Forget God, forget prayer, forget magical thinking. There’s no path in life other than the steps already taken.

Whatever happened to that Olympic maxim? The Olympic Creed states: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle.”

It just doesn’t work; it’s not in human nature: we do pin everything on winning: losing is more often than not seen as failure – particularly in our consumeristic societies. It no doubt stems from that most basic human drive: survival. You had to win against the lion or the neighbouring tribe, or you perished. And those feelings haven’t gone away, and there’s also the brain’s reward chemical, dopamine, that produces pleasure.

There are many ways to help ward off the crushing feeling of defeat – Malinin chooses ‘magical thinking’. Relying on some aspect of the supernatural can help alleviate our very natural feelings of fear, insecurity and helplessness. And of course, there are many community and social benefits. Also, as humans are geared toward pattern-seeking and agency, it is quite normal to assign meaning and purpose to what can seem like random happenings.

The figure skater, Alysa Liu, seems to have quite a different attitude. Perhaps she has a more stable psychology; maybe she just enjoys skating for its own sake and is happy to be good at it. Hers does seem to be a more stable attitude, but what makes it so is unknown. Maybe Brian touches on the reason: “I realise that the only path in life is marked by the footsteps we’ve already taken, since the future is unknown and largely, if not entirely, out of our control. So, the past cannot be changed, the future is unknown, and the present is what it is.”

Maybe Alan Watts offers a clue here: – “We are living in a culture entirely hypnotised by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between a causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realise that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than the present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality.”

So, his suggestion (or observation) then is to pay attention to the present moment and perhaps learn not to let its contents dictate one’s behaviour, thoughts and feelings.

Do you think 90 million followers are going to miss you? The path has also been described as a royal highway. But this is all just hearsay it’s an inner meditative analogy. And you just don’t know how to meditate. You thought there was something in it for you. You either didn’t understand or you did it for the wrong reasons. It’s not a competition. It’s not a race. Your arrival is assured at the time of initiation and that’s all you need a guru for and once that happens you don’t need them anymore. The inner guru never dies. The path is inside it starts maybe in your next life.

Some of the Indian yogic disciplines say that by following practice ABC or XYZ it is possible to raise one’s consciousness. Not theorise about in one hundred million clever or otherwise words.
In the same way training for climbing (I’m a long time climber) can or rather will, improve your climbing.
But I do agree that mere belief that by doing DEF or whatever leads to enlightenment (whatever THAT means !) can fool a lot of people into using their well earned discipline in what turns out to be fruitless.
It’s all a bit luck of the draw I’m afraid, but eg Brian and his 35 years attempting to be holy, is there something coming out of it ?
I think there is.
You Brian are a bit of a guru. You’re a teacher, because all these ideas you promulgate I think have had a good effect on a lot of people by making them think.
And the freedom of expression, and sheer broad mindedness on this forum is exemplary.

But…. Careful here… there may come a time when BH goes a bit quiet…. Because something happens….he just knows.
Chapeau !

“Calm, happy, and confident. No God or magical thinking required for that.”

Maybe it is. To imagine that one might actually perform something no one else in the world can, that is certainly magical thinking. To believe that fate brought you to this moment, at this event, in this very second, that your whole life of endless practice, waking before dawn, and practicing again after school until dark, all for some imagined future event?

How can we know? It is absolutely magical, because we don’t actually know everyone else in the world. So why would someone imagine such a thing? Because it is powerful. Because something compels them to do so. A fate no one can explain.

Because it means something. “I am a part of this world. Part of its past and its destiny, and there was a past, and is a now made of it, and that is part of tomorrow that is in the making. I have a role to play…maybe a glorious one. Or maybe all roles where I am alive are, for that reason alone, glorious.”

It’s all magical thinking, Brian, because none of us actually knows.
But if you are compelled to think in natural terms, or compelled to think in supernatural terms, no one actually knows.

Real knowledge isn’t thinking.

And great athletes already know this.

Knowing emerges from unknowing. It isn’t even magical thinking. It’s beyond thinking. And it was before thinking.

Why does it happen for different people differently? Really? You have no clue?

Only because it allows them just to focus on what they are doing. And that is going to be different for everyone. It allows them to act without such thinking at all, to not over think.

Magical thinking is just a byproduct of a far greater knowledge, real knowledge, being One with.

No words there.

But any sort of absurdity can help put your mind aside so you can let yourself go into that bliss and perform something…well…miraculous… on that ice, on that hill, on that high dive, in that court.

And then like all great artists, claim, you don’t know. It came through you. The performance was a life unto itself, and you had a moment where you and that performance were One.

Magic, Brian.
Miraculous.

The author’s problem is his (largely unconscious) compulsion to sum everything up.

When he was doing RSSB, he summed everything up in the Sant Mat paradigm. He even wrote a book about it called Life is Fair, which is the usual RSSB boilerplate delivered in a tone of perfect assurance that God does exist, that we are spiritual beings, and that life’s purpose matches that of the teachings of his guru Charan Singh Maharaj.

Then the author says he became an atheist, and for the last 20 years has been declaring that life is perfectly summed up by atheistic hard determinism.

Polar opposite creed, but same stance of declaring he knows the meaning of life.

With all of that, the author dances from book to book by different atheist gurus. Why? Because, despite his claim of utter philosophical assurance, he clearly feels something in his hard determinism creed is lacking and unsatisfactory.

I think the author is like the rest of us — he’s really not sure what he believes. But he’s definitely sure he doesn’t want to admit it.

@ Sant 64

I read your comments regularly. But I honestly feel that you consistently keep your eyes closed to the serious concerns surrounding RSSB and its current leadership. I have never once seen you raise a question about what GSD is doing or what is happening around him. Instead, you retreat into philosophical metaphors and abstract arguments.

Life does not run on philosophy alone.

If everything were just about inner determinism and neat metaphysical explanations, then why are there so many court cases associated with GSD? Allegations of financial irregularities, shell companies, money laundering, land disputes, even accusations connected to altering river directions — these are not abstract philosophical issues. These are real-world matters affecting real people.

Yet I have never heard a single word of concern from you about any of this.

When the author was in RSSB, you criticize him for seeing everything through the Sant Mat lens. But are you not doing the same now — interpreting everything through a protective lens that shields the Guru and the organization from scrutiny?

Throughout history, genuine spiritual figures have not remained silent in the face of injustice. Guru Nanak openly criticized Babur when he witnessed the suffering caused by invasion and violence. Saints and reformers have raised their voices against oppression, corruption, and wrongdoing — even when it was uncomfortable.

But where is that voice now?

If a spiritual leader claims moral authority, then questions about accountability are not attacks — they are legitimate. Silence in the face of serious allegations does not look like spiritual detachment; it looks like avoidance.

You say the author moves from one certainty to another. But perhaps what changed is that he began to question authority instead of defending it at all costs.

Experience changes people. Sometimes it reveals things they were once unwilling to see. That isn’t weakness — it’s awakening.

Before accusing someone of philosophical rigidity, it may be worth asking whether defending a leader without ever addressing troubling realities is another form of the same rigidity.

@ Sant 64

>> …. I think the author is like the rest of us — he’s really not sure what he believes. ….<<

The question is:
"Can humans be REALY sure of anything"
and if so
"HOW"

Humanity has developed different strategies throughout history but are they in absolute sense true?!

They serve the the day to day use, for sure, but are they not in the end also just a matter of belief?!

People do want to convince themselves that what they perceive, think and experience, is just what it is and use outside sources to convince themselves

However, to use "authorities" outside themselves, does make the problem only more complex, and adds to the doubt, as believing any expert, outside source is again a matter of believe and prone to doubt.

It is in a sense like the inherited genes, first from the parents and than prom the parents parents en so on until in the end what fanned out comes together to just one couple

Think of the divine inspiration of historical figures like Abraham and Mozes. !!

Because they were sure that their inspiration was divine, meaning outside or beyond themselves, not related to them but forced upon them, and accepted my their followers, then to this day …. the consequences of that believe, can daily be seen in Gaza and the westbank, where everything is done to force another people from the land that THEY say was given to them by god, through their prophets.

The problem is … that supposed divine authority .. failed to inform the chieftans of the world tribes then en later the ruling kings etc and now the presidents.

So the believe of the prophets was never proven!

Spencer suggests that: “To imagine that one might actually perform something no one else in the world can, that is certainly magical thinking.” Magical thinking though, as generally understood, is described as a cognitive distortion where an individual believes their thoughts, actions, words, etc., can influence external, unrelated events. It can be used as a coping mechanism – as Malinin did.

It’s fine to talk of human achievements as being magical, or, for that matter, the fact that the universe and life are magical, but that is merely a popular way of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings. I reckon that what Stephen Batchelor calls the ‘everyday sublime’ and when Wittgenstein says “The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is”, describes better the everyday and ordinary wonders of the world as it is and that it presents itself as being just this.

Saying that, it perhaps isn’t necessary to mentally describe it at all. Just to be alive in the moment as the senses feel – whatever they do feel – is all there need be; and actually is – all else being conjecture. It is relevant that Zen and Chan point out that all we can ever know of reality is what we experience now; all else being mental musings from the past or mental projections of the future.

We habitually miss the central, and perhaps the main point of our existence or as A. Watts in his direct way points out: “ Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.”

M y dear Wormwood,

So you “have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away”, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?

Humans are amphibians — half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined 0\ur Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation — the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life — his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dulness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.

To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul. He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks ; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself — creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled ; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself : the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little over-riding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs — to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived. Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

But of course the troughs afford opportunities to our side also. Next week I will give you some hints on how to exploit them,

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

It’s fine to speak of a successful artist who won gold, who arrived happy and joyous and with a relaxed style checked off all the boxes beautifully, competantly and won. It’s fine to point to them as a great example.

But I have another example for you to consider. An artist who, while winning many great awards, never won gold at the Olympics. And yet she is consideted by many to be the greatest female free style skater in all of skating history. An artist so far ahead of her time, while others saw her raw power and athleticism, few understood the immense grace, poetry and beauty of her artwork, because it doesn’t fit a traditional feminine style. An artist who liked great scores but wasn’t there for the score. Who never played it safe, who challenged her audience, who gave her life in her performance, who died and was reborn right there on the ice, for all to see, who suffered in pain in the midst of it all and who triumphed, not in the eyes of a judge, but in the mastery and truthfulness of her expression: Denise Bielmann.

https://youtu.be/SrI-L34_Jh0?si=nHdOKhQ3QdqaNTaa

Oops autospell
Denise Biellmann, the greatest figure skater in the history of the sport.

>> Forget God, forget prayer, forget magical thinking. There’s no path in life other than the steps already taken.<

It is my conviction that most of the people that left the path would have done so anyway, sooner or later, irrespective of the affaires of the dera that "made"them take that step.

Not that there is something wrong with the path they took, nor with them .. it was just taking the wrong tool for the job.

The path has nothing to offer them with regard to the motivations that made them step up that path