Posted inAwareness Spiritual practice/meditation

In mirroring ourselves, we lose naturalness in the name of spirituality

Today I read a chapter in Robert Saltzman's book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning, that ended up so filled with highlighting of passages that I admired, the chapter only had a few unhighlighted areas. That's how much I liked "The Mirror." It addressed a question that has been in the back of my mind (and sometimes in the front of my mind) since I embarked on a spiritual-but-not-religious path some twenty years ago after giving up an Eastern form of dogmatic religiosity. What I've been wondering is whether there's something seriously wrong with my…
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Posted inHappiness Meaning of life Neuroscience

Happiness and meaning can trap us. Psychological richness, not so much.

A few days ago I wrote my first post about Shigehiro Oishi's book, Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. For a thoughtful review of the book by Sebastiano Mancin, click here. Here's a second post about Oishi's call for adding psychological richness to the commonly heard dimensions of a full life, happiness and meaning. He argues that while we all crave happiness, this longing can be a trap. The happiness trap has two faces. First, there is the pressure to be happy, which makes feeling sadness, anger, and anguish seem undesirable and…
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Posted inHappiness Meaning of life

In addition to happiness and meaning, there’s psychological richness

I got excited when I heard about Shigehiro Oishi's book, Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. I can't remember how I learned about the book. I just recall ordering it from Amazon almost instantly. Though I just got the book, and have only been able to read a couple of chapters so far, my excitement at learning about a third dimension to life in addition to happiness and meaning seems to show that I'm prone to psychological richness.  This chart included in a Psychology Today article, "How to Live a Psychologically Rich…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Just breath. Arising out of nothing. Returning to nothing.

Most religions say that the purpose of human life is to merge with God. Maybe not become God, but at least become really close to God. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism obviously differ in many respects. However, they all espouse achieving a closeness to the Almighty that expands the usual conception of what being a person is all about. The Eastern religion that I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, had a similar teaching: the creative power of God extends throughout the creation. Through meditation and other spiritual practices, it is possible to first become self-realized as…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas

If a religion claims to know ultimate truth, how can its teachings change?

This morning I read another chapter in Scott Carney's The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond  Mountain. "Diamond Theosophy" included some interesting Buddhist history that I wasn't aware of before. I did know that Buddhism became less popular in the area where Buddha lived, modern day India. China and Japan became Buddhist centers, along with south Asia. But Buddhism also made its way into Tibet in the fifth century, where it thrived.  Carney writes: Modern scholars who have studied the original manuscripts were unsurprised to learn that the translations that endured the legions of miles on monks' backs…
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Posted inMeaning of life Morality

Two deeply flawed heads of state on a red carpet. Truly, life lacks inherent meaning.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Philosophical Jury. Regarding the question of whether there is meaning, morality, and justice inherent in life, I present into evidence this photograph of two men walking on a red carpet prior to their meeting yesterday in Anchorage, Alaska, where they discussed how to end the war in Ukraine. There are those who argue that life is fair, that we get what we deserve, that what goes around comes around. I beg to differ. For the man on the right is Vladimir Putin, Russia's dictator, though his official title is something less honest. Putin kills his…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Karma makes sense. Except when it doesn’t. Same with trusting a spiritual teacher.

I'm gradually making my way through Scott Carney's The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond  Mountain. (First blog post about the book is here.) The book is building up its tale of Buddhism gone bad by telling us about the history of the Buddhist student who dies and the Buddhist teacher who, I'm assuming, played a role in his death. Along the way, Carney describes what Buddhism is all about. This is mostly familiar territory for me. But since I'm much more interested in the modern secular non-supernatural side of Buddhism than the traditional religious supernatural side, some…
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Posted inNeuroscience Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Perfectionism is loved by religions, but it’s bad for us

There's nothing wrong with aspiring to be perfect. That's how athletes improve at their sport. That's how scientists improve at their research. That's how ordinary people improve at their relationships. But there's a danger lurking in this aspiration: perfectionism. That's a serious psychological malady. It manifests when we are overly attached to the lure of being perfect, lacking the ability to understand that failure and flaws are what make us human. The August 8, 2025 issue of The New Yorker has an article by Leslie Jamison, "The Pain of Perfectionism." It spoke to me because, like most people, I go…
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Posted inDelusions Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

“The Enlightenment Trap” — a cautionary tale of spirituality gone bad

Today a friend gave me a book that he thought I'd like. He was right. We've known each other for a long time, so after he'd listened to the audio version of Scott Carney's The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond  Mountain, he correctly surmised that I'd find it interesting. I'm only up to page 32, but Carney's introductory "A Note for a New Edition" contains some strong hints of what the book's central themes are. Rather than thinking of this as a true-crime story that follows the downward spiral of a cultic community, this book is the…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Neuroscience

Part of you lives on after you die. But it isn’t soul.

I've got some good news and bad news for you. The good news is that part of you lives on after you die. The bad news is that it isn't your soul, your consciousness, or anything else you likely currently consider to be "you." But hey, something is better than nothing. Especially when it is a believable something that doesn't require blind faith in supernaturalism. I've finished Brian Lowery's book, Selfless: The Social Creation of "You." Lowery, a social psychologist, makes a convincing case that who we are is the product of relationships extending far beyond the narrow confines of…
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Posted inFree will Morality Neuroscience

Evil doesn’t exist. It’s just a word used to describe bad behavior.

We humans love abstract concepts. As we should. For no other species has anywhere near our capability for language and conceptualization, both of which are needed to come up with abstract notions like freedom, justice, love, evil.  None of those words point to anything concrete, something that can be put on a table and studied as we would a starfish, piece of marble, or hummingbird. They're purely human inventions with no connection to the natural world. It's easy to forget this, though. Just as "God" has come to mean something real and important for billions of people without any substantial…
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Posted inMindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

“Never let your mind leave your body” — wisdom from Ajahn Mun

If I come across a few ideas in a book about meditation or mindfulness that make me go "Wow, that's really good advice," I'm a happy reader. It only took me 17 pages of reading Martin Aylward's book, Awake Where You Are: The Art of Embodied Awareness, to find a statement that had a pleasing wow factor. Ajahn Mun, another famous Thai meditation master, used to give the instruction, "Never let your mind leave your body." If that seems too much to ask, then how about this: every time you notice that your mind has left your body really notice…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness

Martin Aylward’s embodied awareness makes body as important as mind

One thing leads to another. That's the story of my life. Also, everybody's life. Here's a recent example.  I've been going along in my morning meditation, enjoying a mixture of guided meditations from Zen master Henry Shukman on his The Way app and from Tamara Levitt on the Daily Calm app, when I feel an urge to check out what's new on Sam Harris' Waking Up app, as I hadn't used that app for a while. (My meditation has become app'y, obviously.) On Waking Up, I noticed a new series of 30 lessons from Martin Aylward called Awake Where You…
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Posted inScience

A Nobel laureate believes quantum mechanics actually is deterministic

If, like me, you're fascinated by quantum mechanics (or quantum physics, two words for same thing), you'll love an article that features an interview with theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft in the July/August 2025 issue of Scientific American, "Quantum Physics Is Nonsense."Download Breakthrough Prize Winner Gerard ’t Hooft Says Quantum Mechanics Is ‘Nonsense’ | Scientific American t' Hooft earned the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics and recently won a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics worth $3 million in recognition of his many contributions to physics throughout his career. So his views deserve serious consideration, even though -- or because…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Religious communities have standards, because all communities do

In the course of reading Selfless: The Social Creation of "You" by Brian Lowery, I'm getting new insights into the India-based religious community I belonged to for 35 years -- Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). Those insights aren't limited to religious communities because they apply generally to all communities. Lowery, a Black Stanford professor and social psychologist, describes his experience with growing up with rap music in the 1980s and '90s. We are created in communities, so when our communities change, so do we. New relationships can produce new communities that confer identities that define selves. Take a benign example:…
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Posted inHappiness Personal/Stories

It’s good to be as unguarded as possible in our relationships

When we see a guard in front of a property, we figure there is something valuable inside that needs to be protected. But when it comes to being guarded in our relationships with other people, this is an interesting question to ponder: what are we guarding when we aren't open and honest with them about how we really feel? I'm not saying that total openness and honesty is always a good thing. When the clerk at a checkout line in a grocery store asks me, "How's your day going?," I realize that they aren't expecting a detailed answer about how…
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Posted inNeuroscience Reality

Where does reality come from?

We here at the Church of the Churchless don't shy away from asking Big Questions. No indeed, our problem isn't with questions, it's with answers. That's a much tougher proposition.  Nonetheless, I'm pretty confident that I can answer the question posed in the title of this blog post: Where does reality come from?  From you and me, along with every other person in the world. Reality isn't given to humans. Reality is produced by humans. Now, I'm not saying that we somehow have godlike powers of bringing the universe as a whole, and our planet in particular, into being. Nature…
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Posted inHappiness Meaning of life

Loneliness is both a problem and a benefit of sorts

Is loneliness a good or bad thing? This isn't an easy question to answer, especially after I read a provocative article by Paul Bloom in The New Yorker, "A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That's a Problem."Download A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem | The New Yorker  Most of us are afraid of being lonely. I certainly am. At my age (76) there no longer are the automatic ways of meeting people that younger folks have: school and work. And the older one becomes, the fewer friends and family are in their life, because so many have…
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Posted inComments

Reminder about how to use AI responses in comments

A reminder to those commenters who don't have a good memory of what I've said before about using AI responses in comments. You'd remain nameless if I didn't say that "sant64" is the worst offender here. This is what the Commenting page at the top of this blog says: (8) No unattributed AI comments. If you want to use the response of an AI (Artificial Intelligence) model like ChatGPT in a comment, you need to indicate at the beginning of the comment what AI model was used and what question was asked of it. Keep the AI response brief.
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Posted inMeaning of life Neuroscience

Our “self” is a shifting structure of social relationships and interactions

As I make my way through Selfless: The Social Creation of "You" by Brian Lowery, a social psychologist and Stanford professor, a book I wrote about recently, I'm impressed with the insights Lowery shares about who we really are -- in contrast to who we wrongly believe we are. He doesn't mince words, as shown in this excerpt. You know who you are deep down, in your heart of hearts. You know that you mean well, that you only do the wrong thing when you must or when the situation requires it. If you hit someone it was to defend…
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