Can I get a summary before I jump in? Did you decide to forgo the hallucinogens and go for meditation instead?To be honest, I just started watching it but I've listened to Graham Hancock before on Joe Rogan's podcast and I find his ideas about spirituality, archeology, and consciousness rather interesting.
I sincerely believe you don't need religion to address the human condition at all. For myself though, spiritual practices have helped *me* contextualize a lot of things, but that's just me.To be honest, I just started watching it but I've listened to Graham Hancock before on Joe Rogan's podcast and I find his ideas about spirituality, archeology, and consciousness rather interesting.
Graham's theory about consciousness is that it doesn't originate from our brains but instead it is picked up by our brains like an antenna would with a TV channel or a radio signal. I don't know if that's the main focus of this talk though.
And no, I haven't had any hallucinogens or had any time to meditate. Still trying to educate myself about this stuff.
Huh, that's interesting. I might give it a runthrough later if it isnt too smartdumb.
What drew me to philosophies again was that, as an atheist, you live a life without a guide. I have enough self confidence and self assurance to know what is right and wrong, for the most part, without religion or philosophy. But being atheist or non-religious still doesn't fix the human problem: the knowledge we are all going to die, the pain and suffering that is life, and how to truly leave a good mark on this world when we do perish.Not to make this seem like I'm singling you out Himu, you just brought it up. This kind of negative view is one of the few issues I tend to have with the religious. Too often in the context of "without an outside moral code, you'll just end up killing people!" And I think it's mainly projection. (None of this is to say there is no role for philosophy, just that I find it natural instead of essential.)
I never said that you need religion to live a moral code. I didn't even bring up a moral code. I'm not talking about ethics or even conduct. I even said in the post that ethics have nothing to do with atheism. As an atheist, I have no backbone or base. I do things because I feel they are right. But something still seems missing. I'm talking me, myself, and I in that post.I apologize because I was not trying to imply that you were nor directing anything at you. Merely using the quote as a jumping off point. The "moral code" aspect is simply one that I often find in connection with the notion of needing a guide. That if you don't follow the Bible, or whatever, that people will have no guide and just go around killing each other because why not, there's no meaning to life might as well rape and pillage. But it was not my intent to claim that was you or like you or to say anything really about you other than to use the sentiments expressed in the quoted part as justification to discuss my own self-centered interests. So again, I apologize.
Life is the same way, but it need not be. You are one of seven billion but you are always having your own impact in your own way, even if you can't see it. Maybe you think your grand glory is breaking Sony insider information, but you never see the Off-Topic post you make on some random topic that causes someone to rethink things, switch their majors and eventually cure some disease. But that's not a stone monument which will last eons after your gone reminding others that you once existed.jesus fucking christ, benji :bow2
As they say, graves are full of indispensable men.
I think r atheism was the wrong descriptor. What happened was that I eventually began to hate the religions around me at a young age. I hated being excluded and confused by christian and jewish customs, and the fighting I saw about them (gory, graphic abortion protests for example). I hated people teasing me about the way my gods looked or the dots on my foreheads. I hated the fear that they represented to me, of hell and damnation. And then when 9/11 happened and my temple was vandalized, I began to hate Islam for somehow managing to brand people that look like me as a threat. And for Pakistan and its terrorism. But I was just a child, and I was too prideful to talk about it with anyone and internalizing.I don't actually visit r/athiesm so I have no idea but I just assumed that descriptor was the type who, well if you go into any of the threads on the first couple pages of OT GAF, they're making multi-quote posts jumping on every single thing someone has posted. (Or quoting and taking issue with a certain somebody posting Always Sunny quotes without attribution.) Or the people who circle jerk over the seven days of creation like that's the biggest epic burn ever.
I never had a phase of arguing with people over particulars of religions scientific validity or not, but a stark phase of hating religion, even the one I was raised on when I realized how it tied in with class conflict.
Islam is cool and all, it really isn't as bad as you may have heard from fox newsThat's just what they told me you'd say next thing we know BAM SHARIA'S LAW! WHOEVER THAT IS!
Interesting. It is certainly easier, but I'm of the opinion that individual research and journeys give you significantly better processing equipment to process whatever your L. Ron Hubbard tells you.I agree with this, I was ruminating more on why people will take that path unlike how you and Himu were discussing more or less taking the best parts of various things.
I believe in the church of worms. Meaning you live, you die, and then worms eat you after you decay and your coffin or ashes are exposed.Yeah, pretty much. Anything beyond that is wishful thinking to me.
And that's it. That's your life. Have fun.
I wouldn't mind an afterlife so long as I got to see the universe develop. Turning into a ghost would be cooler though, but maybe that's just latent voyeurism.
Regarding death? I dont feel any sort of way about it. I just wanna make sure I do as little damage to mother earth as I go. Probably ask to get resomated and thrown in a nice garden somewhere. As far as the afterlife... im not preoccupied by it or thinking about mortality. Im just apathetic to it.
I don't like organized religion. I think it's really really bad for society and culture in general. I view it as a one time necessary part of social evolution but that it increasingly needs to go away for social evolution to keep progressing. That being said, I'm not rude about it unless a religious person is aggressive in pushing that stuff. I understand why some people need religion and hounding them about it doesn't do anyone any good. I care more about secularism than atheism because I think the former is more important than the latter even though I'm about as atheistic as you can be.Ive actually been mulling this over a lot. Religion is a distinct method of passing down a blend of history, language, ethics and philosophy, metaphysics, and spirituality. As our global society grows less and less religious, what will take the place of it. Philosophy? Education? Where will the content of all that end up? I dont mean that in an alarmist sense, just curious.
I just think its going to be interesting to see the forceful contraction and disappearance of religious infrastructure in our (my?) lifetime.
If there wasnt anyone still alive to be distressed by it, I'd probably like to be eaten alive :lol(http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lf79iliAVc1qfa84uo1_500.gif)
Maybe I'm just not at the age yet where lying as a form of conflict avoidance bothers me.
Well, I guess I should keep it to myself, but then the question will come up, why I don't attend. I feel as if it'll become a subject anyways.
Should I even go?
Have you ever gotten upset or angry when people don't appreciate all the kindness you've shown them? Ajahn Brahm explains how to keep giving without expecting or getting any reward.
Maybe it was because I wrote a letter and letters can be interpreted in their own way. In person may be lots better. Should I give it another shot?
Maybe it was because I wrote a letter and letters can be interpreted in their own way. In person may be lots better. Should I give it another shot?
Maybe it was because I wrote a letter and letters can be interpreted in their own way. In person may be lots better. Should I give it another shot?
I've only read one of your letters but you seemed able to express yourself in that medium plenty fine.
If it matters to you, and it seems like it does, then another approach seems warranted given the response you received. What would you do differently in person?
After some more introspection I'm beginning to accept that psychedelics might not the best thing for me in this current stage of life I'm going through.
Once I have my own place I might purchase an isolation tank and use that as a means to sort myself out. :larry
Huh?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeqmKwsvM58
After some more introspection I'm beginning to accept that psychedelics might not the best thing for me in this current stage of life I'm going through.
Once I have my own place I might purchase an isolation tank and use that as a means to sort myself out. :larry
What does that have to do with spirituality/religion? I mean, LSD can create a spiritual experience, but it isn't spirituality in itself.Spirituality, to me, encapsulates altered states of consciousness through psychedelics, meditation, sensory deprivation, etc. :yeshrug
Good on you.Yeah, once I quit my 2nd job after July I'll definitely be outside more.
I think the best thing you could do is "get outside more".
Maybe getting a little bit of sunshine on you will help, you know vitamin D deficiencies and stuff.
What type of meditation do you do?Vipassana.
How can you think psychedelics encapsulate a spiritual consciousness if you've never done them?From some of the accounts that I've read and listened to.
Okay. What experience did you have with vippasana?Can't really say that I've "experienced" much so far. I mean, I'm just starting out.
Don't you have to sit for long sessions in vippasana? My zazen meditation times are 20-30 minutes a sit.I don't believe there's really a set time limit for vipassana.
http://www.science20.com/writer_on_the_edge/blog/scientists_discover_that_atheists_might_not_exist_and_thats_not_a_joke-139982
When researchers asked people whether they had taken part in esoteric spiritual practices such as having a Reiki session or having their aura read, the results were almost identical (between 38 and 40%) for people who defined themselves as religious, non-religious or atheist.:heh
The implication is that we all believe in a not dissimilar range of tangible and intangible realities. Whether a particular brand of higher consciousness is included in that list (“I believe in God”, “I believe in some sort of higher force”, “I believe in no higher consciousness”) is little more than a detail.
What type of meditation do you do?Vipassana.
I've only done around five 30 minutes sessions so far but once I quit my 2nd job I'll have more time to dedicate to it.QuoteHow can you think psychedelics encapsulate a spiritual consciousness if you've never done them?From some of the accounts that I've read and listened to.
I mean, I am of the mindset that everything can be and is a spiritual experience to some degree.
LSD was about the only time I've ever experienced anything close to spirituality. I'd take psychedelics over any traditional religion any day of the week.
At least the fleeting inner peace that comes with that doesn't force me to join in collective delusion.
I like organized religion :yeshrug
Or at least examining it as a social construct and wrestling with its concepts/learning about its greater ramifications in the human experience. I don't really have to deal with any dogmatic zealots on a regular basis so that probably colors my outlook; I understand how that could get annoying.
Some famous person said everyone should try LSD at least once.