Carl-Richard

When you realize you don't know nothing, you're just left with your best guess, but that also works.

My 333rd eye is opened far and wide. 13:01 (Volume warning.) (Volume warning for the entire album, I just posted because of the title.)

Like mentioned earlier, spirituality and religion isn't all that different when it comes to traps like beliefs vs. direct experience, or group-think, or dogmatism. Besides, New Agers will tell you things like "go out into the forest and meditate, that is where the real work is done" ...while typing on an internet forum... where they have thousands of posts. See what I'm saying? It's so obvious that you're craving these things I'm talking about. You're just making do with a constipated version of it. And when I present that case, what is the reponse? New Age dogma ("religion is about beliefs"). (@UnbornTao I didn't mean to sidetalk you like that, but it was what was on my mind ?).

It's the best artistic rendition of a bad trip I've ever experienced.

2000 years ago, you had religion The death of God was very recent.

@Lila9 *Claims to be spiritual* *Has 666 posts* ?‍♂️

So should we just be lonely New Age carrot farmers then? Is that a better alternative?

It's to serve as many human needs as possible. If you don't want it, you can reject it, but if it was indeed serving your needs, would you really feel the need to do that? Probably not, but again, if I was in charge, I wouldn't stop you. Also again, I'm of course not talking about force-feeding you, an old dog, a new way to interface with the world. This is for the youth. See if you can find the 7 features of the friend of the blue-haired nerd.

Spirituality is the search for the highest value ("the sacred"), be it God, Truth, Love, etc. New Age spirituality borrows concepts and practices from traditional spiritual traditions, but it does so in an incomplete way (examples are Ram Dass, Rupert Spira, Eckhart Tolle, Leo Gura, etc.). Traditional spirituality is found in things like Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, etc. New Age spirituality places much more emphasis on aspects like mysticism (the direct experience of the divine) and associated practices (meditation), while traditional spirituality has a more holistic approach to serving human needs (e.g. the Eightfold path in Buddhism, the four puruṣārthas in Hinduism, etc.). Also, the distinction between spirituality and religion is really less about substance and more about history. I just think of religion as traditional spirituality. Nevertheless, traditional spirituality is much closer to the type of grand narrative that I've been talking about than New Age spirituality.

It's possible to convince yourself that you've transcended parts of your humanity, or to become accustomed to your own trauma, while in reality you're just not living up to your full potential. Survival is not flourishing. Think about a grand narrative like an all-you-can-eat buffet. There are so many different types of food in one place, but you're so stubborn that you don't even want to taste it, and instead you want to spend your days growing your own carrots while all your friends are having fun in the restaurant. Religion is the all-you-can eat buffet, and New Age spirituality is the lonely carrot farmer.

I think if you had grown up in a society with a flourishing grand narrative, you would firstly be a different person, and secondly, you would be less likely to fall into the types of radical ideologies that you're experimenting with now, but if you still wanted to do that, maybe you should have the right to do that. Maybe that will be a part of the ideological portion of that grand narrative. It doesn't have to be Abrahamic fundamentalism.

Ideology by itself, if you reduce it down to a theoretical framework which you can adopt willy-nilly, isn't inclusive enough to get all your needs met. You need something bigger than that. You arguably shifted from focusing on one set of needs to a different set of needs. If you haven't already, watch the guy in the video explaining his 7 features of a grand narrative.

Nope, that is New Age spirituality — spirituality separated from its traditional backdrop. Spirituality is the search for the highest value (God, Truth, Consciousness, Goodness, etc.), and there are many other practices than meditation that are required for getting there safely. What Leo is providing on the side (personal development, psychology, philosophy) are a few examples. Meditation doesn't address all human needs, and without a grand narrative that addresses all human needs, you have to construct your own on your free time, and that is a process filled with traps. Whatever they stripped from Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever. They're virtually identical, just smaller scale. This applies to anything: politics, personal development, science, etc. Don't let yourself be discouraged by the lowest common denominator.

Yes. True. He has said he wouldn't like working with institutions. He likes to keep it close and cultish ? Same with government. Government 2000 years ago was garbage, and we had to make modifications along the way to get to something resembling functional government. Religion has been lagging behind in that process.

I'm just saying the need for a grand narrative is there, and an united world would in some way or another be united on the level of narrative.

It's odd to think that what New Age spirituality has been in just the last 50 years is what spirituality is supposed to be. That is very short-sighted.

You're not getting at the core of religion. It's not about "faith". It's about doing spirituality in a functional context.

Would you be against Leo's ideas and practices being consolidated into a tradition with codified practices and agreed-upon ethical frameworks, with proper institutions and large-scale communities, where you can easily go to other people for proper guidance and where you can be understood and encouraged by your friends and family?

I'm worried about the rivalrous games. This is my red herring: ? His name is Hegel.

You're not going to force it on anyone. You just need to have the right goal in mind and sow the seeds for it.

They tend to only pick the juicy parts, like meditation, and reduce all of spirituality down to that, which is dangerous. Spiritual people are not wise either. They reduce spirituality down to almost nothing, they dogmatically hold on to their "tradition", etc. They have the same problems. Besides, you're strawmanning religion by pointing at the fundamentalists. There are highly developed people who are pro-religion.

I don't understand what you mean.

Those are rare indeed. But do you ever feel like you're talking "at" people rather than "with" them?

"Rivalrous (win-lose) games multiplied by exponential technology self terminate. Rivalrous incentive has been the generator function of almost all the things humans have ever done that have sucked. Technologically mediated exponential suck becomes existential. Exponential tech cant be put back in the bag, so we figure out anti-rivalrous games or the human experiment completes. (Anti-fragility in the presence of decentralized exponential technology requires anti-rivalry.)" — Daniel Schmachtenberger

@Moksha Wow. Stairway to heaven.