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Goodbye Jesus

Spiritually Dead Ex-Christians?


Joshpantera

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I was thirty and struggling through both a back injury and the early stages of deconversion. I gained a significant amount of weight and was absolutely miserable. Some years later, I stopped feeling sorry for myself and took up endurance mountain biking. Now, I'm  competing in races and consistently doing better than folks twenty years my junior. 

 

You can regroup and become a beast in your thirties and forties. You may need to be smarter about diet and workout routines but it's absolutely doable and this  is anecdotal but extreme endurance feats seem to be associated with "older" folks. I don't know but maybe with age and experience we know how to suffer and grind through prolonged physical challenges a bit better? 

 

One of my mentors is in his mid 60's and the guy is a freak animal that has no qualms about 20+ mile wilderness rides and will climb up trails that make lesser men like me break down and sob with self doubt and discomfort. He tore his meniscus less than two months ago, had surgery and is already planning on leading a 30+ mile adventure ride in the next week. 

 

As already stated, it's not too late man. Also, one thing I've come to realise is that it's not about quantity but quality. I'm in great shape but sometimes I ride like an asshole, so this possibly increases my risk of death. Also, I could have a massive stroke or heart attack tomorrow. Better yet, I could get run over or die in car crash on the way to work. Perhaps that itching in my arm is a rapidly metastasising lymphatic cancer?

 

Point being, my quality of life has been awesome over the past years and I feel I've lived dozens of lives worth of experience so even if my days are limited, at least I've had an incredible ride. 

 

Best of luck! 

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18 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

 

I'm going to check out the thread. And I like the Zen Garden idea.

I need you to message me on pantheism. I've read a few sites but I'm not quite understanding the theory behind it. Like what's there thoughts on after death, what is that spiritual energy we are able to tap into? I took a test to see if I had pantheist beliefs on one site. I was like 80% dualistic pantheist because I believed in a individual conscious spirit. Not that i put any faith in an online spiritual placement test. Just curious about the details of the belief.

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Pantheism may pertain to a spectrum of beliefs and you'll likely find individuals who identify with certain nuances. I am not sure about any "spiritual energy," but I can see how someone can hold beliefs that could be considered pantheistic and still have an intellectually honest overall world view. 

 

In in a certain sense, I could identify with a pantheistic type of view where the entire universe is "divine" without any specific, personal god that exists separate from the world and actively intervenes with the day to day affairs of said universe. In essence, I can see how someone could identify with the "god of Spinoza" and see beauty, order and wonder as it permeates the entire universe. 

 

One thing that I've come to realise is that it's often limiting to attemp to box yourself into a certain "camp." It seems we humans are often desperate to cling onto some label; however, once you start using labels, you sometimes take on all the intellectual and social baggage associated with said label. Sometimes this also leaves out the possibility of nuance in the eyes of some. Of course, I believe I have identified as an agnostic atheist on this site and that label has its own baggage, but I need not let it if I'm willing to self reflect and drill down into my beliefs. This is why I'm

able to say that certain pantheistic interpretations resonate with me even though the atheist label has been attached to me. 

 

Therefore, to answer your question about death you need to understand that not all pantheistic leaning folks will give you the same answer. This is true of many other folks with different labels. I will say that the most intellectually honest answer at this time is a strong and definitive "I don't know." 

 

The persuit of "spirituality" is an important endeavour IMHO, but there's a lot of uncertainty in this universe and perhaps the most important thing we can do is develop some degree of comfort with being uncertain and having some (most) of the "big" questions go unanswered. 

 

 

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18 minutes ago, RogueScholar said:

One thing that I've come to realise is that it's often limiting to attemp to box yourself into a certain "camp." It seems we humans are often desperate to cling onto some label; however, once you start using labels, you sometimes take on all the intellectual and social baggage associated with said label.

 

In this respect you remind me a lot of my uncle. He doesn't want to be labeled either. And I don't think I really do either. I've said it before in other posts that I don't think there is a category I really fit into anymore. I'm just tring to take in aspects from other beliefs.  Who knows maybe there is a little truth in all of them. Ya just have to find those common threads that cross theologies.

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, DarkBishop said:

I need you to message me on pantheism. I've read a few sites but I'm not quite understanding the theory behind it. Like what's there thoughts on after death, what is that spiritual energy we are able to tap into? I took a test to see if I had pantheist beliefs on one site. I was like 80% dualistic pantheist because I believed in a individual conscious spirit. Not that i put any faith in an online spiritual placement test. Just curious about the details of the belief.

 

I guess you guys already dove into pantheism. Rogue's correct, there's a range of different pantheistic beliefs. The scientific pantheism is completely naturalist based. Atheist's who have a pantheist leaning usually stick to a scientific approach. No afterlife belief exists there. Our elements are endlessly recycled much like the idea of reincarnation except without the notion of a literal soul or consciousness leaving one body for another. This variety walks a fine line steering clear of any supernatural content. 

 

The dualistic pantheism is where people favoring supernatural ideas usually land. The universe is all god, but also beyond the universe is all god as well. This is where panentheism falls, the belief that god is both immanent and transcendent of the universe. But even there, some people are going as panentheist without the supernatural beliefs. They just see god as the whole universe and beyond but don't believe that the beyond is anything other than more of natural existence spanning out forever. This would be like instead of saying the universe is god, saying that a multiverse is god which is both the entire universe and transcends the entire universe at the same time. So there's both supernatural and naturalist ways of looking at panentheism. 

 

The consciousness notion ushers in something else - monist idealist pantheism. The entire shebang is a manifestation of primary consciousness underlying the existence of everything, or a type of primary sense of awareness inherent is all existing things - as we were looking at it in the Awareness Broken Down thread. This takes pantheism into deeper depths, speculative depths in comparison to the fine line walking of scientific pantheism. 

 

What's common here is the All (pan) is God belief (theism). What breaks it up into categories is what people envision as "The All." But the common thread is the all encompassing aspect of the belief. If you view the all as made up of spirit and matter, then you're dualistic. If you view the all as both immanent and transcendent, then you're panentheistic. If you view the all as made up of primary awareness inherent in nature, then you're monist idealist. But if you take a straight line path down only the standard model view of reality then you're naturalist or scientific.

 

Then you get into these pantheist forums and you'll find people that mix them up in different ways... 

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I've been active, on & off since 2005, on a site called Ex-Church of Christ. I was Church of Christ for 27 years. (Evidently I'm a really slow learner). Anyway for the last year I've been posting a lot of biblical historical data that challenges the belief the bible is the inerrant inspired words of God and that the bible is historically accurate.  The Church of Christ believes the bible is the literal words of God and therefore they have turned it into an instruction manual from god. Their actions and focus on the bible indicate they actually worship the bible, but they of course deny that even though the evidence says otherwise.

 

I've managed to instill some doubt about the bibles claim of inerrancy for a few folks over there. I post references to various bible scholars and the books they've written such as Ehrman, Price, Armstrong, etc. A few participants over there have actually acknowledged to me that they have come around and accepted the bible has human origins and that it's not historically accurate.

 

One particular poster has acknowledged the bible is a collection of myths and therefore it is neither literally true or historically accurate. She even refers to Xianity as Christian Mythology, but she insists that those bible myths are still relevant and has encouraged me to read some of Joseph Campbell's books such as The Power of Myth. I've listened to all of his Youtube videos and read excepts from all of his books that are available on kindle.

 

I haven't purchased any of his books because, even after watching his videos and reading all the excepts available from his books, I am unable to connect with his thinking. Before buying one of his books I wanted to see if I could connect with his unique way of understanding & approaching spirituality but it has become clear to me that I can't.

 

I've even explored the concepts of Buddhism, spirituality without a deity, but that didn't register either. That has led me to conclude that I am simply not wired to be either religious or spiritual. That same individual over at Ex-Church of Christ is involved in a study now focused on why some people are religious and some aren't. The preliminary findings indicate some people have analytical minds and others don't. Apparently I am one who does and that explains why, even as Christian, I was constantly asking questions and challenging established traditions and teachings. I always wanted to know why "we" believed they things we did and where did all these beliefs and rituals originate?

 

I remember many years ago listening to a SS teacher present a lesson on baptism. I was young and full of myself and I remember asking him in class where baptism came from? Somebody had to be the first one ever to be baptized, so who was it and why did they get baptized. I remember the teacher just staring at me and other heads were turned looking at me like I'd just grown a second head. The teachers answer was, "I don't know and that isn't important. The Bible says to do it and that is what God means."

 

Years later I decided to find out where baptism came from and it comes from Judaism (big surprise). It is a symbolic cleansing ritual that is still part of Judaism. It's called Mikveh. I confess I never did find out who the first guy was to get a Mikveh ceremonial cleansing though, but I found out both men and woman were nude when they were cleansed.

 

 

 

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What is it about Campbell that you don't connect with?  

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59 minutes ago, Joshpantera said:

What is it about Campbell that you don't connect with?  

 

I am apparently unable to find this so called power in myths Campbell talks about. A myth, as far as I'm concerned, is a vehicle for wisdom teaching. It can & often does convey truth in some form but I associate it with philosophy not spirituality.

Since I don't connect philosophy with spirituality I can't connect myths with possessing life changing power, therefore I am unable to make a connection with Mr.Campbell.

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I'll try and explain. There's four functions of a traditional mythology:

 

1) mystical / religious function. This is simply to point out the mystery of existence itself. 

 

2) cosmological function. This is providing an image of the universe and a cosmic order which points back to the mystery of existence behind the whole. 

 

3) sociological function. This comes in behind the first two and provides a social order, often based around the cosmic order where societies were based around the "as above so below axium." 

 

4) pedagogical function. This comes into play as the living of an individual life from birth through death. And as we go down the line the mystery of the first function underlies each of the next three. 

 

The power of myth that you're looking for comes from tackling and understanding the first function, which is the mystical and therefore encompasses anything spiritual. I never really caught it from Christianity. But I did catch it from comparative mythology. 

 

Here's an example from the Upanishads of India. A father takes his son and standing before a great banyan tree asked the boy to pick up a seed. The father then asked him to break it open. He asked the boy what does he see. The boy says that he seeds more seeds increasingly small. The father says break them as well. Finally they get down to the last seed and the father tells the boy to break it. Then asked the boy what he sees now. The boy says nothing, nothing at all. The father then says from that, this great banyan tree arises. And also from that do we all arise. 

 

Do you see how the Myth outlines the mystery of existence and serves the function of putting a person in touch with the mystery of their own existence? That's the religious, mystical and spiritual function. It sounds philosophical. But that's it. It's about achieving a state of mind and human emotional status. And it has to do with putting one in accord with nature and the surrounding universe. Because of this, it has also to do with human consciousness. 

 

We could simply change the analogies and set the story to a physics lab between a teacher and a student and make the discussion about the search for the last divisible particles of matter. And conclude that the mystery we find in doing so is the mystery of our own life and existence. That provokes the experience of deep mystery. We could also do the same discussing the macrocosm and multiverse ideas about eternal space. The philosophical and spiritual are not separate issues. 

 

Campbell made clear what's wrong with Christianity as a myth and pointed it out often. The main problem being that many cultures understand these stories as metaphor while Christians understand them as literal and historical. This focus is what led me eventually to investigating the Christ myth theories. If the Buddhas and Krishna myths are metaphor, why would the Jesus myth which is similar in so many ways not be metaphor? 

 

So Campbell tried to interpret the Christ myth as a mythology instead of historically. Looking at the cruci-fiction another way is a story about "the zeal of eternity for incarnation in time, which involves the breaking up of the one into the many and the acceptance of all suffering." That's a mythological reading of what is usually a theological statement. 

 

I had goose bumps when I first heard him say that. Because suddenly something that never made any sense to me at all, the cruci-fiction, was clear as day. Eternity is present in all of the forms and images of time, eternity is now. And it's the basis of our own existence. As it says in the Upanishads, "thou art that." When set to the mythological reading I found that I completely understood these things.

 

Your Christian friend, no doubt, is referring to the sort of things I've outlined. She probably figures that she'll take Christianity as metaphor and accept that it's largely fiction and not historical. A mythicist writer who took a similar approach is Tom Harpur who wrote "The Pagan Christ." They're using Christianity as mythology instead of hard fact. 

 

These are what are called spiritual truths. They're philosophical oriented and connotative, not denotative. They don't have to do, finally, with the metaphors that are used to get you down to the mystery of your own existence. Creation, gods, demons, heavens, hells, reincarnation and all mythological symbols can only be metaphorical of the real mystery of the unknown underlying all such terminology. 

 

That's why I say that the highest order of spiritual thinking involves spiritual atheism. A deeply spiritual person has gone far enough to understand that these symbols are not literal, not meant as a history lesson. But they essentially represent something. 

 

Does my explanation make better sense of the issue? 

 

Just curious if you're really as non spiritual as you think. 

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Apparently my mind is wired differently than yours. And my friend is Jewish not Christian. She was raised Church of Christ but couldn't relate to God in that environment. She eventually, as an adult, converted to Judaism.

 

Your explanation of mythology is pretty much the same thing she has told me & it obviously makes sense to both of you, & apparently it provides deep spiritual meaning to both of you as well. As I noted, it seems my brain is wired differently. Mythology just doesn't resonate with me like it does with you guys. 

 

I can accept #3 & #4 as having value, but I think science does a better job with  #1 & #2. Science has shown to my satisfaction how everything came to be. It seems to me life revolves around endless unrelated circumstantial events. There is no pattern or predetermined outcomes. It's all random. Our bodies begin decaying from birth. Our bodies are fragile & susceptible to injury & disease, so our life expectancy is limited. When we die life ends for us but the cycle continues. 

 

I accept that some people absolutely need some form of spirituality in their life, but it seems I am not one of them. I became a Christian because I thought the Bible was true. I was young and naive. With time I became aware that I'd been deceived. When I found evidence to confirm my deceit & gullibility I removed religion from my life without regrets. 

 

I don't see a role for spirituality in my life now. 

 

 

 

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Josh and Geezer,  you are both testimony to the fact there is more than one way to be an atheist.  You are also both members that I very much appreciate, BTW!

 

I think I fall somewhere in between the two of you.  Like Geezer, I have never been spiritually inclined.  At the same time I have seen how Josh's exploration of atheistic spiritualism has enriched his life and I want to get me a piece of that!  My life recently has been more stressful than usual, mainly because of a job that I love but which has been crazy busy lately, so I'm inclined to explore meditation and I'm intrigued by Campbell and just got the Power of Myth book from the library.

 

Josh, in a separate post I asked members if they had read Sam Harris's book 'Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion".  I'm especially interested in your take on this book, if you've ever read it.

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12 hours ago, Geezer said:

Apparently my mind is wired differently than yours. And my friend is Jewish not Christian. She was raised Church of Christ but couldn't relate to God in that environment. She eventually, as an adult, converted to Judaism.

 

Your explanation of mythology is pretty much the same thing she has told me & it obviously makes sense to both of you, & apparently it provides deep spiritual meaning to both of you as well. As I noted, it seems my brain is wired differently. Mythology just doesn't resonate with me like it does with you guys. 

 

I can accept #3 & #4 as having value, but I think science does a better job with  #1 & #2. Science has shown to my satisfaction how everything came to be. It seems to me life revolves around endless unrelated circumstantial events. There is no pattern or predetermined outcomes. It's all random. Our bodies begin decaying from birth. Our bodies are fragile & susceptible to injury & disease, so our life expectancy is limited. When we die life ends for us but the cycle continues. 

 

I accept that some people absolutely need some form of spirituality in their life, but it seems I am not one of them. I became a Christian because I thought the Bible was true. I was young and naive. With time I became aware that I'd been deceived. When I found evidence to confirm my deceit & gullibility I removed religion from my life without regrets. 

 

I don't see a role for spirituality in my life now. 

 

 

 

 

I think you're on to something in terms of many Christians not being naturally spiritual minded to begin with. When the gig is up, there's no remaining spiritual attitude because there never really was to begin with. 

 

And christianity gets away with that because it's not actually very spiritual in the first place, not compared to the more sophisticated spiritual ideas in the world. Your example speaks to my discourse against Christianity as a spiritually bankrupt form of religion. And a lot of that discourse comes from Joseph Campbells critique of Christianity. 

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, ThereAndBackAgain said:

Josh and Geezer,  you are both testimony to the fact there is more than one way to be an atheist.  You are also both members that I very much appreciate, BTW!

 

I think I fall somewhere in between the two of you.  Like Geezer, I have never been spiritually inclined.  At the same time I have seen how Josh's exploration of atheistic spiritualism has enriched his life and I want to get me a piece of that!  My life recently has been more stressful than usual, mainly because of a job that I love but which has been crazy busy lately, so I'm inclined to explore meditation and I'm intrigued by Campbell and just got the Power of Myth book from the library.

 

Josh, in a separate post I asked members if they had read Sam Harris's book 'Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion".  I'm especially interested in your take on this book, if you've ever read it.

 

No, I need to read it. 

 

On the meditation, I YouTube'd Peter Russell's approach because it makes more sense to me than traditional meditation. He's not into mantras or trying to do something. It's just relaxing your mind. Its something to look into. 

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8 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

 

I think you're on to something in terms of many Christians not being naturally spiritual minded to begin with. When the gig is up, there's no remaining spiritual attitude because there never really was to begin with. 

 

And christianity gets away with that because it's not actually very spiritual in the first place, not compared to the more sophisticated spiritual ideas in the world. Your example speaks to my discourse against Christianity as a spiritually bankrupt form of religion. And a lot of that discourse comes from Joseph Campbells critique of Christianity. 

 

 

 

 

I believe you're correct JP.  Looking back on my life as a Christian there were lots of rules & rituals but there wasn't much of anything spiritual going on in my life then.  I had not thought about that until you pointed it out. Thank you. 

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11 minutes ago, Geezer said:

 

I believe you're correct JP.  Looking back on my life as a Christian there were lots of rules & rituals but there wasn't much of anything spiritual going on in my life then.  I had not thought about that until you pointed it out. Thank you. 

 

As a fellow ex-Church-of-Christ guy, one thing that struck me about that denomination (gasp! It really is a denomination, brothers and sisters!) was the distinct lack of spirituality.  They seemed distinctly uncomfortable with the very idea of the Holy Spirit, much more so with the black-and-white world of scripture.  As Joshpantera has pointed out, Christian spirituality is rather weak sauce anyway, and the version that you and I adhered to for so many years seems especially so.  Having been raised amid the 'bells and smells' of Catholicism, I do find a certain sense of spiritual comfort (as best I can describe it) when I attend Mass with my wife in an especially beautiful church, even while rejecting the dogma.

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From the standpoint of the Brethren (absolutely anti-charismatic and pro-literal-bible-interpretation, at least in my experience, and disturbingly similar in general outlook to the Church of Christ ) spirituality is actually non-existent.  It's a system that stifles spirituality by defining it in terms of what boils down to a form of restrictive literary criticism.  Any who start out with spiritual leanings with either find them scotched or will eventually make a bid for freedom.

 

What I've seen of charismatic Christianity suggests it also suffers from a curious mixture of indiscipline (glossalalia and prophecy as spiritual gifts is just laughable) and over strict rules (if it doesn't conform to our understanding of the bible, it's not spiritual).

 

Whether there is greater spirituality in more esoteric forms of Christianity, I don't know.  Maybe in the extreme ends that, possibly, merge into hermeticism and ceremonial magic.  But I'm not convinced.

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I was raised SDA and the spiritual factor seems poor, to put it lightly. But any literalistic reading will necessarily be poor. The reason is because the literal is exoteric. The spiritual is esoteric. 

 

The only spiritual reading that I can see coming from Christianity would be to consider Jesus as an example figure about the relationship between the whole and an individual human life. And in this example the character promotes the idea that we're all sons and daughters of the god. Everyone takes the example and relates it to their own life and existence. You the person and the whole, are one. (John 10:30)

 

That would be a spiritual insight about our human lives in relation to the whole or ultimate realty. We're one and the same. That's the mystical realization. It's esoteric oriented and it curbs the power of the Christian religious institutions. There's no organization that stands between the individual and ultimate reality. The connection is a direct one.

 

These are reasons that prohibit Christianity from ever being deeply spiritual in depth and scope. This is also why Christianity can not seem to deal with the logical conclusion of having an omnipresent god concept. They make a pantheistic claim (god is everywhere present) and then shy away from the consequences of the claim - that god therefore must be everything. That's a spiritual insight, so in their denial of pantheistic conclusions they deny deep level spiritual insight in the process. 

 

With pantheism, the earth is sacred. Human lives are sacred. Space, time and existence itself is sacred. You can find the sacred even in the most profane. Because  all of existence is essentially regarded as sacred. Those are the depths that religion must go to in order to take a top dog spiritual status. If you fall short of an interconnected, interdependent all encompassing scope of thought, then you simply fall short. 

 

And christianity has fallen short. It was a poor man's mystery school. It took the esoteric symbols of the pagan mysteries and turned them inside out into an exoteric presentation that amounts to a lot of nonsense when analyzed. They took the symbols to the joe blows of the world and told them the stories, which contain symbols and archetypes of the unconscious are literally true. 

 

My suggesting Campbell is simply to suggest a body of information which can be used to put cocky Christians in their place at the bottom rung of world spiritual insight. And in the process one can cut through the bullshit and glean what insights are there for recognition. Campbell thought that mythology is a result of our biology and the internal conflicts of the body being projected out there. It's all inner world stuff, presented as outer world. 

 

This has led me to wonder if being that we're the fabric of the universe incarnate, there must something in the way of self knowledge ingrained right into us all. We are that. We are it. And this comes up in mythology. The Upanishads say quite literally, "thou art that." And the reference is to ultimate reality. It's something in the way of people recognizing how we relate to the whole and expressing that. 

 

Meanwhile a degraded version would be a mythology where we pussy foot around coming out and saying clearly that the great insight is that we're it, we're of ultimate reality. This would represent a deceptive tendency in humanity, something in the way of self deception and self denial. That's Christianity. It's the case of trying to bubble up the mystical realization but pussy footing around the edges, contradicting one self in the process, and claiming that the degraded version spirituality is superior and absolute! The orthodox version is the best candidate for its own feared anti-Christ. It's deceptive. And it's the "anti" of human self realization. It takes something that could represent self realization and then obscures it to where the realization is out of reach and is largely missed completely. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 4/2/2017 at 0:46 AM, Joshpantera said:

 

On the meditation, I YouTube'd Peter Russell's approach because it makes more sense to me than traditional meditation. He's not into mantras or trying to do something. It's just relaxing your mind. Its something to look into. 

 

 

I'll look into Peter Russell - thanks.

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On ‎4‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 0:46 AM, Joshpantera said:

On the meditation, I YouTube'd Peter Russell's approach because it makes more sense to me than traditional meditation. He's not into mantras or trying to do something. It's just relaxing your mind. Its something to look into. 

 

OK, I just realized Russell was the guy from the Consciousness videos you shared a while ago.

 

I think you'll be interested to see his reaction to Harris's book...

 

Russell on Waking Up.jpg

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13 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

This has led me to wonder if being that we're the fabric of the universe incarnate

 

This statement resonates with me greatly. ?

 

DB

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Lurking around here, I would just like to say that it is refreshing to see that one can be an ex-Christian, but still open to trying on a few lenses through which we might view the world differently.  I have always felt pulled to explore - or at least ponder -  concepts like 'consciousness,' but have found very few people with similar interests (particularly since I am inescapably surrounded by Christians). I enjoy following these threads - when not bogged down with other things. 

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4 hours ago, Faithfulless said:

Lurking around here, I would just like to say that it is refreshing to see that one can be an ex-Christian, but still open to trying on a few lenses through which we might view the world differently.  I have always felt pulled to explore - or at least ponder -  concepts like 'consciousness,' but have found very few people with similar interests (particularly since I am inescapably surrounded by Christians). I enjoy following these threads - when not bogged down with other things. 

 

Welcome to the party Faithfulless! 

 

This sub forum was a good idea. Those of us who are interested in this sort of thing can go to town. Thanks for posting and letting us know you're thoughts on the matter. I suspect that many people have been reading silently. No pressure, but I'm sure we'd all like for those folks silently reading along to go ahead and join in, share their own thoughts, ask questions, and participate with us in these discussions. 

 

Thanks again. 

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I can't get enough of this guy.  Too bad he died in '73.  I find his lectures still relevant today (and this one is about 50 years old).  It is long, but I found it very interesting. 

 

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Interesting forum this.

 

I went off Xianity in the seventies when my dad died. I needed to make sense of why he died other than ' gods will ' !

 

I think religion emerged when humans wanted to make sense of dying. What happens, are we dead or do we continue in another dimension in another form somehow. So it follows that when Xianity is rejected what does the person replace the Life After Death conundrum with. Obviously due to indoctrination many reject god in all its forms and become atheist but the LAD debate lingers.

For me it was a personal experience. I have lucid dreamed since childhood and when I started reading eastern philosophy I realised this was a version of an astral projection or out of body experience. Realising I was aware of an alternative dimension and interacting independent of my physical body I experienced a profound shift. I also found beings there that have independent thought and can communicate with me including giving advice on my life, showing me past events and predictions of future events that have come true.

 

I hope all those seeking to make meaning of their lives find something that resonates with them.

 

 

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@Ablemate

 

Would you like to start a thread on Lucid Dreaming? That's something we haven't discussed much at all around here. And I'm not experienced with it myself. I'd like to learn more about it. 

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