Feeling Called Back To The Church

[Noggy]

RItuals, symbols, outmoded outdated cultural practices and just about anything else that has outlived its useby date but we still keep just because we have always done it that way

 

I can't imagine feeling closer to god or whatever it is that people get from sitting amongst stained glass windows, or listening to liturgy or lighting candles or having altars or any of that stuff that people do.

 

 

I know, for me at least, that the symbolism is not stained glass windows, or menorahs, or bibles or whatever. It is nature. It is the way trees grow. The way the clouds go across the sky. The way the solar system works, and even the universe.

[Tabula Rasa]

Outlaw, if it works for you better to believe in some sort of divinity, nearly anything but the abrahamic religions would be better. Here's something that might help you with feeling alone in regard to being a pagan.:The Small Town Pagan's Survival Guide

 

It occurs to me, that if there are gods, that being greater than us, they would not have our frailties and faults. For the simple fact they're gods, not humans. Just as a human is smarter and considerably more powerful than an ant. We don't worry over the right way to milk an aphid do we?

[Antlerman]

What I object to, and often wonder about is why things are applied to humans en masse, like every single one of us think exactly the same way, or that evolution in some way dictates that we will.

I certainly don't mean to suggest that we are determined by evolution without any control on our part through will, nor that we all think alike. That said however, there in fact are universals applied to humans, such as the fact we are 99% identical genetically as a species, the fact that all human species employ the use of language - which universally means we all think in symbolic terms and use symbolic forms of expression. These really aren't debatable. We take what we have received through our evolutionary past and build upon these in new creative ways, which in turn drives our further evolution.

 

When we get into culture then we diverge slightly, but not in the fact of culture itself. The forms vary, but not that it exists in human societies. We create, interact, and participate within culture, even if you consider yourself counter-culture. It's still an interaction with culture itself - as a part of it. I too think many of our culture's practices are outdated, but you know what? So did those many moons ago who got rid of the practices of their day to create the ones of ours today; just as we will shape and create new practices that tomorrow they will criticize and scoff at; and the cycle goes on, round and round the universal fact of culture in the human experience.

 

So when it comes to the expression of spirituality in human experience, it too takes many forms, and individuals coming from their own personalities and life experiences, exposures to other cultures and other ideas, etc, will themselves participate in the shape and forms that expression takes. I view atheism itself as very much part of the process of 'casting off the old forms', even though it in itself is merely a tool of deconstruction and not any sort of improvement to the role and function of religion in human spiritual expression. It simply smashes the idols of the past and says, "There. I'm the victor", in the ruins at its feet (at least in the modern, less thoughtful form of it that is).

 

So when I say that we have through evolution inherited how we approach the world symbolically, that is a fact and is universal. How we take that symbolic world and build on it through language, and all the effects language has on our very conceptions of the world, and the effect it has on our biological evolution itself, is also universal. How we express those things, what we do with those in our application of them is not. The fact that we are doing that is.

 

We are all part of that universal process, all our response and reactions, all our supports and objection, all of it is what shapes and molds the forms it all takes. We are universally part of that process, and it of us. That is inescapable. But I reject the idea it is deterministic in that we are merely responding to stimuli alone. Indeed we do respond, but we also affect it through the will and our minds. We are both influenced, and influencers. I can hear this in a favorite quote of mine from Plotinus, "Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts".

 

 

I can't imagine feeling closer to god or whatever it is that people get from sitting amongst stained glass windows, or listening to liturgy or lighting candles or having altars or any of that stuff that people do.

The purpose for these things is frankly rather simple. It is to create a mental space for private reflection. It is in that space of private reflection that insight can occur. The ritual is designed to help the mind draw a circle in which it can set aside the thoughts of the world and enter into itself in quite. It is a form of guided meditation. Then within that space, the mind is allowed to look within. It really doesn't matter what the religion is, nor what the ritual, so long as the individual can enter that space.

 

What is the value of going there, one might ask? Solitude. We in fact subjective beings living in an objective world. To be completely wrapped up in the world outside us can leave the subjective self weak, and undeveloped and consequently lost underneath the mountain of society and culture with no sense of self. It is unhealthy. It reminds me of what I saw in The Onion this week with a picture of a body builder with this huge muscular torso, and his right arm was scrawny and undeveloped, and the caption read, "Bodybuilder Can’t Believe He Forgot To Develop Right Arm".

 

We as humans are not just thinking, robotic processing calculators analyzing the 'objective' world for facts and bowing low before the god of facts. We are creative, emotional, fluid, willful, loving, inspired dreamers who create worlds in the external world, from spaces within the mental. Furthermore, how we see and understand the "objective" world is completely intertwined with our subjective spaces. We create art, for god's sake!

 

To be developed fully as a human, it requires we address all aspects of who we are: subjective, cultural, and physical. Going into that inner-space can open one up to being in touch with our very nature which exists within us, and that experience can be quite 'spiritual', touching even the Divine. Awareness of that, in itself will in fact affect us mentally, socially, and culturally, as well as physically.

 

However effective those systems are in creating space for introspection depends on how well they are also able to speak to the current culture they are part of. If they can't relate themselves in their ritual forms to anything relevant outside that circle, they are difficult for someone to use to set aside the current cultural life in order to find that private space within it. None of these are going to be, nor can be absolute in the forms, which is why I see dogmatists who insist on one method to be coming from a place of ignorance.

 

Anyway, I hope that helps explain some of my thinking in this.

 

 

P.S. I smile to imagine any of this can be understood rationally to be "feel-good bunkum".

[Antlerman]

I'm surprised you bring this up. Anyone bothering to look at the thread in question will be struck much more by the vehemence of your incredibly immoderate response to my rather innocuous comment than anything else.

You seriously, sincerely, as part of a culture whose forms of communication carry significance honestly can say how you worded this was "innocuous"? There was no tone or irony, facetiousness, sarcasm, disgust, insult, etc? It was just pure, rational, calm intelligent assessment? Nah...

 

I've tried to look at this from many angles trying hard to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it's pretty blatant it was a put down to the other members of this site who have a different approach to the world than you by saying alone they are out of touch with reality, by the fact you believe they need to be "steered into reality", and that this site has a policy that prevent good-minded people like you to help steer them into the true path (which is where I as a moderator take the greatest offense at this). That all is pretty blatantly obvious, and offensive on top of being ridiculous.

 

I call it feel-good mythology because that is how I feel about it.

And so it doesn't matter if its taken as insulting to those of intelligence who have a different understanding of reality than you? How about this? If you feel it is just that, how about sharing your thoughts in intelligent discourse of ideas? I don't in any way consider this sort of rhetoric intelligent. Do you feel your ways are the true ways and there is no truth but yours? Why else run others down here then? Where's that coming from?

 

You are certainly respected to see the world as you do, but try to understand its not about putting down others views with this sort of insulting banter. I don't believe in a lot of what others do myself. I don't practice Wicca, believe in an afterlife, etc, and nor do I believe in a Materialistic view of reality that claims that defines Reality with a capital letter. Yet, I am able to express my views of difference, share my views in the hopes someone might gain something from them, as well as the value it gives to me to try to put them into words (since we do after all relate to the world rationally through symbolic frameworks of understanding and all). And my hope is not to behave towards others in the pursuit of my own thoughts and beliefs through running them down, calling their views "Bunkum" (another word for crap, nonsense, silliness, or whatnot). That's not intelligent language, and to use it that way in reference to another's views if nothing short of dismissive and insulting. You surely have to be able to see that?

 

I'm really sorry, I just honestly can't see another way to take your language as communicating exactly this disdain. If you don't intend that, then you should honestly look at your choices in words. I would much prefer to believe you have more to offer than this.

 

I don't think it is pouting to honestly relate an event and my own chagrin with regard to it. As you will recall, I took responsibility for my failure to read the forum rules before posting and did not complain of your treatment of me in the forum, choosing instead to address it privately with you.

And I also apologized that I assumed at the time you just yet another attacker, which there is a long, long history of those who despite reasoned appeals from the mod staff for them to respect the other members of this site just seemed unable to control themselves. That history is well recorded in that forum. My error was to assume you were yet another of those.

 

My unhappiness here that I am hearing this sort of dismissive and insulting language from you here. Is it OK for you to have open-season on other members here? Hell no! Disagree yes, I do all the time without causing too much damage. But the 'spirit' of the entire site is to, "Encourage Ex-Christians". You do not have to agree with them, you do not have to like how they believe, you may feel adamant they are on the wrong path. These are all good things! Yes, share, disagree, press your point, but do it with RESPECT to them! The hope is too encourage them to find what will help them, which may or may not be what works for you. That is the whole site, not just the Spirituality forums. Running others down I take as self-promotion, "I'm right, you're an idiot", is not in that 'spirit'.

 

I honestly don't believe your heart is that, and I do have respect for you more than you realize. We can disagree, and we should frankly because it helps us ultimately to further our understandings. But I'm pretty tired of rhetoric in place of substance.

 

In this forum, at least, non-Christian supernatural beliefs are no more sacrosanct than Christian beliefs, are they?

The only thing I see the Spirituality forum to be different for is that it give teeth to slam the fist down on those who can't control themselves and feel they just simply must ridicule other members for their exploring spirituality in their post-Christian experience. My hope is that we all can rise to the meaning of the word Reason, and use it to be a hell of a lot more than rationality and skepticism, but a broad encompassing understanding in Reasoned behavior.

 

I'm not going to say anymore on this. Choose as you will.

[Ro-bear]

I'm not going to say anymore on this.

 

 

Good. We are wasting our time. I have my position and you have yours.

[Antlerman]

I'm not going to say anymore on this.

 

 

Good. We are wasting our time. I have my position and you have yours.

To be clear, I have my position as a moderator of these forums. Enjoy the differences, express them, debate them. In fact I encourage that. But bear in mind you are here to encourage others not incense them and drive them off through insults to their intelligence. If you have to insult, then take it the Lion's Den where that is more tolerated, and people venturing in there should be aware that goes on there.

[Ro-bear]

I'm not going to say anymore on this.

 

 

Good. We are wasting our time. I have my position and you have yours.

To be clear, I have my position as a moderator of these forums. Enjoy the differences, express them, debate them. In fact I encourage that. But bear in mind you are here to encourage others not incense them and drive them off through insults to their intelligence. If you have to insult, then take it the Lion's Den where that is more tolerated, and people venturing in there should be aware that goes on there.

 

 

Really? Are we still going?

 

Allow me to elaborate then on my last comment. By "position" I meant our perspectives with regard to spirituality, not your position as moderator and mine as regular member.

 

You seem to understand my position in that sense but not my attitude or intent. I'm not sure I even understand your position. I appreciate symbolism and even ritual as much as the next guy, but it would never occur to me to apply them in the contexts you are so supportive of (to the point of being defensive about it, in my opinion).

 

It was never my intention to demean or insult any individual, but sometimes people perceive contradiction of or scoffing at dearly held practices or beliefs as personal insult. That's too bad, because I insist on the freedom to scoff! Even my boss at work has to put up with that. I have long prided myself on clearly and frankly expressing myself, and I find it troubling that you and I fail so utterly to communicate properly. But I don't think assigning blame or advancing theories will "lance the boil", as they say, so I think your recently expressed intent to leave it alone is probably the wisest course.

[DesertBob]

The purpose for these things is frankly rather simple. It is to create a mental space for private reflection. It is in that space of private reflection that insight can occur. The ritual is designed to help the mind draw a circle in which it can set aside the thoughts of the world and enter into itself in quite. It is a form of guided meditation. Then within that space, the mind is allowed to look within. It really doesn't matter what the religion is, nor what the ritual, so long as the individual can enter that space.

Nor does ritual need to have the slightest religious / metaphysical connotation. I get into this space by writing in certain ways. My father was this way, too, although he discovered quite late in life that this worked for him, partly because he wasn't very educated (6th grade was it) and I think he just couldn't see himself as a writer until he had a lot of time on his hands and got some positive reinforcement for sending cards and letters to people in which he was able (unlike in person) to express his inmost thoughts and feelings.

 

Sometimes I write for my eyes only and then pitch it, sometimes it's stuff I write on these forums, and sometimes it's an entirely un-metaphysical blog post or something.

 

Sometimes, too, when conditions are just right, I can get into this reflective mode with a long walk or a good book or a conversation with someone whose intelligence and wisdom I respect.

 

I think sometimes the fact that people often or maybe even usually use candles or incense or chants or repetitive physical movements or objects of manufactured special significance or singing or a zillion other things to make a ritual -- or that a lot of people borrow rituals that are widely recognized as such -- makes us think that some kind of approved hocus-pocus is required for ritual to work. 'Tain't so. Anything that pulls your head out of your rectum will do.

[Antlerman]

Allow me to elaborate then on my last comment. By "position" I meant our perspectives with regard to spirituality, not your position as moderator and mine as regular member.

Certainly I don't mind that you I differ in our views of spirituality. I welcome that and the debate. It's good stuff to me. My whole point has been about being sensitive to the fact that others are just a tad bit worn out with the dismissive rhetoric of the religious atheists who just have to assert themselves and their "opinions". That you aren't doing that makes me feel a whole lot better, but it then does come back to my suggesting you consider the way you communicate it and why its important - important enough for me to make an issue of it.

 

You seem to understand my position in that sense but not my attitude or intent. I'm not sure I even understand your position. I appreciate symbolism and even ritual as much as the next guy, but it would never occur to me to apply them in the contexts you are so supportive of (to the point of being defensive about it, in my opinion).

That would require you and I having a deep-dive discussion, which I'm more than happy to do. Again, I'm not defensive about that, it's just I'm really tired of those who just have to make jabs and pokes, rather than having intelligent discourse. If that's not you, then once again I apologize. But again, the word choices you use comes off like that. Wouldn't it be better if it didn't?

 

That's too bad, because I insist on the freedom to scoff! Even my boss at work has to put up with that.

You know, I've had a discussion like this with Vigile about how in Europe tearing into each other and being friends after is normal, but we here in the States don't get that. Unfortunately, people are a bit worn on feeling insulted over this topic. It's that fact that I am being sensitive to. You can come after me all you want... but be ready to meet your greatest challenge!

 

I have long prided myself on clearly and frankly expressing myself, and I find it troubling that you and I fail so utterly to communicate properly. But I don't think assigning blame or advancing theories will "lance the boil", as they say, so I think your recently expressed intent to leave it alone is probably the wisest course.

I'd like to leave behind as well, but ask you try to be sensitive to what I've hopefully expressed now.

[Antlerman]

The purpose for these things is frankly rather simple. It is to create a mental space for private reflection. It is in that space of private reflection that insight can occur. The ritual is designed to help the mind draw a circle in which it can set aside the thoughts of the world and enter into itself in quite. It is a form of guided meditation. Then within that space, the mind is allowed to look within. It really doesn't matter what the religion is, nor what the ritual, so long as the individual can enter that space.

Nor does ritual need to have the slightest religious / metaphysical connotation.

It can be religious in the experience of it, without it having to be centered around typical religious iconography, such as gods or goddesses. Religious expression can use theistic symbols to aid in visualization, or not. But you're right it doesn't need to. For me it mostly doesn't. If it does, it can have a certain value that might not come otherwise. It really depends.

 

I get into this space by writing in certain ways. My father was this way, too, although he discovered quite late in life that this worked for him, partly because he wasn't very educated (6th grade was it) and I think he just couldn't see himself as a writer until he had a lot of time on his hands and got some positive reinforcement for sending cards and letters to people in which he was able (unlike in person) to express his inmost thoughts and feelings.

 

Sometimes I write for my eyes only and then pitch it, sometimes it's stuff I write on these forums, and sometimes it's an entirely un-metaphysical blog post or something.

I understand this. I write music, and I find that doing strictly improvisation is working for me at this time in my life as opposed to forming a piece crafted out of it. That's the 'throw away' score that is strictly in the moment, for the moment. I also listen to music in ways that transport me, that elevate my spirit and mind. I breathe in nature. I listen to the world. I breathe in Life, and exhale it. All these are those moments of solitude, those moments where you are in yourself in the world.

 

Still there are many ways into many states of ourselves that in the end serve to open something within us to be consciously recognized and embraced. Music, dance, ritual, incense, nature, stillness, all these things allow that opening, that exposure of what is within to be given space to be free, to express itself, to respond to the world, and us to hear and see and know that part of ourselves, and to see and experience the world as who we really are through that. None of this is experienced on the rational level. It is the non-rational. It is not a cognitive, "I've figured it out!" moment. Not at all.

 

Religious themes, religious symbols do have their place in such places. They are symbols of the transcendent. At their best they do not demand killing reason in some backwards spiral into the belly of Mother Earth where spirit slumbered in subconscious unawareness, but rather toward the elevation of mind beyond reason itself into the face of God. God in this sense is the expression of the Ultimate Realization. And as such, as a symbol of mediation, a focus of mental 'prayer' it raises the mind towards what is beyond it into Spirit itself. For me, God is a symbol, albeit of the Absolute, but there is "God beyond God", which is the ultimate Reality of all that is, of ourselves. So these as meditations can open up ourselves in vertical ways, as well as into the world.

 

I think sometimes the fact that people often or maybe even usually use candles or incense or chants or repetitive physical movements or objects of manufactured special significance or singing or a zillion other things to make a ritual -- or that a lot of people borrow rituals that are widely recognized as such -- makes us think that some kind of approved hocus-pocus is required for ritual to work. 'Tain't so. Anything that pulls your head out of your rectum will do.

I don't disagree. I think, and agree very much so, that the danger of the methods is that they become the thing in itself. The ritual becomes the experience itself and the thing sought after. Thus dogmatism! Rather it should be that the ritual aids in creating that space to open you to access something in yourself - which is Spirit. Not everything always works, and there should never be frustration you 'aren't finding it'. Bull. In not finding it you are too. Every moment is it, in different form, in our not-seeing as well. Now that's another discussion... but as I've said before, simply doing nothing is to never see anything in the same way never leaving your house or even looking out the windows shuts you off from the world.

[Galien]

The purpose for these things is frankly rather simple. It is to create a mental space for private reflection. It is in that space of private reflection that insight can occur. The ritual is designed to help the mind draw a circle in which it can set aside the thoughts of the world and enter into itself in quite. It is a form of guided meditation. Then within that space, the mind is allowed to look within. It really doesn't matter what the religion is, nor what the ritual, so long as the individual can enter that space.

 

 

Oh okay. Der. I am an obsessive introspector, born to search the inner rooms of my soul with huge searchlights Totally neurotic. Part of the therapy I have gone through is helping me to understand that not everyone else is like that, but I still forget. I spent about 45 years thinking everyone was as introspective as I am and constantly trying to correct their behaviour in the same way I constantly try to correct my own. My challenge is to stop the navel gazing that makes me too concerned with my inner life, and whether I am doing it "right". I have always wished we had the capacity to touch another's hand, and just for an instant see the world the way they see it, because I don't know what it is like to be anything other than me.

[Noggy]

The purpose for these things is frankly rather simple. It is to create a mental space for private reflection. It is in that space of private reflection that insight can occur. The ritual is designed to help the mind draw a circle in which it can set aside the thoughts of the world and enter into itself in quite. It is a form of guided meditation. Then within that space, the mind is allowed to look within. It really doesn't matter what the religion is, nor what the ritual, so long as the individual can enter that space.

 

 

Oh okay. Der. I am an obsessive introspector, born to search the inner rooms of my soul with huge searchlights Totally neurotic. Part of the therapy I have gone through is helping me to understand that not everyone else is like that, but I still forget. I spent about 45 years thinking everyone was as introspective as I am and constantly trying to correct their behaviour in the same way I constantly try to correct my own. My challenge is to stop the navel gazing that makes me too concerned with my inner life, and whether I am doing it "right". I have always wished we had the capacity to touch another's hand, and just for an instant see the world the way they see it, because I don't know what it is like to be anything other than me.

 

Everyone else isn't as introspective, but that is because they aren't as evolved as you. If anything can be considered superior, I would say its the introspection and reason that separates us from the animals. If someone doesn't exhibit those, then its not your fault you offended them by getting them to think

[Antlerman]

The purpose for these things is frankly rather simple. It is to create a mental space for private reflection. It is in that space of private reflection that insight can occur. The ritual is designed to help the mind draw a circle in which it can set aside the thoughts of the world and enter into itself in quite. It is a form of guided meditation. Then within that space, the mind is allowed to look within. It really doesn't matter what the religion is, nor what the ritual, so long as the individual can enter that space.

 

 

Oh okay. Der. I am an obsessive introspector, born to search the inner rooms of my soul with huge searchlights Totally neurotic.

If I may offer some thoughts to you? I very much understand what you mean by that obsessive introspection, totally trying to figure myself out, picking and scratching at the scabs to try to understand them, to get a handle on my feelings, my motions, etc. It was something I used to do quite a lot when I was younger. There is a difference in what I am talking about now when I say introspection than what that was. If I may explain in the hope it may help you, as I know it did for me?

 

To be look within is not to obsess over problems, or trying to figure stuff out. Quite the contrary, it is to suspend obsession over all those things and simply get in touch with yourself in quite. You set aside all the cares and worries, and simply breathe. You refresh your mind, you find your heart, you find your soul. You spend time going into your nature, your very being, which is not tied to your worries, your concerns, your struggles, relationships, phobias, anxieties, etc.

 

You do not sit there and try to untie any knots whatsoever! It is the place to find renewal of spirit from the well of life itself. Then, from that place, you move with clarity of mind and work out the puzzles of your life like you would trying to fix a faucet leaking in your kitchen. The problems do not define you. They are merely issues in your environment that your clear, calm, mind deals with.

 

That is going within. That is introspection. Looking into the calm, not the tangles.

[Galien]

 

To be look within is not to obsess over problems, or trying to figure stuff out. Quite the contrary, it is to suspend obsession over all those things and simply get in touch with yourself in quite. You set aside all the cares and worries, and simply breathe. You refresh your mind, you find your heart, you find your soul. You spend time going into your nature, your very being, which is not tied to your worries, your concerns, your struggles, relationships, phobias, anxieties, etc.

 

You do not sit there and try to untie any knots whatsoever! It is the place to find renewal of spirit from the well of life itself. Then, from that place, you move with clarity of mind and work out the puzzles of your life like you would trying to fix a faucet leaking in your kitchen. The problems do not define you. They are merely issues in your environment that your clear, calm, mind deals with.

 

That is going within. That is introspection. Looking into the calm, not the tangles.

 

Oh yes I know what you mean. I used to think I was in the presence of god when I did that. It is an interesting place, I am on top of a mountain in a very barren place, there is a small fire and a pole with a long flag on it, which blows in the wind which I can feel on my face, but it is incredibly silent. Even when I was a child I used to draw pictures of it. The good thing about that place is that no matter how bad things have gotten, and they have been pretty bad, nothing can violate it. Kinda cool.

[Noggy]

the Void.

[Tealeaf]

And these are exactly the kinds of places I've had my entire life. All for me. All BY me. None of it with a shred of reference to religion either. What I like in my experience never having been religious is the freedom to have this kind of peace tailored to myself in a genuine way. Reading all the stories on this site just make me sad in seeing how far people have had to come just to find themselves, where as I have been happily living as myself from the get-go without any of these identity crisis deals going on.

 

Religous symbolism is an insult to me. It's just too shallow and based on too much bullshit. Symbolism, ritual, etc. and the like can be very personally theraputic. But this is only so much as they are of yourself. This is why I can't see the OP wanting to go back to the dictated content of religion as being healthy as it is nothing more than pre-subscribed content; outdated and primitive at that.

 

What you guys are saying is basically what I've always come to think about "spirituality." It's reconciling yourself with yourself. Some people don't have to do that. Others get to doing it. Others sadly do not (and religion is the big blocker here).

 

Looking for tailor-made methods in a personal identity dilema is completely contradictory, no?

[DesertBob]

Looking for tailor-made methods in a personal identity dilema is completely contradictory, no?

It's not a long-term strategy but I believe it is a necessary developmental stage through which most people must pass.

 

I read an otherwise forgettable novel once whose name I no longer remember, but whose premise was quite insightful just the same. Some guy found a lost document that would actually expose Christianity as a total fraud, as a man-made invention for the purpose of controlling others. This document had been cleverly hidden from its enemies.

 

The protagonist of the novel, whose personal philosophy was basically that of an empiricist, ultimately destroyed the document because he felt essentially that the cost of depriving billions of people of their illusions was too great for human society to bear at this point in its development.

 

It's an interesting premise -- and has a practical application here, to the OP. If he's not ready to function on his own without hope in a higher power, then many of us are arguing he needs to go back to that until he figures out he's just eating his own vomit. Others may argue that he should be slapped silly until he sees things as they really are, but in my experience you can't wake sleeping people up in that manner. Sometimes life experiences slap us silly and pry us loose from the symbols we worship, but it seems that our fellow man can't do the job. It's not credible. At the end of the day the only thing that led me out was my consistent, undeniable personal cognitive dissonance between what religion promised and what it actually was able to deliver -- between the religious world view and the actual world. Until you're either willing to see that cognitive dissonance (or can't make yourself not see it) and respond to it, you just aren't ready, IMO.

[Antlerman]

Looking for tailor-made methods in a personal identity dilema is completely contradictory, no?

It's not a long-term strategy but I believe it is a necessary developmental stage through which most people must pass.

I think there is a factor that is overlooked in this. While I am a full supporter of the self-actualized individual, that self-actualization includes others. It's not just about "ME" in some self-facing world. My personal identity must include you as well. It must include my body, my environment, my community, the world. People do not develop in a vacuum. In fact they can only develop fully as part of a community of others. There is shared worldspace that the individual participates in, as well as that space affecting him. We are only always and ever whole/parts, interlocking links in a chain, or in a web.

 

So in a religious context of shared symbols, rituals, and whatnot you have community. That shared experience is as much a part of the individual as their privately subjective space is. Additionally their physical world, and their social worlds are. Sickness in society does have a direct impact on all its individuals collectively, and individually. Everything interacts with each other, and affects each other, both in positives and in negatives.

 

What the complexity of this situation is comes to those like most of us here. Those systems of premodernity, like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc, are failing to properly translate the world for its individuals within groups, and consequently as individuals alone. I see Neo-Paganism, New Age, etc, as essentially trying to make Christianity 'modern', taking the mythical God and either stripping Him of his traditional robes, or putting new robes on Him in a series of experimentation. It's often a form of Romanticism trying to go back 'before' Christianity came on the scene and 'ruined everything'. There are what I see as flaws in the approach, but the bottom line is the motivation for trying something like it. And that motivation is that existential need for supporting communities in personal development. Again, personal development does not happen in a vacuum. You would be essentially a "wild-child" with next to no sense of yourself as a human being.

 

The reason things like Romanticism, and by extension the postmodern experimental religions are occurring at all is first because of a fractured sense of self in society in the wake of Modernity. This is not limited to religion, but religious expression follows suit with this. Fundamentalism was born as a direct response to the motions of Christianity going through modernization, taking the post-Enlightenment realizations and trying to understand itself in this new light in things like Neo-Orthodoxy. But it struggles as a system to adequately take its historically viable symbols and make them able to speak to the emerging world informed and impacted by Modernity's influence in both academia and in culture at large. We are all products of this.

 

In order to heal this fracture we as a society are trying to find a replacement system of integration where the individual, community, and the natural world can once again function as a whole. We do this as humans because we have to. It's who we are, how we evolved, what defines us as humans. That fracture I'm referring to is Kant's big three, Art, Morals, and Science, defined in his 3 Critiques: Judgment, Practical Reason, and Pure Reason. Prior to Modernity they were all integrated under the Myth Systems. After this, they rightly differentiated into separate pursuits, but nothing has since pulled them back together. The pursuit of Science in its amazing discoveries took the limelight and people began looking to it as the Beacon of Hope of the New World, and try to dominated the other two with itself, squashing them into what became Scientism, a new religion of sorts of "Pure Reason". What Kant was showing is how "Pure Reason" fails in areas of "Practical Reason" (or Moral, culture, etc), let alone in the subjective Judgment of the aesthetic or art.

 

And so the struggle goes on to integrate the 3 into a new, post-mythic reality. The newest forms of Atheism in the West, those we are very familiar with now with the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, are essentially only fighting the battle of the past to 'debunk' mythology (as opposed to understanding it). That's all good and fine, but really only amounts to nothing more than what I'll now call "anti-literalism literalism". I'm all in favor of showing that Myths are not literal facts, but I do so in the context of understanding their legitimate role in human society and the evolution of the individual psyche. Neo-Atheism is really just brutal deconstructionism, gleefully proclaiming a hollow victory, IMHO. There is nothing to offer to integrate the big three in the death of the mythic God. No actual practical understanding beyond a cold harsh glance at the supposed "silliness of the past". It's only picking over a corpse in the desert, and in its own rights often veers straight over in an irrational religiousness, IMO.

 

So then where and how can we integrate? What way do we bring together our personal subjective growth into a healthy integration with others in a community, and into an integration with our world; the whole interaction becoming part of the whole person as part of others as part of the world? And how do with do this? With what symbolic reality to unite us? The past gods? Modern Science as the Savior? I side with those who look forward, not backwards, but where all aspects of us, the big three are fully embraced and grown in the whole individual. I don't believe we can stop growing, we can ever, ever say "I've arrived!". The very second you say that you are on to the next stage of development. How does that happen? And this come back to that whole "religion" equation, and by that I do not mean premodern religion.

 

I'm gonna let this be here just to maybe get some thoughts going on this before I keep digging into it. Plus to let myself process some thoughts on this as well. Not so simple is it?

[DesertBob]

I think there is a factor that is overlooked in this. While I am a full supporter of the self-actualized individual, that self-actualization includes others.

In retrospect I regard the sort of "community" interaction that I had under church auspices as so limited and un-genuine that I have to confess I don't really even know what a healthy, balanced and truly supportive community would even be like. I have learned to live without it, to distrust it, and to regard it as something of limited practical utility for so long that I'm not sure I even want it at this point.

 

It's a little bit like people I know who had crappy childhoods. They see people like myself and others who come from intact, basically functional and loving families, and wonder, much as I might speculate about life on other worlds, what it would feel like to feel nurtured and cared for and cared about so thoroughly that one had little if any primal anxiety about one's worthiness, safety or adequacy. I have that same sort of detached curiosity about a theoretical world where you have community beyond the nuclear family and find it a reliable, sustainable source of encouragement and growth.

 

Apart from my fiancee I don't know anyone, including either my children or hers, frankly, who would wonder about our welfare if we just quit leaving the house or calling anyone for a few weeks. We're like that guy who died suddenly in front of his TV one night and was only discovered months later when all his bill auto-pays had emptied out his bank accounts. This is actually pretty common in today's world. It isn't a phenomenon that's limited to freethinkers. The truth is that much of the sense of community even in the church is highly conditional and/or shallow and based on one's level of "commitment" or "involvement", that is, one's usefulness to the community, rather than to a commitment to a vision of real outreach. Other associations that evolve, around the pub, or your bowling league, the PTO or other community organizations, even volunteer work, are no better and often worse. I volunteer with the local hospice organization and I would have thought the shared experience of caring for the dying would have created a sense of community but it's really just a way for people to pass time and feel smug for the most part; even in an organization with a serious purpose like that you have the typical phenomenon of people who want to be a big fish in a little ocean and order people around. I would have thought that the hobbyist musician community when I lived back in Arizona would be rich source of positive experiences with like-minded folk but it turned out to be a preening contest about who had the best musical chops or the most impressive instrument, etc.

 

It all reminds me of the character in the WC Fields movie "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break", a banker who would say, "allow me to offer you a hearty handclasp" -- and laid his palm on the other person's without even grasping it. For folks like myself who have extended themselves over the years toward various forms of community and come away with very little to show for it other than such limp fish sorts of perfunctory responses, it's going to be difficult to fire them up about community.

 

By far the most effective community I've experienced is in forums like this. Once upon a time there was a forum for people over 40, now defunct, where you could have (mostly) intelligent conversations with other adults; I got support from that community when I was grieving my wife's death and I met my current finacee there. I find ex-christian at least intermittently a good place to talk about meaningful things. I think that part of what causes these environments to work is that they are low-risk; you can remain anonymous and use pseudonyms and yet paradoxically that very anonymity allows you to be very open and real and unguarded with each other. I wonder about that sometimes. Support groups for people with addiction problems are usually based on some level of anonymity as well -- even the ones that aren't 12-step based. It seems like if you want to get down to the nitty gritty in community it requires openness, and if you want openness you can't have concerns about anything you say being used against you some day, or with having to filter and parse everything so as not to overwhelm other people's fragile sensibilities, needs, and expectations.

 

No, AM ... it's not very simple at all :-\\

[Noggy]

The church is the worst excuse for community almost anyone can have.

 

And feeling a oneness with the world and your community is not necessarily interacting with them at all. In fact, in the way I read antlermans hard-to-interpret (its like the bible, eh?) post, I think you completely missed the point.

[Antlerman]

The church is the worst excuse for community almost anyone can have.

Not if it fits where you're at. And that's the point. Where you are at it doesn't fit. It is no longer effective for you. But it was once upon a time for you, I assume. It was for me, until I outgrew it. I say that's really the heart of the matter to understand. It's about support systems for where we are at. When it starts failing, there are reasons for that. Ever wonder why it survived at all? Could it be because it worked, for that time?

 

And feeling a oneness with the world and your community is not necessarily interacting with them at all. In fact, in the way I read antlermans hard-to-interpret (its like the bible, eh?) post, I think you completely missed the point.

You did miss the point. It's not hard to interpret, it's just perhaps the concepts are foreign? Would you like clarification on some things to make it more understandable?

[chosendarkness]

And these are exactly the kinds of places I've had my entire life. All for me. All BY me. None of it with a shred of reference to religion either. What I like in my experience never having been religious is the freedom to have this kind of peace tailored to myself in a genuine way. Reading all the stories on this site just make me sad in seeing how far people have had to come just to find themselves, where as I have been happily living as myself from the get-go without any of these identity crisis deals going on.

 

Religous symbolism is an insult to me. It's just too shallow and based on too much bullshit. Symbolism, ritual, etc. and the like can be very personally theraputic. But this is only so much as they are of yourself. This is why I can't see the OP wanting to go back to the dictated content of religion as being healthy as it is nothing more than pre-subscribed content; outdated and primitive at that.

 

What you guys are saying is basically what I've always come to think about "spirituality." It's reconciling yourself with yourself. Some people don't have to do that. Others get to doing it. Others sadly do not (and religion is the big blocker here).

 

Looking for tailor-made methods in a personal identity dilema is completely contradictory, no?

 

Not everyone believes the same way when it comes to spirituality and religion. Thinking something wrong with people who don't agree with you is the same way fundamentalist Christians think. When someone is truly reconciled with themselves and life they don't act like that.

[Ro-bear]

Not everyone believes the same way when it comes to spirituality and religion. Thinking something wrong with people who don't agree with you is the same way fundamentalist Christians think. When someone is truly reconciled with themselves and life they don't act like that.

 

I like your first sentence a lot.

 

I think your second sentence has some truth in it, but just because fundamentalists do it does not make it wrong per se. Fundamentalists also get married and have children, but I didn't let that stop me from doing so as well.

 

I disagree very much with your last sentence. You can be reconciled with yourself and life and still think something is wrong with other people. In fact, I would say that almost everyone can identify several groups of people he thinks something is wrong with.

[chosendarkness]

Not everyone believes the same way when it comes to spirituality and religion. Thinking something wrong with people who don't agree with you is the same way fundamentalist Christians think. When someone is truly reconciled with themselves and life they don't act like that.

 

I like your first sentence a lot.

 

I think your second sentence has some truth in it, but just because fundamentalists do it does not make it wrong per se. Fundamentalists also get married and have children, but I didn't let that stop me from doing so as well.

 

I disagree very much with your last sentence. You can be reconciled with yourself and life and still think something is wrong with other people. In fact, I would say that almost everyone can identify several groups of people he thinks something is wrong with.

 

I meant when you think somethings wrong with people because they believe in Christianity. I do the same thing, but now I'm starting to recognize it. It's kind of absurd to think millions of people believe in religion because they're weak and I don't because I'm stronger than them. I'm sure there are plenty of strong people that believe in religion. All I really know is the fundamentalist part that caters to people with issues like me, but that doesn't mean that's the only way it is.

[Galien]

The church is the worst excuse for community almost anyone can have.

Not if it fits where you're at. And that's the point. Where you are at it doesn't fit. It is no longer effective for you. But it was once upon a time for you, I assume. It was for me, until I outgrew it. I say that's really the heart of the matter to understand. It's about support systems for where we are at. When it starts failing, there are reasons for that. Ever wonder why it survived at all? Could it be because it worked, for that time?

 

 

I fought against church in my inner person the whole time I was there. As a teenager I questioned why they preached things they did not practice. As a young adult I wondered the same thing, as an older adult I STILL wondered why they said one thing and did another. I wondered why they shot their wounded, usually at point blank range and straight in the face. As a christian I programmed myself to LOATHE dishonesty in any form. They still embraced it. I still don't understand.