Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

The journey between two steps

My Tai Chi class is a wonderful mix of Taoist movement and philosophy. I loved this phrase as soon as it left a fellow student’s lips: “the journey between two steps.” Thank you, Josette. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what it means, but intuitively it strikes me as being the key to almost everything. We’re always on the way to somewhere, taking the next step on our life’s path. Even before we’ve fully settled into the place we’ve just reached, our intention is making plans for moving to another location—whether it be physical, mental, or spiritual. Goals,…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Meditation strengthens the brain

Here’s some good news for meditators from Massachusetts General Hospital researchers: meditation seems to thicken the brain and might slow down age-related atrophy. I’ve done a lot of meditation over the past thirty-six years. I can’t point to any conclusive evidence that all those hours spent trying to concentrate have brought me spiritual benefit, but it’s encouraging to learn that I might well be doing positive things to my physical brain. The subjects in the Mass General study were practitioners of Buddhist insight meditation. Their focus was “mindfulness,” following the breath, sensations, and mental states in a non-judgmental manner. I’ve…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Mantra meditation: it’s all about melting

All these words in my head forming such marvelous conceptual structures, thought turrets soaring into an abstract sky. How wonderful to feel them melting down, icy stuck ideas turning into smooth flowing mystery. For me, that’s what mantra meditation is all about: dissolving the mental temple where we worship our notions about God, not the real deal itself. I believe in being churchless. But it doesn’t do any good to stay away from physical religious institutions if we’ve got rigid beliefs firmly instituted in our own minds. As I’ve been writing about recently in my (now) three-part post series on…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

God, go to hell

Cursing God is my response to Pat Robertson’s warning to Pennsylvania voters of divine wrath after they ejected a school board that ordered creationism lessons. Being scientifically minded, I feel that an experiment is in order: if there’s a God who gets ticked off just by creationism/intelligent design supporters being voted out of office, then he, she, or it should really become peeved at my telling him, her, or it to go to hell. So either me or whoever will inherit this Church of the Churchless blog (should I fail to survive this test) will let you know if anything…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Mantra meditation: what’s in a word?

If I had a penny for every time I’ve repeated a mantra during the thirty-six years I’ve been meditating, I’d have something to show for all the words I’ve spoken in my head. But I don’t. So, what’s in a word? What’s the point of saying a mantra over and over, whether it be during a designated meditation period or at other times during the day? Christians use mantras. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” was endlessly repeated by the Russian whose tale is told in “The Way of a Pilgrim.” Buddhists use mantras. “Namu amida butsu” (I take…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Mantra meditation: does God make it better?

“Love, love, love.” “ God is love, God is love, God is love.” “I am love, I am love, I am love.” Three mantras that could be repeated in meditation. Which is better? This question was addressed in research reported in the September 3, 2005 issue of NewScientist. The conclusion was that “If meditation is good, God makes it better.” After randomly assigning students to three groups, researchers found that the spiritual meditation group (which concentrated on a phrase such as “God is love” or “God is peace”) showed greater reductions in anxiety and a higher pain tolerance than a…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Being religious without a religion

Can you be religious and not belong to a religion? Of course. In fact, I believe this is the only way to be genuinely religious—to give up religion. This seems contradictory, but one non-religious “religion,” Buddhism, already has proven that it can be done. I’m referring to original Buddhism, that of the Buddha himself. After the Buddha died, it wasn’t long before his teachings were turned into a traditional religion. However, Huston Smith writes in “The World’s Religions” that few traces of six normal features of religion can be found in the Buddha’s message. These features are authority, ritual, speculation,…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Nirguna and saguna, two visions of God

It may be a simplification to say, “There are two kinds of people in the world,” but often this seems to be true. Certainly it is with men and woman (leaving aside a few hermaphrodites) and I’m coming to believe that such is the case concerning our conceptions about God. Some people are attracted to the idea that God is beyond being, formless, inconceivable, pure mystery, unfathomable through our usual organs of cognition and perception. nirguna, to use a Hindu term. Others find this vision of God too distant, too detached, too abstract. They are drawn to a saguna divinity…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions Spiritual practice/meditation

My religious unconversion

Lots of people talk about their religious conversion. Few speak about their religious unconversion. Google gave me 7,150,000 results for “religious conversion” and just 187 for “religious unconversion.” I hope to make it 188. I’m proud of my unconversion. Much prouder than of my previous conversion. For it is more challenging to embrace a universal spiritual openness and uncertainty than a defined spiritual system and its corresponding dogma. Each unfaithful person has their own unconversion story. Google gave me “Escape From Religion, My Untestimony,” the tale of an increasingly questioning Christian, and a (long) riff on “The Meaning of Life”…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Dismantling the golem project

A golem is an animated being crafted from inanimate material. It’s a popular figure in Jewish folklore and legend. There’s always something lacking in a golem because it has been created by man, not God: “Much as Man is Created in the image of God, the golem is created in the image of Man, a replication that loses fidelity.” We’re all engaged in creating our own golems. These are idealized images of what we hope someday to be. A creature that has no doubts, no anxieties, no misgivings, no uncertainties, no fears, no miseries. Our project is to make the…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

I reveal my mystical experiences

There: Right there. See the blank space after “There:” That’s where I revealed my mystical experiences. I was impelled to disclose the status of my inner spiritual realization after reading a comment by A fellow bubble-bursted soul on my recent “Bursting Belief Bubbles” post. This person, a fellow Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) initiate, said that he/she was still pursuing the experiment of meditation even though positive results to date had been lacking. The commenter said, “Unfortunately if I have a break through I won't be able to tell you because us satsangis [initiates], conveniently, aren't suppose to reveal our…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality Spiritual practice/meditation

Bursting belief bubbles

“Don’t burst my bubble!” We hear this all the time, as if keeping our belief bubbles intact was a good thing. Well, increasingly I say, “Burst my bubble!” I want my erroneous beliefs to be deflated, as regards religion and spirituality at least. I add that last qualifier because 100% unvarnished reality likely would be too much for me to take. Like everyone, I hold onto delusions that help keep me afloat. For example, I do my best to avoid looking too closely at myself in a mirror. Wrinkles, gray hair, and unwhite teeth aren’t so obvious from a distance.…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Kung fu meditating

Bruce Lee was a master of kung fu (or gung fu). I just finished reading a collection of his writings that were edited into a book, “The Tao of Gung Fu.” I’ve studied martial arts for thirteen years and meditation for thirty-six years. More and more I’m coming to glimpse Lee’s basic point: they aren’t two things; there’s just one thing. He says: Gung fu is more than just an excellent physical exercise or a highly scientific method of self-defense. To the Chinese, gung fu is a Way of training the mind as well as a Way of life. The…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Universism

Salem Universists meet, noisily

Here we are, six Salem Universists, gathering outside of the Coffee House Café last Thursday evening. This was the first meeting of our non-dogmatic spiritual support group, loosely organized under the Universist banner. “Loosely” is the operative word, as I wasn’t organized enough to check and see if the café had a band playing on Thursday nights. I’d pictured us sitting on the Coffee House’s comfortable couches, sipping lattes and discussing deep philosophical issues. As soon as I walked in the door, clutching a Universist flyer to my chest so a few members I hadn’t met yet would recognize me,…
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Posted inBooks Radha Soami Satsang Beas Science

Don’t believe, just have faith

Sunday I gave a talk to my spiritual group that inspired me. So before I lose touch with my self-induced inspiration, I figured that I should capture it in a weblog posting. That way hopefully I can re-inspire myself as needed. However, I have to admit that this whole way of thinking is at odds with what I was talking about. Namely, the absurd split between “I” and “me.” More defensible are the splits between “belief” and “faith” or “religion” and “science.” Nonetheless, we humans love to divide up reality with concepts divorced from experience, then get anxious about feeling…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Seeing clearly now

My philosophical mind is always trying to find the commonalities in spirituality. Also, my scientific mind. We don’t say “What science do you believe in?” But “What religion do you believe in?” is a common question. That’s because science is a universal approach to learning about physical reality, while every religion considers that it alone holds the key to the truth about a presumed spiritual reality. So scientists are able to stand on common ground with other people, while religious believers end up isolated on their own distinct islands of false understanding. I’m attracted to the possibility that it’s possible…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

What’s your God experiment?

We all have beliefs about the nature of “God,” a term that to me is synonymous with “ultimate reality.” If you believe that the physical universe is all there is, that’s your hypothesized God. Alternatively, if you believe that there is a spiritual reality apart from materiality, then that’s your hypothesized God. I’m interested in how you are trying to turn that hypothesis, whatever it might be, into certainty or near-certainty. Specifically, what is the One Thing you do that is most central to your pursuit of truth and meaning? By “do,” I mean that this One Thing is an…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

An honest embrace of faith

Earlier this month I heard from a New Zealand woman, Elizabeth Wagner, who has come to embrace faith after a lengthy period of faithlessness. I liked how honestly she spoke about her spiritual journey, so with her permission I’ve shared her email message below (mildly edited for clarity and to Americanize those weird British spellings like “endeavour”). Her thoughts are sort of a counter point to the “More criticism of Radha Soami Satsang Beas” post that similarly included a guest opinion from a person who, like me and Elizabeth, has had a long-time connection with RSSB, a.k.a. Sant Mat. As…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Uncertainty: Be sure of it

We all need something to cling to. The big question is, “What?” What can be counted on to support us when everything else falls away? What will stay with us and never leave? What is the stable center around which the rest of our crazy spinning life can revolve? This is a theme that I keep coming back to in these Church of the Churchless “sermons.” I do so because I’ve been searching for that reliable something my whole life, as have we all. I haven’t found it yet. I’ll willing to bet that you haven’t either. For if we…
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Posted inReligions Science Spiritual practice/meditation

Plunging deeper into Universism

As reported on my other weblog, I’ve decided to sponsor a Universist face-to-face discussion group here in Salem. Currently the group has two members: me and my wife, Laurel. This makes it easy for us to meet, but it would be nice to expand the membership between the confines of Hines. So if you live in the Salem area, consider becoming a group member (sign up here). Though this discussion group will be under the Universist banner, there’s essentially no difference between the philosophy of Universism and what gets preached here at the Church of the Churchless. I know this,…
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