Posted inPersonal/Stories Taoism/Tai Chi

I dreamed within a dream. Felt a lot like reality.

Usually I don't pay much attention to my dreams. They seem to be the brain's way of processing waking life events, albeit in a often disconnected and bizarre fashion. But last night I experienced a dream that was coherent enough to be philosophically quite interesting. I suspect some of the content had to do with my going through some old files yesterday, keeping some folders and discarding others. I also drove my Mini Cooper to town and back, taking turns on our rural road the way I usually do: vigorously. My dream started out with me driving on what seemed…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Meditation should be pleasant, not a chore

This morning my pre-meditation reading was a chapter on Wu-Wei (non-action) in Alan Watt's "Tao: The Watercourse Way." The passage below reminded me of how different my meditation period is now that I've become churchless, unreligious, and dogma shunning. In a footnote to a preceding paragraph, Watts says that he is a "deplorable heretic" to those Zen practitioners who favor the "aching legs" brand of Buddhism, since to them long periods of meditation are considered to be key to enlightenment. On the other hand, those who understand the Tao delight, like cats, in just sitting and watching without any goal…
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Posted inReality Science

We are to the brain as the cosmos is to us

What's our biggest problem in life? Us. Ourselves. If there wasn't any me, I wouldn't be dissatisfied, unhappy, or feeling that a situation should be different from how it is. Of course, I also wouldn't exist. For most people, not being anything isn't an attractive solution to the irritating somethings that are part and parcel of our daily existence. But perhaps there is an in between, a middle ground which comfortably avoids the extremes of too little me (personal non-existence) and too much me (ego-encapsulated anxiety). This is the promise of many forms of spirituality, philosophy, psychotherapy, mysticism, meditation, religion,…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Why we can’t imagine the moment of our death

Thumbing through a recent issue of The New Yorker last night, I came across a thought-provoking paragraph about mortality in a personal history piece, "The Aquarium," by Aleksandar Hemon. There's a psychological mechanism, I've come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant fear and humiliation of absolute helplessness, it would be very hard to live. It would be unbearably obvious that death is inscribed in everything that constitutes life, that any moment…
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Posted inMorality Science

92% of Americans believe in God. Are they normal?

Yesterday I was reading TIME magazine and came across a factoid that 92% of Americans believe in God. My first reaction? Wow, I'm part of a distinct minority. Checking on the Gallup web site, I learned that this percentage is down only slightly from the 1940's, when the polling firm started asking this question. In 1967, when I was a godless existentialist drug-crazed college student, 98% of my fellow citizens believed in God, making me even more of an exception. But am I abnormal? Another survey found that only 1% of people in the United States said they've never believed…
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Posted inGod Humor

I’m an atheist who is beloved by God

Bow down to me, religious believers, because I am the exalted one, God's most favored favorite, the beloved of whoever or whatever divinity -- assuming such exists -- lies at the heart of reality. How do I know this? In the same way the true name of God, Galobet, came to me in a French Roast-fueled revelation five years ago. So after sipping my way through some pre-meditation reading, my consciousness was marvelously attuned to Galobet’s divine message. I was flying high on the swiftly beating wings of caffeine. This proximity to Galobet’s heavenly realm allowed me to hear his…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A guru should know if he is God

Sometimes visitors to this blog ask me, via a comment or email, if I'm bitter about the thirty-five years I spent as a devotee of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) spiritual teachings. Meaning, I guess, do I feel letdown, deceived, or maliciously manipulated by the guru who initiated me in 1971 (Charan Singh) and/or his successor, Gurinder Singh, who became the head of RSSB after Charan Singh died in 1990? The truthful answer basically is no. My feelings about my "divorce" from Radha Soami Satsang Beas are pretty much the same as my feelings about the ending of my…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Humor

I like “The Thinking Atheist.” He reminds me of me.

Recently I came across The Thinking Atheist web site. It's slick and sophisticated looking, which distinguishes it from my Church of the Churchless minimalist blog design. But when I turned to the FAQ page and read the witty Q and A's of The Thinking Atheist, I realized that I was in the presence of a kindred non-soul. Namely, someone with a sense of humor who has had to deal with many of the same questions and issues that I have. This guy was a Christian of 30 years and a former Christian broadcaster. He says: I finally started "thinking" for…
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Posted inScience Universe

Embrace uncertainty, shun dogma — be a possibilian!

Dichotomies are limiting. Also, unrealistic. Theist/atheist. Believer/skeptic. Conservative/liberal. Follower/leader. Human/animal. Matter/energy. The world comes in a lot more flavors than just vanilla and chocolate. There's all sorts of shades of gray between black and white. Reality doesn't completely conform to how we Homo sapiens' conceptualize it. This is one reason I like David Eagleman's "possibilian" philosophy so much. (I've blogged about it before here and here.) Eagleman is a scientist. He recognizes that the scientific method is more than passively open-minded; science also actively seeks out new possibilities, creatively wondering "what if... ." Yet this doesn't mean giving credence to…
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Posted inScience

Conscious awareness is a small part of who we are

Mystery is a big part of why people are attracted to religions. True believers in God, or some other supernatural entity, thrill to the notion that they're diving into a vast unknown spiritual ocean whose depths can't be fathomed. Lots of devotees also embrace the idea of surrender -- turning one's life over to a higher power who knows better than we do what is good for us. Well, modern neuroscience has some news for these religious folks: if you want mystery, unfathomability, and surrender of your conscious will, look no farther than right here and right now. Because the…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Religions

Humans are naturally optimistic. Which helps explain religion.

Most people's brains are hard-wired to generate an optimistic outlook on life. Evolution, it seems, has favored an ability to look into the future and see good things happening. Such is the message of TIME magazine's cover story this week, "The Optimism Bias." It's a highly interesting article. Tali Sharot, the author, says that "optimism starts with what may be the most extraordinary of human talents: mental time travel, the ability to move back and forth through time and space in one's mind." This ability was naturally selected for in the course of Homo sapiens' evolution because it had so…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

One million pageviews. Thanks, blog visitors.

Kind of fitting. It's Memorial Day here in the United States. And today this blog passed a memorable milestone: one million pageviews.  Feels good. Thanks for the good feeling, blog visitors. There's something about a million that's, well, substantial. Not that my ego cares about this meaningless stuff, of course. My many years of meditation have brought me enlightenment and ego-loss. Also, delusions. 
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Yes, us churchless folks are searching for truth

Ooh, I love good questions. Here's four. Nice! Marina offered them up in a comment to a recent blog post. Is there anyone here on this blog who is looking to realise the truth or are we more interested in realising how right we are, how wrong others are?Are we into defending our beliefs and condemning others for theirs?Are we more interested in getting 'facts' about others then finding out 'facts' about ourselves?Are we so much enjoying the 'dramas' that we don't care about the truth, the real truth about ourselves and realising that?Just wondering........ I found these thoughts fascinating,…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Rapture did happen last week — spiritually, not physically

Well, I shouldn't have made fun of Harold Camping, Christian evangelical, after his prediction that the Rapture (basically, the second coming of Jesus) would happen a week ago, on May 21. It turns out that Camping was right about the Rapture. But it was an invisible judgment day, not physical. So says Harold Camping, a seemingly reliable source about all things Camping'ish. I have to believe him, in the same sense that I have to believe the Bible, because it says in the Bible "believe the Bible." Anyway, I'm not worried about the Rapture. I was baptized Catholic and had…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Indian guru manifests to a dead person

I got an email message from a friend recently. He keeps up on media reports of what's going on in the life of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, a.k.a. "Baba Ji," the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas in India. Devotees believe that the guru appears to his disciples at the time of their death. So I appreciated the clever one line message -- which included a link to a news story. Who says Baba ji doesn't appear when someone dies?
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Worship should be of something real (which leaves out God)

Yesterday I finished listening to a Philosophy Talk podcast on "Worship." As always, I enjoyed the intelligent insights of the discussants, hosts John Taylor and Ken Perry of Stanford University, plus guest Daniel Speak of Loyola Marymount. This Philosophy Talk program had a different feel, though. Usually religion takes a backseat to secular humanism on the show, as befits the emphasis on philosophy (literally, from the Greek, "love of wisdom"). In this case, while Speak didn't broadcast his Christianity at full volume it was an obvious murmur that could be heard to some degree in just about every statement that…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Vedanta/Advaita

“The Ultimate Twist” — honest, creative, appealingly unconvincing

Suzanne Foxton, author of "The Ultimate Twist," is an occasional commenter on this blog. She has her own nonduality-oriented blog, Nothing Exists, Despite Appearances. (Tagline: "All there is, is this, exactly as it is") That last sentiment sums up how I felt about her book after I finished reading it. I liked Suzanne's honesty and creativity. Yet my attitude toward nonduality was unchanged by her 116 well-written pages. Knowing that she'd written a novella based on her own life, I was eager to learn about Suzanne's struggle with addiction and other problems that come with being human. However, I also…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

How Sant Mat is moving from duality to oneness

OshoRobbins has put up an interesting series of three videos that explain the difference between Sant Mat 1.0 and Sant Mat 2.0. I've blogged about this in "Sant Mat, version 2.0" and "Has Gurinder Singh revised to Sant Mat to v. 3.0?" Whatever the version number, these YouTube presentations do a good job of making clear how the Radha Soami Satsang Beas version of the Sant Mat philosophy has evolved to become a far different creature from the traditional teachings. More broadly, OshoRobbins points out how a dualistic view of God, heaven, soul, and such can't co-exist with a monistic…
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Posted inGod Religions Science

Religion is like a placebo with no active ingredient

So you don't believe in God, but you want the benefits that come with being religious: feeling special, not being afraid of dying, embraced by a loving divine power, and such. No problem. You can keep your atheism or agnosticism and have your Godly presence also. This is the message that I draw from a fascinating study about placebos, which found they can be medically effective even when people know they're getting a fake drug. Patients can benefit from being treated with sham drugs even if they are told they contain no active ingredient, scientists have found. The finding suggests…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Thank God — the excessively religious 2011 Survivor is over

My wife and I barely survived watching Survivor: Redemption Island. There was so much irritating God-talk from Matt Elrod and his fellow Christians, we felt like we were going to overdose on religious absurdity. Our greatest fear was that some "Praise God, it's all His will!" contestant would win this reality show. Thankfully, pleasingly duplicitous (and seemingly non-religious) Boston Rob came through, finally becoming the Sole Survivor after four tries. Not surprisingly, the Christian Post loved Matt. The guy kept saying that God was keeping him going during his extended stay on Redemption Island, where he had to win duel…
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