Does This Make You Feel Spiritual?

[Legion]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TWkYYkmp9c

[Midnight-mindwanderings]

Yes but not as much as this

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOZuQ_r3ROY&feature=player_embedded

[Legion]

Oh Midnight! The link didn't work for me. And I want to feel spiritual!

[Guest end3]

Oh Midnight! The link didn't work for me. And I want to feel spiritual!

This will help.....it's the nothingness, oh, sorry, Nothingness that Rod and AM access. (Two things will might happen...if it looks like a blank screen, then you are not accessing.....but if it looks like a blank screen and you feel spiritual...you are deepish. Enjoy:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Xerces]

Art and music makes me feel good not spiritual, to me if life was spiritual it wouldn't seem so naturalistic and brutal. Here you have a planet that has 1001(example) things you can die from and creatures that would kill you without hesitation, outside the planet is inhabitable unless we use science to overcome it, and even other planets we try to inhabit may not be compatible with our evolution if we try to inhabit them. I will say that there is more to reality than we know, but in that I mean things we have yet to understand by using science. So, its really difficult for me to accept a warm fuzzy feeling of fantasy, because that is just what it is, feel good fantasy make believe, akin to playing video games or watching sports or any other thing humans do that feels good but doesn't really have any sway on how reality works.

[Deva]

No. But I can see where it might make some people feel spiritual. Its pretty, though.

 

I like this one better:

 

[Antlerman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TWkYYkmp9c

If you equate warm fuzzy feelings with spirituality.... but no actually, not even emotional fuzzy feelings for me with this trite Hallmark moment. I can see where some might get fuzzy feelings, like a cute bunny in a clover patch smiling happily at you, like grandma giving you a big warm hug on your birthday.

 

How about you though? It must have done something for you on that childlike emotional level, and it must have also made you a tad uncomfortable about feeling a certain loss of dignity as a mature adult, feeling all gushy over the little unicorn and all, in order to post it here to laugh at it, sort of like the gay man laughing at other gay men for being gay. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much".

 

 

[Legion]

How about you though? It must have done something for you on that childlike emotional level, and it must have also made you a tad uncomfortable about feeling a certain loss of dignity as a mature adult, feeling all gushy over the little unicorn and all, in order to post it here to laugh at it, sort of like the gay man laughing at other gay men for being gay. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much".

 

Yeah man, it touches me. I can't help but weep for the last unicorn, the last presence of innocent magic on Earth.

[Legion]

I like this one better:

Haunting and beautiful. Thank you Deva.

[Antlerman]

Yeah man, it touches me. I can't help but weep for the last unicorn, the last presence of innocent magic on Earth.

Now, now, there, there, grandma will make it all OK. {{{{BIG HUG}}}}

 

 

BTW, talk about myths. The only innocence there was was a dreamlike state of subconscious ignorance. Hardly what one could call, "living in innocence". We were not really "alive" in that sense where any sense of innocence would even register in our minds. It would be like calling a coma victim living in innocence.

 

We create these sorts of nostalgic ideals as an expression of our Romanticism in our thoroughly Western culture. That is purely romanticism, and nothing I would consider spiritual. It's one of those terms someone will equate with those sorts of idealist feel good moments, but it's purely emotional. It isn't based on any actual depth.

[Legion]

Art and music makes me feel good not spiritual, to me if life was spiritual it wouldn't seem so naturalistic and brutal.

I find it ironic that your words here Xerces are directly above Deva's wherein she has the following in her signature...

 

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake

[Legion]

BTW, talk about myths. The only innocence there was was a dreamlike state of subconscious ignorance. Hardly what one could call, "living in innocence". We were not really "alive" in that sense where any sense of innocence would even register in our minds. It would be like calling a coma victim living in innocence.

 

We create these sorts of nostalgic ideals as an expression of our Romanticism in our thoroughly Western culture. That is purely romanticism, and nothing I would consider spiritual. It's one of those terms someone will equate with those sorts of idealist feel good moments, but it's purely emotional. It isn't based on any actual depth.

I think most of the human mind is submerged in the subconscious and I'm not convinced it is ignorant. I also think emotion is as important to us as reason. For instance, I desire understanding. But how does this manifest itself emotionally? It does so through an unquenchable curiousity.

[Deva]

I like this one better:

Haunting and beautiful. Thank you Deva.

 

Glad you liked it

[Antlerman]

Art and music makes me feel good not spiritual, to me if life was spiritual it wouldn't seem so naturalistic and brutal.

Well, I'm going to respond to this because I'm just such a serious kind of guy and this sort of discussion is my candy stick these days, even though I know LR was being funny in this.

 

It's interesting you talk about art and music (neither of which I really saw in that video BTW). Outside the general use of the word art to describe anything like drawings and whatnot, or music to mean any collection of notes in a rhythmic pattern, I would say when speaking of "art for arts sake", that it can be a vehicle of express that can in fact transport the mind out of its environment into a place for inner reflection.

 

Someone can feel 'nice' at looking at a painting of a sunset, or hearing a well composed symphony, and all those things can be valid, but when art becomes an expression of some existential state beyond a reflection of the ordinary and becomes a creator of reality, it can transport someone. This is different than just responding pleasantly to something "pretty".

 

Then, in that place of 'transportation' to use that word, we may access places of mind and awareness and being that create a different place of being for us. That, is the place of what one can call the spiritual - a place that transcends the mind and thought and includes perspectives. Hardly the same thing as feeling good and warm and fuzzy over cute displays of easily accessible popular, cultural art forms.

 

Can there be emotional responses to being in that 'transported' place? Surely, but it's not from the warm fuzzies of a cute story manipulating emotions. It comes from mind in its own place and a new, expanded state of awareness and presence of being. It is from that, that the emotions come. And why I state strongly that the emotions do not define that state, but are a byproduct of it. Emotions are not its essence, and therefore, a Hallmark moment is not "spiritual", IMHO.

 

Here you have a planet that has 1001(example) things you can die from and creatures that would kill you without hesitation, outside the planet is inhabitable unless we use science to overcome it, and even other planets we try to inhabit may not be compatible with our evolution if we try to inhabit them. I will say that there is more to reality than we know, but in that I mean things we have yet to understand by using science.

Except of course that entire inner reality of mind; the world of self awareness and reality we fashion and live in everyday that is created through our languages, societies, cultures, dreams, aspirations, response to beauty, heart, love, life, and spirit.

 

If the world were solely physical, than all you say would be true. But you take a look through your eyes and see that world, call that reality, and deny the entire world you live in within your conscious thoughts, that created reality! Everything in being human includes that, and is not defined by the machine, the mechanics of nature, anymore that the function and reality of biological life is defined by the atom.

 

We, "Mankind" are truly, as Plotinus stated it, "poised midway between the gods and the beasts".

 

So, its really difficult for me to accept a warm fuzzy feeling of fantasy, because that is just what it is, feel good fantasy make believe, akin to playing video games or watching sports or any other thing humans do that feels good but doesn't really have any sway on how reality works.

Clearly I don't equate warm fuzzy feelings with the spiritual, as I've explained. And to me, "how reality works", that doesn't include that inner realms "between the gods and the beasts", is in fact not recognizing nor embracing "how reality works"

[Guest Valk0010]

Found Midnight's vid.

[Xerces]

@antler

I'm trying to understand what you posted, yes maybe the world is an entire different reality based on what the persons' mind believes. However, if someone believes they are invincible and stands in front of a train, they're still gonna have their guts thrown all over the ground, that is reality.

 

Its cold, harsh, unforgiving and extremely complex, but humans have found a way to manipulate it with science, find beauty and humor and a humbling sense of awe as they contemplate it. Spirituality and religion are both over exaggerating extensions of those facets, to focus more on the pleasant and to forget of the chaos & destruction that accompany is a delusion.

[Midnight-mindwanderings]

I am trying again. I am frequently using a vpn to be on American websites and sometimes that messes up things like this sorry

 

 

Let me just say that I am fantasy obsessed and I have always gotten more of "that" feeling from things like Lord of the Rings and the Last Unicorn than I ever did from the bible or church. I try to keep it in the context of childhood though, because adults who truly believe in fairies are a bit creepy and weird.

 

ETA: doh valk already posted it. The Fountain is my way of looking at death in a spiritual way that still acknowledges the death of the self to make way for new life. Also the music is simply amazing

[OpheliaGinger]

I prefer this one for mediation:

 

[Antlerman]

@antler

I'm trying to understand what you posted, yes maybe the world is an entire different reality based on what the persons' mind believes.

Everything in the world is an interpretation. In another word, what a person believes. What we interpret is not just the physical world, though that is certainly part of what constitutes our reality.

 

However, if someone believes they are invincible and stands in front of a train, they're still gonna have their guts thrown all over the ground, that is reality.

So... we are just solely responders to the physical world, nothing more? I addressed this in my previous post.

 

Its cold, harsh, unforgiving and extremely complex, but humans have found a way to manipulate it with science, find beauty and humor and a humbling sense of awe as they contemplate it.

But isn't what we consider with our minds, simply a delusion, like "stands in front of a train getting their guts thrown on the ground"? Is that non-physical world, that world of 'beauty' reality or illusion? And if illusion, is the fact that we create entire realities surrounding it in which we interact, "live, move, and have our being", to use that language, in reality a non-reality?

 

Spirituality and religion are both over exaggerating extensions of those facets, to focus more on the pleasant and to forget of the chaos & destruction that accompany is a delusion.

Spirituality and religion are two separate things. However, neither of these I would consider strictly denials. They in fact are considerably more complex facets of human evolution. Certainly death-denials are once facet of religion, just as that is also of all human endeavors that have nothing whatsoever to do the supernatural symbolism, in a sense. All our endeavors to create culture, a sense of our self extended into the sphere of immortal continuance through participation in a shared worldspace, is itself a denial. I would extend the use of the word religion to all enterprises of human creativity which seeks to extend itself beyond death. All human culture.

 

Exaggerations? Or is all of this indicative of some greater or root reality we haven't quite wrapped our minds around yet?

[Xerces]

The physical is what we currently define as reality, as we progress to understand more we incorporate more into our reality. Illusions and "non reality" are exactly that, going back to the definition of what we define as reality, these things would be a distortion of the "truth". Thus far truth isn't contained in hokus pokus its contained in rational inquiry which does not include spirituality. If there is something in another dimension, IT is apart of reality, spirituality claims to be separate from any of that, so it is false. Its like asking theists what was before god, until we discover what we don't know yet, the real distortion, illusion, non reality are the generic explanations, fairy tales, and superstitions we come up with.

[Antlerman]

The physical is what we currently define as reality,

Who is this nebulous "we"? Is it like the "they say..." mental placeholder of unseen influential entities? Seriously who constituents this "we"?

 

as we progress to understand more we incorporate more into our reality.

I would agree with this statement, provided it extends beyond the strictly materialist philosophies.

 

Illusions and "non reality" are exactly that, going back to the definition of what we define as reality, these things would be a distortion of the "truth".

What about culture? What about beauty? Are those reality? In fact, what about truth itself? Have you seen, touched, tasted, or measured truth in a physical piece of reality, as a chunk of matter of some sort? In fact, have you ever actually even seen "matter" for that matter? Those are puzzles to unwrap actually where you end up with reality which doesn't exist in how this "we" defines reality.

 

Thus far truth isn't contained in hokus pokus

Ummm... actually yes it is. It was a created framework of reality with which people, tribes, cultures, etc interacted with their mental and physical worlds which constituted reality for them (I'm speaking anthropologically); which also was directly responsible for their mental development and consciously "self aware" beings. Frameworks of understanding provide objective realities with we interface with the physical and mental worlds - those combined create "reality" - for that time and place in our evolution (not for all time). Art and poetry, myths and sciences, are all parts of that sense or definition of reality for humans at that point and time.

 

its contained in rational inquiry which does not include spirituality.

Rational inquiry itself is a means to create that sense of "what is" in order for us to function in the world. But it is functionally the same as the 'hokus pokus' of the dawn of man, dreamlike reality as the cave-dwellers. It is a much more highly developed set of tools to create much more sophisticated languages which we then interact with in our new, more developed sense of "what is". It still creates what constitutes "reality" for us, exactly as the magic symbols of our deep past, or the mythic symbols of the last 10,000 years.

 

Please bear this well in mind that each and every stage of our understanding of reality defined reality for us, it was reality for us, and anything before that current stage (or above it), would be viewed as "out of touch with reality". Exactly as we who are now functioning in a rational view sees every other way as 'delusional'. That was hardly true at all. If it was, we as a species would have utterly ceased to function and not survived.

 

Now as for "spirituality" not being part of rational inquiry I very much disagree. If you mean investigated by the empirical sciences (which is a tool of rational inquiry, not the definition of it), then I would agree it doesn't, neither more nor less than it can things like the study of the humanities. If you define spirituality couched in the language of mythology, or in the language of magic, then those languages have great difficulty in translating that experience into a language of rational inquiry.

 

But the symbols of what has been used as expressions or ways to interpret and translate the spiritual into the experience of the inner person, are themselves just as much in need of upgrade as our languages about our experience of the physical world was. The physical world is no more defined by the ghosts and goblins any more than the inner, "spiritual" ground of reality is for humans. That many people still talk about it in mythic languages because they have not yet understood how to translate that reality into a higher understanding, no more negates its validity than their inability to use the languages of the empirical sciences to describe and relate to the material world negates the existence of the physical.

 

In short, if someone speaks about the natural world in mythic terms it doesn't negate the physical worlds reality, it simply means they are speaking about, understanding, and relating to it in less developed terms. If someone speaks about the inner reality, the self sense and it nature as being in mythic terms, it likewise simply means they are speaking about, understanding, and relating to it in less developed terms. Its about modes of consciousness and languages, not about the existence or non-existence.

 

The problem is that this "we" you mentioned, would be those of a particular slice of this rational worldspace called philosophical materialists, who take what they see and extend that to all of reality as 'the way it is'. That is a belief, not a conclusion of inquiry. And in that sense, no different whatsoever than those who belief the world is controlled by a deity defines reality. It's operating in exactly the same vein running up from the earliest way man looked at reality, up to today with the Rationalists who now claim that position of dominant view - the new priests if you will. Rational inquiry is valid, religious conclusions about what qualifies and constitutes reality is not a valid conclusion of rationality. I would argue it violates it on many levels, actually.

 

If there is something in another dimension, IT is apart of reality, spirituality claims to be separate from any of that, so it is false.

Only in the mythic space that externalizes things, like gods and whatnot. I would argue it is very much part of reality to the same degree the physical world is and qualifies as much as a part of what constitutes the nature of reality, as best we can interpret that with our current given language structures. We live in it every day. "It" is not anything "out there", any more or less than the physical world is 'out there' and not part of our experience of "reality".

 

Its like asking theists what was before god, until we discover what we don't know yet, the real distortion, illusion, non reality are the generic explanations, fairy tales, and superstitions we come up with.

It's like asking a child where a mountain came from. They'll come up with fanciful explanations as well. But the mountain is there.

[Legion]

Let me just say that I am fantasy obsessed and I have always gotten more of "that" feeling from things like Lord of the Rings and the Last Unicorn than I ever did from the bible or church. I try to keep it in the context of childhood though, because adults who truly believe in fairies are a bit creepy and weird.

Ah, so you have seen the movie "The Last Unicorn". I saw it as a kid and thought it was pretty decent. I don't know how I would see it now that I am an adult. I remembered the song though and thought I would post it here for giggles.

[Legion]

Antlerman, I know this is a long song, but could you please listen to it and share your thoughts on it with me?

 

 

I think objective reality is what it is. And we have internal maps of it, which we often confuse with the actual terrain. Now perhaps we also have internal maps of our very selves. If so then perhaps we stand in danger of confusing our ideas about ourselves with the actual nature of our selves.

[Antlerman]

Now perhaps we also have internal maps of our very selves. If so then perhaps we stand in danger of confusing our ideas about ourselves with the actual nature of our selves.

Bingo. I chuckle when people throw the term "delusional" about. Next question, how do we know that nature of ourselves, and especially so when we deny it exists?

 

 

I'll try to listen to the song later as I'm heading out of town.

[Xerces]

I give up aman lol, the stuff you say to me sounds like that one question, if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? Of course it does, animals hear it, it makes the vibrations. But its that kind of philosophical word play that does not resonate with me at all, for me it either has to make sense rationally or I won't bother with it. A lot of things make me feel humble and feel that awe feeling but that pertains only to things we can see and experiment with through the use of technology or our own senses, and I do enjoy a good science fiction or some good fantasy but I limit those things to being mental constructs, just like dreams. I mean, I do think if we could manipulate light to our own desires there might be a tiny chance of time travel, its those kinds of things I am really entertained by, but the whole spiritual mumbo jumbo bullshit? no.