Just a couple of questions on religion, spirituality and ritual
1. Do you consider yourself religious or spiritual or neither? (I wouldn't
have asked whether anyone considered themselves religious a few
years ago, because I had never much heard anyone call themselves
religious except when Sean did.) What is the difference between
the two?
2. If one of the above, do you cherry pick what feels right for you/ more in
line with you or do you follow something more according to its precepts.
3. If you are neither religious nor spiritual, do you ever pray? If so, why?
4. Believer or not, do you have your own personal rituals that ground you?
5. Do you ever rail at God in anger?
6. Forgetting about the followers of any ideology (ie, hypocrisy, etc.)
what do you find most off-putting about spirituality/religion? What do
you find most attractive?
7. If you grew up in a religion and then discarded it, do you find yourself
following some of it in a more secular way---giving up something for Lent
for instance?
I gotta lovingly laff bonosSaint ..."oh just a couple of questions" on _, _& _ . Some of the more profound stuff humans ask themselves. Or some do.
3) a question I can answer easily. Yes, I do pray just about every night. Though it's possible I stopped for a while when I became agnostic, almost an aethist a several yr period sometimes I think in trhe very late 60's into the 70's. Sometimes more if needed for family, friends, various people in need, serious/dire situations here and around the ountry/World etc.
1 & 2 ) might be easier to flow in between them we'll see. #warning long and covering a myriad of spirtual/religious and secular matters.
I think I have had an interesting spiritual life which I contnue to explore and learn, particularly because I have many interests some stronger than others which I often weave together as I learn more. I have that capacity oft prompted if you keep your eyes & ears open living in the amzing stew of cultures that is in the NYC area, plus being educated in Public Schools at an expanding time of studies .
So I partially grew up in a Eastern European Catholic in a church that was sometimes more influenced by Orthodoxy while still following The Pope. We have the "wandering Easter" where in the Moon calander determines when our Easter is. Where in we called Roman Catholic/Christian Easter "American" Easter (I'm Second Gen immigran).
This year we matched Palm & Easter Sunday.
But when my dad was too tired to go to 1 of 2 churches of his faith we went to the local Roman Catholic Church. Which was fascinating in itself for we started going there around the time the ?2nd Vatican Council started to make the reforms of Pope John XXIII and his sucessor. That was quite a time.
WHat was also fascinating/upsetting was to learn through the years ( I was 7 when JFK was elected) how Catholism was mistrusted by a certain amount of Christians... etc It'd be a few more years before I'd learn about The Protestant Reformation etc.
So as a young woman who loved science and art, who IQ was tested (because of being a preemie who underwent experiemental treatment) several times who's abstraction abilities were considered "off the Charts" -- yet didn't get calculus, only partially chemistry ( was it because Iwas female or because I didn't have the right type of teaching
). I still loved a lot of the sciences esp the Earth and Space sciences and some what the soft sciences of Psychology/Sociology. I became terrribly perturbed offened by my Catholic Church to not admit women in to the Preisthood, and in the more tradition streams with the whole "women obey your husband" ideology.
I started to drift away, told my dad I wasn't going to church anymore ( i was ? 16), and started on my currenty journey. Ah one more thing in this part my mom converted to my dad's religion, but I'd say she was more spiritual than religious.
Anyway she often gave me stories or art from other cultures Native Amercian, Japanese, African, and from India. One day I turned to her becuase Jesus's Sermion on The Mount ..."do unto others..." was her most pivitol guidance; i said, "mom if these various people really follow the golden rule but they have other religions will they go to Heaven. She said Yes.. So
that (was around 11 or so) actaully was the seed that was watered by the subserviant role of women in the Catholic church a few years later for me to leave.
I sort of looked at Christian Churches but eh I didn't really find anything that called to me. Now if I had found the wonderful St John The Divine (an ?Anglican church) wiht one of the biggest cathedrals in the world (unfinished) that welcomed over time a very ecumenical POV- i might have stayed or left later on with a less dismyed sense of dissappointemnt or worse. In fact my jaw dropped open the first tim e I saw a woman Minister at this church. What a shivery thrill that was!!!
That began my drift towards Angnosticism and even maybe a brief Aetheistic POV. So...what happened. A few things over a period starting around in the early 80's. Back in the early 70's in College I took a course taught by a very open-minded Quaker Professer (who was also - during the Vietnam War- the draft counselor) . It was a great course. Not just the 3 "Abrahamic" Relgions as bono would say, but Hinduism, Budhism, Jainism, Sikhism etc. And a bunch of the stories I mentioned my mom gave me read as a child had spiritual parts so I was also intoduced to Animism (everything has a spirit) way early on by osmosis!
One of the major differences between Western Science and many scientists and all these other earlier & contnuing religions/cultures is that WS considers Our Conciousness as an Epiphenominom of the Brain. Wherein all these other POVs see Conciouness as First an then it forms physical Universe and eventualy the body it inhabits etc.
I began to hear about Transpersonal Physhcology. It was i think first conceived by physchologist and MD William James. Later on Stanislav Grof MD &Y PHD who studied conciousness and altered states, higher states of conciousness/awareness through LSD and later through breath work. He also with a few others set up a Transpersonal Physchology orgainaztion. One of the tennets is that they feel there may be more to conciousness and it not being a brain epiphenominom.
Astronaut Edgar Mitchial had his own spiritual expereince heading home to Earth from the Moon in the capsule. He eventaully founded the Institute Of Noetic Sciences to study these things and others with scientific rigorous methods.
Oh and there is at least one and maybe more Theoretical Physicist who started having metaphysical expereiences that has had him wondering about the current scientific view on conciousness.
Even Star Wars played a part as when I saw The Empire Strikes Back again when it was shown the summer before Return of the Jedi would be released. Some (like me) who saw Luke's training with Yoda and The Force struck a nerve. There were a bunch of smart women with interests in the hard & soft sciences who chaffed under their conservative religious strictures on women who were intrigued by this whole thing. The Force was not a Patriarchal Bearded guy (let alone jesus bering portrayed as a reddish-brown haired white man when he was probably a darker Egyptian or some one with some darker african bloodline skin as well) but it was a intrinsic part of The Cosmos. And I beleive GL said he took various ideas and put The Force together. ( I am not talking about the "M' factor here
)
So i've heard and read enough so far over the past 3 decades that tells me there just might be "something bigger" going on "out there" as in Conciousness first.
Quauntum Physics also may play apart in explaining certain things.
Hi to any one still reading!
I have troulbe with both extremes of the Religious -----> Aethiest continium! I fiercely reject "right-wing" religious ideology in all religions. I reject one religion holding itself as the "one True" way over others. I reject relgious people picking on (or worse!) agnostics or aetheists.
OTOH I reject really those "snooty" Aetheists ( I'm talking to you- Mr Richard Dawkins) who think anyone who has R/S beliefs only has ? like half a brain?
I might end up becoming an aethiest, but i really don't think so. Not with the fasicanating things I've read/heard and continue to explore.
I don't think being a Spiritual person means you're a slacker. I do a bit of "picking and choosing " I suppose in terms of forms/rituals but again each of the religions in their most open forms besidies beleiving in a God/Gods/Something Imense and Mysterious ("The Great Mystery" as the Sioux Indians would say) talk of The Golden Rule, Do unto others, Mercy etc, and how we are all connected in some way. ANd that's what I follow as best I can. As I said except possiblyback in the early 80's I'ver been praying for a long time. That is certainly a form of long time devotion because I forgot to mnention I
also give thanks for a lot of things each night.
5) yeah I sometimes rail at God, but usually I beleive in Free Will on some level which means God/Jesus doesn't always interfer even with all the awful stuff that happenes to some peopledone by other people, etc.
7) yeah! I and family eat the various Easter or Chrsitmas food associated with them. In the Eatern Euro church I grew up in we'd take a basket of foods to be blessed. 2 bread one Ukranian, one Greek, eggs, ham, farmer's cheese, butter, salt, oh yes keilbasa (sausage YUMO). And celebrate a secular Christmas...though I do consider Jesus a Spirtual Masrter among others.
I picked up the Greek Easter Bread at a Greek Bakery on Fri
eating it bit by bit.
4) yes different rituals, some stay the same or close. Others are newer, or really changed versions of older ones. One time I had the urge to build I do small scuptues and work with brass wire for jewelty so I have alll manner of smallish tools) a little spirtual temple. I finished it and in the next week I ( along with a few others) were laid off for several months and then permantently let go as the company restructured.
I didn't feeel "betrayed" but I used that little "temple" as a place to focus my prayers, staying positive etc.
7) I don't like heavy prosteltizing, or or someone tryiing to foist their religion or atheism on me.
Positively> I know people who have been seriously helped by the major religious charities here in NYC area
without any protylizing or stuff like that...at least in those arenas. SO that makes me happy. "There but for ____ go you and I ....."