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Religion seems to make sense to me, just based on my experiences with pleasure and pain
    #16827045 -

I know that when evaluating religion many like to focus on the supernatual claims, such as does God exists and are miracles real?

I don't pretend to be able to answer those questions. My interest in religion stems more from the fact that it seems like my natural state of consciousness is lacking somehow. Or to put it in religions terms, I am "fallen". My natural tendency, as well as that of most people, appears to be seek pleasure, avoid pain, seek pleasure, avoid pain while generally placing yourself ahead of other people in terms of importance.

The religions which I have studied teach we do not attain lasting peace or happiness this way, but rather by gving up on this frutless endeaver to attain enough things to make us happy and instead realize we are already complete or as some religions put it, to come to rest in God and let God be in us. Now, through psychedelics and other spitiual practices I have glimpsed such states of peace and it seemed to me quite true this teaching.

So this is the bases for my belief/interest in religion, I want to attain happiness and pursuing pleasure doesn't seem to cut it. No matter how pleasure I experience, I always want more and I always want to avoid pain which is inevitable. And I still feel something isn't right, even when having highly pleasurable experiences. I sense there is something I am missing/not understanding about life and who I am. So I guess, either religion is correct and there is a better way, or its not correct and we are all doomed to spend our lives pursuing happiness but only achieving it temporarily.

Edited by Deviate (09/11/12 02:03 AM)

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Re: Religion seems to make sense to me, just based on my experiences with pleasure and pain [Re: Deviate]
    #16827399 -

Its all temporary, with or without religion. You're attracted to pleasurable things and repelled by the painful for a reason. Things that support the propagation of your own genes and maintaining your own existence are pleasurable due to millions of years of meticulous natural selection. The inverse is true for painful experiences. You've evolved with an aversion for experiences that are harmful for you, or for the continuity of your own genetic makeup. However indulging in the extreme of either impulse tends to be unhealthy, and leads to unhappiness. Sugar is a really good example of this. The experience of eating sugar is very pleasurable because its a dense form of energy that's extremely easy for your body to process and put to use, however in excess it leads to obesity, and possibly cancer; both things that will make you unhappy.

Even that sense of lacking something that's within all of us has is usefulness. It keeps us pushing forward seeking the pleasurable and avoiding the painful, that is to say, it encourages behavior that is favorable for the propagation of your genes.

Your life is just one link in a chain running through time and connected with all other chains at multiple links along the way. If you understand it and play your part the burden of it all lightens, and life gets much easier.


--------------------
The Prophecy!

Learn To Code

Edited by blewmeanie (09/11/12 04:43 AM)

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Re: Religion seems to make sense to me, just based on my experiences with pleasure and pain [Re: blewmeanie]
    #16827581 -

God is God. Seek Him and He will reveal himself to you as your consciousness. He's not hiding.


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My solitude...
My shield...
My armour...

TESTED
WITH
FULL
FORCE

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Re: Religion seems to make sense to me, just based on my experiences with pleasure and pain [Re: circastes]
    #16827597 -

God is just a word. It's a placeholder for everything you don't understand. Ignorance doesn't reveal itself to you, but it does feel good to fill the void of knowing that you don't know with anything that makes that burden feel lighter. Some people do drugs, some over eat, and some wrap up their anxiety about the unknown in a undefinable word.

Whatever gets you through the day.:cheers:


--------------------
The Prophecy!

Learn To Code

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Re: Religion seems to make sense to me, just based on my experiences with pleasure and pain [Re: blewmeanie]
    #16827680 -

blewmeanie said:
Its all temporary, with or without religion. You're attracted to pleasurable things and repelled by the painful for a reason. Things that support the propagation of your own genes and maintaining your own existence are pleasurable due to millions of years of meticulous natural selection. The inverse is true for painful experiences. You've evolved with an aversion for experiences that are harmful for you, or for the continuity of your own genetic makeup. However indulging in the extreme of either impulse tends to be unhealthy, and leads to unhappiness. Sugar is a really good example of this. The experience of eating sugar is very pleasurable because its a dense form of energy that's extremely easy for your body to process and put to use, however in excess it leads to obesity, and possibly cancer; both things that will make you unhappy.

Even that sense of lacking something that's within all of us has is usefulness. It keeps us pushing forward seeking the pleasurable and avoiding the painful, that is to say, it encourages behavior that is favorable for the propagation of your genes.


I don't agree, or at least I am not going to accept this without proof. The sense of lack does not keep me pushing forward, it often leads me to apathy and behavior that is not favorable for the propagation of my genes. On the contrary, I would be much more likely to propagate my genes if I had a higher baseline mood. When I feel whole is when I am able to truly engage in life and express my genes.

But I think this is all beside the point. The point I want to discuss is that we all tend to think that we should be concerned with seeking out good things and avoiding bad things and its by being successful at this that we become happy. Religion on the other hand (and by religion here I mean Christianit, Buddhism and Hinduism because they are the only ones I have studied enough to speak about), teaches that we become happy by giving up the stupid game of trying to make ourselves happy, especially through sensory pleasures which it says are simply temporary. Giving up the idea that we have a self we ought to be concerned about pleasing and instead it tells us that we can be just as happy giving as receiving. I am probably not doing the best job explaining this, but the point is that what these religions tell us about happiness, is very much at odds with the common sense view and our normal ways of thinking. And yet, in my experience, it rings true.


Quote:
Its all temporary, with or without religion.


I am not sure I agree with this. All phenomenological experiences are temporary including emotional experiences, but in my experience it is possible to cultivate a focused form of awareness that is both peaceful and enduring. It is easy to allow oneself to become distracted by the allure of some pleasure, or the fear of some ill, and in the early stages, this will cause you to lose that peace that comes from simply being aware but without wanting this or that or fearing this or that and simply being right along with what is. So, as humans we have the option to attempt to cultivate that inner peace, or to seek he pleasures of the world. Its very hard to do both at the same time, which is why we must choose one. After spending a long time seeking the pleasures of the world, I realized that I was happier when cultivating inner peace.

Quote:
Your life is just one link in a chain running through time and connected with all other chains at multiple links along the way. If you understand it and play your part the burden of it all lightens, and life gets much easier.


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Re: Religion seems to make sense to me, just based on my experiences with pleasure and pain [Re: Deviate]
    #16827773 -

A sense o flacking does drive you. You're hungry so you eat, you're horny so you fuck. Apathy and malaze come from feeling a need you are incapable of fulfilling. The truth is, there is no eternal happiness, nor eternal anything else. Everything is in a constant state of change. This is especially prevalent in our modern culture where societal responsibilities and expectations often conflict with with our biological urges. We eat unhealthy food and lead sedentary emotionally sterile lives. We have a compulsion to live together and support each other, yet the infrastructure of our culture keeps us apart.

Here we are, sitting in little boxes communicating and attempting to connect with each other through a series of symbols on a screen. It's the most mangled distant form of what your biology compels you to do possible.

What are the conditions of "inner peace"?


--------------------
The Prophecy!

Learn To Code

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Re: Religion seems to make sense to me, just based on my experiences with pleasure and pain [Re: blewmeanie]
    #16839017 -

On psychedelics I have expereinced a state of inner peace. Its like, you realize that your very being itself, IS peace. That is its nature. Our thoughts, our desires and our fears distract from this though and disturb our natural state of peace, giving us the illusion that there is no eternal happiness and life is simply a constant state of change dooming us to eternally experience ups and downs.

This is not so though. There are some, though very few people, who know how to enjoy the bliss of being. For one who realizes that bliss that is your very own self, he is freed from the need to pursue endless pleasures and entertainemnts to keep his mind occupied.

Quote:
A sense o flacking does drive you. You're hungry so you eat, you're horny so you fuck.


bodily sensations are not the same as a feeling of existential lack. I am quite capable of eating whether I feel whole or lacking.

Edited by Deviate (09/13/12 12:56 AM)

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Re: Religion seems to make sense to me, just based on my experiences with pleasure and pain [Re: Deviate]
    #16839357 -

Atheists and theists will NEVER agree. We can only agree to disagree. So when atheists present their viewpoints about God I am not one to forcibly try to redefine their path by claiming there is no definition for atheism. Likewise I expect the same courtesy in turn from the other party and not only that but I lose all respect for those who do not. The reason for this is that our lives when summed up will always have a certain tint to our perception. This tint will block out some information and emphasise others. As such we all have blind spots and it is only folly to talk about things you cannot see.


Back on topic, yes OP this is indeed how I too came to religious drive. "For one who realizes that bliss that is your very own self, he is freed from the need to pursue endless pleasures and entertainemnts to keep his mind occupied." - and this is precisely the understanding I have approached. I am living this. I feel God here and now: it is That which is indestructible, which remains when all other things are removed and is present before they are even added.

Atheists generally tend to see God believers as beings opiated. But conversely I would point out that the atheist can only imagine a world of opiate addiction because of their reality tunnel, confirmation bias and false consensus effect (these both arising from the reality tunnel). But the presence of God is not a presence of an object, nor is it a feeling or an emotion or a thought. It is the knowledge of the sole enduring reality which is no object, it is Tao. One must let go of all ups and downs to accept the level flat emptiness and that is where abides the presence of God.


--------------------


"Everything there is, and all that there is, is a Pattern of unspeakable proportion. The Pattern contains everything that is, completely fixed in succession, all the minimal particles interconnected in every way that is. Every way that is is not every conceivable way, because not everything that can be conceived is manifest in the pattern."

"THE Human, you, is a miniscule but essential part of that pattern. In it lies complete fulfillment. It will never become something it is not, but it will never need to be anything else." - Wiccan_Seeker

"If boring drudgery was the way of the universe, everything would have killed itself long ago." - Spacerific

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