I'm spiritual, but not religious...

[featherboa]

i like that except for how it's the job of one specialist instead of everybody

[fallbacktostone]

that looks like claude leviss strauss maybe (sp)

klonopin

[Necrometer]

indeed abram, via neckbeard

i was telling you that i've wrestled with this impulse as well when i said that.

everything you said there is exactly why this mumbo_jumbo-shaped hole in our brains is not best packed with the occupants of hotel drawers - I think it's OK if everyone's individual experience sounds retarded and is readily dismissed by someone who's part of a school... it's perfectly human.

re: TSIB trip, sure there were some mushrooms along my road from materialism to 2012, but I assure you they stood as waypoints and not citadels

I appreciate what you have to say about work - but that's something that will be in a given person and is meaningless if it's externally imposed. so fuck the amish. unless their genetically imbued with burly spirits.

I would help you with the information of entropy (and vice-versa!!!!) if it wouldn't spare you some all-important spiritual suffering

[fallbacktostone]

i suck of the dick but i am not truly gay, i just love the taste

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

[Necrometer]

turns out the holy ghost in febtus was chad all along

[fallbacktostone]

ok i cant go on anymore. your posts dont make sense but i think they will later. my eyes just cant see them. i posted my whitaker song because i felt like i was being ignored and i have to get up at 6 and if my sacrifices for this fucking place arent felt even in the abstract anymore than i have no use for any one of you

i hope i havnt wasted anyones time again

[fallbacktostone]

turns out the holy ghost in febtus was chad all along

.

that wasnt my actual follow up response you insulter it was just overlap because it takes me 3 times longer to post than it does the stupidest poster we have.

.

[Necrometer]

I'm just pullin' your payot

[featherboa]

> At one point he asked me about spirituality, and I gave him a definition, something about rejecting philosophical materialism without following the centrally controlled beliefs of a religion. I asked Davis what "spirituality" means to him, and he struggled to define it without using the word "spiritual".

[Necrometer]

fbts still has assigned reading material from post 1

I just saw this adorably retarded article over at CNN, you can read it or not, whatever.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

The increasingly common refrain that "I'm spiritual, but not religious," represents some of the most retrogressive aspects of contemporary society. The spiritual but not religious "movement" - an inappropriate term as that would suggest some collective, organizational aspect - highlights the implosion of belief that has struck at the heart of Western society.

Spiritual but not religious people are especially prevalent in the younger population in the United States, although a recent study has argued that it is not so much that people have stopped believing in God, but rather have drifted from formal institutions.

It seems that just being a part of a religious institution is nowadays associated negatively, with everything from the Religious Right to child abuse, back to the Crusades and of course with terrorism today.

Those in the spiritual-but-not-religious camp are peddling the notion that by being independent - by choosing an "individual relationship" to some concept of "higher power", energy, oneness or something-or-other - they are in a deeper, more profound relationship than one that is coerced via a large institution like a church.

That attitude fits with the message we are receiving more and more that "feeling" something somehow is more pure and perhaps, more "true” than having to fit in with the doctrine, practices, rules and observations of a formal institution that are handed down to us.

The trouble is that “spiritual but not religious” offers no positive exposition or understanding or explanation of a body of belief or set of principles of any kind.

What is it, this "spiritual" identity as such? What is practiced? What is believed?

The accusation is often leveled that such questions betray a rigidity of outlook, all a tad doctrinaire and rather old-fashioned.

But when the contemporary fashion is for an abundance of relativist "truths" and what appears to be in the ascendancy is how one "feels" and even governments aim to have a "happiness agenda," desperate to fill a gap at the heart of civic society, then being old-fashioned may not be such a terrible accusation.

It is within the context of today's anti-big, anti-discipline, anti-challenging climate - in combination with a therapeutic turn in which everything can be resolved through addressing my inner existential being - that the spiritual but not religious outlook has flourished.

The boom in megachurches merely reflect this sidelining of serious religious study for networking, drop-in centers and positive feelings.

Those that identify themselves, in our multi-cultural, hyphenated-American world often go for a smorgasbord of pick-and-mix choices.

A bit of Yoga here, a Zen idea there, a quote from Taoism and a Kabbalah class, a bit of Sufism and maybe some Feing Shui but not generally a reading and appreciation of The Bhagavad Gita, the Karma Sutra or the Qur'an, let alone The Old or New Testament.

So what, one may ask?

Christianity has been interwoven and seminal in Western history and culture. As Harold Bloom pointed out in his book on the King James Bible, everything from the visual arts, to Bach and our canon of literature generally would not be possible without this enormously important work.

Indeed, it was through the desire to know and read the Bible that reading became a reality for the masses - an entirely radical moment that had enormous consequences for humanity.

Moreover, the spiritual but not religious reflect the "me" generation of self-obsessed, truth-is-whatever-you-feel-it-to-be thinking, where big, historic, demanding institutions that have expectations about behavior, attitudes and observance and rules are jettisoned yet nothing positive is put in replacement.

The idea of sin has always been accompanied by the sense of what one could do to improve oneself and impact the world.

Yet the spiritual-but-not-religious outlook sees the human as one that simply wants to experience "nice things" and "feel better." There is little of transformation here and nothing that points to any kind of project that can inspire or transform us.

At the heart of the spiritual but not religious attitude is an unwillingness to take a real position. Influenced by the contribution of modern science, there is a reluctance to advocate a literalist translation of the world.

But these people will not abandon their affiliation to the sense that there is "something out there," so they do not go along with a rationalist and materialistic explanation of the world, in which humans are responsible to themselves and one another for their actions - and for the future.

Theirs is a world of fence-sitting, not-knowingess, but not-trying-ness either. Take a stand, I say. Which one is it? A belief in God and Scripture or a commitment to the Enlightenment ideal of human-based knowledge, reason and action? Being spiritual but not religious avoids having to think too hard about having to decide.

it's so stupid I think everyone is mandated to get on board with SBNR on principle

[featherboa]

Ugh.

Abraham was SBNR

[fallbacktostone]

i know how it sounds coming from me but i'm really not sure what i was getting at (and why) when i was posting in this thread. like i hate to be that guy but i actually don't remember posting any of this either. i'll have to read it all again and i'll start with the first post. on my my solemn message board honor.

[Necrometer]

it was a blaze of glory for sure

I'm not mad or anything I just thing there's a special form of detestation you need to experience by opening up that spoiler box

[riley-o]

Look I'm not going to defend the original article or anything because of course it's terrible but I can't help but agree with the part of the reasoning that says "if you want to learn something, go to a good teacher who's an expert on the subject" and it seems like that's what's being fought against here because everyone seems to think they're already an expert on the subject

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

I'm trying really really really hard to not relate this to all the untrained meatheads I meet who are convinced they just magically know how to fight

So if you have no interest in the subject and just don't care))) then fuck whatever, shut up about it

But if you're going to claim the spiritual label for yourself while having not even idea one about the language of God and you just, you know, feel it man..

[Necrometer]

But if you're going to claim the spiritual label for yourself while having not even idea one about the language of God and you just, you know, feel it man..

but all the external shit is merely constructs arising from that feel within us

your premise is like saying you can't study the foundations of electricity until you have purchased a toaster

philosophy almost holds a parallel: if you just use your brain and your heart you can regenerate a lot of the main teachings of philosophy on your own; that doesn't make you an expert so you should learn in all the ways that benefit you; this is actually accepted in the case of philosophy because there aren't billions of assholes telling you to follow ONLY Plato and ignore everyone else, as is the case for spiritual shit

or like relationship counseling - it's a scam when the customers are intelligent/mature people since that stuff is way too personal for any external entity to be an expert; same goes for spirituality I think

I might be full of shit, don't take this too seriously

[the awesome Assassin]

So if the Jets lose to the Seattle, do you thing Ryan will put Tebow in as starter?

[the awesome Assassin]

I mean that's probably throwing in the towel for season I guess.

[the awesome Assassin]

And Ryan, never wanted Tebow, pretty obvious from his playing time, but I guess he'll get fired and blamed.

[the awesome Assassin]

Maybe that's why Ryan hasn't been a loud mouth goof off this year. He knows the Jets are screwed.

[krudmonk]

[riley-o]

But if you're going to claim the spiritual label for yourself while having not even idea one about the language of God and you just, you know, feel it man..

but all the external shit is merely constructs arising from that feel within us

your premise is like saying you can't study the foundations of electricity until you have purchased a toaster

No it's like saying you can't study the foundations of electricity without either going through the painstaking rigors of rediscovering what others have already discovered, or learning from an expert. That's a big difference

Likewise, while all the external shit may well be constructs, learning about the constructs of others who have experienced much before you and thought and learned and written about it for their entire lives may just save you some time and effort and progress you further along than doing it all yourself

[altars of radness]

Maybe people are hesitant to investigate someone else's teachings/findings on spiritual topics because they already know, at some crucial, logical, oft-repressed level, that what they're about to study is just more delusional bullshit.

[Necrometer]

Maybe people are hesitant to investigate someone else's teachings/findings on spiritual topics because they already know, at some crucial, logical, oft-repressed level, that what they're about to study is just more delusional bullshit.

heheh

But if you're going to claim the spiritual label for yourself while having not even idea one about the language of God and you just, you know, feel it man..

but all the external shit is merely constructs arising from that feel within us

your premise is like saying you can't study the foundations of electricity until you have purchased a toaster

No it's like saying you can't study the foundations of electricity without either going through the painstaking rigors of rediscovering what others have already discovered, or learning from an expert. That's a big difference

Likewise, while all the external shit may well be constructs, learning about the constructs of others who have experienced much before you and thought and learned and written about it for their entire lives may just save you some time and effort and progress you further along than doing it all yourself

OK. I guess I have a kneejerk reaction against the vast majority of "spiritual experts" because it's all couched in the desert death cults. Like either you're learning at the school of organized megareligion (total bullshit where most of the "teaching" is bullet-point indoctrination combining feel-good soul-stroking with scary afterlife threats) or you're learning from some random underground oldwolf spirit guru who isn't going to convince the author of that initial quoted text (or you?) of anything since the "common voice" of all these earnest SBNR learners averages out to disjointed noise. Maybe I am naive/ignorant - from which expert would you advise a spiritual noob to learn from?

[the awesome Assassin]

Maybe people are hesitant to investigate someone else's teachings/findings on spiritual topics because they already know, at some crucial, logical, oft-repressed level, that what they're about to study is just more delusional bullshit.

What does this have to do with Tebow blocking on punts..??

[Chad]