would assume most of what of your kind, merciful and loving lifestyle comes from what has been taught to you... And that you have a strong grip on what is promised to you will be yours... But if you have no motivation... And no one who you believe is laying laws down upon you... How can you become like that?
Click to expand...

Hi Angel--

I may have said this to you before, but I think that the law of Love is written on all our hearts, and we only need to wake up to its beating. This motivates us to take the focus off ourselves and onto others. When we love this law, we find ourselves dancing to this beat with pleasure, even when there may also be pain, because we know that the suffering we sometimes experience is not just for ourselves but for others. It is a way to hope to ease the situation for everyone.

I cannot end all the suffering, but I trust that someday it will end. And I can follow the beat in the meantime...even when it may appear I am out of step. ;)

InPeace,
InLove
 
That's beautiful, InLove.

I wasn't taught any particular doctrine or religion as a child, though I had a Christian background. I was encouraged to forge a personal relationship with the Divine and come to my own conclusions.

Personally, I don't try to act loving or kind because I believe something is promised to me. I don't do it to avoid a hell or to gain a heaven. I do it because I see God in all beings, and I sense other beings' pain and suffering, and I want to ease that as much as I can and honor the "God-light" within them. It's not that I believe God is the sum total of Creation, but rather that God is the Great Mystery, and springing forth from that is all Creation... so they carry in them that stamp of the Creator (even when they have forgotten it), they are the "visible garment of God," and when I serve other beings, I serve God. I believe I should serve God because, having experienced in various ways this Mystery, I believe It deserves my allegiance and love.

Whether or not I am rewarded doesn't much matter, nor what church I'm in or my beliefs on the details. If all I was given was this one lifetime (which I do not believe due to personal experience), it's still a tremendous gift and one that makes me feel it is my priviledge to honor and worship God by honoring and caring for Creation.
 
Hey Path-once again I could say "ditto" as to how my beliefs intersect with your own, though you typically express them far better than I could. When it comes to compassion/love/service, I think of the Buddhist notions. That is there is flip-side to 1 of the key insights of Buddhism: on the one hand, the notion of non-self by which they mean a permanently existing, wholly independent entity does not exist in reality. The flip-side: if no phenomena are wholly independent, we and all are intimately interdependent on many levels and in many ways,then truly seeing that leads to natural expressions of compassion for all. I love your notion of all Creation being the garment of God. Another way of putting the Buddhist insight is that humans fall into the delusion of thinking we are just independent threads in that great tapestry. So from the Buddhist perspective, the more the sense of the isolative self dissolves such that one can truly see that they are a thread of the whole cloth, the more compassion and service simply becomes as a natural of a response as breathing. Buddhists also see conscious exercising of one's "heart muscle" as a upaya, skillful means to assist us in loosening the tight grip we have on our "selves" and its supporting delusions. have a good one, earl
 
17th,

For me personally, I don't believe in a spiritual realm that exists alongside or follows this one or that anyone has laid law before me. I do enjoy actively engaging in myth, but given my unwillingness to even label our day-to-day experience of the world as what is real, to me it's all just experience anyway.

I think that when it comes to developing a more caring and loving lifestyle, as you put it, one of the things that has helped me a lot, is simply imagining myself in another person's place to the point that I can not just understand, but feel for where they're coming from, even if I disagree, even if I find it abhorrent. I am often aided by this in remembering that we are all shaped by nature and nurture, and that even something like free will may even be an illusory construct of our mind, created to make sense of contradictory psychological processes. It's not always easy, but it seems to be very rewarding.

Also, I've found a paradox in my approach to life. When it comes to beliefs, to the metaphysical, the existential, the theories, philosophies, what-have-you, I find it best not to make determinations and conclusions, but when it comes to actually living, especially in the sphere of ethics and the day-to-day, it becomes necessary to act with determination. So although I am a moral relativist, I bind myself to the ethics of my place and time, and look at how the key components of those ethics might be advanced, and where placing too much weight on one part of the system may have created a hypocrisy, or a violation of the most basic tenets of the system. It's actually not as cerebral as it sounds. As you do indicate, a lot of it is about what has been taught.

Dauer
 
Reading the post it seems most people are in a spiritual state that is usually reached by those aspirants who have traveled many worldly roads; I guess one can say that they have had many experiences. They have sacrificed their own self-centered claim and by doing so have performed the supreme self-sacrifice. It is the soul that causes and coerces these individuals to make this self-sacrifice and in this human sacrifice they find themselves because a person only has what he gives away.
It seems the people who made the post are enjoying the serenity of the soul because they have quieted the outer layers of the mind and have become instruments of the collective unconscious.

Christian Mystic
 
Hello all...I just want you all to know that what each and every one of you has thought and written is true for me also. How wonderful !

flow....:p
 
Wow, didn't expect that many responses... Thanks, some eye opening and worth pondering posts.

Not much of a reader lol... But, will seek 'The God Delusion'.

"with or without religion we can determine that we choose our choices but cannot choose the consequences."
I liked that...

Inlove we are mrs Inspire. ;)

Dauer, not simply to think of being in anothers shoes, but to walk in their shoes... I guess it would come down to quite some practice. I tend to get blind sided in certain situations, and with rage and blah blah, that is when my mind tends to disconnect, I indeed need to try and think and pause to reflect...
 
That reminds me, 17th, of Bananabrains quote from Billy Conolly: "Before you would criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then who cares? He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!" :)

Oh Dawkins! So much intelligence and so much stubborn stupidity all in one. He appreciates music and poetry yet he claims to believe in nothing that can't be proved scientifically! Hah!

Seriously I think this all comes from the sceintific method of objectivity. You have to separate yourself from the object of your study. Yet for things spiritual this doesn't work. You have to participate in them. Oh well.
 
Virtual_Cliff said:
That reminds me, 17th, of Bananabrains quote from Billy Conolly: "Before you would criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then who cares? He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!" :)

Oh Dawkins! So much intelligence and so much stubborn stupidity all in one. He appreciates music and poetry yet he claims to believe in nothing that can't be proved scientifically! Hah!

Seriously I think this all comes from the sceintific method of objectivity. You have to separate yourself from the object of your study. Yet for things spiritual this doesn't work. You have to participate in them. Oh well.
Click to expand...

Heh... Billy Conolly can have his moments I guess.
 
Virtual_Cliff said:
That reminds me, 17th, of Bananabrains quote from Billy Conolly: "Before you would criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then who cares? He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!" :)

Oh Dawkins! So much intelligence and so much stubborn stupidity all in one. He appreciates music and poetry yet he claims to believe in nothing that can't be proved scientifically! Hah!

Seriously I think this all comes from the sceintific method of objectivity. You have to separate yourself from the object of your study. Yet for things spiritual this doesn't work. You have to participate in them. Oh well.
Click to expand...

The thing with Dawkins (and I've gone into a bit more detail on another thread) is he's a very intelligent man, probably the worlds leading expert in evolution and very arrogent with it- only reason I recomended it here is because he, in one chapter, asks the same question as 17th- and gives a very well reasoned answer that is quite eye-opening. most of his arguments against God are realy arguments against organised religion and both (God and religion) are fields he really could do with actually researching. That said I think he's always worth reading and his obvious passion and enjoyment for his field shines through, you just have to remember (just like everyone else) he's writting with an agenda of his own. (the other thread is in the science fourum, the title should give it away.)
 
u don't have to have a religious faith or belief system to be a decent person... conversely, u can be religious and psychopathic... if u want to live a decent life, without faith, u at least need to feel u belong to the human race, and then, once u feel part of society, u can make the decision to improve it, in small ways, and try to treat people how u would like to be treated urself... ta dah!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top