Posted inPolitics

America’s founders reasoned their way to a secular republic

How did the United States come to be the secular constitutional republic -- arguably also termed a democracy -- that it is now? Why aren't we ruled by a king or queen? Why aren't we a theocracy? I've vaguely been interested in these sorts of questions, but I'm not a big history buff. So reading Matthew Stewart's book, Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic, is pretty much my first serious venture into learning about my country's revolutionary origins. In my last post I shared a bunch of quotations from the book. Here I want to take a stab at relating…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Quotations from “Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic”

l am loving Matthew Stewart's brilliantly written book, Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic. It demolishes the absurd oft-heard claims that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Yet it is difficult to summarize Stewart's arguments why this is untrue. "Nature's God," which I'm about 2/3 through, is a complex blend of history and philosophy. It isn't enough to simply say that this country was founded by deists, not theists.  Yes, this is true. But to understand the book's subtitle, "The Heretical Origins of the American Republic," not surprisingly requires Stewart to journey through a…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

30-plus days into Headspace meditation, I’m liking it a lot

A bit over a month ago I discovered Headspace, which was founded by Andy Puddicombe, a British guy who trained as a Buddhist monk before starting this online meditation site. My first free trial experience on July 7 led me to write "Yikes! I actually like a guided Headspace meditation." I'm not a big fan of guided meditations. Usually they irk more than relax me. I get annoyed with the (usually) New Age'y tone of the person doing the guiding. Hey, if anybody is going to annoy me while I meditate, I'm perfectly capable of filling that role myself. After about…
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Posted inReligions

1000 musical fans of Foo Fighters display religion-like devotion

I'm not a religious person. But I respond to emotional displays of devotion that have a sort of religious quality to them. Such as this wonderful video of a thousand musicians and singers assembling in an Italian field to play the Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly" -- with the goal of getting the band to put on a concert in Cesena, Italy.   I was moved by the video. And I'm not even a fan of the Foo Fighters.  We humans are social animals. We enjoy getting together with other people and doing stuff. We also enjoy watching masses of…
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Posted inGod Reality

Aliens test the faith of Earth’s religious believers

So here's a thought experiment to ponder, religious believers... Aliens have come to Earth. They're from an advanced civilization in a galaxy far far away. Their spaceship is way beyond anything our scientists have even imagined.  Technologically, it's immediately apparent that we are as sophisticated in their eyes as a chimpanzee with a termite-removing twig is to us.  Fortunately, the aliens haven't come to destroy humanity. Well, let's rephrase that: they're fine with destroying us Homo sapiens one at a time. It's part of a game they like to play with denizens of the planets they visit. The rules are…
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Posted inReality

Boundless Existence is grander than anything, even a God

l enjoy marveling at a primal marvelousness: That the cosmos exists. Recently I wrote a piece for the Spiritual Naturalist Society about this -- "Wow! Existence has always existed." I boldfaced That because there's a unbridgeable gap between the What and That of existence. We can talk about What existent things are. It is impossible to talk about the That'ness of existence: That existence exists. Recently on a bookshelf I came across Milton Munitz' "Does Life Have a Meaning?", one of my favorite books. For the third time, I read it. Munitz  also was fascinated by the brute fact of existence. Being a Distinguished Professor of…
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Posted inMystics Radha Soami Satsang Beas

My response to someone’s mystical experience of “heaven”

Once in a while someone emails me a description of a marvelous mystical experience they've had. Usually the person is a devotee of the organization I belonged to for about 35 years -- Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). RSSB is led by a guru who is considered to be God in human form, in much the same way as Jesus is viewed by Christians. Except, the guru is alive. Once initiated by the guru, supposedly he places his "radiant form" within the disciple's consciousness.  Then the radiant form leads the mind/soul of the disciple through various higher stages of reality…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

How I deal with the fear of death and non-existence

Recently I got two email messages from someone who said he shared my fear of death and non-existence. The fearful feelings were bothering him. He felt like no one else understood what he was going through. He wondered if he was going crazy. He asked me how I dealt with this fear, and if I wanted to live forever. Here's the reply I sent to him tonight. Sorry for the delay in replying to you. Anyway…  Yes, I would like to live forever. And yes, I do think like you. I’ve had the same feelings as you — the fears…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I have another mini not-really-mystical revelation

Might as well start off this post as I did a similarly-titled one back in 2014: Hey, when you're as churchless and unreligious as I am, you take your revelations in any form they might appear. So today, my mini (or micro) satori came unbidden while on a late afternoon dog walk. After canine companion Zu Zu and I had made our way across the creek, through the woods, and started to circle the path around our community lake, I suddenly had a Wow! feeling while we were walking on dry cut grass. Naturally I had to document the outwardness…
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Posted inMystics Spiritual practice/meditation

Alan Watts talks about the source of spiritual authority

Over on my "Let's add a new L-word to 'Who is the guru?' possibilities" post, William left a comment today: Hi BrianI was listening to a talk on the topic of What is a Guru? by Alan Watts. You may well find it interesting. Here's the link that will bring you to the pertinent part of that talk. https://youtu.be/sAq2NY0Tjf8?t=1m54s Since I enjoy reading Watts' books, saw him speak in person back in the 1960's, and like his audio recordings, I watched about half of the You Tube video today. Here's the link William sent, which starts at about the two minute…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Check out On Being — a website, radio program, and more

Driving around today, satellite channel surfing, I clicked on NPR (National Public Radio) and came across On Being. On Being is a Peabody Award-winning public radio conversation and podcast, a Webby Award-winning website and online exploration, a publisher and public event convener.  On Being opens up the animating questions at the center of human life: What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live? We explore these questions in their richness and complexity in 21st-century lives and endeavors. We pursue wisdom and moral imagination as much as knowledge; we esteem nuance and poetry as much as fact. …
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

My new Spiritual Naturalist Society essay: “Marijuana is my secular sacrament”

The third essay that I've written for the Spiritual Naturalist Society is about a subject of considerable interest not only to me, but also to just about everybody in Oregon, where I live, since on July 1 of this year it became legal to grow, use, and possess marijuana. In "Marijuana is my secular sacrament" I argue that cannabis produces an experience of less-self, or even non-self, that is a genuine spiritual experience -- using that word, spiritual, in a decidedly non-supernatural sense. You can either read the essay over on the Spiritual Naturalist Society site, or right here. In…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Me and Tai Chi — eight blog posts about “Taoism in motion”

Today a friend expressed some interest in Tai Chi, so I sent him info about where I've been taking classes for the past eleven years.  I included links to eight blog posts I've written about Tai Chi. After finding them via a Google search, I thought (not surprisingly), Hey, these are really interesting! I'd forgotten about most of them and was pleased to be reacquainted with my own creations.  Tai Chi is an intriguing blend of Taoist philosophy and martial arts practicality. The posts cover both bases, and then some. I've shared an excerpt from each. ------------------------- Ten reasons for guys…
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Posted inMorality

What if…? (questions for religious believers)

Believers in God deserve to have the What if...? gambit turned back upon them. They enjoy telling atheists, agnostics, and other non-believers in a supernatural divinity that nasty things await them -- hell, for instance. Failing to accept the reality of a world beyond this one supposedly leads to undesirable consequences (in this life and an imagined next one). But what if the atheists are right and believers are wrong? This is extremely likely, as I noted in last year's "Religious believers, what if you're wrong?" That post includes some quotes from a book by James Lindsay, "God Doesn't; We…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Yikes! I actually like a guided Headspace meditation

I'm not a big fan of guided meditations. Usually they irk more than relax me. I get annoyed with the (usually) New Age'y tone of the person doing the guiding. Hey, if anybody is going to annoy me while I meditate, I'm perfectly capable of filling that role myself. After about 45 years of daily meditation, that's one thing I've learned from contemplating the workings of my mind. (Maybe the only thing... but at least that's one thing.) A few minutes ago, though, I actually enjoyed a ten minute guided meditation. Listening on my laptop while sitting outside on our…
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Posted inReality Religions

Imagined orders — like religions — depend on shaky myths

Today I hit a sweet spot in my reading of Yuval Noah Harari's book, "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind." Harari is a historian who has a knack for explaining the past and present in some wonderfully fresh ways. In his Building Pyramids chapter Harari describes the Code of Hammurabi, circa 1776 BC, and the United States Declaration of Independence, which was created in 1776 AD. Each claimed to be founded on sacred principles. So how do we know which is right? Or more right? Harari says: The two texts present us with an obvious dilemma. Both the Code of…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Mystics

DMT, a natural psychedelic chemical, could produce “spiritual” experiences

Someone sent me an email with a link to an article whose title was so intriguing, I was eager to read the piece: "The psychedelic drug that could explain our belief in life after death." DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is the most powerful hallucinogenic drug around. The class A psychedelic is so potent that under the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances its manufacture is strictly for scientific research and medical use and any international trade is very closely monitored. But it also naturally occurs in the human body. Now a Senior Psychologist at Greenwich University, Dr. David Luke, is trying to undercover a link…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Christian bullshit: “Living as exiles in our own country”

There's nothing so pathetic as a Christian who thinks his religion is becoming a pariah here in the United States. Fox News has made a journalistic career out of this, conjuring up absurdities like the War on Christmas. The plain fact is that this country is one of the most religious, and it is dominated by Christianity. There's no evidence that Christians are at risk of losing their super-majority status. Which makes this piece on Time.com by Rod Dreher, "Orthodox Christians Must Now Learn to Live as Exiles in Our Own Country," so absurd I thought at first that the title must…
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Posted inBuddhism Death/Rebirth

Idea of no-self doesn’t translate into no-fear-of-death

Over on Slate there's an interesting piece by Nina Strohminger, Jay Garfield, and Shaun Nichols, "Buddhism and the Loss of Self." I've copied it in below for easy reading. Surprisingly, research seems to show that Buddhists who don't believe they have (or are) a continuous self are more fearful of death than Hindus or adherents of the Abrahamic traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). Buddhists also were less generous in a thought experiment about giving away a single dose of medicine that could extend either their own or someone else's life. But I guess this really isn't so surprising. After all, our sense of…
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