Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual ego worse than worldly ego

Losing the ego... what's up with that? In most religions, particularly Eastern ones, this is supposed to be a supreme goal of spirituality. Yet no one has ever seen an "ego," much less the absence of one. I've come to feel that "losing the ego" is one of those phrases that sounds like it means something -- and gets repeated in sermons, satsangs, and such as if it did -- but actually points to an absurdity. How would a person without an ego, a sense of "I," personal desire, look? How would he or she be different from other people?…
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Posted inReality

Beyond Ken Wilber’s bounded reality

I've got mixed feelings about Ken Wilber. Sometimes he strikes me as a self-absorbed guy who's fervently marketing his Integral Philosophy as the answer to every question, even though it strikes me as a conceptual exercise without much reality meat behind it. Then I read something Wilber has written and resonate with it. (A sampling of my divided opinions toward Wilber is here, here, and here.) I wasn't planning to renew my subscription to "What Is Enlightenment?" when the magazine changed it's question mark spots and became EnlightenNext, an even more brazen vanity massager for Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen…
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Posted inHumor

Seven days of sex — religion I can get behind

Or, on top of. That's one of the great things about this story of a mega-church pastor urging his congregation (married only, please) to have sex for seven days straight. It lends itself to double entendres. I watched a story about "Thou Shalt Not Abstain" on CNN and couldn't resist getting out my Flip VIdeo camera and beaming it up to You Tube. My favorite part is about 1:10 in, when a woman says that the pastor hadn't touched on this subject before. At least, "not in so much depth." Giggle, giggle. It's refreshing to see religion addressing down-to-earth human…
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Posted inReality

The meaning of life? Life.

Pretty obviously, I'm entering the simple phase of my philosophical trajectory. In my life I've thought a lot of complex thoughts. I've written some complex books. I've followed a complex spiritual path (Sant Mat, which has lots of rules and posits a dazzlingly involved cosmology). I've embraced the teachings of a guru, Charan Singh, who had advice on countless subjects associated with the inner and outer life of his disciples. Now, all this strikes me as way too much. As do the intricacies of every religion. Most scientists suspect that simplicity lies at the heart of reality, notwithstanding the seeming…
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Posted inBooks

End of the spiritual search

Given how many mystical, spiritual, and philosophical books I buy from Amazon, my favorite online book store should be cautious about carrying this title:"Beyond Awakening: The End of the Spiritual Search," by Jeff FosterIndeed, since I read this slim book (141 pages, whose message could be encapsulated on one or two) I haven't bought anything in the What's It All About genre. But give me time. I doubt that I'm really at the end of my spiritual search. Could be, though. I like a lot of what Foster has to say, which is supremely simple. He ends the book with...Yes,…
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Posted inReality

Boxing up varieties of belief

Most people don't like to be put in boxes. Meaning, categories. Hey, I'm an individual, unlike anyone else! we like to believe. Fair enough. But I see nothing wrong with putting how we believe into boxes. So I've done just that -- stimulated into belief-categorizing action by a question that's been running through my mind recently: Why do some people's proclamations irritate or please me more than other proclamations? I'm speaking generally here, about all sorts of utterances. Verbal sayings. Blog posts and comments. Books. Magazine articles. Any way that someone communicates a belief from their brain into mine. Sometimes…
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Posted inReality

Shared reality is better than private reality

Sometimes you hear people say, "He's off in his own private world." Now, this may not be such a bad thing. But few of us would want to be in a totally closed off fragment of reality, because that would be exceedingly lonely. Comments on a recent post got me thinking about shared (or "intersubjective," as one person put it) realities, versus private realities. In my experience, the most satisfying moments in life are when I feel connected with other people. Or with nature. Or with some other animate or inaminate entity, such as our dog -- or my newly…
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Posted inScience

Belief is in the brain, so beware

Believing in the supernatural is easy: our brains lead us down the belief road without our knowledge. So there's good reason to be skeptical of religious, mystical, or spiritual experiences.Much, most, or all of the time (depending on your level of skepticism) your brain is fooling you.Such is the fascinating message of Sharon Begley's "Why We Believe" in a recent issue of Newsweek. I read her piece the day after my wife and I believed we were at the right election night party place, but really weren't. We weren't in a supernatural frame of mind, but some of Begley's believing…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

If you can’t find the party, try another place

I want to suck as much meaning as possible out of yesterday’s marvelous election results. So I’ll keep the party going (sorry, Republicans) with a story about how I couldn’t find the party. Which bears quite a bit of resemblance to how I wasn’t able to locate the spiritual extravaganza that supposedly was rocking on a level of higher consciousness, according to the meditation system that I followed for many years. In both cases, it eventually became obvious that I wasn’t in the right place. But the interesting thing is how non-obvious obviousness can be, if you’ve got your mind…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Make life more of a silent movie

I'm fond of encapsulating the meaning of life in a pithy phrase. Only problem is, I keep coming up with different capsules. Back in my psychedelic-fueled youth, it was "the universe is a paper bag turned inside out." Recently, I realized that it was folly to "overlay the actuality of my day with an idealized version of it." Today, it's "make life more of a silent movie." This thought came to me, and it seemed so enormously profound I instantly knew it must be the key to understanding everything. I only wish I understood what I said to myself. But,…
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Posted inScience

Getting down to rock bottom reality

I've never understood why science isn't worshiped by religious believers. After all, most religions believe that God or a higher power created the cosmos. So seemingly the next best thing to knowing God would be knowing how our universe works, since it stands to reason that the consciousness of the creator would be reflected in the creation -- in the same way as the psyche of an artist shines through his or her paintings. Normally my meditation nook's reading corner has several science books nestled comfortably next to spiritual and philosophical titles. I jump back and forth between them most…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Small things can be the biggest

For me, one of the hallmarks of churchlessness is being content with the smaller side of life. Maybe this partly comes from aging, but not all of it. Yes, I recall my 50th birthday, when a friend told me: “Now you won’t worry so much about accomplishing all that you set out to do.” What was unstated I took to be, “because you’ve passed your prime and don’t have much time left.” Well, if that was true at 50, it’s even more so at 60. Yet I don’t think age alone explains the increased pleasure I get from everyday life…
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Posted inScience

Thumbs up to naturalism, evolution, and Palin fading away

Today Pharyngula, a terrific science/ progressive/ anti-religion blog, hit the mark with links to stories on three of my favorite subjects. Exposing Sarah Palin for the fool that she is. Palin is against science. She's for the teaching of creationism. She doesn't think humans have much to do with global warming. Picturing her as vice-president of the United States: too irrationally scary to contemplate. This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Death can’t be imagined

What do you think will happen to you after you die? If you're religious, many answers are possible. "I'll be in heaven." "My soul will exist without a body." "God and I will be a single consciousness."But even if you're a non-believer, there's a good chance that you still harbor notions of your continued existence. Seemingly it's super tough, if not impossible, for the human mind to conceive of nothingness. We're hard-wired to imagine that we'll always be something, rather than nothing.This is the premise of a fascinating Scientific American article by Jesse Bering, "Never Say Die: Why We Can't…
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Posted inReligions

Another reason to reject religion

I just got an email from someone who wanted to let me know about the dangerous immoralities of cults. He said this story left him speechless. Me too. Except I wanted to use a few words to write this post. The next time someone asks you, "Why are you so down on religion?" say "Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's because true believers make their children eat their own flesh." Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg is right: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

If a satguru isn’t God, what is he?

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I don't write as much about my experience with Radha Soami Satsang Beas anymore. My  of posts includes just about everything I want to say about my churchy phase. Still, there's always a bit more to say. Today I answered an email from someone who wondered how to deal with unjust situations. I told him that keeping calm, cool, and collected is admirable, but there's a difference between not being unduly affected by an injustice and failing to deal with it. Action is called for when someone is trying to screw…
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Posted inPolitics

Sarah Palin’s Christianity is scarily senseless

Yesterday I thought I'd pushed the car radio button that brought up Oregon Public Broadcasting, so I wasn't all that surprised to hear Sarah Palin's distinctive voice. It appeared that she was being interviewed by someone with a Christian bent. I figured that an excerpt from the interview was being played so it could be discussed from OPB's usual moderate perspective. But Palin and the man she was speaking with kept on talking. I heard her refer to him as "Dr. Dobson." That spurred me to glance at the radio setting. Oh my God! I had stumbled onto the dark…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Turn around, if you feel like it

Yesterday I related the following story to my Tai Chi class. Our instructor had been talking about the importance of staying empty, keeping one foot unweighted so you can easily move it in a desired direction. Being double-weighted is a no-no. That's when you're firmly planted on both feet, committed to where you are, which prevents you from fluidly being somewhere else if the situation demands it. I came across this tale in "A Short History of Chinese Philosophy." Wang Hui-Chih was living at Shan-Yin. One night he was awakened by a heavy snowfall. Opening the window he saw a…
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Posted inWu Project

Profitable spiritual investing

As the world financial crisis deepens, conversations tend to turn toward money rather than other subjects. Last night I was with a group of people who discussed the ins and outs (not to mention the ups and downs) of investing in tough times like these. I didn't have a whole lot to say. Briefly I held forth on the Buddha-like nature of index fund investing, where you don't try to beat the market through some clever scheme but rather rest content with rising and falling in concert with the overall financial tide. I told my friends, "If the world and…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spirituality without God

Is an atheist or agnostic spirituality possible? Sure. And I've read a book that proves it: Andre Comte-Sponville's "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality." This morning I browsed through the final chapter again, liking it even more the second time through. My first post about the book was on the theme of desiring God isn't proof of God. That's true, but sort of negative. Comte-Sponville ends his book with a positive flourish, arguing that not only is an atheist spirituality possible, but really it is the only authentic way to establish a loving, truthful connection with the cosmos. First, what…
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