Carl-Richard

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Everything posted by Carl-Richard

  1. Well, firstly, there is already a word for that: "the mystical experience", which is the goal of mysticism. Secondly, what about the New Agers who don't identify themselves with mysticism (i.e. the crystal healing astrology people)? Are they just religious then? But New Agers don't like being called religious, you should know that The problem is that you'll fall short of describing a large chunk of people who call themselves spiritual. Your definition no longer becomes an attempt to describe the behavior of people at large, but rather a way to satisfy your own biases ("spirituality = mysticism"), which is not scientific. Maybe you don't care about being scientific, but I'm just telling you that is what it is. Well, firstly, as I explained in another post above, mysticism is in 99.999% of cases practiced with tools that are not themselves direct experience. Deciding which meditation style to use (or deciding to meditate at all), deciding which position to sit in, how many minutes to sit, etc., are all based in conceptual ideas that are not themselves direct experience. Secondly, you did smuggle a lot of individualistic cultural assumptions into your previous answer, which also affects how your mysticism is practiced. For example, you'll probably be inclined to meditate alone in your room, without following elaborate techniques that have been developed over millennia in various mystical traditions (but rather some basic technique that you learned online), and of course without having a well-established community that you can go to for wisdom and guidance. I think this is actually a sad and scary thing, that spirituality (and mysticism) has largely been conceived as an DIY activity. Because when you're cast out into the spiritual wilderness and you experience your sense of reality collapsing before your very eyes, you might have an averse reaction that needs immediate help, but of course, you have nobody to go to (except internet forums of course, which are not exactly a fount of wisdom). A lot of unnecessary trauma is created from this cultural misappropriation of mysticism (I'm talking from experience). Do Buddhists not seek Enlightenment/Nirvana? Do Hindus not seek Moksha? Do Christians not seek Salvation? I'm curious, how many religious people have you talked to that you respect as thinkers or otherwise? You might want to try that.
  2. I like Zinnbauer's definition: spirituality is "the personal or group search for the sacred" (the "highest value"), and religion is "the personal or group search for the sacred within a traditional context". How you define "traditional context" is of course dependent on history. What people consider "spirituality" today might be the religion of tomorrow, merely by the fact that it's seen as traditional or "old". That is also why it makes little sense to treat them as very different things, because the difference is only created by who views it and when, not what is the actual substance of the phenomena (and the actual substance is generally the same). The actual substance could be described as the overall structure or dimensions of the phenomena: concepts, ideas, doctrines, institutions, rituals, symbols, etc. This structure is the same for all forms of "search for the sacred", both spirituality and religion. What might differ between different forms could be for example the level of institutional and doctrinal integration (for example New Age and folk religions seem low on that scale while the World religions seem high on that scale). Again, the sacred is not necessarily identical to mysticism, or the "goal" of mysticism (direct experience of Oneness, God, etc.), but in your case, it might be.
  3. @UnbornTao Guidance, either by your own intellect, intuition or sense, or by some outside source, is in 99.999% cases an inevitable part of not just spirituality or religion, but mysticism (the seeking of "direct experience"). Unless you spontaneously awaken and spontaneously accept this new existence (which are two separate and highly unlikely events, especially in conjunction), guidance is something you'll run into on the path. Whether you want to claim that guidance is just a game the ego likes the play or whether there is actual causal significance between guidance and the end goal, before the end goal is realized, guidance is in 99.999% of cases encountered. Therefore, to try to separate guidance from the activity of mysticism, is hopelessly futile. You can try, but don't pretend you're in that boat. You're not the noble savage or naive miracle saint that can speak from that position. You're contaminated goods, filled up to the brim with information and stories that contradict the ideal you're espousing (which is actually not a problem — only insisting on the contradiction is). As for making the case for causal significance, my little brother has reported to me several ego death experiences, even sober ones. He does not meditate, he does not consume spiritual concepts. By all means, he has had spontaneous awakenings (by my judgement, as someone who also has had them). That said, he did not accept them as himself or as reality. He saw them as something foreign and largely unwanted, a source of confusion and ambivalence. It was the same for me the first time I had one, and it was only after I sought guidance and identified it within the spiritual frame that I started viewing it as something desirable (at least in principle) and that I started actively pursuing it. And this is not unique to me or my brother: there are other famous stories of the same phenomena. So spontaneous awakenings aren't enough, and spontaneous acceptance is hard to come by. What guidance can help with is to make yourself aware of the importance of things like acceptance. Whether that helps towards the actual goal of acceptance is another story, but at least the possibility is there. At least the alternative seems less likely. Besides, what else can you do? As soon as you read one letter of a book or a post about spirituality, your mind will be forever tainted by this new information; your way of conceptualizing your own goals and ambitions, your own spiritual quest, is forever changed (and maybe for the good). If you want to live in this world, you have no choice but to seek and/or accept guidance. So I don't see much value in insisting on putting the genie back into the bottle. Rather work with what you've got and acknowledge the limitations.
  4. The outcome is that we can get more clear on what we think spirituality and religion is. By the way, I'm not saying it's useless to distinguish between spirituality and religion. I'm saying the distinction is not based on substantial differences but rather something trivial like history. What you seem to refer to as "spirituality", many academics like to call "New Age religion". And again, to distinguish it from "traditional religion" (e.g. "world religions", "organized religion"), they generally point to historical and cultural developments: New Age is a religious movement originating in the early 70s and is compatible with individualistic and (post)modern values. New Agers tend to value individual expression and pick and choose among different religious traditions for inspiration but are not dedicated to a single tradition. So the core of New Age and traditional religion is the same, only the cultural clothing is different. New Age is of course not necessarily about mysticism ("direct experience"), which explains the general connotation of the word in these circles ("New Agers only care about crystals, spirits, astrology, reincarnation, etc.; essentially just beliefs"). Likewise (and more obviously), traditional religion is not necessarily about mysticism either, which also explains the general connotation of that word in these circles ("religion is about beliefs"). But of course, mysticism does exist both in New Age and traditional religion. To say that New Age and traditional religion are about beliefs is only one part of the picture. Like many people in these circles, you seem to place an equal sign between spirituality and mysticism (direct experience), but at the same time, you couch it in an individualistic and modern cultural frame ("your personal spiritual journey"). Could it be that these cultural values make up the "doctrine" of your religion? Could it be that if you had lived 1000 years in the future and looked back at your current self, you would've called yourself religious, because you would've clearly seen the cultural values as an arbitrary addition to the higher goal of mysticism? I think the same thing would've happened if you had lived as a mystic 1000 years ago. Anyways, if we are to sum up your statements into a coherent whole: you seem to follow a religion with an individualistic and modern cultural frame with an emphasis on mysticism, which roughly adds up to New Age religion.
  5. Challenge accepted:
  6. I doubt he ever gave that as a prescription. Rather, your need for sleep will naturally drop when you develop a calmer baseline state.
  7. I have an idea: let's try to look at the behavior of people who call themselves spiritual/religious and go from there.
  8. You can learn about direct experience through any religion, just like all the mystics throughout history have. Conversely, you can gather a lot of beliefs from self-proclaimed spiritual people that have nothing to do with direct experience. The stereotypical example there is crystals and tarot readings, but also just deciding which spiritual practice to pursue has an element of faith and belief in it. You'd make a good altar boy Yep, you seem to be well-versed in the individualistic "spiritual" doctrine. Well, that's what many academics seem to do. Distinguishing religion from spirituality, without merely pointing to social/cultural/historical happenstance, is actually a hard problem. I'm aware that you're giving me the "common sense" distinction that the majority of (secular) people in society seem to use, but I want you to go a little deeper. Again, you're showing good adherence to the doctrine of individualistic "spirituality". That's good
  9. Haha this guy is a freaking ninja. Like, just wow: 1:25
  10. They say that good music keeps you at the edge between familiarity and surprise. Too familiar becomes boring, and too surprising becomes hard to follow. Musical improvisation is the manifestation of this in real time, and you can usually notice when the player is engaging in well-established/familiar patterns ("licks") and when the player is creating something completely original. I'm used to improvising a lot on guitar, and I've noticed that I'm able to imagine impossibly intricate and original lines of improvisation in my head, but I'm in no way technically advanced enough to manifest that through my instrument. When I listen to the most complete virtuostic improvisational players out there, even though they can come very close many times, I always feel a tension between boredom and impenetrability. Of course, this desire I have of hearing the most hyper-creative lines of notes that I can possibly imagine is impossible to fulfill. It's completely relative to my unique conception of music, and I would probably never in a million years get to hear somebody produce even 10 seconds of those exact notes (which would be absolutely transcendentally orgasmic if it happened). Nevertheless, I know two players who come extremely close, and I'll try to weigh to which extent they're too "boring" ("musically conventional" is a better word) or too impenetrable (too melodically or harmonically complex) relative to my impossible standard of imaginative perfection. Guthrie Govan (obviously). It's tricky, because he is so versatile that he often fluctuates between too conventional (like bluesy bendy stuff) and too complex (like jazzy shredding stuff). I'll give an example for each player: Allan Holdsworth is notoriously known for being impossible to imitate by other players. For reference, Guthrie Govan can imitate virtually anyone but him. He often becomes too complex. I sometimes have to listen to his songs 30 times to understand what he is doing (like the run at 1:28 in the video below). (Btw things become more interesting around 0:40).
  11. For example, the image you posted. It's not direct experience. It's a teaching, a pointer. Doctrine: "direct experience is paramount", "looking inward", "personal exploration", "non-duality", "you are God", "you are Infinity", "reality is One". Rituals and practices: meditation, mindfulness, yoga, self-inquiry, contemplation, psychedelics. Faith community: Actualized.org, spiritual YouTube channels, other internet forums, spiritual retreats, Buddhist monasteries (?)
  12. @m0hsen @UnbornTao If you take a look around, self-proclaimed spiritual people tend to rely on teachings which are not themselves direct experience, which seems according to your definition to be religion. Self-proclaimed spiritual people tend to fall into the same behaviors of being guided by faith, belief, conjecture, hope and belonging as religious people. A more defining difference is that they tend to do it in a different social and cultural context. This is evident by how 99% of threads in this place are about how somebody "doesn't get it", "you're taking things on belief", "you're conflating absolute and relative", "don't conflate the concept with the experience", "false teachings", "what people don't seem to understand about awakening", "how do I awaken?", "is this awakening?", etc. In other words, belief is an integral phenomenon to spiritual communities, same as religious communities. But sure, some religious people seem to place belief higher than direct experience, but it's not a particularly defining distinction.
  13. Who were some of the first spiritual teachers in history?
  14. You don't think religions teach direct experience? Don't confuse the concept of Religion with actual Religion.
  15. Spirituality and religion should be inside the same bottle
  16. But are genes for brain hemorrhages dependent on genes for neuroticism?
  17. If you'll allow me a moment of starry-eyed idolization of a spiritual guru, it does seem like he has a "third eye" kind of control of it though. He seems to only give in once it's absolutely necessary, which for him is apparently multiple brain hemorrhages deep. And it's not completely mysterious either: people in these states of consciousness tend to be incredibly resilient, and the same can be said of their intuitive foresight (or luck or whatever). If your goal is to run arguably the biggest "spiritual" organization in the world as smooth as a whistle, and you have these qualities, the level of damage or dysfunction where you feel like tapping out will be significantly higher than most people. That said, maybe he got out of his depth and was simply lucky he didn't die. As for spirituality not being a cure for genetic ailments, it's not like you can avoid a brain hemorrhage if that is what is going to happen, but how you deal with it in terms of healing is very dependent on things like your mental state and general physical health. This is mainstream knowledge now. If you take a course in biological/health psychology, it's all about the fuzzy boundaries between mind and brain: psychosomatic illnesses, functional somatic disorders, subjective health complaints, the placebo effect, mental coping and appraisal being an integral component of the stress response, mental coping and cognitive therapies being used to deal with chronic physical illnesses, mental disorders like PTSD being associated with negative physical health effects like cardiovascular disease, the 7 factors of "resilience" that protect you from disease are mental/social in nature, etc.
  18. Maybe worse when you literally work through multiple brain hemorrhages 🤔
  19. I dunno, when somebody posts something psychedelic in the psychedelic section, my first thought isn't "it must've been a mistake". I guess this is us being on the opposite sides of the autism-psychosis spectrum 😆 (differential sensitivity to subtle cues like context markers 🤓).
  20. Did he post this in the psychedelics section? Are you tripping?
  21. I want to count how many times this exact point has been made on this forum and create a live counter for it on the top of the spirituality section so that maybe one day people will become bored of it.