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youre spiritual awakening is a peace of poo poo. if you think about it, the world is like a giant computer. if that is tru though who programmed it to make you and me and the computers in the computer :bleepthinkingface: here is a run down of some of the most prevalent theories christianity believe that the world was programmed by jesus or his dad. catholics and protestants are in disagreement about whether it is better to learn to program by going to a boot camp or to RTFM islam believe that mohammed was the last person to program a computer judaism not really sure tbh buddhism dont really talk about who programmed the world, just that computers are an endless cycle of suffering and the only way to escape is to not use them atheists no one programmed the computer. the computer just is satanists atheists with tattoos spirituality and religion is a big dumb thing that people either think about way too much or not enough so i wonder what takes people in the 'pos have. p recently i started doing spiritual based meditation and while it helped with behaviorial / mental anguish, secular buddhism was ultimately unfulfilling. meditation slowly morphed into prayer and a new found appreciation for the spiritual world far away from any electronics of any kind
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Dec 30, 2020 05:44
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Bored Online posted:buddhism 
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Dec 30, 2020 09:11
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sikhism: someone programmed the computer, and you probably don't want to piss them off, so spend your free time doing good deeds for people whether or not they believe in the programmer
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Dec 30, 2020 09:39
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Bored Online posted:p recently i started doing spiritual based meditation and while it helped with behaviorial / mental anguish, secular buddhism was ultimately unfulfilling. meditation slowly morphed into prayer and a new found appreciation for the spiritual world far away from any electronics of any kind do you mind if I ask you to elaborate? genuinely curious this is me just blabbing a bit about how I understand meditation and consciousness: different schools of buddhism seem to place different levels of emphasis on the importance of meditaiton, with some paying lip service, seems like this is common in the case in buddhism countries like thailand for example, and tibetan buddhists push more toward more esoteric meditative "tricks" like non-dualism etc. i've been interested in buddhism on the side, because investigations into meditation will always tend to bring buddhism along, but mostly interested in meditation. in particular using (and forgive me if I get these terms wrong) samatha to bring about escaping unhelpful frames of mind and set the scene for mindfulness and then vipassana to cultivate mindfulness. and mindfulness done correctly should lead to deeper and deeper insights into yourself and also how the mind works. if done correctly it should also generally be rewarding and not boring and it should be possible, either thru persistent mindfulness or somehow thru observing this directly, that consciousness is an absolutely blank state, with no apparently boundaries, and that everything thats possible to experience isn't an inherent feature of consciousness, but a phenomenon within consciousness. one of these phenomenons which appear fundamental but can be perceived to be an appearance in conscioussness is the sensation of subjectivity. that is to say, that feeling like you are a "you", inside your head behind your eyes, is simply a feeling. and to give a bit of understanding to something coming up, the concept of being lost in thought, is potentially undesirable from a mindfulness point of view, because it's *not* being mindful, it's thinking without realising you're thinking. you can catch yourself doing this, but until you do you're just on a thnking train, no matter how small. and something this subjectivity does is give a sense that "you" is separate from everything else. this is dualism. that there is me and there is everything else. what we perceive, is not reality itself, but our internal representation of the world. is has to be. and so it's possible to perceive that everything possible to experience is made from the same thing, which is consciousness, and that there isnt actually a distance between "you" and "the world" in the sense that there is no separation between the fighters and the background in street fighter 2 because they're all just expressions of bits in graphic memory. this is something ive experienced high as gently caress lol but not sober. and so my understanding of this is more intelluctual than practical. and in this state of consciousness, things like thoughts can be observed without necessarily getting lost in them and that persistent mindfulness can show this, but there seems to be a trick that can be shown to people known as the "pointing out instruction", that can allow people to slip into this non-dual state of mind. its as if there is consciousness as far as the raw bits of memory, and then there are all the things that bring context to the bits, ie, a face looks like a face and not just fleshy coloured shapes, and that you can slip into this space of non-judgement, and just exist, and it's meant to be quite good, and not boring, like, at all, boredom isn't possible apparently. idk I think im trying to hard sometimes to achieve it. I really need to be guided I reckon but thats not the only benefit of mindfulness, greater mindfulness should be useful to observing thoughts and not necessarily diving into them. and a host of other things. and I think an understanding of rebirth cycle is, well a good example, is feeling horny af and then jerking off and then you come and you're not horny and you wanna go change the oil in the car, and if you realise we are not just one person, but a constant series of egos that arise and give away, and if you are mindful enough, you can observe an ego being born within you, a series of thoughts and intentions and drives, and eventually giving away to the next one. this is just my take on it. im really in a waiting room as far as discovering some of those things first hand, and trying to intellectually understand more, but being too fuckin useless to put in the time to discover more first hand
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Dec 30, 2020 09:42
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I think prayer is interesting, not from any metaphysical point of view, but if our brains are made of plastic, and they are, then thinking about something literally changes how you'll think in the future, and by spending time thinking good things about someone else, not only will that result in your future actions being more positive toward that person, but you'll be more positive toward everyone theres a kind of meditation called loving kindness, where you focus on a person, and pretend to be saying 'I wish you well", and genuinely wish better for that person, and because our brain gets better at what we practice, it transforms us. prayer must have a similar effect, presumably, unless its like, prayer for death to the apostates etc e: i certainly dont think im an expert on these things, its more like, I've investigated lots of things and have lots of thoughts, but its like ive done some ad hoc 101 courses and dont have real experience or wisdom here. just a lot of poo poo that interests me and things that I think could probably bring me genuine betterment in life, if only i got off my rear end
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Dec 30, 2020 09:50
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Bored Online posted:helped with behaviorial / mental anguish I am paying $10 to some iron age god and only want this
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Dec 30, 2020 09:52
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Dec 30, 2020 15:50
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deism: someone programmed the computer and then went outside to do something else so stop asking about them already
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Dec 30, 2020 16:26
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I Met God She’s a Hacker
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Dec 30, 2020 16:30
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heaven: eternal vim hell: emacs on a 60% kb
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Dec 30, 2020 17:30
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epic thrad
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Dec 30, 2020 17:44
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religion is a trap for the unenlightened
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Dec 30, 2020 17:44
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take some drugs mothetfucker
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Dec 30, 2020 17:49
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bored online hope my rambling hasnt fuckd up ya thred 2 much. those who give a sit will controbute I hope ;/
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Dec 30, 2020 17:57
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echinopsis posted:bored online hope my rambling hasnt fuckd up ya thred 2 much. your doing great mate ill respond with an effort post when i can Silver Alicorn posted:religion is a trap for the unenlightened 
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Dec 30, 2020 17:59
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idk. religion sounds like a lot of effort. I could instead use those brain cells to play video games
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Dec 30, 2020 18:07
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we are strange matter living on a speck of a planet orbiting an unremarkable star in a galaxy just like countless others. to think we are in some way special is hubris
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Dec 30, 2020 18:08
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at best some nugget of humanity spreads out into the stars and lives on a galactic scale for some hundred thousand years until ascending to a new existence we today cannot understand. at worst some other intelligent species might find a planet of which the inhabitants, bizarrely, decided to turn it into a second Venus.
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Dec 30, 2020 18:12
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you not interested in delving into and discovering what your own mind is like more? thousands of years of experience tell us that there is much to be found in there, including true contentment, peace, and equanimity. and perhaps more importantly, it can extremely lead someone toward being a better person to others and the rest of the world.
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Dec 30, 2020 18:19
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echinopsis posted:take some drugs mothetfucker are you the role model for positive outcomes from drug taking lol
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Dec 30, 2020 18:24
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I did not read the thread.
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Dec 30, 2020 19:00
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I think understanding the brain better is fine and important but it doesn’t have to be done within a spiritual/religious framework.
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Dec 30, 2020 19:14
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also op I believe that your question was answered by the hit movie the Matrix 2: ReLoaded it's some colonel sanders-looking motherfucker with a bunch of monitors
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Dec 30, 2020 19:49
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Silver Alicorn posted:I think understanding the brain better is fine and important but it doesn’t have to be done within a spiritual/religious framework. thats fine but that would be a purely intellectual pursuit, which while necessary in any attempt to understand the universe, is not all encompassing if you do believe in a spiritual world as truth
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Dec 30, 2020 19:59
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look man, if praying or whatever makes you happy, enjoy it. to me it seems that religion is a means to fill a void in the human psyche. I would recommend a healthy mix of other sources of fulfillment, and if you want to throw religion too then okay but don’t overdo it.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:35
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Someone should turn off the computer or at least roll it back to a snapshot from 2016
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Dec 30, 2020 20:37
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gently caress that i'm not living through the last four years again
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Dec 30, 2020 20:43
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without human cognition forcing meaning on things the world is just a soup of random particles interacting. the death of philosophical metaphysics was to a great extent caused by the scientific revolution seeming to explain everything from fundamental principles, from newton to einstein promising to give a foundation upon which a full understanding of the world could be systematically built. a century on however it is pretty clear that the divide between fundamental particle physics and actual human concerns can only be bridged in very rare and limited circumstances. this does not mean that rationality needs be rejected, but it means that a lot of it needs to operate within an ill-defined subjective realm (e.g. all social sciences, but also our individual attempts to understand the world). and i think a certain kind of spirituality is actually for there, as a means of finding ones own principles and ideals.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:47
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TOOT BOOT posted:Someone should turn off the computer or at least roll it back to a snapshot from 2016 this except they enable exploits and debug features for real hackers 
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Dec 30, 2020 20:48
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since leaving the Mormon church, and after doing a lot of self discovery (paganism, Buddhism) I found I just... don’t need any spirituality. nothing has any meaning except what we assign, and it’s more natural for me to think about everything in terms of mechanisms and natural laws. I understand why people join religions, there’s lots of different reasons, but none of them are for me. I don’t need a sense of community because I’m bad at socializing anyway (and I find something close enough in the local LGBT+ scene). if I had to pick something on pain of death I would join the Unitarian church and not attend very often
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Dec 30, 2020 21:12
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echinopsis posted:do you mind if I ask you to elaborate? genuinely curious carepost about meditation / prayer / whatever it means to you: my personal experience with this was directly through exploring buddhism so i can only answer through that lens. ive read a couple books on the subject but never dug so far as trying to understand the pali canon or other sacred writings so ymmv. the first time i meditated it was a transformative experience for me, and i didn't even realize i was doing it at the time tbh. my senior year of high school i had to give a project presentation in order to graduate. this is common in us schools now. i spent the entire senior year getting stoned and listening to punk and becoming further and further disillusioned with society and alienated from my angry family. long story short i uh didn't really do my project just slapped together some stuff last minute. right before i presented i was up front waiting to get the go ahead. i was staring at the clock and breathing. at that moment something "clicked" and i proceeded to give a stellar presentation with no fear or anxiety that convinced my teacher to pass me even though i should have failed and taken summer school by the numbers. the second time i meditated was in some jc stress therapy class i took for pe credit. we would do mindfulness for the last ten minutes everyday. i became terrified of it because i would reach a level of serenity that would morph into extreme vertigo that would make me feel like i was slipping through reality. that fear and my general apathy would keep me from trying again for a long time until... i went through an awful divorce and started attending therapy. my therapist urged that i tried it and eventually i did because honestly i was desperate and willing to do anything to make the heartache of a failed marriage go away. talking to my physician, it turned out i was holding it wrong! (described below) but eventually got over everything with extreme self punishment through exercise. i was in the best shape of my life but genuinely hated myself inside and out. only really got over it because i became too tired to do all that mentally and go back to college at the same time (for computers lol). now: not really sure why i started. often i wonder if it is a "jesus lives in a jail cell" type of thing with coronavirus but i quickly found that, more so than any medication or cognitive behavioral therapy over the past several years, meditating even for just ten minutes a day provides a level of clarity that i never have had in my life. my general anxiety and ocd (i check things, have a hard time leaving the home, etc) has been dramatically improved by quieting my brain. this kind of "opened the door" to buddhism because buddhism in general invites you not to take anyone's word on anything, but to experience the benefits in your live via practice. in this case the benefits were a very real tangible improvement in my life. intellectually, the idea that happiness is fleeting and suffering is the natural consequence of living is seen as "a given" how i meditate currently i only practice in clearing my mind of all thoughts. i do not engage in chanting, koan reflection, walking, or other practices made popular in tibetan, zen, and other schools. this is mostly because of my selfish goal of alleviating the suffering caused in my life by checking things. i sit in the lotus position as best as my fat rear end can currently handle and abstain from moving at all if possible. my key goals are to gracefully push away thoughts as they occur to me, and to return to the "physical world" gently, not abruptly. how my attitude changed the scientific aspects of meditation are well understood to provide the benefits i describe, but i do not feel it grants accurate representation of its meaning to me as an anchor in my life via tradition. while i was already pretty agnostic at the time, it was the practice of meditation that made the spiritual world seem real to me in a way i could not grasp before. while i have built what i consider a strong ethical / moral framework without any spirituality / religion, this change inspires more "good works" to the benefit of other people. i find i have more empathy for people in situations where i originally did not before even if i understood it academically. thoughts on cosmology the mahayana tradition has a whole cinematic universe of alternate dimensions, buddhistavas, extra texts, and so on. while i find it fascinating, i am not sure i am in a place where i believe these things to be true. the original message of the cycle of samsara is enough to for me to grapple with right now physical aspects turns out guided meditation can be very harmful! people can often be put together wrong in a way that deep breathing compresses veins / arteries, causing the vertigo i described above. it is important to breathe naturally in this circumstance. often the biggest interrupter of my thoughts is the fear of making myself sick. that whole post probably will convince many people that spiritual exploration in my case is a crutch to overcome different traumatic events but i dont think there is anything exceptional about my lived experiences. generally i believe i have had it better than most tbh. currently i dont have a religion or really shape to my spiritual understanding but theological exploration has been intellectually stimulating lately if not spiritually fulfilling.
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Dec 30, 2020 22:05
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The Management posted:look man, if praying or whatever makes you happy, enjoy it. if you think about it, working through hobby projects and sharing meaningful time with others is in itself a form of prayer and congregation #woah #wow
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Dec 30, 2020 22:07
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Silver Alicorn posted:I think understanding the brain better is fine and important but it doesn’t have to be done within a spiritual/religious framework. you’re not necessarily wrong, but there is a fundamental difference between knowing something intellectually, and knowing through direct experience. and when it comes to consciousness, the size of that difference cannot be overstated
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Dec 30, 2020 22:37
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Silver Alicorn posted:since leaving the Mormon church, and after doing a lot of self discovery (paganism, Buddhism) I found I just... don’t need any spirituality. nothing has any meaning except what we assign, and it’s more natural for me to think about everything in terms of mechanisms and natural laws. I understand why people join religions, there’s lots of different reasons, but none of them are for me. I don’t need a sense of community because I’m bad at socializing anyway (and I find something close enough in the local LGBT+ scene). if I had to pick something on pain of death I would join the Unitarian church and not attend very often i hear this but I do think there’s something to be said about trying to be a better person, wanting to build a better world, wanting to be a kinder person. i suppose in north america caring is a weakness so it doesn’t make sense to want to give a poo poo about anyone you don’t know, but I think it does make for a better world. some people could consider this greater good something like spirituality i don’t feel spiritual when i meditate or anything like that personally.
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Dec 30, 2020 22:43
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Bored Online posted:carepost about meditation / prayer / whatever it means to you: thankyou for sharing. i’m at work and i want to respond better later but i appreciate this. your experience is super different to mine. i’ll elaborate later. thanks
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Dec 30, 2020 22:56
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echinopsis posted:i hear this yknow. I completely agree that you should be kind to your neighbors etc, people should help each other and capitalism is a disease that allows the worst people to thrive on the suffering of many. but I haven’t really reflected on why I think these things in a while. maybe it’s a product of being raised under Christianity and taking its teachings at face value. then again anthropology teaches us that ancient peoples were egalitarian and effectively communist/socialist. we, at least most of us, are hardwired to support our peers as best we can. the “goal” of life is to replicate itself and altruism is the best vehicle for that. maybe I’m happy with that meaning
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Dec 30, 2020 23:07
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i’m not actually sure what “spiritual” means i was bought up agnostic i suppose, and at 14 the woman who i would later marry was in the salvation army but went to some charismatic camp and got slain in the spirit and fell over and i wasn’t taught critical thinking or anything despite being a “smart kid” and eventually went to a pentecostal church where tongues and falling over in the spirit was normal. was in that church for years, well i got kicked out of one for kissing girls but yeah. then later we discovered bible orientated church and a side effect of critically examining the bible is questioning the validity of the bible as a whole and i just couldn’t do the leap of faith anymore now that i had critical examined the edge of the chasm but not really during that time did i feel spiritual. i kinda feel that spiritual is a feeling that you’re part of something bigger. idk. praying to jesus never gave me that feeling and not much else has since you can get that feeling at large church services during emotional songs which were a mainstay. sometime in the early 2000s hillsong worked out a formula for real emotionally rich music which made worship time at church feel “epic”. i was even the band. it was kinda cool the congregation was like 1000 people sometimes so it was good band practice. but you can get this at secular concerts too. 🤷♂️ bored, no not a crutch at all. life is hard as gently caress and our brains aren’t designed for modern world, and I can’t think of a healthier and more sustainable way of dealing with life than what you’re doing. i’m proud of you and would like to be more like you. i think about meditation much more than I do it and yeahs . peace brother
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Dec 31, 2020 00:47
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Silver Alicorn posted:yknow. I completely agree that you should be kind to your neighbors etc, people should help each other and capitalism is a disease that allows the worst people to thrive on the suffering of many. but I haven’t really reflected on why I think these things in a while. maybe it’s a product of being raised under Christianity and taking its teachings at face value. that’s good. sorry if i came across as contrary, I was just reacting to the life has no meaning notion. 
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Dec 31, 2020 00:51
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i think my empathy is too strong lol, as in, I create emotional load unnecessarily. like i hate charging money for things at work, in my mind i’m creating this idea where the person is going “gently caress i need to eat tonight i can’t afford this”, and I need to stop doing it and just allow people to take care of themselves. sometimes I feel like I need to manage the feelings of others and it makes me bitter because I don’t ask anyone in my life to manage my feelings. so much of the suffering in my life is my own doing. either thru like getting into huge credit card debt, or because of the emotional phantoms i’ve created where I care way tooo much about what others may not even be thinking. like at work, business is slowing down coz of discount pharmacies, and I take so much emotional burden on myself of the failing business and then i feel guilty charging for medicines when other pharmacies don’t. i know that a) it’s not my business and it’s not my burden, i wouldn’t expect employees of a business i owned to burden themselves with the greater business problems and b) people know about the discount pharmacies and still choose to come to mine knowing it costs them more. in the light of those two last statements, it means there is nothing for me to burden myself with emotionally. focus on my own problems and my own problems alone, and don’t destroy yourself caring about theoretical problems of others which just makes me unhappier and leading to worse decisions by me watuary can’t come soon enough
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Dec 31, 2020 00:59
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echinopsis posted:that’s good. sorry if i came across as contrary, I was just reacting to the life has no meaning notion. as a species and a society we agree that life has meaning towards certain goals or ethics/morality, but meaning is a human concept and the universe mostly gets along fine without us. it's weird but I like to think about how aliens would think and it likely be very very strange check out Provenance by Ann Leckie, it involves an alien race that has very strange ideas about personhood and what the universe actually is. Silver Alicorn fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Dec 31, 2020 |
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Dec 31, 2020 02:28
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