I'm Currently Working On My Positive Faith

[Antlerman]

 

Everything has to be very politically correct in this section, so I dunnno.

Politically correct? That's a rhetorical disdain-word people always resort to saying something is when they wish to deflect from themselves for them not exercising a modicum of self-control and showing just basic respect and manners towards others in discussions where they have differing opinions. I reject that word in this context.

 

I agree with Phanata. As much as I do like you, it seems to be issues from within yourself about yourself. ("Methinks the lady doth protest too much!). I'd like to hear your thoughts to my points I raised. You're more than welcome in this discussion, and I promise I won't call your thoughts warm poo, without considering that me being "politically correct".

[Galien]

[Happy is a lesser word. Fulfilled. If you are filled spiritually, then, you cannot help but give love. But it is not about you. It is not about your happiness. It is about being others. In this you are fulfilled, and concerns about your happiness are replaced with being Love itself. Your identity shifts away from "you". That is the heart of the spiritual Self.

 

 

Don't look to others for answers. It comes from inside you. Look for guidance, trust no one as the answer. You are the answer.

 

 

This.

 

Plus, regarding the distrust your emotions thing, it seems to be part of the "I don't believe in god anymore" package. I think one needs to have a good handle on all sections of one's life. Valk in particular seems to want to take on the whole I'm so rational thing. It still isn't balanced.

 

I really believe that people need to be left alone to believe whatever they choose. It isn't my job to tell the rest of the world how or what to believe. It makes me a smaller person to mock what is precious to someone else's heart.

[Guest Valk0010]

Politically correct, as in polite, I violated that, political correct as in not downright insulting and inflammatory, I think I upheld that. One could also have put, polishing a turd in a less crass way as to say maybe, trying to save what can't be saved. Means the same except one is more informal. But sorry if I offended anyone.

 

Now as to personal issue, I offered my own personal examples, as suggestions of how to go about his situation, because I see it as somewhat similar, Phanta.

 

As to self control, my crime is faulty word choice not self control, antlerman.

[Guest Valk0010]

Isn't this a bit like polishing a turd.

 

No, because it's not based on the Bible or any other ancient book.

 

It's based on emotions, feelings and rationale

How can I say this without stepping on toes......

 

I would question why your developing your own "personal religion."

 

I consider spirituality at times and then I realize, that whatever is truth has to be beyond what makes someone feel good, it has to have some rational reasoning behind it, even if it can't be argued or defended, it will be foolish and doing myself a injustice, to say, ohh I am just going to believe something or make something up just because I feel empty or don't like something.

 

In short don't do something just for feelings, and check your feelings at the door when you can.

 

Some thoughts, however unrefined.

 

Valk

Btw, I am pretty well set about dealing with my problems, I was just offering some of my insights because I think the issues were related, so I don't mean to derail or anything.

[Guest Valk0010]

 

I would agree with this. I think to just go run amok off seeking a new haven for our souls without taking into account the whole person, the whole of who we are, is a misguided act.

No disagreement here.

 

And then when you've set aside your emotions for a time, you should take them up again and give them a voice as well, considering they are part of who you are. You shouldn't let you emotions rule you, nor should you deny them either.

Call me emotionally paranoid, or maybe this comes correct with age or something,but I would say my emotions fooled me enough dealing with christianity that there is proof there for me, that feelings shouldn't be trusted. I am reminded about the Bertrand Russell line from the beginning of this

 

However that said, I think what NS is saying goes beyond just emotions. When I hear someone speak about their heart in this way, it goes much deeper than feelings. And that voice which goes much deeper than emotions should never be ignored! And that voice may not always have your logical mind up to speed yet with it. So when I hear someone suggest to "check it at the door", I hear something which is as irrational as checking your reason at the door in order to hold to a religious belief.

I think personally, the empty thing, its more perception based then, actual emotion, its more like clouded thinking, only within the emotional context.

 

The problem is that people confuse that "heart" with emotions. Emotions respond to it, but it itself is not sourced from emotions, nor emotions themselves. This is where I would make a distinction between faith and belief. Beliefs are what we tell ourselves are true and cognitively defend to ourselves. They are a set of views we adopt and identify ourselves with. Faith is more an intuition of some truth that is not dependent on a set of beliefs. It is more about that "heart" again, which intuits some higher reality, and through that it guides our actions. That faith is not always readily understandable rationally, nor can be accessed through reason, nor beliefs. Simply following a set of religious - or non-religious - beliefs does not grant you access to that 'intuition' or 'faith'. I personally find both religious beliefs and rationalism to be of like kind in this regard. Both become substitutes for that inner sense, or self-imposed distractions, if you will.

I would debate the existence of something higher then reason or emotion, so I would have to tie heart to emotion. So are your saying faith is the same like instinct. If that is the case then I agree. But like emotion I think instinct/fail fails, because of how it can be preconditioned by outside forces and be twisted and turned. I am looking for consistency, not randomness if that makes sense.

 

But faith is not the end. Faith becomes supplanted by experience which grants a literal cognition, however brief into that higher state.

Its there actually some higher state, or is it just glorification of mind. I am skeptical of the higher conciousness idea of the human mind, to me, its making a mountain out of a molehill.

 

It is the understanding of that then that cannot violate reason, even if that reason yet has the ability to process and fully understand it, nor deny its value or meaning or 'spiritual' insight into a greater sense of reality to the individual, and the world itself because reason does not yet comprehend it. Adherence to a religious set of doctrines or beliefs will seek to deny or explain it within its framework of language, and rationalism or scienticism will do likewise, as is abundantly evident, in philosophic reductionist or materialist beliefs - same animal, different coat.

This answer will sound bad, but I don't think your basis for this conclusion is correct, so I can't agree with you here. But I will say this thought, religion or even scienticism to use your words, is trying for the same purpose, to find order in the universe.

 

But experience is not the end. Adaptation is. What that means is that what we first intuit, we at some points experience, and later integrate into our whole selves, rationally, emotionally, socially, culturally. The whole person is fulfilled spirituality. The ground of our being itself and the goal of its evolution is both before and beyond the physical, the mental, the cognitive. It is that Nature that is the essence of the spiritual, and that people or religions bat about that term in their present contexts of beliefs - or present level of adaptation, does not negate nor invalidate it because their understanding is limited, if any experience is even present at all.

So your talking about personal understanding. Isn't that glorifying it a bit. Your in many ways it seems committing the same sin you accuse materialists off, at least based of that statement you made.

 

So when I hear someone's emotions failing, feelings of emptiness, or dysfunction, then that integral balance is off. I for one find reason and rationality exhilarating, plus absolutely necessary to my own personal growth spiritually. But if I were to check part of me "at the door", then I am simply finding another belief, a new religion as it were, to replace or substitute that actual space of opening up that entire person into the world and beyond. If our emotions are 'unhappy' then that should be an indication to look at why that might be. Emotions are responses to the mind and the heart.

All things equal, what are we left but rationality and reason.

[Deva]

You are the only one that sees through your eyes. Keep working on that positive faith!

[lunaticheathen]

I think all healthy spirituality starts with Love. You don't need a god, per say, to pursue Love. Go with it, NS.

[Antlerman]

Call me emotionally paranoid, or maybe this comes correct with age or something,but I would say my emotions fooled me enough dealing with christianity that there is proof there for me, that feelings shouldn't be trusted. I am reminded about the Bertrand Russell line from the beginning of this

A couple things here, first that you let your emotions rule your mind is not good. But the response shouldn't be to distrust your emotions. In reality what you did was not listen to reason. So now, you do the opposite error. You listen to reason and say no to that other part of you. It's the same error in reverse. It's a pendulum swing that corrects nothing. The middle is listening to both and letting both inform choice.

 

What I see as the downside of being some sort of 'ultra-empiricist" is that that whole non-rational half of our being becomes repressed, and that becomes a distortion in our nature, which will manifest itself inevitably in various neurosis and pathologies of some kind. Being afraid of emotions is unhealthy. Letting emotions overrun reason is also unhealthy.

 

Now to Bertrand Russell. What you fail to understand is that time in which he said these things, and furthermore the fact that this is an approach to empirical sciences. It cannot be applied to the humanities, which are far messier! The whole rise of existentialist philosophies, which I agree in good part with, is to rebuff these notions of Positivism that reason alone guides humanity and is to be its salvation. No human lives true to this, not even you. We are non-rational, and often times make choices that defy reason - choices which are positive. If we were to not act until we had all the evidence, we wouldn't live. Those that claim reason alone, live inconsistently to that.

 

What Russell was saying at that time was a response to the rise of new discoveries in science to the dogma of religious institutions. It has no bearing on the greater sciences of the humanities, which included in that I will add spirituality. Anti-reason of dogma is bad. You and I have no disagreement there. But to deny an equal chair at the table for the non-rational, is bad as well. What your issue boils down to, IMHO, is you don't know how yet to address that side of you, that frankly I doubt will ever ultimately allow to ignore it, as a partner in your whole approach to life and living. You should never trust every part of yourself without checks and balances, which is what you did in the past. But I see it an error to now place it under lock and key. And if I may be so bold, with those who do that, and lash out at anyone they see playing with that dangerous animal of their own, I see a great deal of existential fear that terrifies them to see others going there. If so, then I'd say that the power of that animal to cause that, if managed, would be quite powerful indeed. That defines the power of Wisdom.

 

 

I think personally, the empty thing, its more perception based then, actual emotion, its more like clouded thinking, only within the emotional context.

I'm not sure where I was speaking of Emptiness in here, but nonetheless... I would hardly call that clouded thinking. Have you ever experienced that? Nor is it in any emotional context. You don't sound as if you understand it.

 

I would debate the existence of something higher then reason or emotion, so I would have to tie heart to emotion. So are your saying faith is the same like instinct. If that is the case then I agree. But like emotion I think instinct/fail fails, because of how it can be preconditioned by outside forces and be twisted and turned. I am looking for consistency, not randomness if that makes sense.

I wouldn't say faith is like instinct. That would be your lizard brain - impulse/response. I'm not talking about that. That is pre-rational, primitive, animal. I'm talking about a sense of something higher and greater, a pull, a draw, towards something higher within ourselves through the world. It pulls thought upward, hope, aspiration towards an unseen unknown, like a plant reaching towards light. Faith in that context a non-rational mental response to a higher 'something'.

 

If you don't believe there is anything higher in store for us, just look back over our own evolution as a species. Do you think one day we awoke in the forest with rationality and reason at our full disposal, or do you think we moved there in stages? And considering that, don't you think each stage prior to yours now likewise thought that were at the top? That as the mythic system arouse with it's new, better understanding that they were now fully enlightened, compared to those primitives before them, much as you are saying now. I can tell you were are not at the top. Hardly. We're barely half ways there.

 

Again if you are looking for consistency, rather as I hear you expressing it, Answers with a captial A, you will not find it. That is an illusion. You at best will find temporary workable solutions, but they are temporary. I consider that desire for Answers with a capital A to be carryover of prior religious error. And frankly, the pursuit of religion in that same manner is a symptom, not the cause. It's all a balancing act. You do learn to trust it as you come to know it and understand it. I experience it like a dance with a partner which is the World. It engages both my rational mind, my existential heart, in a transrational movement, fluid, yet in control. That is just the very beginning of what is more than just reason, that you consider to be the top of the game. In no way is reason forfeiting or denied. It is simply not the end. You cannot dance if you are an idiot. Reason must be present, but not the source of movement.

 

Its there actually some higher state, or is it just glorification of mind. I am skeptical of the higher conciousness idea of the human mind, to me, its making a mountain out of a molehill.

I wouldn't consider it a molehill. I consider it the Universe Itself. I've been there. And it's not a glorification of mind, but its utter Awakening. An awakening that includes the entire Self. It is life transforming. Hardy a molehill. It where words like "God" make sense and have meaning (until you open the Bible at your local church that is, where it all get distorted into some odd creature of half-resemblance at best!).

 

It is the understanding of that then that cannot violate reason, even if that reason yet has the ability to process and fully understand it, nor deny its value or meaning or 'spiritual' insight into a greater sense of reality to the individual, and the world itself because reason does not yet comprehend it. Adherence to a religious set of doctrines or beliefs will seek to deny or explain it within its framework of language, and rationalism or scienticism will do likewise, as is abundantly evident, in philosophic reductionist or materialist beliefs - same animal, different coat.

 

This answer will sound bad, but I don't think your basis for this conclusion is correct, so I can't agree with you here. But I will say this thought, religion or even scienticism to use your words, is trying for the same purpose, to find order in the universe.

I don't think you really understand my basis for this conclusion. But to your other point, I would argue it from a more existential perspective. "Finding order in the universe" as you put it is driven by a greater need. I do not agree it is strictly utilitarian. Not at all. That its used as philosophy moves it squarely outside of just a tool of reason. That "order" is about trying to find their own place in the world, "Who are we? Why are we here? What is my purpose? What does this mean? What is my value?" and so on.

 

Now where I say this becomes a 'substitute', is because it is a created framework, a constructed worldview that is driven by both individual existential angst - the terror of self-aware existence in the face of non-being; social needs; self identity, group identity, all in a need little swirling mass of death-denial. All of it is edifices against non-being, a propping up of created self-images. Now I could go on at some length explaining and justifying all this, but suffice to say, we are not monological creatures! We create illusions of reality. Religions and Science as the Answer™ (as opposed to a tool) are the same in this. Humans created both. Have we somehow evolved beyond this??

 

But experience is not the end. Adaptation is. What that means is that what we first intuit, we at some points experience, and later integrate into our whole selves, rationally, emotionally, socially, culturally. The whole person is fulfilled spirituality. The ground of our being itself and the goal of its evolution is both before and beyond the physical, the mental, the cognitive. It is that Nature that is the essence of the spiritual, and that people or religions bat about that term in their present contexts of beliefs - or present level of adaptation, does not negate nor invalidate it because their understanding is limited, if any experience is even present at all.

 

So your talking about personal understanding. Isn't that glorifying it a bit. Your in many ways it seems committing the same sin you accuse materialists off, at least based of that statement you made.

The sin, if you want to call it that, of materialism is that it claims science as it's Gospel, it hides behind it as "science" when it is not. It fails to acknowledge itself as a philosophy or a belief. I have a point of view based on what I consider reason, evidence and experience. Is this "glorify" my personal understanding? I'm not sure how you get that. I have strong, reasoned points of view and I'm sharing them and trying my best to explain them.

 

So when I hear someone's emotions failing, feelings of emptiness, or dysfunction, then that integral balance is off. I for one find reason and rationality exhilarating, plus absolutely necessary to my own personal growth spiritually. But if I were to check part of me "at the door", then I am simply finding another belief, a new religion as it were, to replace or substitute that actual space of opening up that entire person into the world and beyond. If our emotions are 'unhappy' then that should be an indication to look at why that might be. Emotions are responses to the mind and the heart.

All things equal, what are we left but rationality and reason.

Our Nature, before and beyond all present grasp. How to access that, is the question.

[lunaticheathen]

A couple things here, first that you let your emotions rule your mind is not good. But the response shouldn't be to distrust your emotions. In reality what you did was not listen to reason. So now, you do the opposite error. You listen to reason and say no to that other part of you. It's the same error in reverse. It's a pendulum swing that corrects nothing. The middle is listening to both and letting both inform choice.

 

What I see as the downside of being some sort of 'ultra-empiricist" is that that whole non-rational half of our being becomes repressed, and that becomes a distortion in our nature, which will manifest itself inevitably in various neurosis and pathologies of some kind. Being afraid of emotions is unhealthy. Letting emotions overrun reason is also unhealthy.

 

... We are non-rational, and often times make choices that defy reason - choices which are positive. If we were to not act until we had all the evidence, we wouldn't live. Those that claim reason alone, live inconsistently to that.

 

... You should never trust every part of yourself without checks and balances, which is what you did in the past. But I see it an error to now place it under lock and key. And if I may be so bold, with those who do that, and lash out at anyone they see playing with that dangerous animal of their own, I see a great deal of existential fear that terrifies them to see others going there. If so, then I'd say that the power of that animal to cause that, if managed, would be quite powerful indeed. That defines the power of Wisdom.

 

...

If you don't believe there is anything higher in store for us, just look back over our own evolution as a species. Do you think one day we awoke in the forest with rationality and reason at our full disposal, or do you think we moved there in stages? And considering that, don't you think each stage prior to yours now likewise thought that were at the top? That as the mythic system arouse with it's new, better understanding that they were now fully enlightened, compared to those primitives before them, much as you are saying now. I can tell you were are not at the top. Hardly. We're barely half ways there.

 

Again if you are looking for consistency, rather as I hear you expressing it, Answers with a captial A, you will not find it. That is an illusion. You at best will find temporary workable solutions, but they are temporary. I consider that desire for Answers with a capital A to be carryover of prior religious error. And frankly, the pursuit of religion in that same manner is a symptom, not the cause. It's all a balancing act. You do learn to trust it as you come to know it and understand it. I experience it like a dance with a partner which is the World. It engages both my rational mind, my existential heart, in a transrational movement, fluid, yet in control. That is just the very beginning of what is more than just reason, that you consider to be the top of the game. In no way is reason forfeiting or denied. It is simply not the end. You cannot dance if you are an idiot. Reason must be present, but not the source of movement.

 

 

I find much wisdom in what I've quoted here. Of course, it's not all of the wisdom, but these are the parts that touched me, personally.

Especially the part about the non-rational mind being like an animal others are screaming at me to not pet. Made an image of the Lust card in the Crowley tarot come to mind.

[Legion]

NSE, I don't want you to tell me where to place my faith, therefore I will refrain from telling you where you should place yours.

 

Here's some Bjork...

 

[newjlo]

Sounds like Unitarian Universalism.

 

That was my first thought.

 

Another possibility may be the Baha'i Faith, but that's another organized religion and another fraud ... it's kind of interesting for the most part, but then they're homophobic.

 

I may have reached the Unitarian Unviersalism, but I'm not sure - I don't know what these people believe in. I've only heard that there are many Christian Universalists who become unitarians

 

Unitarians don't require belief in anything. They're instead about community. This includes atheists, agnostics, and much of their service is actually secular, they incorporate comedy, etc.

 

If you definitely must believe in a supernatural being, why not try

? or whatever the local version of it wherever you live ... Here in Chicago, it's the 'Center for Spiritual Living' and their service is very moving, dynamic and uplifting. They call themselves 'ecumenic' and it feels like a Christian church but they recite from Buddhist, Hindu and other scriptures as well as from the New Thought movement. They are VERY progressive.

 

Or maybe you can just be a secular humanist. Many large cities have humanist community centers (like churches but without the belief systems). The prominence of the new atheism in our day has generated a need for these community centers: they have their chaplains that they send to universities and jails if needed, they perform secular marriage ceremonies and funerals, etc. Humanists are sometimes religious, usually non-religious.

 

Atheists don't have religion, they have philosophy. In fact, I find that the non-theistic philosophy of Epicureanism makes a lot of sense. If you are trying to develop a POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY instead of a positive faith, you may want to read Epicurean works and his philosophy, his

and other works. This philosophy sustained ancient Greeks for about 7 centuries and was very egalitarian: women and slaves were always treated as equals, which was VERY progressive for its day.

is the Western world's hidden gem in terms of the evolution of our thought, it's the classical version of Buddhism.

 

If I were you, I would have fun experiments with various traditions for some time, I would visit Buddhist temples and various churches and places where people of like mind gather just to get a feel for what they're into, how they think and whether the people seem HAPPY and FREE there ...

[lunaticheathen]

NSE, I don't want you to tell me where to place my faith, therefore I will refrain from telling you where you should place yours.

 

Here's some Bjork...

 

SQUEEEEE!

I used "Joga" in ritual.

Back to topic.