Are you spiritual?

[uncloned]

Yep, I have strong doubts about that too. But a big planet coming along, messing up our solar system, is another story.

Its always the damn astrophysics mucking things up....

and if it ain't a stray planet it is a black hole 100 light years away winking out of existence with a bust of  radiation sterilizing its quadrant of the galaxy.....

Bing!

Next evolution of life please......

[residentgrey]

Since I have dealt with other realms besides the one we all experience there is no question as to where I stand. But the truth is that I don't put too much stock in it, I just enjoy my life while it is here, and improve myself as I see fit. I have times of strong devotion to certain doctrines, one that will always stick out is the tried and true Golden Rule. You can't go wrong with that one. All else is kinda bunk.

I am playing with numerology, the system I am learning is eye-opening. I can get reams of information with a few numbers. How terse and amazing! It's too much fun testing it!

More to follow, I am distracted by love lol!

[Sam_Zen]

2 residentgrey
I share your liking of numbers and especially the Golden Rule. But I don't try to explain or predict anything out of it.
But I must admit that some savants have strong feelings about certain numbers. They experience some as 'ugly', others as 'beautiful'.
I feel this with the Golden Rule as well. The order of Fibonacci.. To me it's not cold mathematics, but a very organic, natural thing.

2 uncloned
In the perspective of this, isn't it a rather silly question to ask ourselves : - Why are we here ? It just doesn't seem to matter.

2 RWP
What a surprise. You can be reasonable too
Indeed I'm usually called Sam. And I prefer the zen way in daily life.
A bit more to it : These are also the last three letters of my family name.
I like to play with language and 'obvious' meanings.

[Really Weird Person]

That is interesting. I initially thought that "zen" meant easy or something to tha effect because, unless I am mistaken, "zen" mode typically is easier than normal modes in video games, but apparently "zen" actually means Chinese. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Zen

[cubaxd]

I'm Christian, but that's only my christian name. IRL i'm ignostic. Every civilization has its own god(s). And with the fall of a civilization, its god(s) is/are getting meaningless as new gods have been created to serve as creators. All the hackneyed gods are mythology, and the gods currently in use are religion. When people are getting sick of their current god, they put him to mythology and create a new, better one.
Maybe there is a real god (maybe even more of them), but I don't know of him/her/them/it.
This is my opinion. I don't wanna make it a fact. I just believe in science

When we leave religions aside, then I think that every person is more or less spiritual. But in our industrialized high-tech society, people don't take the time for spiritual aspects of life. Life is getting faster and faster, fast-food, infarctions, stress, even on vacation. Many Germans (you can also replace this by Brits, Americans, younameit) who holiday in other countries, insist on "german" hotels. If i were to holiday in another country, i wouldn't want to see any Germans at all :-D. But i wouldn't even holiday at places full of holidaymakers. How could one relax under such circumstances? More and more people schedule their whole lives, with agendas, cell phones, everything must be "perfect". People are getting mentally ill, suffer from burnout. We are trying to buy our luck (tv, video games, drugs, shopping, "sex industry", ...). We are missing something in our lives and we are trying to fill this emptiness with buying and using those products. They might help for a while, but after some time the emptiness is even worse. For the next "kick" you will need something bigger. There is a mental chaos. Others decide who we are. And if we don't meet the requirements of the society, or the ideal of ourselves, then we can make room for more emptiness until the soul is one single black hole. I think, that's why people say: just be yourself!

[Really Weird Person]

Based on the starting of that message, cubaxd, it sounds like you control a gray and orange robot and have a sister whose name is what salt comes in and, uh, yeah, that was a bad joke! Continuing
As for the emptiness, there is only one thing that can fill one's emptiness. What can fill one's emptiness is Jesus. As you mentioned, many people have tried many different things such as drugs, various gods and goddesses, etc, but none of it works. As you also mentioned, it does indeed have the potential to leave them feeling more depressed than they may have before. The gods being used as creators is an interesting thing because most gods are not even people at all. They are statues, sculptures and the like. Things that have no brains

[maleek]

I tend to change opinion and feeling from time to time. From a philosophical position I think that life is a little like looking at a painting from different angles and positions with large numbers of people. Each person gets an impression and there is no way for me to tell you that your impression is wrong per se... This is text-book post-modernism, and is being challenged by both devout religious people as well as political humanists. Even taking in the critique that there can not be many true answers to one question at least on a moral, ethical and spiritual plane I think that we, at least in some degrees, "create our own truths" as societies and individuals. These truths are of course not without tension.

[uncloned]

2 uncloned
In the perspective of this, isn't it a rather silly question to ask ourselves : - Why are we here ? It just doesn't seem to matter.

I don't know - I think it may be even more important considering how very temporary it all is....

You have heard my guess - but it is only a guess.

There is only one way to find out - and in that  have no choice.

[tvdude]

This is an excellent topic, thanks for posting it LPChip.  I am very spiritual.  I was raised as a protestant Christian, and was a member of the United Church.  When that church made some decisions I didn't agree with, I began to question what was the truth.  And what exactly is truth anyway?  What is THE truth?  After a very long struggle, I formulated this: Truth is the actuality of everything, whether or not you believe it , or are even aware that it exists; it IS.  So either there is a God or there isn't.  Either we live after our bodies die or we don't.  Where do morals and guilt come from?  Why do we have these emotions, if not for some purpose?  I for one don't claim to know the truth, I just claim that it exists, but I do believe that there is something bigger than we as humans can fathom.  We do not posess all of the knowledge in the universe, so there can be no absolute conclusion, but we do posess the ability to believe through faith.  I do believe there is something greater out there, and I choose to believe there is a God.  Maybe I'm wrong, but you know what?  I'd rather be a nice, loving person than be mean.

And if you are exploring the Christian faith in particular, the Bible says to test the spirits.  It would be wise to take that to heart.

And I hope that this will not be considered spam, but a there is a documentary you can watch that would be excellent food for thought.
Look it up, it is called American Zeitgeist.  And after watching it, yes, I am still a Christian.  While it attempts to quash religion in general, it has had the opposite affect and actually boosted my belief in God.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I look forward to more comments and some good debate.

[Sam_Zen]

Nice link, RWP. I still don't see the link to video games, but a street name for LSD is funny as well. Plus :
"How'd you figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it."
2 cubaxd
I agree about the loss of recent gods being filled with being a consumer, buying things, to get happy.
But I think it's a poor thing if religions use the same market-mechanism to get their customers back.
2 RWP
Oh, come on. This guy just was lucky enough that some stories about him were saved in a book.
It's not impossible that some wise Hopi-indian in the same century had a far better message. But it's gone in the air.

As long as a question is not correctly formulated, answers probably will be confusing.
Apart from the preset factor : Should we question things in the first place ?
Or, more pragmatic, people demand an answer anyway, so others create a question for it.

[Really Weird Person]

That is a great post, tvdude. Because we cannot see, hear, or touch God, we can only trust that He will get us through by one thing, and that is called faith, as you had mentioned.

[LPChip]

Although I have started the topic but haven't posted in it myself that much, I'm reading everything.

I find it a bit hard to join the discussion since I'm a very spiritual person myself, and I don't want to give an uncomfortable feeling to anyone, especially since I could say things that might offend anyone.

I am pleased to see that this topic is going the way as it is going though.

[uncloned]

Why worry about comfort levels?

Everyone is bound to offend someone

It can't be avoided

[psishock]

I think LP, that noone should be offended if they aren't seeing the world as you do. Everybody go an own picture about these ideas. You aren't need to censor yourself at any rate, who don't care about the ideas you (or any other person) may found out, simply won't read this thread. You are you, exchange of views and possible positive arguments won't change that fact. =)
I am a very curious person (about the most things), and will allways look forward to discuss interesting topics.

uncloned

It can't be avoided

sure it can, if you're extra cautios and saying only stuff what others want to hear. That will help you to fit in every enviroment and society in the world. I'm doing that on my daily life from time to time =), but you can never be "yourself" that way.

[LPChip]

Thats true I guess, but as this is mainly a music forum, I don't want to see people leave this place because of a topic.