Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

An atheist meditation that pleases God

I'm a believer. Not in God. But in "covering my bases." (For those unfamiliar with American English, this means being thoroughly prepared for something.) I don't believe in God. But I believe in the possibility that God exists. Heck, I believe in the possibility that anything imaginable exists. Along with what can't be imagined, just to cover my bases. That's because I'm scientifically minded. Contrary to how many religious people view science, actually it is science that is most open to reality in any form, any guise, any way of being. Material. Energetic. Non-physical. Mathematical. Ethereal. Conscious. Unconscious. Higher dimensional. Lower…
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Posted inGod Personal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

A cup of coffee is more real than God. Drink up!

There's so much to like about reality. It's got real stuff in it. Way cool. This is what makes living so satisfying. And so frustrating. Yet always interesting. We bump into real stuff that isn't us.  Maybe that bump is with an attractive sexual partner. Maybe it is with a mountain whose steep slopes challenge our climbing skills. Maybe it is with sitting still on a meditation cushion, aware of air going in and out of our nose. Maybe it is with cancer cells that have invaded our body. There's no end to the variety of encounters with physical reality.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Science

Salem (Oregon) skeptics meet under Center for Inquiry banner

Last night my wife and I entered a den of secular, scientific skeptics. Not surprisingly, we enjoyed our first CFI Salem Humanists meeting. There was some sort of merging between the local Center for Inquiry and Humanist groups, but CFI seems to be the main banner under which they meet now. Laurel and I had read about the meeting, an honoring of Carl Sagan, in our local newspaper. We figured we'd meet some like-minded people. We figured right. There were quite a few other newbies in an upstairs room at the IKE Box coffeehouse. So it took a while for…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

Marvel at the Wizard of Is

With apologies to L. Frank Baum, I'm amending your book title for some philosophizing about "Is" rather than "Oz." I'm no longer religious. But I've still as awe-inspired as I ever was. What I find so awesome now isn't God, or guru, or any other imagined divinity. It's the inarguable presence of Is. No faith, no dogma, no theology, no anything is required to demonstrate the existence of Is. That's because Is is existence.  There Is is. Here Is is. Everywhere Is is. Awesome! Yet as obvious as Is is, what I really love about Is is how mysterious it is.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Give up on making life itself a project

I enjoy projects. Meaning, I like to try something new, something I've never done before, which entails finding out what the thing is all about, how it works, what's necessary to do it, and then learning from my doing. I might find that I don't enjoy this new activity as much as I thought I would. Or, that it's even more satisfying than I expected. For example, early in the summer I decided to try longboarding, skateboarding without the tricks, basically. My longboarding has been the subject of various posts in a "skateboarding" section of my other blog.) I really…
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Posted inBuddhism Personal/Stories

Have I ever had a meaningful, valuable meditation experience?

Yesterday Jesse left a comment on this post which asked me: May I ask if you ever had a subjective experience in meditation that you found to be meaningful or that revealed something of value to you, personally? Not necessarily a RS [Radha Soami Satsang Beas] meditation or any specific lights or sounds but just something that left you in a state of deeper self reverence or lasting tranquility. Good question. Not an easy question to answer. It's a question that got me thinking more about the question than a possible answer.  Meaning, after pondering for a bit how I…
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Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

Photos of my not-so-sacred meditation chamber

I figure it's time to prepare for my hoped-for veneration, exaltation, and worship as an enlightened godly being. True, I don't believe in enlightenment or in God. But why should this stop me from being worshipped? I founded this here Church of the Churchless. I preach about stuff all the time. I'm venerated in my own mind. Maybe the exaltation I feel toward myself will spread someday. So in case someone ever builds a shrine to me, here's photos of the meditation chamber where my perfection becomes more perfect every morning. I hereby give permission for it to be recreated…
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Posted inBuddhism Personal/Stories

Extreme is good. Be spacious in your extremeness.

Often we're advised to embrace moderation. Don't be extreme. Stick to the safe middle ground. Edges are dangerous; cliffs await.  Most religions, forms of spirituality, mystic practices -- they like boxiness. Commandments keep devotees' actions within certain bounds. Rituals are well-defined and repetititve. Prayers, meditative practices, worship... stay in control, sit in your seats, listen and don't talk back. For God's sake, don't yell, scream, object, or in any other way do your own unfettered thing. Here's some countervailing thoughts about going to extremes. Two personal stories, one link to a Tantra-related blog post. I'd almost forgotten about the Groupon…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Does God want me to be a senior citizen skateboarder?

There's got to be a deep meaning behind my strangely strong desire to become a skateboarder, longboarding style, at the age of 63.  After all, don't the world's Western religions tell us that God/Allah is in control of our lives? And don't the world's Eastern religions tell us that Karma/Tao guides our decisions?  Thus I have to assume that if I follow through on my lust for longboarding, I will have taken another step toward my salvation, enlightenment, god-realization, satori, and overall Major Dude'ness.  (For some background on my divine mission, see here and here.) Now, so far I haven't…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Life lessons learned on a Maui beach

I always feel pleasantly alive when my wife and I visit our favorite Maui beach, Napili. There's just something about a tropical beach that screams (or rather, murmurs) this is what life is all about.  It isn't just the warm air and water speaking. There's also something else. Elemental. Honest. Real. No need to try to name it. But I enjoy trying to talk about it. Last year I blogged about some life lessons I've learned boogie boarding.  -- You can't control the big things.-- You can control how you relate to big things.-- Change is the only constant.-- Don't be afraid of being the only one.-- Rushing…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

My new Major Life Project: don’t have one

For most of my 63 year-old life I've had what could be called a Major Life Project. Meaning, an overarching ambition aimed at transforming not just part of my life, but all of it.  "Mystical enlightenment." "God realization." "Knowledge of ultimate reality." "Soul travel." "Salvation." These are ways of saying what I aspired toward, though it's difficult to put into words. What propelled my Major Life Project since my college years was a feeling, an intuition, a drive.  I wanted to know... I wanted to experience... I wanted to be... What followed those ellipses...? I wasn't sure. I had some…
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Posted inBooks Personal/Stories

Boxing up books reminds me of a beautiful book, freely-given

I just finished mailing off 87 pounds of books I once was deeply attached to. As related in my previous blog post, "Break free of the religious merry-go-round," I got an email from a woman in India who was looking for early editions of books published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). I told her that I had plenty of them.  After a few additional rounds of messaging, it was decided that I should send the books to her two daughters, who live in the United States. They'll find ways to get the books over to her in New Delhi, such…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Catholic woman is offended by McDonald’s

Recently our local newspaper here in Salem, Oregon had a column by Carol McAlice Currie that resonated with my long-time experience of being a vegetarian.  Download Fast food offends religious woman  Since I've shunned meat and fish since 1970, and raised a daughter born in 1972 as a vegetarian, I know what it's like to ask servers in a restaurant to substitute something animal'ish for something vegetable'ish.  Many times I walked into a McDonald's with my daughter and said to the person behind the counter, "Could you make us a Big Mac without the hamburger?" Or at Taco Bell, "We'd…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

How I deprogrammed fundamentalism out of my brain

I got some great questions in an email today, boldfaced below. Brian, out of curiosity.... I was wondering after you left RS [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]... How did you deprogram all the fundamentalism out of your brain? The whole "The world is a bad place, don't get "involved" in worldly things....  and pursuing things in the world to find happiness is bad... How did you start to finally pursue your own happiness, without the fundamental programming snake coming in and poisoning your progress? I told the person who wrote me I'd reply via a blog post tonight, adding that I'd been planning to write…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Science

Doubt is the stepping stone to truth

I was so sure that I was right. It turned out that I was wrong. But after finding this out, I was able to get on the road to rightness. What got me facing in the right direction was doubt. Thank you, doubt! If it weren't for you, I'd have headed in the wrong direction for quite a bit longer. I'm not talking about a religious belief, though I could be. The lesson I learned last week is universal: don't be completely, absolutely, 100% sure about anything. Even when we're super confident that we're correct, it's important to leave open the…
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Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

Universe is sending me a “Fuck. That. Shit.” message

I've got no idea who "the Universe" could be. Or if it is a "who." Or if it is, at all. Regardless... The Universe seems to be trying to communicate an important message to me.  Fuck. That. Shit.  It also comes in a different cadence and punctuation. Fuck that shit! Today I came across the Mother Ship source of the first link, a cool xkcd comic. Read it. Maybe the Universe is out to give you the same message.  Here's an excerpt from the comic that I liked a lot: I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

Why isn’t a movie as appealing in HD?

Last night I took advantage of my wife being out of town to stream, through Amazon, an action movie that I've wanted to see for a long time: The Bourne Identity (2002). My wife isn't big on action flicks and wouldn't have appreciated the way-cool Mini chase through the streets, alleys, and walkways of Paris nearly as much as I did. But what irritated me through the entire two-hour movie experience was watching it on our television in HD (high definition). I paid an extra dollar to get the HD version. Then, almost as soon as I started watching amnesiac Matt…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Janis Joplin, vapor trails, and falling leaves

Oh, man, this has got to be a terrific post now that I've come up with that title. It's almost Christmas, so naturally my thoughts are turning toward utterly unreligious stuff. But I'm still getting signs from the universe. At least, I like to think that I am. And who else is better qualified to tell whether a seemingly random event actually is a message from... [fill in the blank; me, I have no idea who might be the messenger].   Like, yesterday I was driving around, listening to Classic Vinyl on Sirius XM, grooving to sounds of the '60s…
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Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

Hafiz warns, watch out for spiritual la-la land

Hafiz is pretty cool, for a religious'y guy. He's a Persian mystic poet who did his thing in the 14th century.  Daniel Ladinsky has written a book, "A Year With Hafiz," that contains 365 poems that are versions of Hafiz, in much the same sense that Coleman Barks has popularized Rumi. Meaning, liberties are taken. These aren't word for word translations. Fine with me. I'd rather get the spirit of a poet, than the letter of what he or she said.  Here's the January 17 poem, "Watch Out for Spiritual La-La Land." Watch out for spiritual la-la land, where you might…
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