Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

How meditation helped Yuval Harari write “Sapiens,” a terrific book

I absolutely loved Sapiens, a book by a historian that was like no history book I'd ever read before. It was filled with wonderfully fresh insights -- Big Astounding Ideas rather than little boring facts. My blog posts about the book will give you a feel for what the author, Yuhal Harari, wrought.  "Religion is just one of many stories humans have imagined""Imagined orders -- like religions -- depend on shaky myths"Given how much I admired Sapiens, when I saw the title of a post by Ezra Klein on the Vox site, I knew that I had to read "Yuval…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Looks like God in Human Form isn’t more powerful than a VCAT member

Here's a Radha Soami Satsang Beas related newspaper story that came to my attention via someone's Twitter feed that I follow: "Opponents to religious group Radha Soami Satsang Beas' worship centre in Green Wedge at Carrum Downs score win at VCAT." (VCAT stands for Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal) A religious group’s plan for a large worship centre in Carrum Downs has been scuttled after opponents had a stunning win at VCAT. In a decision handed down yesterday, VCAT member Michael Deidun overturned Frankston Council’s approval of a permit for the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) group’s new Australian headquarters…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Gurinder Singh, RSSB guru, “hale and hearty” after medical tests

Having been a member for many years of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a mystical/meditation-based spiritual organization headquartered in India, I'm still somewhat interested in going-on regarding the group's current guru, Gurinder Singh. So when someone I follow on Twitter shared a link to "Radha Soami Sect Chief Gurinder Singh Dhillon returns from Singapore hale and hearty," I was curious to read this Punjab News Express story. Note: Dera refers to the main RSSB center in the Punjab; "lac" is a hundred thousand. Punjab News Express/Jagmohan Singh AMRITSAR: Radha Soami Sect Chief Gurinder Singh Dhillon today who had flown to Singapore following…
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Posted inMorality Universe

Rejoice in the glorious indifference of the universe

I'm no Carl Sagan, but after coming up with the thought expressed in the title of this blog post I did some Googling to find an image to share which expressed that sentiment. So Carl Sagan and I are on the same indifferent wavelength, the difference regarding our realization of indifference perhaps being that I find this worthy of rejoicing in the gloriousness of it. Which is a decidedly minority opinion, because most people fall into these Belief Camps, which are not mutually exclusive: (1) Believing in a God who loves us, cares for us, watches out for us. Usually…
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Posted inPolitics

Trump is trying to turn United States into a theocracy. Resist!

There are lots of reasons to dislike what President Trump (I hate writing those two words) is doing to our country. He's out to wreck the environment, trash human rights, destroy our relations with international allies, further enrich the already wealthy, and make women into second-class citizens.  But now there's another big reason to Resist The Idiot: news that Trump is out to make our constitutional democracy into a Christian theocracy.  When I woke up this morning the first outrage to appear on my laptop was "Trump Vows to 'Destroy' Law Banning Political Activity by Churches." President Trump vowed Thursday…
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