Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual experiences don’t exist

People talk about "spiritual experiences" all the time. I've done my fair share of that myself. Yet frequent mentions of these words in a comment conversation on this post got me thinking about what they mean.Conclusion: by themselves, nothing. Which fits with an earlier notion, that "spirituality" is a meaningless word. A blog visitor asked me recently if I believed that people have had spiritual experiences. I replied, yes, people consider that they've had them. But before we can judge what this means, we need to define "spiritual."And that's difficult to do, since there are so many definitions of "spirit."…
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Posted inFundamentalism

Tips on talking to a fundamentalist

While this blog is for churchless folks, we get some fundamentalist visitors also. I enjoy having comment conversations with them, even though I can get frustrated with preachiness and closed-mindedness.Soon after I started the Church of the Churchless I wrote "How to talk to a fundamentalist." With more than four years of additional experience in this area, it's time for an update.Fundamentalism is defined in various ways. I like this Wikipedia definition: "clinging to a stubborn, entrenched position that defies reasoned argument or contradictory evidence."If someone is certain they're right, it's tough to have a productive conversation with them. So…
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Posted inReality

Life is change. Why cling to a religion?

I've been thinking about some of the changes that have happened in my life. Starting with marriage, since it's our anniversary today. (Laurel and I were smart to get married on St. Patrick's Day; when green beer starts to be mentioned, I'm reminded of what I shouldn't forget).After being married for eighteen years to one woman, now I've been married for nineteen years to a different woman. Good change.After getting a Master's Degree in Social Work, I realized that I wasn't cut out for counseling and worked on a Ph.D. in Systems Science. Good change.After buying a Ford Fairmont in…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

“Churchless” is a 360 degree perspective

Thanks again to Shin for sharing his or her doubts about Radha Soami Satsang Beas, which formed a recent post. I've enjoyed the comments also.These thoughts have, not surprisingly, gotten me thinking ... about my own evolution from a fervent RSSB true believer to who I am now. It's sort of tough to encapsulate my current state in a few words, like I used to be able to do with "RSSB initiate" or "RSSB disciple." This is progress. Before, my spiritual focus was narrow. Even though I read widely in other traditions -- Sufism, mystical Christianity, Greek philosophy -- I…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Good questions from a Sant Mat truth seeker

Questions...they're so much more important than answers. Questions open us up. They point us in the direction of truth. They help us avoid premature explanations that haven't ripened into a reality we can depend on.Below is a mildly edited email message that I got yesterday from a thoughtful, questioning member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the group that I belonged to for over thirty years.I've responded to this person in a comment. Hopefully other Church of the Churchless visitors will do the same, as he or she requested. Even if you aren't familiar with the Sant Mat theologies that are…
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Posted inReligions

Religious abstractions are authoritarian

Oneness. Unity. Enlightenment. Perfection. Salvation. These are abstractions. Nobody ever has seen, touched, heard, tasted, or smelled them. They're conceptions, but religious believers often take them to be more real than here-and-now reality. "The Guru Papers," which I'm enjoying a lot, says:The concept of oneness is an abstraction created by thought as a way of framing and attempting to describe the mystical experience. Insofar as Oneness is placed in a higher realm or plane than the world of separation and multiplicity (the Many), this is done by abstracting out and reifying a presumed quality or essence from life, and making…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

BIt of a blog makeover

TIme for a Church of the Churchless banner change. I wanted a stronger look that matched my other blog. Browsing through my photos for image inspiration, I came across one that I took at Suttle Lake in central Oregon. (Larger version viewable in this blog post.)I like how Serena, our pet companion (a.k.a. Canine Perfection), is gazing in the opposite direction from the way the chair on the dock is facing.When I saw the photo, my mind said "spiritual independence." Which got the image onto the banner. Last October I made a video of our walk around Suttle Lake. It…
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Posted inReligions

Yay! Churchless are on the march in U.S.

Excellent news: a survey has found that the ranks of faithless, irreligious, and pagan people are growing rapidly in the United States. "nones"—people claiming no religion—constitute the only "religious" tradition that's growing in all 50 statesKeep not-believing, churchless brothers and sisters. We are overcoming!The only depressing part of the survey findings for me was how Oregon has slipped over the past 18 years. I feel like I should have done more to keep up my state's godless credentials. This nifty USA Today chart shows that back in 1990 Oregon was #1 in No Religion. Now look at us in 2008.…
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Posted inReligions

Religious and worldly wealth bubbles

Some days the financial meltdown has me feeling like our stock market portfolio -- trashed. In an effort to get some benefit from the holy shit! that bursts forth every time I take a peek at our Schwab account (my soma hasn't shown up yet), I'll attempt to suck some cosmic meaning out of the dry rind of increasingly bad economic news.What's been striking me is how similar a rapid decline in net worth and a sudden loss of religious faith can feel. Having experienced both, I can say that the defining emotional characteristic of each (for me, at least)…
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Posted inScience

Sure you’re right? You’re probably wrong.

Is a depression coming? Will Obama's stimulus and budget plans get the country back on track? Does God exist? Is heaven the after-death destination for believers, and hell for doubters?These sets of questions seem very different -- economics is worldly; religion is other-worldly. But after reading a recent Newsweek article, "Why Pundits Get Things Wrong," I suspect there is a commonality between those who offer up answers in both areas.Ongoing research by Philip Tetlock, a psychologist, looked at 82,361 predictions by 284 pundits. Searching for an explanation of why some people were better predictors than others, he found that:The best…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Danes and Swedes don’t obsess over meaning of life

For most of my sixty years I've seriously pondered the Big Question, "What is the meaning of life?" So much so, I've assumed that anyone who doesn't engage in similar pondering is shallow, clueless, frivolous, unaware.After all, Socrates said: "The unexamined life is not worth living." But there's intriguing evidence in Phil Zuckerman's "Society Without God" that most people in Denmark and Sweden simply live life, without questioning its meaning. And the citizens of these nations are among the happiest in the world, according to comparative surveys.So what gives? Zuckerman lived in Scandinavia for fourteen months, interviewing about 150 Danes…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

“The Guru Papers” and magical thinking

Here's some additional correspondence that I've received from "Unknown," who sent along previously-posted (from January 12-28, 2009) material that can be found in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas category of this blog.

The theme of this submission is why people accept so uncritically a guru's claims of divinity, or special access to God, when either positive evidence is lacking or negative evidence is present.

I wasn't familiar with one of the cited books, "The Guru Papers." It looks interesting. I decided to order a used copy from Amazon — 408 pages of anti-cult prose for $6.99, that's the kind of cost-effective churchless reading I go for.

Click below to read on.

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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Get rid of the guilt, religious or otherwise

I usually don't see myself as a guilt-ridden person. However, yesterday I learned that old Catholic habits hang around in difficult-to-discern guises.I've got a natural food store checkout clerk to thank for this valuable churchless insight. This was my first visit carrying a Whole Foods reusable bag. My wife and I had picked several up during a trip to Portland earlier in the day (Salem doesn't have a Whole Foods Market -- or a Trader Joes, despite our fervent visualizations).When I plunked my purchases down on the conveyor belt and started to unfold the Whole Foods bag, I found myself…
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Posted inReality

Yes to science and mysticism, no to religion

I've pondered the nature of reality for about five decades. Specifics aren't becoming much clearer, but I feel like I'm making progress on three basic questions and general answers.(1) Is it possible to learn about the universe? Yes. (2) Is it possible to learn about the ultimate origin of the universe? No.(3) Is it possible to marvel at the mystery of the "Yes" and "No" above? Yes.The two affirmations in 1 and 3 lead me to embrace science and mysticism. The negative in 2 causes me to reject religion. Pretty damn simple. This makes so much sense to me, it's…
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Posted inWu Project

Resting in the stillpoint of mystery

So many religious beliefs.So many philosophical systems.So many gurus with divergent truths.So many notions of what life is all about.So many guides pointing in different directions.And so few people willing to say, "I don't know."Ignorance isn't bliss. But neither is illusory knowledge. I'm much attracted to those who have done their best to sort through the world's collection of answers to life's biggest questions and have the guts to say it like it is:All come up short.Virtually everyone ends up choosing sides in the massive Game of Meaning, where countless teams vie to collect the greatest number of people willing…
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Posted inGod

God demands heresy. I obey, devoutly.

Fairly frequently I hear from true believers who ask me, in so many words, "Brian, how could you?" Almost always my reply is "There's no way I couldn't."Meaning, my nearly lifelong search for the way things really are necessitates leaving aside the way things aren't. The fancy philosophical term for this is Via Negativa, the negative way.In negative theology, it is accepted that the Divine is ineffable, an abstract experience that can only be recognized—that is, human beings cannot describe the essence of God, and therefore all descriptions if attempted will be ultimately false and conceptualization should be avoided.Religions love…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

“Spirituality” is a meaningless word

After trying to lead a spiritual life for most of my 60 years, I feel eminently qualified to make what may seem to be a radical suggestion: Let's do away with spirituality.Not so much the actions people associate with being spiritual, but how the word is usually used -- and the divisiveness that comes with splitting reality into "spritual" and "material" spheres.Actually, the problem with spirituality isn't that the word is meaningless. Rather, it has so many meanings, most of them aren't recognized by someone using the term in a particular sense.Check them out."Spirit" and "soul" are closely connected. So…
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Posted inBuddhism

The Monk and the Philosopher debate Buddhism

It's interesting how my attitude toward Buddhism has changed during the course of my descent (or ascent) into churchlessness. I used to find Buddhism wonderfully non-dogmatic. Now, I see it as permeated with an uncomfortable amount of religiosity.A couple of fellow Tai Chi students recommended "The Monk and the Philosopher" to me. With the subtitle, a father and son discuss the meaning of life, how could I resist making a visit to Amazon?Last month I wrote about how when the Monk (Matthieu Ricard) and his Philosopher father (Jean-Francois Revel) discuss karma, I disagreed with the Buddhist notion that Tibetans brought…
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Posted inUniverse

The universe is unity

Look around. Outside of yourself. Inside of yourself. Do you find any sharp divisions between utterly distinct aspects of reality? I can confidently predict, "No, you don't." (If I'm wrong, enlighten me.) There's a reason the word universe starts with "uni." It's a whole.Most religions, maybe all, are founded on a duality of some sort. Heaven and earth. Soul and body. Spirit and matter. God and creation. Salvation and sin. Liberation and karma. Truth and maya. Yet these supposedly separate spheres of existence aren't evident. They're concepts, belief structures that have to be taken on faith. So religious believers necessarily…
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