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MrSoap
A HumblePhilosopher
Registered: 01/14/05
Posts: 11
Loc: Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Last seen: 18 years, 7 months
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Some Ramblings on Spirituality
#4556767 - 08/19/05 08:44 PM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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True faith, spirituality and meaning is impossible to be revealed or adhered to in organized religion, texts or rituals. Adhering to religious rules and restrictions, even those called laws within a religion, is not a signifier of true faith. In the modern world, the majority of people are born into a religion or into a society that holds a religion to high esteem. This does not serve as a basis of faith, rather it serves as the basis of a sense of community identity. Religion is a way to connect to other people, not a way to connect directly to the metaphysical. This does not mean that every person born into a religion lacks faith, but few people are genuinely spiritual. Thus, we must recognize that faith is individual.
One of the most frightening and difficult conditions of being human to overcome is the belief that one's own perception of reality is the most accurate and reliable. Overcoming this is one of the most important steps to having a truly open mind. The sensation of being threatened by another's beliefs, behavior or lifestyle is simply a defence mechanism put in place by a false sense of individuality, brought into being by failure to overcome the human condition, which further influences materialism and alienation from universal conciousness.
Those who vigorously defend their individuality and beliefs, those who honestly believe that to prove that their religion is right, they must be able to prove that another's is wrong are missing the point entirely, and are more than likely not spiritual in any way whatsoever. Use of something as powerful as religion to justify explicit reactionary political agenda corresponds with one of the lowest levels of human conciousness. Religion has the potential to be a vehicle for giving momentum to your spirituality, but you must be willing to take it further than that. Religion without spirituality is like a football fan who does not actually play football (again, more than likely a basis for communal identity). There is a certain passion that is absent. Furthermore, religions are not intended to be football clubs, but many people treat them as so. I will leave conjuring metaphors and similarities between the two to my skeptical readers.
-------------------- Love, - MrSoap
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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Re: Some Ramblings on Spirituality [Re: MrSoap]
#4556773 - 08/19/05 08:47 PM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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Mista Soap. Welcome to the fray!
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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MushmanTheManic
Stranger
Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
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Re: Some Ramblings on Spirituality [Re: Icelander]
#4557464 - 08/20/05 12:30 AM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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Nice post. Welcome to S&P!
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Deviate
newbie
Registered: 04/20/03
Posts: 4,497
Last seen: 8 years, 6 months
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i like this post, especially this line "One of the most frightening and difficult conditions of being human to overcome is the belief that one's own perception of reality is the most accurate and reliable".
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 38,062
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Re: Some Ramblings on Spirituality [Re: Deviate]
#4557852 - 08/20/05 03:46 AM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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always the best starting position
-------------------- _ 🧠 _
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ninjapixie
newbie
Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 417
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Re: Some Ramblings on Spirituality [Re: Deviate]
#4558145 - 08/20/05 08:26 AM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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If one didn't believe their perception of reality is the most accurate they wouldn't believe in it.
Therefore one must have 'no beliefs', though 'no belief' is a belief in itself which one believes to be the most accurate, otherwise they would have 'a belief' instead of 'no beliefs,' as they believe having 'a belief' is more accurate then having 'no belief'.
-------------------- Put that monkey back in the oven.
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder
Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
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Re: Some Ramblings on Spirituality [Re: MrSoap]
#4558359 - 08/20/05 09:43 AM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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Good post! Psychiatrist Victor Frankl once pointed out a phenomenon that he called "Sunday neurosis," in which people, men in particular, experience an 'existential vacuum,' freak out and attempt to fill that vacuum with the overblown emotionality of rooting for a football team. I have observed this countless times. For some people, church services fill the Sunday void, but of course, the content is quickly forgotten when the everyday routine begins again on Monday morning. Football 'worship' works the same way as tent-revivalist, evangelical or charismatic Christianity - supplanting an inner emptiness with pseudo or actual hysteria, and claiming that the effects of exaggerated emotion are the effects of the Holy Spirit.
Being a supporter of a football team has its grease-painted fanatics whose motive for living is somehow constellated around a group of absurdly paid mesomorphic entertainers. Players may come and go, but the team name remains (like the 'same' river that can never be stepped into twice). There are memorable passes, catches and kicks, and these are tantamount to 'miracles' which prove the 'superiority' of the team in question (Adlerian psychology: superiority vs. inferiority, social interest, organ inferiority, describes such individuals best). To the extent that football fan[atic]s place sex and food somehow secondarily to the game, it would seem that their very lives depended upon this game. Indeed, this would suggest that a life supplied with basic needs is simply not enough; that a purpose is truly needed that enjoins those basic needs in some coherent way. A wife and a refrigerator at home is just not enough when compared to whistling at cheerleaders while compulsively consuming the sacramental hotdogs and beer at a real live game!
So, while I agree that religions are not supposed to be like football clubs (except in the sense that public worship becomes the mode of social interest), football teams have become the objects of veneration in place of a worthy Object of veneration.
Remove football from a football fan[atic]'s life (a cruel experiment no doubt), and one would discover something far more pitiful than a spiritually bereft human being. One would find in many cases a mind that worships a simple competative attitude, dressed in colors and numbers, and enshrined as the source of joy and enthusiasm (from the Greek entheo - god within) in life. Not all fans hold the same degree of value of course, but the fan[atic]s lend their degree of devotion as the yardstick of a 'real' fan. It is not a pasttime for these people, it is a purpose for living. It reminds me of the moment of abject horror that Sean Connery expressed in the film 'Zardoz,' when he realized that the entire culture of the planet was built upon Frank Baum's fiction 'The WiZardof Oz.'
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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Great movie.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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MrSoap
A HumblePhilosopher
Registered: 01/14/05
Posts: 11
Loc: Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Last seen: 18 years, 7 months
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Re: Some Ramblings on Spirituality [Re: Icelander]
#4560322 - 08/20/05 06:55 PM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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That was a really great post MarkostheGnostic, very well thought out. Just for future reference, I was referring to English football (soccer), and I guess there are other ways for people to interpret my ramblings.
Nevertheless, fantastic
-------------------- Love, - MrSoap
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder
Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
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Re: Some Ramblings on Spirituality [Re: MrSoap]
#4560511 - 08/20/05 07:52 PM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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Ramble on...
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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