Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Wear religious and spiritual beliefs loosely

Ever eager to find profundity in anything connected with my dearly beloved iPhone 4, I took a look at a self-portrait I snapped yesterday -- using my phone's forward-facing camera held at arm's length -- and realized how much it had to say about my preferred approach to religiosity. My wife detests this shirt, which I recently bought from The Territory Ahead after they enticed me with a Sale! email. As soon as I opened the UPS package, Laurel said "you should return it." It wasn't her style. I usually trust my wife's taste in clothes, which almost always is…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

What if a “guru” is no different from us?

When I was a member of an India-based spiritual group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the guru who led the organization frequently would say, "We need teachers in every aspect of life. Mysticism and spirituality are no different."Here's the problem with that statement: if I can't tell whether a person is more competent at something than I am, why should I accept him/her as a guide, teacher, consultant, handyman, or whatever?I got to thinking about this today after reading a response to a comment on a blog post about financial dealings of the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh. Tucson, a…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Religions are wrong about self-realization

There's a lot of talk about self-realization in religious circles, mostly of the Eastern variety. The India-based spiritual group that I was a member of for many years promoted the idea, "self-realization before God-realization."In the West, self-realization has much more of a secular connotation. Regardless, many people have a simplistic notion of the "self" that supposedly is to be known via meditation, mystic practice, prayer, psychotherapy, or some other means.Modern neuroscience has demolished the fantasy that the essence of a human being is something open to view under the right circumstances, like a jewel wrapped in layers of cloth that…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Why God can’t be found

The shortest, simplest, and likely most accurate answer to the question, "Why can't God be found?," is: because God doesn't exist. We also can't find unicorns, leprechauns, or the Tooth Fairy (hope my granddaughter isn't reading this post) for what almost certainly is the same reason.They don't exist.But for the sake of argument let's assume that some entity which reasonably could be called "God" does exist. Don't ask me to define that term, "God," because it isn't possible. An understanding of God comes at the end of the search for him/her/it, not before.And that brings us to the biggest problem…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Be as little as you can be…and real

"Be All You Can Be" was a longstanding slogan of the United States Army. I like it, though the big question is what that all consists of. (In part, clearly, a soldier.) Compared to the cosmos, "not much."I used to be pretty darn grandiose in my spiritual goals. The organization I was a member of, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, taught that it was possible -- indeed, imperative -- to experience God as a living inner presence.At the core of the RSSB philosophy is a belief that there is a spiritual purpose to human life – to experience the divinity of…
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Posted inFundamentalism Spiritual practice/meditation

Integral egos gone wild: Wilber and Cohen relish worship

As I said in this post, I used to have a love-hate thing going on with Ken Wilber and his Integral philosophy. (Click on that link and you'll be led to examples of what I liked and disliked.)Last night, though, I got around to reading the September - November 2009 issue of EnlightenNext, a magazine devoted to uncritical lauding of Wilber's work, along with that of his Integral comrade, Andrew Cohen.When I got through reading "The Second Face of God," I'd reached a clear conclusion: Wilber and Cohen aren't aiming to go beyond the limitations of religiosity in their quest…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Wu Project

The beauty of boundless existence

"Existence" is one of my favorite things to ponder, mostly because existence (the boundless variety) is imponderable. It's just what it is: Isness, Thatness, whatever you want to call primal That -- which isn't a What.A few months after I started this blog, I wrote "Existence exists. Amazing!" And said in that post:My head hurts when I think too much about existence. But I get an enjoyable chill up my spiritual spine when I simply try to wrap my psyche around existence. Not in a wordy way. In, well, an existential way. This happens when I try to let the…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Religion should be seen as an art from

Lately I've been surprising myself. My churchless psyche isn't nearly as down on religion as it was a few years ago, when I was closer to my saying "goodbye" to an organized spiritual, mystical, and metaphysical belief system.This is natural. Right after I got divorced from my first wife some twenty-one years ago, I thought about her much more, and considerably differently, than I do now. We've each moved on to other relationships. Emotions and attachments, whether positive or negative, almost always fade with time.It still bothers me when fundamentalists expect other people to accept their view of reality on…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Great logical argument for not believing in God

Why should someone believe in God? Any god. Or gods. Going further: why should someone believe in any metaphysical, spiritual, mystical, or other-worldly hypothesis?Usually people don't give much thought to these questions. Most of humanity is religious in one way or another. They've fallen into some faith by virtue of birth, culture, conversion, or a leap that was taken without much (or any) of a logical underpinning.Yesterday I started reading a book by Greg Craven, "What's the Worst That Could Happen?" It's subtitled A rational response to the climate change debate. Which it is, judging from the four chapters that…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Psychedelics and placebos more effective than religion

For some churchless inspiration, check out Mark Morford's "Placebo effect beats out God, Prozac." He discusses the finding that anti-depressants are pretty much useless, except for cases of extreme depression. A sugar pill works as well as Prozac, if the patient believes he or she is getting the real deal.The placebo effect -- hereby defined as the sheer force of will and belief, of the mind's (and heart's) ability to heal and nurture itself sans external assistance -- applies to all sorts of constructs in our tortured modern world.Organized religion? Hell yes. Is your life flawed and painful? Are you…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Feeling something spiritual doesn’t mean it is real

Everybody has feelings, intuitions, hunches, gut-reactions. They always are real for us, because we're aware of them. Individual awareness equals subjective reality.Trouble is, many people make a big leap of faith: they assume that a personal experience reflects a universal truth. Like, God. Or spirit, soul, Jesus' love, heaven, a guru's greatness, or whatever.Thanks to a post on The Rambling Taoist, a blog I follow, today I came across a terrific piece by Greta Christina, "Why 'I Feel It In My Heart' Is a Terrible Justification for God's Existence."Showing that I've haven't quite reached the final stages of egoless Buddha-nature,…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Spiritual practice/meditation

Getting small: solution to all of my problems?

Last week I heard a Taoist scholar/practitioner say, "Feel small, and your problems will be small." Makes sense. A similar intuition has been taking root in me since embracing the non-faith of churchlessness six or so years ago.Most religions teach that bigger is better. We're supposed to expand our consciousness, rise up to heaven, grow in spiritual understanding, enlarge our connection with God.I used to enjoy the feeling that my devotional practices enjoined by a religious organization -- meditation, volunteering, vegetarianism, tee-totaling, and such -- were helping me to become more.More detached from this lower world of materiality. More attached…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Meditation: nothing special, whatever is going on

Cosmic. Earthy. Whichever, or neither, the day after I asked (and answered) "Is meditation different from simply living life?" I came across a great little book by Steve Hagen that addressed the same question.I found "Meditation: Now or Never" in a Malibu metaphysical bookstore. My wife and I were spending a few last hours shopping in the Malibu Country Mart after a pleasant weekend of granddaughter-visiting and beautiful people-watching. (See here.)I've enjoyed Hagen's other books, "Buddhism Plain and Simple" and "Buddhism is Not What You Think." When religiosity is stripped away from Buddhism, I find it pretty darn appealing.We experience…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Is meditation different from simply living life?

For about two-thirds of my life -- from the age of 21 to my current 61 -- I've meditated almost every day. By "almost," I mean that during those forty years I can recall only a couple of times I didn't put in at least twenty minutes of meditation time. And usually it was more like a couple of hours.I've been a big believer in the benefits of meditation. But I've begun to wonder whether my dedication to sitting still with eyes closed, usually concentrating on a mantra (or simply doing as little as possible mentally), makes as much sense…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Wu Project

Doing nothing is the best meditation

The title above is my theory, at least, as discussed in my marvelously cogent, persuasive, and uplifting post "Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become."Well, let's make that cogent, persuasive, and uplifting to me. Who is the person I'm most concerned with making sense to. That said, I'm always interested in learning the specifics of how other people approach meditation or some other form of spiritual practice. "Specifics," as noted in that previous writing, is the watchword.More and more, I'm into specifics when it comes to spirituality. I've spent a lifetime floating in the philosophical, theological, and…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

One wild and precious life

Thanks to fellow Oregon blogger Rain, I came across this image and adapted excerpt from Mary Oliver's poem, "The Summer Day." Nice. Read the short poem, which a poetry blog says is about the act of attention being a form of prayer. I liked the poem's ending -- a bit different from the words in the wave-tossed image:Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Life without God is more meaningful

Bart Ehrman once was a devout evangelical Christian. Now he's an agnostic scholar who debunks religious myths. Today on my car radio I heard a snippet of an NPR interview with him.Ehrman was asked how his life had changed now that he doesn't believe in heaven, hell, and life after death any more. He answered that it had become much more meaningful. Ehrman no longer expects to enjoy (or fear) another life after this one.This is it. One chance. Enjoy it while you can. Make the most of every moment.That's how I've come to feel also. But for a while,…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Become a better person first, a perfect divine being second

Often people attracted to spirituality want to skip the whole human being thing and jump directly into some supposed metaphysical realm. Christians base their lives on being saved and getting a pass to enter heaven after death; Buddhists, Hindus, and other "Eastern" practitioners envision enlightenment, nirvana, god realization, or whatever as being an escape from the illusions of the material universe.Well, there might be a transcendental reality, despite the lack of evidence. But for sure there is a physical world, which we all are living in now, doing our best to deal with the difficulties of being human.Sickness and health.…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

I want my “spirituality” to be physical

I had an interesting experience this morning. Sitting in my meditation area, sipping a strong cup of coffee, I settled down to enjoy reading a spiritual book.I'd already read about half of Scott Kiloby's "Love's Quiet Revolution." My churchless psyche was enjoying his subtitle theme, the end of the spiritual search. I wasn't agreeing with everything Kiloby said, but his general stance seemed agreeable enough.Until... it didn't.I started using my highlighter to pen in yellow question marks in the margins. Lots of them. I skipped through pages that now struck me as ridiculous. Why? Because scientific reality had caused me…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Why every religion and spiritual path is wrong

I've just finished reading my bajillionth (more or less) spiritual, mystical, religious, or philosophical book. You could call me a slow learner, but today I had a mini-enlightenment. It dawned on me -- more clearly than ever before -- why every religion and spiritual path is wrong. More precisely, wrong for everybody but one person: the guy or gal who had the initial religious or spiritual experience that led to a claim that it is right for everybody. A personal experience is just that: one person's experience. End of story. But if that person shares his or her tale with…
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