Carl-Richard

Have you never heard a Christian struggle with their belief? Regardless, when somebody tells you it's possible to get enlightened and you get curious and decide to practice, you don't sit down and practice for hundreds of hours if you believe it's impossible. You believe it is possible, and you arguably believe it is true. And you keep practicing despite the lack of "direct evidence". You only have breadcrumb trails, intuitions, glimpses, intellectual conviction, belief. Because you are religious. I'm defending you (and myself)

Even within the mainstream, there are some hardcore Christians that don't just do it for the community, the Christian nerds, the intuitive-introvert Christians, the INFP Christians who follow their own internal compass, the INTP Christians who care about the underlying truth. I believe they are intertwined. If you are curious enough about the truth that you pursue it, there is a belief born that it's possible, that it is true. Belief always involves doubt, ask any Christian. I sense an allergy to "belief" similar to an allergy to "group-think". Maybe it's something to look at rather than push away. The mistake is believing it's not already corrupted and that it's not an endless struggle. The belief of Christians is present in you.

How did this get derailed into "women are insane"? 🤡 That's pretty insane. Only a man could be that insane (jking; I won't enforce my edgy observation that most people on the forum are Bluuee 🟦).

There are some scholars that have a slightly different definition (search for "significance" in ways related to the sacred), which could capture some of the more mundane expressions of religion that we see today (e.g. going to church for the communal aspects and not so much for the sacred aspects). But yes, as a foundation, you find the sacred, and then you find various expressions around that which can be more or less direct or tangential. This is perhaps captured by Leo's "fake vs true spirituality" distinction, in that those who care less about the sacred (truth, Consciousness, the Absolute) and more about things that bring significance to their own lives (e.g. community, belonging), would be less "truly" spiritual. And you might notice the definitions aren't really that dissimilar anyways (at least on the surface), because you can load "significance" with the sacred itself, and mysticism (because for some, these bring a lot of significance to their lives). And when you simply define religion as the search for the sacred and then specify the different dimensions (intellectual, mystical, communal, etc.), you can explain the variety by simply people weighing the different dimensions differently (and therein you reconstruct an analog for "significance").

Leo is not the only New Age guru. Why? It was invented by religions, it is a part of religions and has been a part of it for millennia. The foundation of religion is the search for the sacred. It's true that belief is involved: you believe there is such a thing as the sacred, you believe you can describe it roughly and take steps towards achieving it. You believe that, not just Christians. Your religion places individualism and postmodernism as doctrinal and methodological cornerstones: "find it out for yourself", "you don't have to subscribe specifically to one doctrine or one tradition". That's described as New Age, New Age religion.

Yet religion is where science came from historically. You're confusing dogmatism and the intellectual/doctrinal dimension for religion. There are dogmatic scientists, stuck in their intellectual frameworks. There are dogmatic spiritual people, stuck in their intellectual frameworks. It is not specific or endemic to Christianity, or Judaism, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Jainism, etc. Leo didn't invent mysticism, religions did. Mysticism is a prolific dimension in various religions. What happened with the "mainstream" Christianity we see today was a slow process of generally phasing out mysticism and calcification of doctrine. It wasn't that mysticism was never there. The notion of apophatic theology contradicts this. Dogmatic Christians persecuted Galileo, but Galileo was a Christian.

You have a "search for the sacred" (the highest value), be it truth, Consciousness, God, the Absolute, the Good. You have different dimensions like intellectual frameworks (doctrine, theology), mysticism (experience of God), practices (e.g. psychedelics, meditation, contemplation, "prayer"), rituals (go to the Church of Actualized.org/forum and talk shit about e.g. the Catholic Church), institutions and communal aspects (e.g. again Actualized.org, YouTube, scienceandnonduality.org). Where they differ is mainly the cultural and traditional backdrop. New Age has a postmodern and individualist orientation where they pick and choose from religious traditions they like and create a smorgasboard of all kinds of religious stuff. Meanwhile "Christianity" (or what you call Christianity, which is actually a specific kind of Christianity, let's call it "traditionalist Christianity") is indeed more traditionalist and follows traditional Christian doctrines and practices more strictly. "The New Age paradox" which I coined earlier is the paradox that while they claim to be in favor of individualism and "doing it your own way" or "going it on your own", they claim so on platforms like Actualized.org or YouTube where like-minded people congregate to share their opinions and experiences, where they learn about practices and techniques and theology and doctrine endorsed in those spheres.

I didn't because I already knew what it was about: placing New Age religion as the true spirituality, anything else as fake. We also had a discussion about the variety that exists within Christianity, and you might remember I disagree with that as well.

Don't you remember our old discussions of me deconstructing the spirituality vs religion distinction for you? That I think your idea of spirituality (New Age) is actually indistinguishable from religion?

👍

I dispute that very claim.

It's interesting how "oh no, not the group-think!" everybody is 🫠 Ok I'll stop.

"Here on Actualized.org, we absolutely fetishize individualism, and if you don't, you are possessed by group-think". 🫢

What you try to repress the most, you become.

The irony with this and planning a retreat in the same thread (and saying "you should really heed what Leo said"). The New Age paradox.

It's terror management until you actually experience it. Then it's terror. For it to not become terror, you must drop it as a terror management strategy. Because if you use it to seek comfort or solace, that's the thing that must be let go of. You don't get to bring yourself into enlightenment. The self is the very thing that must be left behind. If you expect enlightenment to be for you, you will be disappointed when you get a taste of it. Because there is no you to be comforted, no you to be given solace. It's what exists before that thing.

@Elliott "There is no teacher or student, there is only the One" is a marketing trick to make him seem more enlightened and is more effective for drawing people in than saying "I'm enlightened and I can enlighten you". The latter is actually the most honest position, the former could be the position concerned about not turning people off. Prove me wrong

A word is not a model? What is a model?

If only people could apply the same kind of thinking for the S-word.

"You feel it more, but you're bothered by it less" — Ken Wilber (possibly paraphrasing).

But wouldn't Spira claim that embodying this teaching (that he happens to be teaching) leads to enlightenment? See how the framing ultimately is indeed about style and not substance? The flip into the absolute of "there is just the One, there is no teacher or student" is probably mainly a tool for pointing to the truth, maybe also an optics tool. But the substance is that he is a teacher and he is teaching enlightenment, he believes his teachings work, and therefore he would honestly have to answer "yes, I do believe I can enlighten people". But maybe @Elliott would say "optics matter, it decides how you pull people in and sets their expectations". That is definitely the case, but how much is it the case? If you're already paying 4000$ for a retreat, are you not already sold? And what if the optics of "I'm so enlightened that there isn't even a distinction between teacher and student", what if that is more alluring than the alternative? It's the case in music, humor, sex, that it's often that which is denied or left unsaid, or the gaps inbetween, or the play of subtlety, that causes the most excitement. And for spirituality, maybe particularly so.

Tried the magnesium glycinate again, and while it doesn't have the soul eviscerating effects of vitamin Evil, it makes me want to fall asleep (at the gym). Maybe the dose is too high (now 240 mg pure mineral weight) and there are some possible confounds, but man I can't remember ever having wanted to take a nap when warming up for deadlifts. Anyways, next I'll be trying magnesium malate.

Do you believe that Sadhguru and Spira, if they were allowed to be completely honest and not concerned about optics, would claim that they are able to enlighten people through their work?

That's so fucking dangerous to say.