Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

“We each belong to the energy of the moment” — Jack Haas

Jack Haas wrote one of my favorite books about the meaning of life, and the lack thereof: "The Way of Wonder." Like I said in a blog post stimulated by the book: It's been a steady substitution. The less I've filled myself with organized religion, the more I've felt a ever-increasing sense of wonder. I guess I needed to empty myself of theological beliefs, faith-based concepts, and imaginary anticipations of a promised divinity around the corner in order to become much more aware of the Wow! that is right here, right now. Existence. Life. Consciousness. The amazing fact that we are, that the cosmos is.…
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Posted inMorality

Moral relativism linked with openness to experience

By and large, I'm a moral relativist. This fits with my irreligious inclinations. I don't believe in the Ten Commandments, or any set of moral codes that supposedly emanated from a divine, supernatural, or more-than-human source. I think Sam Harris got it mostly right in his book, "The Moral Landscape." Even though I lean toward moral relativism, I agree with Harris that human flourishing is the standard by which moral decisions should be made. He writes: Meaning, values, morality, and the good life must relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures -- and, in our case, must lawfully…
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Posted inReality Religions

Are humans capable of fully comprehending the cosmos?

It's a marvelous quest, our oh-so-human desire to fully understand the mysteries of the cosmos. Dogs don't do this. Chimpanzees don't do this. Dolphins don't do this. (So far as we know.) Science and religion are alike in this regard: each seeks knowledge, as much as possible. Scientists aspire to the discovery of a Theory of Everything which encompasses the core laws of nature. Prophets, mystics, gurus, yogis, and other spiritual seekers hope to know the "mind of God," perhaps even becoming it via enlightenment. Yet there's an egotistical, anthropomorphic, humancentric undercurrent to these attempts to reveal ultimate reality. We…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation Universe

My Amazon review of “The Mystery Experience”

Killing two birds with one stone (or rather, slicing two pieces of tofu with one knife, since I'm an animal-loving vegetarian), I'm going to talk about my overall impression of Tim Freke's The Mystery Experience in the form of an Amazon reader review. I read a lot more Amazon reviews than I write. This will help make up for that imbalance. Usually I'm only drawn to submit a review on books that I liked a lot. Such is true with The Mystery Experience, which I've blogged about before here, here, here, and here. But "liking" isn't the same as "agreeing with."…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual perfection is an illusion. Simply be human.

A few posts ago, in "Allow cosmic mystery to live, not killing it with religion," I talked about what I didn't like about Tim Freke's book, The Mystery Experience. Now I want to share some passages that made me think right on when I read them. Yes, I had a few quibbles with what Freke said, but in general I agreed wholeheartedly with him. After embracing forms of spirituality that emphasized detaching from the world to reach a state of transcendent perfected enlightenment, Freke has seen the light. Not a heavenly radiance, but the illumination that comes from embracing what…
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Posted inScience

Untrue intuitions lead people to not believe in science

Religious people often claim that believing in God is a difficult path to follow, since it goes against the ways of the world. Actually, understanding the truth about materiality is a lot tougher than embracing spiritual falsities. If you doubt this, check out an interesting New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer, "Why We Don't Believe in Science." The main conclusion I drew from the piece is this: if our intuitions about how the physical world works often are so wrong, why should we believe that our intuitions about God, heaven, soul, spirit, and other aspects of a supposed spiritual world…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Guru Gurinder Singh Dhillon’s teachings: a logical look

Here's a blunt, honest, and amusing reaction to some questions and answers of an Indian guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, who is considered to be "God in human form" by devotees.  The author is well-known, Anonymous. (Isn't me, I can assure you.) Gurinder Singh Dhillon heads up Radha Soami Satsang Beas, or RSSB, which is termed Really Stupid Shitty Bullshit in this PDF document: Download Gurinder Singh Dhillon questions  The questions and answers apparently are authentic, having been circulated among RSSB members. The caustic commentary on the Q and A is one person's logical reaction to some religious illogic.
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Universe

First sermon from the Church of What the Fuck

I'm glad I named this blog Church of the Churchless when I started it up back in 2004. But since I no longer adhere to any religious dogma, I'm free to experiment with my churchlessness. So here's a mini-sermon from the Church of What the Fuck. The name came to me yesterday as I was thinking some more about why I started to disagree with what Tim Freke was saying in his book, "The Mystery Experience."  (Reasons described in my previous blog post, "Allow cosmic mystery to live, not killing it with religion.") As I read deeper into Freke's book…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Allow cosmic mystery to live, not killing it with religion

"Uh-oh." This is a common feeling for me these churchless days, as I'm reading along in a book that's been enjoyably non-religious, yet suddenly manifests a scent of unjustified dogmatism. An "uh-oh" followed by a string of highlighted question marks in the margins... this is a sign that even stronger Religiosity alert! Religiosity alert! warning bells are going off in my brain. Such happened today, when I got to the "Where is Awareness?" chapter in Tim Freke's The Mystery Experience (blogged about previously here and here). I was flowing along just fine with Freke's seemingly unarguable assertion that everything arises in…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Truly “living in the moment” would be horrible

Live in the moment. Oft-heard advice. Seems to make sense. Why worry about the past or obsess about the future? Be here now. Anyway, what choice do we have? Isn't everything happening to us now? Yes, that's pretty much what neuroscientist Sam Harris says in an interesting You Tube'd talk, "Death and the Present Moment." (Watch from the 20 minute mark to the 30-35 minute mark, if you don't have time to see it all.)   But no normal person truly lives in the present moment. Meaning, our experience of the present is conditioned by experiences of the past. Memories,…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Life is a mystery… and the stories we tell about it

I'm glad that I ignored my qualms about buying TIm Freke's "The Mystery Experience." Ninety pages in, I'm liking the book a lot.  Not surprising. What's not to like about mystery? And Freke has a pleasing way of talking about what we don't know about life, existence, the cosmos, and other Big Questions. The mystery of life is so enormous it takes my breath away and leaves me speechless. It's not some riddle I will one day unravel, but real magic to be marvelled at. It's not a darkness my intellect can illuminate, but a dazzling radiance so splendid that…
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Posted inGod Humor

If God was real and could see us now

Cosmic! The next morning after I blog about my communication with God, where I learned that this non-existent divine being is deeply irritated with us humans, a cartoon pops up in my Facebook feed with similar message.  
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Posted inScience Universe

God isn’t happy with deeply religious Americans

I had a conversation with God today. I'm sure of it. Just as sure, at least, as so many other prophets, gurus, masters, and other purported communicators with the divine have been.  In my case, a godly voice didn't come out of a burning bush. It was more intimate than that: God spoke to me from right inside my own head, which makes it difficult for me to doubt a divine encounter that was so direct. Below you'll learn what God commanded me to preach. Be warned, God has a foul mouth. He doesn't mince words when he's seriously pissed. And…
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Posted inBuddhism Science Spiritual practice/meditation

Key to self-knowledge: knowing you don’t have a “self”

I love the idea that "I" don't exist. Life sure seems like it'd be a lot simpler without a "me" around. Most of my problems aren't physical, but psychological. So if my body is real, but my self isn't, potentially that removes a large source of difficulties. Fortunately for the "me" who I don't want to be, modern neuroscience has come to a pretty firm conclusion that, indeed, the self is an illusion.  Such is the central theme of a book by Bruce Hood I've started to read, "The Self Illusion." I blogged about an interview Sam Harris did with…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Surrender to a lower power. Or equal. Not higher.

I used to believe in surrendering to a higher power. And not only to my wife -- but also to a spiritual, supernatural, metaphysical higher power. No more. Don't see any reason to. Now I'm much more comfortable with surrendering to lower and equal powers. Which, I suspect, actually are the only varieties powers come in. In fact, we could be talking singular here. Power. Not powers. There's no higher or lower. Just varying manifestations of One Energy, One Nature, One Cosmos, One Reality. But religions, spiritual systems, mystical philosophies, and other advocates of surrendering to a higher power would…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Skeptical look at mantras and Transcendental Meditation

I've never practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM). But for over forty years I've meditated daily, mostly using a mantra (a word or words repeated over and over) just as TM does. So I resonated with a "Mantras" post on the TM-Free blog, which describes itself as: Insider information about the Transcendental Meditation™ techniques, the TM movement and its late founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Our bloggers take independent, skeptical and critical views of TM claims and research. We report allegations of deception by TM organizations and reports that some individuals experience harm from involvement. For most of those forty years I used a…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

High-resolution perception brings mindful clarity

I've finished Chade-Meng Tan's "Search Inside Yourself," after calling the book compassionate, scientific, businesslike in my first post about it -- written after I'd only read a few chapters. The book turned out to be more Buddhist'y than I'd expected, but since the author is a Buddhist (as well as an engineer who was one of the first Google employees), that shouldn't have been a big surprise.  Still, Chade-Meng has a pleasingly non-religious, non-metaphysical, non-mystical approach to mindfulness. Which also isn't a big surprise, given that mindfulness is about paying attention to what is here and now, not there and then.…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Science

Sam Harris interview with author of “Illusion of the Self”

Damn! (but actually I'm happy) Another $19.57 has found its way from my VISA account into Amazon's accounts receivable, thanks to Sam Harris' interview with the author of Illusion of the Self -- another neuroscience book that the "I" who isn't me was led to order by largely unconscious brain processes over which the "I" who isn't me has no control. If you're interested in this stuff, but not twenty bucks worth of interested, it'll cost you nothing to read the interview. I'm fascinated by the increasingly evident neuroscientific conclusion that there's no such thing as a Self to be…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

12 Symptoms of a Spiritual Awakening

This morning I came across 12 Symptoms of a Spiritual Awakening on a friend's Facebook feed. I liked them, even though I noticed that they came from a recovery web site. No mention of a higher power or God in the twelve, thankfully.  1. An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen. 2. Frequent attacks of smiling. 3. Feelings of being connected with others and nature. 4. Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation. 5. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experience. 6. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.…
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Posted inReligions

A sign that maybe I’m part Jewish

The Western monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- interest me considerably less than Eastern religions, since I've got some fondness for Buddhism and Taoism.  But a passage in a recent TIME magazine story about Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, makes me think that maybe there's some Jewishness in my churchless non-soul. For Netanyahu, the Jews are not so much God's chosen people as his argumentative ones. They don't take things on faith. Abraham, Moses, and Job, he notes, all argued with God. And sometimes won. Like Bibi, they were ornery and maybe had a chip on…
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