Spirituality - God - Enlightenment - Sonic Love
 

After going through the smut (though highly entertaining smut) on SYG, I think it would be interesting to discuss spirituality / evolving consciousness / God / Enlightenment.

For the past 6 months I've been reading a lot by Alan Watts, Tolle, sacred texts like the Gita and Pali Canon excerpts, Hesse, Terrence Mckenna and Robert Anton Wilson, and sometimes attend a Vedanta meditation center for Satsang. I just suddenly understood how both spirituality and religion is pragmatic and though often attacked, not something that's "bad" in nature like I used to think.

Where do you stand when it comes to spirituality / religion / evolving consciousness?

I just feel like I should keep saying there is a big difference between spirituality and religion.

Yeah certainly. I included both because organized religion is one faculty within spirituality, and a very prominent one.

I don't read authors from the "spirituality" trend.
The term induce that 'they' are talking about the spirit, and others don't.
Maybe they think Jesus, Socrates, Shakespeare (+litterature in general) were talking about how to grow vegetables or how to repair a fence!

The spirituality 'trend' really encompasses a wide array of writng however. It can be anywhere from sacred religious texts, to highly marketed new-age works like "The Secret", to drug use in relationship of self-exploration, to 2012 conspiracy. It's a broad subject that ideas from it can be borrowed in literature, just as romantic themes can be used in works that are not considered romance novels. Most things to be labeled as 'spirituality' are likely more a direct approach than symbolism through literature, though it all depends on personal preference on yr favorite method on how to extract that information :)

Agreed. It includes so many issues; too many imo.

I don't want to "extract information" when I read a novel.
Symbolism, or personnal experience (sic), is fine to me.

I suppose I get what you mean, but being involved in a religion often has more to do with a cultural aspect than anything to do with being spiritualized. On the other hand, one could argue spirituality is everywhere, and it's just an instinct we're born with. I can't help but see the institution of any church as something almost completely apart from spirituality, which I consider extremely personal and perhaps impossible to share.

My spirituality is entirely passive and silent. I let it come to me and I tell no one.

I also read a lot of Alan Watts in my 20s. Later found he was a major rascal when it came to his personal dealings, so that was a big letdown (he also had problems with alcohol). Still, his popularizations of Taoism were highly interesting, though he got Zen more or less wrong (he's been rebutted by various real-deal Zen masters). Still, I like the Tao Te Ching best and Chuang-Tzu, who is brilliant and hilarious-- the quality translations are important.

Tolle is a kind of Zen-related too ("be fully in the moment"), and a good Westernized approach I supposed without getting into byzantine explanations.

The Gita cracked me up because it is used to justify war-- basically, Kirshna says to Arjuna "You can't really kill your cousins, so kill them!". I've read also the Yoga Sutra but never the Pali canon-- might try some day.

From Terrence McKenna I read "Food of the Gods" about a decade or more ago, and I feel he continues the line that Aldous Huxley started in Heaven and Hell/ The Doors of Perception -- interesting book, haven't read others.

Hesse blew my mind when I was 18 or 19, particularly Demian and Steppenwolf, the Glass Bead game bored me before I could finish, but I loved some of his essays. I don't know if I could read those Hesse again, it's one of those things like trying to get back with your first girlfriend and realizing there was a reason why you two broke up.

Hesse's major wellspring is I believe Carl Jung, who was a bigger mystic and thinker than him, but not a novelist. Still, I hear Jung's autobiography was pretty good and I might look for it at some point.

I only read RAW recently and it came across more as a comedic writer than as a philosopher, though clearly the guy was smart as fuck. Still, being already familiar with a lot of what he talks about made it less mind-blowing than if I had read this when I was 18. It would have had a different effect.

RE: Evolving consciousness, etc: I'm skeptical, very skeptical, when it comes to such claims. I've seen WAY TOO MANY charlatans to trust anybody who claims to have found the secret of life (or whatever) and I tend to side with the views found on Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" with one very big difference-- I don't find a godless universe necessarily leads to nihilism (which is what Monty Python sort of goes after); I think one can find supreme value in life even when said life has no meaning or god or any of that. Does that make me a Nietzschean? An existentialist? I have no fucking idea.

These days I'm interested in Zen and its practice, not because I believe it will lead me anywhere, but simply because I'm interested in the skills it provides to the mind. Whatever happens from acquiring said skills (or "un-skills" if you wanna buy the concept of beginner's mind) I have no idea of what it is or where it leads to. But I find that doing zazen is good for my brain. I'm not interested in enlightenment, nirvana (of any kind), or saving all sentient beings quite yet.

By the way, if you are highly religious or have religious inclinations or rely on some sort of divinity for your life's meaning, beware of reading Nietzsche-- it can make you temporarily mad.

you ever read 2012 the return of quetzalcoatl?

Spirituality often times just refers to the religious that prefer to not associate themselves with any specific religious organization....wether it be Buddhism, Catholicism (which is the oldest form of Christianity, so all denominations fall under it as far as I'm concerned), paganism, pretty much anything else. It still requires faith in something that can not be proven. The "proof" often spoken about by the spiritual is often more so a personal "feeling" that can be described as being any large number of things, being that it can not be proven.

People often forget "religion" just means "belief"...the word doesn't apply to just so called "organized religion". The "spiritual" that choose to not associate themselves with whatever given organized religion (for whatever reason) are just opting to follow their own beliefs on the subject matter...but still, it all falls under the same thing and there's no real way around it. Believing, having faith, in that of which can't be proven has no place in my life...I have no real issues w/ those of any faith, as long as they can keep it where it belongs...which is not in science, politics, etc. Most fail at this.

****And YES, I am saying that if you claim to be spiritual you are still religious. You don't have to be a Baptist in order to be religious.

Some of you may know that I happen to be fairly well-versed in this subject. As such, I'm keeping my trap shut, but also quietly tutting to myself. Someone draw me in with something with teeth.

Oh, also, isn't the Pali canon utterly inapproachable within one lifetime?

tonite, The Universe brought me gifts in the form of a three book series on the construction of earthships.

dreams made real.

my totems are the coyote and the crow.

I hope this helps.

Coyote traveled through the country, fighting monsters and making the world ready for the new people. He crossed the Cascade Mountains and came into the Puget Sound country. He was hungry, very hungry.

He saw Crow sitting on the peak of a high cliff, with a ball of deer fat in his mouth. Coyote looked at Crow with this fat and thought how good it would taste. Becoming hungrier and hungrier, he wondered how he could get the fat for himself. He thought hard. Then he laughed.

"I know what to do. I know how I can get the fat from Crow."

Then coyote came close to the base of the cliff and called. "Oh, Chief! I hear that you can make a good noise, a pleasing noise with your voice. You are a big chief, I know. You are a wise chief, I have heard. Let me hear your voice, Chief. I want to hear you, Chief Crow."

Crow was pleased to be called chief. So he answered, "Caw!"

"Oh, Chief Crow," called Coyote, "that wasn't much. You can sing better than that. Sing a good song for me, Chief. I want to hear you sing loud."

Crow was pleased again. So he opened his mouth wide and called from the cliff in a loud voice, "C-a-a-w!"

Of course the ball of deer fat fell down from Crow's open mouth.

Coyote grabbed it quickly. Then he laughed.

"You are not a wise chief," said Coyote. "you are not a chief at all. I called you 'Chief' just to fool you. I wanted your deer fat. I am hungry. Now you can go hungry because of your foolishness."

Sometimes it isn't so much a question as to what to believe in, it's who to blame for what you believe. + then considering and reconsidering until??????(something happens)?????

Something always happens. God won't.

Humans need constant assurance that they are not A) reponsible for anything and B) that no matter how meaningless and arbitrary existence seems, it "really" is not.

yr sour outlooks manifest in yr reality.

I'm so terribly sorry.

great pity.

I believe in Sonic Love.

what i hate is when people, especially gilrs start to tell you that they are 'really spiritual'. they are normally the types that think they can right poetry and you have to sit there and pretend its good when all your thinking is, if there is a god, why!

I agree. Except to say that I think it's a grave misunderstanding of religion in general when 'religious' people do this. Pplz nd 2 lrn2Kierkegaard.

this makes me think.

Maybe a month ago, I would have given you a long treatise about re-appropriating a pre-Christian definition of 'spirituality' but I care less about that now.

Before my last post, I explained what I would classify as my phenomenal reception of spiritual experience. As for my philosophical approach to metaphysical concepts, I try to combine apophatic theology with theological non-cognitivism in such a way that I oscillate between Kierkegaardian absurdism and Wittgensteinian quietism.

LOL PHILOSOPHY NAME DROPPING! Does this have teeth enough for you, Glice, or where you referring to hasty atheism?

Ugh, I utterly distaste Alan Watts and I'm not precisely sure of why. In fact, I think I have a general skepticism about Western-appropriated Eastern spirituality. Maybe it's because Eastern metaphysics feel claustrophobic to me. There's not enough room in the attic (or, more accurately, basement) for me.

Temporary madness is not necessarily an ill. It maybe be, even, the symptoms of the cure.

Some Frenchies I can't recall have argued that it's impossible for Westerners to get Eastern spirituality, but I think nobody has the monopoly on ways of thinking-- it can be absorbed with enough study and/or exposure to it. What's lacking is the social aspect of it-- so while everyone can understand, it's a lot harder to live it. And hippies are a joke.

You probably dislike Watts because he was a writer of popular books, not a "serious" philosopher. I mean, he wrote in plain non-technical English.


Oh, I never said "don't read it", I merely warned him of the effects. It's like a good emetic that cures indigestion-- but the puking can be intense.

I don't think Eastern spirituality is strictly impossible for Westerners. I can't even see how that judgment could be made assuming the truth of the judgment. lol French, I guess. Anyway, there was a time that I was interested in investigating Eastern spirituality, but what I found was, for the most part, disappointing. What was interesting only buttered me up for Heidegger, who I'm more and more coming to consider a dead-end. I'm beginning to suspect Asian exceptionalism at play.

As for Alan Watts, it wasn't merely that he was a popular philosopher. I also got the sense that he served as fashion fodder for pretend spirituality. For example, he's the kind of guy I imagine the millionaire CEOs with the Zen garden in their office would listen to commune with the "Tao" of the free market. I had a business major friend who told be that he was both a Buddhist and an Objectivist. He never mentioned his philosophical beliefs after my extensive verbal critique. He was the first to introduce me to Watts, by the way.

And Nietzsche explains himself: Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger. This was always a spiritual aphorism.

come on, he never said that. he said that one should live as to be able to say "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger". this doesn't apply to everyone. "what doesn't kill me leaves me crippled" is the most common occurrence. like your MBA friend.

My MBA friend was crippled for taking on things that didn't challenge his values but merely affirmed them through the most immediate thinkers.

Anyway, I'm not going to argue Nietzsche. I have a sense that he crippled you enough as it is.

don't know. maybe he was really trying.


what sense? spider sense?


i have a sense that this is really about how a priest fucked you silently in the ass and you liked it, so you let him come to you and told no one.

spider sense.

I think the thing with 'adopting' 'Eastern' spirituality is that it's difficult to be 'orthodox' in it. I often have this conversation with people who identify with Buddhism. They rarely have any idea of what sort of Buddhism they're interested in and have minimal understanding of the potential brutality of it - you all know the Zazen practice of twatting people over the head as they meditate, I'm sure.

I don't think being an inauthentic 'Eastern' practioner is really a problem; the problem comes when you realise that 'Eastern spirituality' produces and maintains some very strict dogmas. I mention the Pali canon being hideously expansive earlier because the idea of dominion over the writing of a culture is often impossible, or at least exceptionally difficult. To the protestant, there's a book that you could read in a week with minimum difficulty. People can say what they want about whatever they want, 'religiously', but I think it can definitely do a disservice to a religion to render it as some exoticised mourning for lost Christianity.

haaa haaa haaa haaaa. it's true!

the whacks (on the back, not the head) are actually meant to relieve you of pain while they also cause it. as it happens, when you sit a long-ass time trying to keep your spine straight your muscles begin to cramp up and spasm. usually the thing (i forget what's called, i hate that they keep japanese names for a stick, but what can you do) is requested rather than given, at least in the school i know a bit about. i know this girl who was denied it because she was "asking too much" for it, ha ha ha. i've never gotten actually too hardcore with this practice as i mistrust *any* kind of organized *anything*, so i haven't been to the place in a while, but the pain in your ass and legs and everywhere can get pretty horrid without any overhead twatting. flies crawl on your face and you aren't supposed to move. fuck!

also, there's 2 main kinds of zen: soto is the gentle one, was made for peasants, rinzai is the s/m one, it was designed for the samurai class, the stoic bastards.


also, "eastern spirituality" as such doesn't exist-- there more theoretical disputes in hinduism and buddhism than there ever were in the christian middle ages. it's fucking mind-boggling. sect upon sect upon sect.


right, but i don't think even the thais themselves read the whole beast-- there might be a few monks that devote their lives to that but i seriously doubt the general populace is acquainted with more than a fraction. so, say, a western scholar can have greater knowledge of the pali canon than a thai monk. it's how the religion influences the social fabric that westerners have harder access to-- you can read all the confucius you want, but until you live in china and get how confucianism is embedded in all manner of social forms, you won't really "get" it.

still, not all buddhisms are heavily scriptural or too focused on texts themselves (e.g. zen, or nichiren buddhism, to cite a couple of examples).

however, if you wanna look at ancient texts you can always approach the thing one sutra at a time. there are, of course, hierarchies within the thing, there's your essential texts and there's commentaries and there's commentaries on the commentaries, etc. i've never read shit of it though.


sorry, i didn't get your meaning here. who does this?

This is true, and I think one of the fundamental paradigm (almost) dichotomies between the so-called East and West, as since the Protestant Reformation, is that the mystical traditions of the West were subjugated under the veil of rising sentiments of authoritarianism and pre-nationalism and intellectualism which replaced the cultural fabric of spiritual pursuits in the Western Tradition. In the West, folks are far to pragmatic and materialistic (not in the moral sense) to weave a rich socio-cultural tapestry of spiritual perceptions which are quite familiar in the East. Gone were the days of Saint Francis and what replaced it is the practical religion of Sir Isaac Newton, who of all things invented calculus in feeble but sincere attempts to decode the Gematric code of the Bible in order to determine the mathematical date of the Apocalypse (serious shit, after over a decade and dozens of notebooks filled with tables and equations he determined it to be 2060) which from the perspective of the even the most indifferently religious person from the East is comically inept to say the least. How can you use intricate mathematics to discover mystical and spiritual understandings? To the the East, the Western theologians and philosophers since the 17th century have been WAY to left brain about things, and have in fact been too intellectually and brain oriented in the first place, since the Spiritual is not found in the mind or the brain, but rather the Heart.

The real question yet to be asked is what is the substance of the Spirit in the first place? If we must discuss spirituality, surely we must first introduce the various discussions over the meaning of "spirit" which is in itself quite a diverse topic..

No, the ironic and facetious kind.

I'd question that - only because I've struggled massively to put Christian middle-ages Theology into anything like a consistent context; you'll get a general trend - say, millenarianism, Joachimism - which gets massively complicated by what Marxists and Hegelians would call a historical material dialectic, often focussed around (Aristotelian) Techne. There's also the ongoing, long-standing dialogue with other faiths - Judaism and Islam - which doesn't really stop until towards the end of the middle ages. Something that fascinates and frustrates me is you'll get people of the same or contemporaneous cloisters - say, Richard and Hugh of St Victor, Abelard - who are capable of enormous gulfs between their thoughts. Plus, the perigrinatorial nature of their writing means that our received notions of 'academic consistency' are well off. Luther, Zwingli and Calvin for me represent not just a change in Theological orientation but also a seismic shift in Theo-academic writing - in a sense, what we understand as analytical and academic now is inherited from their style. I don't know if you've tried, say, John Chrysostum, but he's an absolute fucker to approach from a modern perspective.

This very much depends on how you interpret differences in the writers. For the non-Theologian (and I'd include myself in that category), the differences between, say, Duns Scotus and Eriugena are fairly minimal, but within the temporal context, read in a 'properly' Theological way, the differences are enormous.

Otherwise, I agree entirely with what you're saying.


It's those people who say that 'Buddhism is more a philosophy than a religion' but who've never come across the 'life is suffering' idea. There's a tendency amongst them to say that Buddhism reflects good actions, being kind to each other, without having the imperial, stratified dogmatic terrorism of the Catholic church. For me, I don't think Buddhism necessarily means the sort of analytical study we associate with the protestant traditions (that is, the absolute, fundamental centrality of a single text), but that by no means means taht Buddhism is a religion absolved of its problems. I wouldn't criticise Buddhism per se, but I think a very glib, cursory awareness of it can quite quickly reveal a very self-centred (though ego-less) absolution of the practitioner from her or his involvement in society; further, there's a minimal emphasis on love, which is a concept that appears elsewhere, and diffusely, while it operates square at the centre of most Christian thought. That's what I mean by 'mourning for lost Christianity', because naif-Buddhists do tend to make assumptions about 'orthodox' Buddhism that reflect more a failure of Christianity's epistemology to be consistent with itself more than a necessary strength to Buddhist thought.

I don't want this to come across anti-Buddhist (the contrary, in fact) but it's one of those cultural paradigms of 'positive stereotypes' that don't really reflect the 'truth' of a culture (even though I've had minimal personal experience with that culture). It's like that thing of 'oh, black people all dance well, don't they?'

I'm really spiritual. Come to my poetry reading.

will there be booze?

there's no spirit without booze.