I'd favor not calling it "God" personally, and I do consider that to be more than semantics. I think a big issue with many philosophies and practices that are otherwise secular is that they robe themselves in language that has more explicit religious connotation. They do this - deliberately or by accident - because it draws more people in. It's branding and marketing. But in doing so, they risk inviting less credible beliefs along with it, or at the very least confusing the practice or idea.
In this case, using a term like God that has myriad meanings, with the most widely accepted of them being incredibly different from consciousness, imo is a potentially dangerous inclusion in an otherwise non-religious concept.
That said, the idea that "everything is God" - or substitute God for various adjacent phrases - is something that is an end goal of some schools of meditation. In Hinduism, for example, the idea of Brahman is all-encompassing; it's often depicted as a deity, but that's simply a symbol for the underlying reality that is All. So you're not wrong, necessarily. It's just that specificity is important, especially when we're all (I'm assuming) in largely Christian cultures.
I know, I'm just drawing the parallel. Was just interested in making the connection. I'd rather a different term, too. "Ground Consciousness" or something, I dunno.
Gender: Male Location: The Proud Nation of Kekistan
Ding ding ding ding ding. Self-awareness is the ultimate truth. It is perhaps the most difficult concept to explain, the thing that gives everything else meaning, and the one thing we can be 100% certain of.
__________________
Shadilay my brothers and sisters. With any luck we will throw off the shackles of normie oppression. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Praise Kek!
THE MOTTO IS "IN KEK WE TRUST"
Last edited by Emperordmb on Sep 13th, 2017 at 05:38 PM
In the meditation traditions, our personal, egoic consciousness is regarded as a "watered down" version of Ultimate / Absolute / God / Ground / Whatever Consciousness. Meditation is the means by which we submerge into the depths of our personal awareness, through various "layers" (the delineation of which varies a bit, depending on the meditation system, but they generally describe the same things), until the Beginning/Totality/End of it All is perceived. In a sense, you can think of the inner dialogue as a Thought Barrier separating our ordinary nature from our higher nature.
This Omega Point can be discussed intellectually until the cows come home, which is why I like the Zen approach. Ask a Zen master if 'God' exists, and he (or she) will say, "Meditate. Experience. Then we'll talk."
I also liked this little story:
A Zen student once asked his teacher for a word of inspiration, something to meditate on. The teacher replied, "Attention." Unhappy with this, the student inquired, "That's it? Nothing more?" The teacher replied, "Attention. Attention." Still unsatisfied, the student expressed his lack of understanding, to which the teacher responded, "Attention. Attention. Attention."
That's about as dogma-free as you can get.
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Shinier than a speeding bullet.
Last edited by Mindship on Sep 14th, 2017 at 10:00 AM
Let me go all Digi on you and say that calling it the Ultimate Truth gives you a wrong notion of self-awareness, kind of a marketing concept that waters down the conceptual depth of self-awareness.
Gender: Male Location: The Proud Nation of Kekistan
Philosophically it's like what Descartes and the solipsists say, awareness of your existence is the one thing you can be absolutely 100% certain of. It's also what allows you to actually experience the world, which is what allows your experiences to actually exist which is how you experience meaning, and obviously this is a large part of meditative practices and from my own experience I believe embracing self-awareness is a very key part of love (which I believe is the core motivation for moral behavior, and the proper orientation for how best to motivate and live your life), and it's ultimately what saved me from the most twisted experience of my life where I was forced to confront my greatest fear and piece myself back together.
So really I personally don't think calling it anything else does it justice given how integral it is to my life philosophy, and other people are free to disagree with the conceptions I hold about it or the semantics of how I refer to it, but I'm not gonna dial back my articulation of my philosophical standpoints because other people feel like I'm thrusting some dogma upon them.
__________________
Shadilay my brothers and sisters. With any luck we will throw off the shackles of normie oppression. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Praise Kek!
THE MOTTO IS "IN KEK WE TRUST"
Certainty doesn't mean Truth, you can cast doubt in True things with no problem.
My observation was about the term employed (which as far as I can tell might be a metaphor), obviously the personal meaning it holds for you is non of my business and I don't intend to contest it in the basis of it being dogmatic or whatever else. Language is ultimately conventional.
I'm generally not interested in "God" or ultimate truths when it comes to this stuff. I just like the practical benefits. Here's a good, short article about reminding yourself to let go of the chaos of life periodically to recenter yourself: http://www.theminimalists.com/tangled/
Gender: Male Location: The Proud Nation of Kekistan
At risk of being ridiculed or coming across as a pushy dick about my beliefs or whatever, recently as a Christian I've been practicing a combination of prayer and meditation. The more meditative aspect helps me to calm myself and find a point of inner peace within myself so I can call upon a proper emotional state. The prayer on the other hand helps me properly orient my thoughts and intentions, such as focusing on an honest admission of my own flaws, focusing on gratefulness and love for what I have in life, focusing on forgiveness and letting go of any resentment I may have for other people, and focusing on externalizing a commitment to self-improvement and putting more effort into my life endeavors. And between the two things I can approach who I am as a person and focus on properly orienting myself and attitudes towards others from a proper emotional state.
So to any religious people reading this, try combining prayer and meditation, because in my own experience I've found them quite complimentary to each other.
To any atheist person reading this, even if you don't believe in God I still think it's worth trying some form of seriously contemplative thought or focus on actualizing specific qualities and natures you want to actualize within yourself, maybe think out loud or something to externalize it idk. This isn't me trying to push prayer or a faith in God on you or whatever, but the calming centering effect of meditation is a pretty good one to utilize for self-reflection and making decisions and commitments and shit.
I hope this didn't violate the rules of the thread, but I just kinda had to share my experience with this kinda thing in case anyone else, religious or atheist, finds it useful.
__________________
Shadilay my brothers and sisters. With any luck we will throw off the shackles of normie oppression. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Praise Kek!
THE MOTTO IS "IN KEK WE TRUST"
Last edited by Emperordmb on Oct 4th, 2017 at 07:16 AM
A distinction I heard once was that prayer was directing one's thoughts toward God, while meditation was opening one's ears to God. There's no reason why the two can't be combined. Davening, eg, embraces this idea. "Talk, then listen."
Meditation is important in the mystical backstories of all the major faiths, certainly including Christianity (Gnosis).
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Shinier than a speeding bullet.
Last edited by Mindship on Oct 4th, 2017 at 10:25 AM
Yeah, that's fine, man. You're just meditating in more of a Christian context, but that's fine.
Just ignore Beniboy who appears to only enjoy being an obnoxious troll.
Yeah, I agree. Any idea of prayer as a means of getting God to give you things that you want in your life I reject as futile (e.g. please heal this person, they are sick -- well, the person is either going to get well or not in their own time, saying words to God has nothing to do with it). But there are even loving-kindness mantras/phrases that can help foster warmth and kindness toward yourself and others, so they may seem like prayers, but they're actually targeted more to the self.
I have a good friend who's a Jesuit priest. I'm an atheist. He meditates, and we've compared notes. So yeah, this is cool. A lot of secular meditation isn't too far removed from Christian meditation (some of which I'm passingly familiar with). You're inciting particular brain states through repeated practice. The only thing that's different is the focal point: in theism, it might be God or your place in His plan or gratitude for His grace, or something similar. Whereas in secular meditation, you can have the same concepts (gratitude, focus, or actualizing particular qualities) just without the deistic overtones.
And the list could go on. Self-reflection, self-improvement, increasing love or thankfulness. These are fairly universal aims of meditative practices, and in indeed of many human pursuits, period, secular or religious. We just get tripped up about the guy in the sky, so to speak.
I think those who pray daily, and intensely focus on their prayer, who truly learn to lose themselves in the process, probably experience something similar to many meditative states. The "pray for my sister to get well" style of prayer - which, let's be honest, is most prayer in secular society - is well-meaning but seems like it's too surface-level to have any true benefit other than maybe a temporary chemical placebo.
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Sep 13th, 2017 04:53 PM
That was actually pretty amusing.
