Spiritual practice/meditation

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.…

I enjoy hearing deconversion stories -- how people changed from being religious believers into atheists or agnostics. But "conversion" and "deconversion" are two sides of the same coin. Everybody who is converted to a faith, such as Christianity, was simultaneously deconverted from some other philosophy, belief system, religion, or point of view.Our lives are ever-changing. When change stops, we're dead. So it's natural to convert, deconvert, convert, deconvert... for as long as we're alive. I converted to mueslix for a while, then deconverted to granola. Now I've converted to raisin bran. (Leaving out many other earlier cereal choices, such as…

Since I've become churchless -- a convert to no-religion -- one of the more ridiculous things I hear from true believers is: So you've given up on finding the truth.No! That's entirely untrue. I've simply realized that the most fundamental questions about life, reality, and what, if anything, lies beyond the physical can't be answered via blind faith, dogma, preconceived ideas, or rigid ritualistic practices.Here's some questions that I find fascinating:What is the essence of consciousness?Does a "soul" exist separate, or separable, from the body?Are humans part of a larger whole, or just a part?Is our usual view of reality…

Religion isn't all bad. That was the not-so-surprising consensus at the monthly meeting of the Salon discussion group that my wife and I helped start up here in Salem about seventeen years ago.The members are almost all godless Prius-driving, expresso-sipping, organic food-eating progressives like us. Religiosity comes in for regular bashing, but since we're into open-mindedness and diversity, believers are embraced so long as they don't try to press their faith onto others.Last night a woman talked about how much she liked taking some Christian children out to lunch at a fast food restaurant. She'd just met them. When they…

I started to practice yoga and meditation when I was 20 years old. Forty-one years later, I'm still at it: trying to find the real me and the truth at the heart of the cosmos.Along the way, in 1990, I married a woman who has taught me as much, or more, about reality than meditation has. Laurel is a psychotherapist (now retired). She helped me understand that attempting to transcend this world is crazy if you haven't first come to grips with yourself and how you relate to other people.This is a central theme of John Welwood's essay, "Double Vision:…

When I used to give talks (a.k.a. satsangs) at gatherings of the India-based spiritual group that I was a long time member of, one of my stock lines was "The easiest vow for most of us to follow is the injunction not to disclose our inner experiences."Ha-ha. Laughter would follow. Because people knew that I was speaking the truth: meditation resulted in almost precisely zilch, nada, zero enlightenment or ensoundenment experiences (the practices of this organization were intended to bring about contact with divine light and sound).So when the guru enjoined his disciples not to speak about their grand mystical…

My Indisputable Churchless Truths have been holding up pretty well, judging from the comments on them so far. So I've been pondering their implications for how I, and others, react to peoples' descriptions of what they find meaningful in life.One of the truths is:Each individual must determine, or choose, his or her own meaning of life, because life's meaning isn't a given like gravity or electromagnetism.Religions consider otherwise, of course. A true believer finds the meaning of life in the Bible, Koran, Vedas, Guru Granth Sahib, or the words of some revered spiritual teacher. Yet this still is a choice…

What can fair-going teach us about churchlessness? Glad I asked. I'll answer my own question...Thursday I went to the Marion County Fair here in Salem to relieve my wife of crushing boredom -- a four hour shift on a slow day womaning a booth sponsored by an earth-friendly organization she belongs to. I chatted with her for a while, then explored the fair. At the other end of the exhibit hall I came across some sort of senior citizen "athletic" event, the quotation marks being justified by this bean bag toss nature of the activity. Apparently senior centers were competing…