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…
7
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…
3
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,…
1
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…
3
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.  
6
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…
2
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…
15
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…
5
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…
22
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.…
No Comments
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…
3
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.…
10
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…
1
Posted inReligions

Religious weirdness: treasures worth billions found in Hindu temple

Every religion is weird, but there are degrees of weirdness. For example, I'm not at all attracted to fundamentalist Christianity. Yet I used to enjoy reading the mystical philosophizing of Meister Eckhart, a medieval Christian who, pleasingly, was decried as a heretic. And I also have enjoyed learning about the less religious side of Hinduism, Vedanta, which focuses on meditation, the nature of consciousness, and other esoteric subjects rather than rituals. However, a fascinating article in the April 30, 2012 issue of The New Yorker reminded me that Hinduism also has its more weird religious side. "The Secret of the…
1
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

“Buddha in Blue Jeans.” Kindle cost: $0.00. Worth much more.

If you've got a Kindle, or a Kindle reader, you'll definitely get your money's worth out of a 26 page e-book, Buddha in Blue Jeans: An Extremely Short Zen Guide to Sitting Quietly and Being Buddha. The cost is zero, nothing. $0.00, nada, zilch.  The message is valuable: sit quietly every day. I've been doing that for 43 years. Can't say that I'm a Buddha, but hey, maybe I am. Regardless, my morning meditation seems to have helped keep me from becoming any crazier than I already am. Maybe even a little saner. (Alternative equally valid rendering: My morning meditation…
3
Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Your spiritual experience means nothing to me

Experience. A wonderful word. So important. It's all that we have, really. Experience. Without it, we're nothing. Dead. Unconscious.  So saith the Merriam-Webster dictionary. 1 a : direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge    b : the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation 2 a : practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity    b : the length of such participation <has 10 years'experience in the job> 3 a : the conscious events that make up an individual life    b : the events that make up the conscious…
2
Posted inPersonal/Stories

Life lessons learned on a Maui beach

I always feel pleasantly alive when my wife and I visit our favorite Maui beach, Napili. There's just something about a tropical beach that screams (or rather, murmurs) this is what life is all about.  It isn't just the warm air and water speaking. There's also something else. Elemental. Honest. Real. No need to try to name it. But I enjoy trying to talk about it. Last year I blogged about some life lessons I've learned boogie boarding.  -- You can't control the big things.-- You can control how you relate to big things.-- Change is the only constant.-- Don't be afraid of being the only one.-- Rushing…
10
Posted inBuddhism

Even Hardcore Zen is too softcore for me

I've come across Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen site several times. I know this, despite my sometimes bad memory, because I always look at the t-shirts for sale. So I remember a repeated feeling of "Seems like I should be the sort of guy to wear a Hardcore Zen t-shirt, but they don't appeal to me." Too Buddhist'y, even with the Buddhist dogmatism and religiosity supposedly removed. I have the same reaction to Warner's recent post, When You Reach Pure Awareness You Will Have No Problems.  He makes fun of Deepak Chopra, which I like. Chopra tweeted "When you reach pure awareness…
5
Posted inChristianity/Jesus Politics

Mitt Romney, you’re wrong: this isn’t a Christian nation

There are lots of reasons for people in the United States to vote for President Obama rather than Mitt Romney in November. Romney's sucking up to evangelical Christians is just one reason -- but an important one. In a recent speech at a hotbed of Christian'ist fundamentalism, Liberty University, Romney told the assembled believers in an imaginary God the untruths they wanted to hear. In the same week that President Obama galvanized his base by endorsing same-sex marriage, Mr. Romney’s message was that evangelicals could count on him to operate as president under “a common worldview,” including his position that marriage…
5
Posted inReality Science Universe

Physics knows more about “nothing” than theology or philosophy

It's amazing, how much can be said about nothing. Nothing always has been a favorite topic of theologians and philosophers. Now physicists are getting into the Nothing Game, big time (see here and here). There's a basic dispute between fact-focused scientists on one side, and concept-obsessed thinkers on the other: is "nothing" a something that can be investigated, or an absolute absence of anything? (including "absence") I've read a bunch of books and articles that argue both sides of this question, which is central to the classic Why is there something rather than nothing? question. More and more I favor…
6