I'm finding peace in Islam.

[Majed]

The thing is it's the religion of my family, and since I started learning more about it, and stopped resisting it, life feels better on a social level as well as on an emotional level. The truth is Islam can be like a regular religion, but it also can be a mystical path thanks to sufism. Anyways since I wanted to learn more about this tradition, as well as fit in better within my family and community I chose to accept it. 

[Majed]

Here are some cool videos on Islam: 

https://youtu.be/IkRbIwCQ7Q0 

[Raze]

No one should trust what you have to say. You bounce from view to view. It’s all an act. 

[Majed]

@Raze Why are you saying that ? 

[Twentyfirst]

@Majed You have been going back n forth admiring islam, renouncing it, questioning it, abstaining from sex, asking about hookers, etc

[Someone here]

@Majed sunnah Islam or Shia Islam?  You're Lebanese right habibi? 

I love Islam. But you just can't actually be an intelligent human being and subscribe to any religion. And this is the case for these reasons :

-existence is infinity .the Quran and any scripture no matter how filled with wisdom it is ..is a finite book. You're not gonna get all encompassing understanding by reading or even memorising a finite book .

-you can't seriously let someone else tell you what to eat and what not to eat and how to shave your balls and what to do after taking a shit etc .

-killing others because they are not Muslims is a mental illness and insanity .

-you are Allah .the best thing ever .that's the one single point Islam is trying to tell you but you're too stupid to get it .

 

[Hatfort]

If it brought you peace, that's fine.

Walk that path if it works for you, just be respectful with other people's faiths and or ways of living, as you want others to respect yours. 

[UnbornTao]

You already find it beneficial, so be happy with that. As long as you recognize that it is a belief system - and so separate from the truth, provided this is your goal - then there's no problem.

Edited October 10 by UnbornTao

[Basman]

Religion is a social game. You can't practice spirituality effectively while being locked into an ideology that presupposes that it has all the answer, especially when that religion is rooted in the middle-ages. Like, not eating pork makes no sense in the modern age. 

It's fine to play that game I think. It is a form of community. I've myself gone to church a couple of times for the experience. Just don't get lost in the sauce. Though I don't think you really need it.

Personally, it is impossible for me to subscribe to any one religion as "the truth". I'm too aware of how religion is a product of collective imagination. There might be aspects of that imagination that are rooted in something wise and spiritual, but those ideas are treated as dogma, making them effectively noise. Which is why you have to think for yourself. Most people are religious primarily because they where raised as such. They programmed/brainwashed depending on how you want to interpret that. That is huge when you consider the epistemic quality of religion. Which also explains why religion is intertwined with culture. Islam is culturally Arabic and vice versa, just like western culture is Christian and India Hindu. You cannot subscribe to religion without also subscribing to culture, which is to a large extent unavoidable. Western culture is rooted in christian beliefs and values. Though those beliefs and values have been watered down and lost their religious edge over time, those values where originally christian, like seeing nudity as shameful. 

[Viking]

6 hours ago, Twentyfirst said:

@Majed You have been going back n forth admiring islam, renouncing it, questioning it, abstaining from sex, asking about hookers, etc

Isn't it a natural path of someone truly questioning their views and trying to arrive at truth?

@Majed I feel it's good you found a piece of truth in islam. The thing to be careful of though are the false/toxic beliefs that often go with islam (like conquering the world, converting everyone to islam, women's rights, etc...). Depends on your environment I believe. 

[Twentyfirst]

2 hours ago, Viking said:

Isn't it a natural path of someone truly questioning their views and trying to arrive at truth?

@Majed I feel it's good you found a piece of truth in islam. The thing to be careful of though are the false/toxic beliefs that often go with islam (like conquering the world, converting everyone to islam, women's rights, etc...). Depends on your environment I believe. 

Yeah it's fine. He was asking why Raze said that so I just mentioned the facts

[MutedMiles]

On 10/9/2025 at 10:48 PM, Majed said:

The thing is it's the religion of my family, and since I started learning more about it, and stopped resisting it, life feels better on a social level as well as on an emotional level. The truth is Islam can be like a regular religion, but it also can be a mystical path thanks to sufism. Anyways since I wanted to learn more about this tradition, as well as fit in better within my family and community I chose to accept it. 

Any path that leads to peace is good. If I could understand Arabic i would read the actual works of Khalil Gibran, Also for most people it makes sense to stay close to your source, language and culture has an intricate way of seeping into one's DNA and foreign ideologies remain Alien to a certain extent no matter how deeply you incorporate them. It looks like a show or an act for some reason.

The truth is in you, just use the tools that are closest to you, don't go too far.

Edited October 11 by MutedMiles

[zazen]

On 10/11/2025 at 6:11 PM, MutedMiles said:

Any path that leads to peace is good. If I could understand Arabic i would read the actual works of Khalil Gibran

His The Prophet is also in English and is amazing - https://www.kahlilgibran.com/images/The Prophet Ebook by Kahlil Gibran.pdf

''You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.

You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living. And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.''

Edited October 14 by zazen

[AerisVahnEphelia]

Religion is bullshit and fantasy

[sholomar]

There's literally an infinite number of choices of everything these days for egos to "define their individuality" and "be themselves" whether it's cars, vacation destinations, sports teams, video games, or religions. Makes me chuckle.   Find your inner peace. How you get there doesn't necessarily matter as much. It's neurochemical reactions in the brain combined with external stimuli generating a result determined by genetics and environment. 

I've found 15 mg/day Lexapro to really help me achieve peace of mind, working on my thoughts and mindfullness without that reactive emotional animal brain always getting in the way with it's irrational evolutionary demands. 

Edited October 14 by sholomar

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Your family and society around you is always going to exert a significant influence over you, that's just how it goes. You can be told how much of a BS it all is countless times but at the end of the day, just for the sake of sheer day to day practicality, you'll end up abiding by the traditions

[Sea]

On 10/10/2025 at 5:11 PM, UnbornTao said:

You already find it beneficial, so be happy with that. As long as you recognize that it is a belief system - and so separate from the truth, provided this is your goal - then there's no problem.

I don't think it's possible to believe something and simultaneously recognize it as just a belief system.

You can be like Jordan Peterson and you treat everything in your holy book as allegory, but at that point why stick to one religion? Might as well take wisdom from multiple holy books if you don't really believe any of them.

[UnbornTao]

17 hours ago, Sea said:

I don't think it's possible to believe something and simultaneously recognize it as just a belief system.

You have a point. The power of a belief comes largely from the fact that it's seen as "reality," not as an adopted or made-up notion. It makes sense to say that recognizing your beliefs as such can feel threatening to your self-identity. 

Still, I think there's room for someone to consciously hold a belief and operate from it while remaining aware of what it is. For example, you might think of yourself as a kind person (or reserved, loud, whatever), and behave according to that self-image. Yet you can also see that as a "belief" - an aspect of yourself that was adopted at some point and isn't inherent to your person. It isn't who you are, existentially.

The main distinction to be made is that no belief is, or can be, the truth. Even when a belief is valid or sound, it's still a thought about - a representation - and in that sense, untrue.

Edited October 20 by UnbornTao

[zurew]

17 hours ago, Sea said:

but at that point why stick to one religion?

Because that particular frame and set of practices resonate with you more than other frames.

Its also about you picking and choosing a random aggregate of practices and frames vs doing things inside a more integrated whole, where things stick together.

 

 

The thing is that you will have an interpretation of your spiritual experiences and certain implications of those experiences will stand out and will mean different things to you depending on what frames you have.  Its probably good to have myths and people and teachings to turn to when it comes to making sense of your experiences and when you might go through  things like a dark night of the soul.

I dont think there is truly a frameless approach to it, because even when you bullshit yourself that you are completely agnostic ,you still pick a particular set of practices and you still aim for certain things (and you still have a bunch of foundational unconscious beliefs about yourself and the world that you might not even able to recognize/articulate but all of that still shapes your experience and motivations) and you are only open minded about certain things and even if you are open minded about multiple things, you arent to the exact same degree.

You do a set of practices to "get to" not-knowing , you never truly start from not-knowing. Even disintegration happens inside a particular narrative which gives you some sort of orientation.

 

 

Also, the funny thing is that if you take a look at how actualized.org works, then you might notice that it has a function of a badly performing pseudo-religion.  And as much as people like to pretend here that they are approaching spirituality in a frameless way  - the thing is that:

1) People necessarily start with an orientation (you dont just randomly do things for no reason, you aim for things and your aim already shapes and constrains your attention and behavior (shapes what set of practices you engage in - for example: you are not here to do practices to confirm that physicalism is true, you are here to confirm whether awakening is possible and or what awakening even is)

2) You believe (even if you want to say that you dont intellectually) , you still act out the belief that enlightenment is possible, otherwise you wouldnt even bother. Like if you are truly frameless, why take/act out a position on possibility, like why choose possibility over impossibility? 

3) When it comes to confirming things - you are not random about it, you necessarily prioritize what you want to confirm based on your pre-concieved  beliefs about what Truth might be and about where Truth might be "found" - more specifically, those unjustified beliefs of yours explain why you are willing to spend 30-40 years pursuing enlightenment and not willing to  spend 50 years studying the Bible and practicing being a Christian (or any other random thing).

4) You can notice, that just as with other religions - people come back here for feedback (come back to get feedback from Leo and from other people [who they think are enlightened], so that they can properly integrate and make sense of their experiences and not go insane and still be capable to survive and not lose their functioning in society)

 

The "solution" is to recognize that you arent above frames and you arent really engaging in anything trans-paradigmatic,because you practically cant start there (and frankly cant even "stay" there). You start with your practices  inside a frame  that resonates with you and you let it transform you and you let it transform your orientation and your notion what the sacred/Truth is along the way and hopefully you eventually have something non-conceptual/trans-paradigmatic and something existential in the end.

Edited October 20 by zurew