Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Vipassana vs. Surat Shabd Yoga meditation. I pick a winner.

Arguably it doesn't make sense to consider that meditation styles can be classed as winners or losers. But, hey, that's no fun! So in this post I'm going to choose a winner after considering a question I got in an email message recently: Do you have any opinion as to whether vipassana is more or less equal to RSSB's simran? Well, of course I have an opinion. I'm a blogger. Opinionating is what I love to do. I've got opinions on just about everything. Heck, on one of my other two blogs I rated the grocery carts at the three…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

We humans are stuck in The Matrix of our own brains

Most religions, mystical practices, and spiritual paths assume there's a truer reality than our everyday existence. Few people, though, think deeply about how it is possible to tell whether Reality X is more true than Reality Y -- assuming that both actually exist. Historian Yuval Noah Harari does think about this sort of stuff, though. Today I read the Science Fiction chapter in his newest book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.  Harari notes that movies like The Truman Show and The Matrix show people trapped in an illusory reality that they have to struggle to get out of. However, both…
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Posted inComments Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Another RSSB defender attacks the messenger, me

This blog has been alive and well since 2004. That's 15 years of talking truth to religious power here at the Church of the Churchless. After over 4 million page views, 2,526 posts, and 42,239 comments, I'm well aware of the games religious believers play when their cherished faith comes in for criticism. One of their favorite ploys is to attack the messenger when the message being shared is so convincing, they have no effective response to my truth-telling. Recent case in point: commenter Chris. He's been doing his best to defend the Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru, Gurinder Singh…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Here’s a positive sign of my (mini) enlightenment

I was really proud of myself tonight. So proud, I'm thinking that what I did could be a tangible sign of my enlightenment, mini, or even micro, variety. After finding a parking spot a couple of blocks from my 6 pm Tai Chi class in downtown Salem, I walked away from my VW GTI without going back and checking if I'd locked the car via a button on the door handle. Now, this may not seem like something that distinguishes an enlightened being. It pales in comparison to what supposedly happened with the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree.  But given…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Meditation isn’t mystical. It’s about awareness of actual reality.

For about 35 years I had some deluded notions about meditation. Back then I embraced a teaching that said meditation was about concentrating at the eye center (third eye, basically) so one's mind/soul could enter higher realms of mystical consciousness. Now I realize that this wasn't what genuine meditation really is all about. A book that I've gotten back to reading, "Altered Traits:  Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body" has helped me understand this.  I bought this book in September 2017, wrote a rather critical blog post about it in April 2018 ("Awareness is a process,…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Religions forget that we humans are animals

Calling someone animalistic isn't an insult. It is a fact. We humans are animals. Just unusual ones, since members of no other animal species can write articles (or blog posts) about the fact that they're animals. Thus our bodies do what other animal bodies do.  Pee. Poop. Breathe. Have sex. Play. Feel. Sleep. Eat. Drink. And so on.  Sure, we also think about all kinds of stuff. The structures we build are more impressive than a termite hill. Our social relationships are more complex than a wolf pack.  Yet the fact remains, we are animals. One reason I've come to…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris on not finding a center of consciousness

Some time ago, can't remember exactly when, I added guided meditations via Sam Harris' Waking Up iPhone app to my morning meditation routine. (I also enjoy listening to the daily guided meditations by Tamara Levitt on the Calm app.) Sam Harris Here's a transcript I made of part of one of Harris' guided meditations. It followed an exercise where Harris asked the listener to breathe in a vision of the world on an inbreath, and to breathe out themselves into the world on the outbreath.  Well, the point of that exercise is to notice, once again, how much the sense…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Attention isn’t what meditation is all about

I'm in book bliss. Someone emailed me with a book recommendation, "The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness," and I'm loving what I've read so far -- the first couple of chapters. Here's a few early thoughts about the book. First, it confirms my belief, which isn't shared by some religious fundamentalists (Eastern mysticism variety) who've been frequent commenters on this blog, that there are many forms of useful meditation.  In fact, the inward looking, world-denying, mantra-focused type of meditation favored by Sant Mat/Radha Soami Satsang Beas, which I embraced for…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Here’s my foolproof guide to wise spiritual “investing”

The past couple of days have been ugly for investors in stock markets around the world, including here in the United States. But I've been pretty much unmoved and unworried by the downturn.  Why? Because quite a few years ago I decided to embrace index investing, where you don't try to be smarter than all the other guys/gals who invest, you just have a goal of doing as well as the general investment climate. A few years ago I wrote about this on one of my other blogs in "Index investing lets me relax in a stock market crash." And…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

My “spiritual” Theory of Everything is coming along nicely

Once in a while I get a glimpse of how things really are, or ideally are, spiritually speaking. Now, I put "spiritual" in quotation marks in the title of this post, because the way I use the word, it has nothing to do with God or the supernatural -- which in my view don't exist. Rather, when I speak of spirituality, I mean a quest to understand how best to live life. The ancient Greeks called this philosophy, literally "love of wisdom." However, these days philosophy usually is considered to be not a way of life, but an academic discipline.…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Religions Spiritual practice/meditation

Wise observations about spiritual experiences and religious craziness

One of the pleasures of having this blog is being able to read comments from blog visitors that make me think, "Wow! That was beautifully and wisely said." Sometimes when this happens I share a comment in a blog post so it will be more visible. Such is the case with two comments from "JB" that you can read below. Each was left on a recent post, "Meaning comes from us, not God." This comment by JB relates to the supposed truthfulness of spiritual/mystical experiences. I agree with what JB says, though these experiences often have more to them than…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

A pleasing message about me, and honesty about RSSB

Some people like this blog. Some people don't like it. After 14 years of regularly writing here on the Church of the Churchless, I've come to expect both praise and criticism.  Not surprisingly, I prefer hearing good things about me and this blog. So when I got the following email message today from someone in India I've been corresponding with, it made me feel good.  I'll explain why after the message. I've corrected some typos and made the formatting easier to read. Otherwise the message is as written. "Sewa" means service, or volunteer work. The Dera is the Indian headquarters…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions Spiritual practice/meditation

Advice for RSSB believers about how to deal with news about their guru

Yesterday this comment was left on a Church of the Churchless post, "Great BusinessToday video about RSSB guru and Singh brothers." The commenter wondered how to break the news about Gurinder Singh Dhillon's financial misdeeds to Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) devotees who had put a lot of faith in their guru. Dear Brian Thanks for your blog and exposing the truths!! It is really sad to learn all the truths of recent events. I had a feeling somethiing is corrupt but it still came as a shock when my intuition was confirmed with facts. I am not part of…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Embrace beautiful imperfection. Push away judgement.

Today's Daily Calm guided meditation on my iPhone app was called "Beautiful Imperfection." Below is a transcript I made of how it ended. I really liked the call for less judgement and more connection.This is tough enough to do in real life. It's considerably more difficult on the Internet, where we form judgements about people without having even seen them, much less understood them. That's why I thought what follows is a good reminder that while informed judgement often makes some sense, uninformed judgement should be engaged in cautiously, if at all. It's so often that our mind falls into…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Thoughts about enlightenment from a Church of the Churchless visitor

I like to hear from people who read my blog posts -- especially when what they say is supportive of my churchless un-preaching. Here's an email message that I got today from John. After I asked if I could share his message, he said "sure." I like John's perspective on things. He and I carry on a fairly regular correspondence.  Hey Brian.  Wow.  I really enjoyed reading your latest post on enlightenment!  To me, that is so freeing!  I’ve pretty much come to the same conclusion. There is a lot of pressure involved in trying to become “enlightened”.  You know…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

“Enlightenment” is a meaningless concept

Over on this post of mine there's been a comment conversation about enlightenment. "JB" left this cogent comment, which I agree with. Tim Rimmer said: "Wasn't that the nature of the Buddha’s realisation? - All is Dukkha, yet ‘one’ is able to remove/get past it?" That one is able to remove/get past suffering is unadulterated mythology. The hero, the savior, the enlightened person- these are all variations on a theme. This is the mythical theme that has encapsulated humankind's greatest hope. It is a dead giveaway that the "enlightened masters" are all from the ancient past. Those that claim to…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

“Teaching is impossible.” An excerpt from The Wooden Bowl book.

People often make spirituality into something complex, argumentative, esoteric. They consider there's a right and wrong way to meditate, to worship, to live life.  I used to be one of those people. I'm a lot less dogmatic now.  Recently, like today, which is pretty damn recent, I've been both entertained and bemused by a rash of comments on this blog where people have been arguing about this and that.  I enjoy those sorts of interchanges. Except when I don't.  In those latter times, I try to remind myself of how simple spirituality can be. And how it really isn't necessary…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Nice quotes from “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist”

I'm a big fan of Stephen Bachelor, who writes about Buddhism from a pleasingly non-religious, non-supernatural perspective. I didn't like "Confession of a Buddhist Atheist" as much as his other books, but some quotations from this book that someone emailed to me resonated with my psyche.  Here they are. The boldfacing was added by the person who sent me the quotes. To be conscious of what is happening in the present requires training in mindfulness, which Gotama described as “the one way” to achieve the kind of focused presence and responsiveness needed to function optimally on a groundless ground. Indeed,…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Mindfulness has become my meditation

Back in my true-believing religious days, when I embraced an Eastern form of mysticism that espoused several hours of daily eyes-closed meditation, I thought that the ultimate aim of life was to experience higher realms of reality beyond the physical. Of course, I had a job to go to, a wife and daughter, worldly activities I enjoyed. But I viewed these as mostly distinct from my spiritual goal of god-realization -- those things were part of my karma; important, yet not what my life's highest purpose was all about. I'm grateful that my eyes have been opened to the flaws…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

How I’m content with an atheistic world view

Today I got an email message from someone who asked a great question about finding contentment with an atheistic world view. I dashed off a response right away, because I loved how this person described their quandary, and how clearly their youthful angst was expressed. Speaking of love, which the person said was their "entire meaning in life," you'll see that I didn't mention love in my reply. I thought about this only after I'd sent my response. It isn't that love isn't important to me, or that it isn't a big part of my life. I guess it is…
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