From 05fa3051e12acddfe320912a93e1927bcf1b64f6df2a14589594144df3b9f3e2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nicholas Johnson Date: Mon, 23 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Subject: Fix spelling errors --- content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md | 8 ++++---- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) (limited to 'content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md') diff --git a/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md b/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md index f846efd..8d1bc8b 100644 --- a/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md +++ b/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ There's an essential fact of life which everyone should know but is often overlo As a matter of physics and neuroanatomy, we know that now is ill-defined. As a consequence of general relativity theory, you can't just talk about two events happening simultaneously. It depends on the observer. Neuroanatomically, the brain has different processing speeds for different senses and different parts of the brain process the same sensory input before other parts. -But subjectively, there is a present moment consisting of the whole collage of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, thought, emotion, proprioception, your sense of self, etcetera. It's anything and everything that can be noticed. So to be clear, assuming you're reading this indoors, everything in the building that's not in your peripheral vision is not in consciousness. Unless you start thinking about it because I just mentioned it. Then it is. +But subjectively, there is a present moment consisting of the whole collage of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, thought, emotion, proprioception, your sense of self, etc. It's anything and everything that can be noticed. So to be clear, assuming you're reading this indoors, everything in the building that's not in your peripheral vision is not in consciousness. Unless you start thinking about it because I just mentioned it. Then it is. # The Problem-Solving Mindset Narrative The contents of consciousness are what they are in this moment. If you don't like them, you can change them by changing your environment. For example, noticing muscular discomfort might prompt you to change posture. But changes only take place after you've already experienced the unpleasant thing that made you want to make a change. You first have to notice that there's a problem with experience before trying to solve it. @@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ So just meditate. Don't worry about having an ulterior motive and don't worry ab # Spiritual Bypassing Do watch out for other ways that the ego can creep back in though. Many novice meditators, after having insights about the nature of the mind, become convinced they're permanently enlightened and try to act as if they are all the time. This can be very psychologically destructive. It's called spiritual bypassing, a term coined in 1984 by American psychologist John Welwood[3]. I'll let Wikipedia explain it: -> "On the other hand, when spiritual bypass is used as a long-term strategy for ignoring or suppressing unaddressed mental health issues, negative consequences can include "the need to excessively control others and oneself, shame, anxiety, dichotomous thinking, emotional confusion, exaggerated tolerance of inappropriate behavior, codependence, compulsive kindness, obsession or addiction, spiritual narcissism, blind allegiance to charismatic teachers, and disregard for personal responsibility" - Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0[4] +> "On the other hand, when spiritual bypass is used as a long-term strategy for ignoring or suppressing unaddressed mental health issues, negative consequences can include "the need to excessively control others and oneself, shame, anxiety, dichotomous thinking, emotional confusion, exaggerated tolerance of inappropriate behavior, codependency, compulsive kindness, obsession or addiction, spiritual narcissism, blind allegiance to charismatic teachers, and disregard for personal responsibility" - Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0[4] It's not a hard trap to fall into. I think staying humble is a good way to avoid it. Admit that you don't have it all figured out, that you're probably not "permanently" enlightened, and you still get lost in thought and let your emotions get the better of you from time to time. @@ -95,7 +95,7 @@ Regardless of how the problem is described, the basic solution is the same: non- # Spirituality And Skepticism ## Deepak Chopra -In the past, myself and others have lamented the fact that the atheist/skeptic/rationalist community doesn't get more involved with spirituality. When sane, rational people don't write books about spiritual inquiry or speak about it, the floor is given people who promote incoherent pseudoscientic pseudospiritual technobabble. Their technobabble sounds just scientific enough so lay people have a hard time distinguishing between the quacks and real scientists. People like Deepak Chopra[5] who promote alternative medicine and make proven false claims such as "you can tell your body not to age" cannot continue to represent the spiritual movement. +In the past, myself and others have lamented the fact that the atheist/skeptic/rationalist community doesn't get more involved with spirituality. When sane, rational people don't write books about spiritual inquiry or speak about it, the floor is given people who promote incoherent pseudoscientific pseudospiritual technobabble. Their technobabble sounds just scientific enough so lay people have a hard time distinguishing between the quacks and real scientists. People like Deepak Chopra[5] who promote alternative medicine and make proven false claims such as "you can tell your body not to age" cannot continue to represent the spiritual movement. ## Myself And an Unnamed Youtuber That's part of why I'm writing this entry. If people like me don't want quacks like Chopra to continue being the authority on all things spiritual, we have to step up and start our own dialog rooted in the principles of science and skepticism. @@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ The reality of today is that almost everyone is identified with their thoughts a Mindfulness and non-identification with thought may help to reduce the suffering of a few individual houseless people, but to suggest mindfulness as an alternative to a real solution for houselessness would be moronic. Houselessness is a social problem. It's easier to eliminate the suffering that comes along with houselessness by dealing with its social causes than by telling mentally unwell houseless drug addicts they just need to meditate. As I said earlier, there is always another problem and identification with problems causes suffering, but at least the problem wouldn't be not having a safe place to sleep. Failing to find an entertaining television station is a better problem to have. -The naïve understanding of spirituality is that you can't simultaneously be free from desire and also be an activist marching in the street trying to make change. An "enlightened" person perceives no problems and therefore doesn't try to change anything. Right? Not exactly. This is another misunderstanding. +The naive understanding of spirituality is that you can't simultaneously be free from desire and also be an activist marching in the street trying to make change. An "enlightened" person perceives no problems and therefore doesn't try to change anything. Right? Not exactly. This is another misunderstanding. An "enlightened" person is someone who accepts the present moment as it is. Whether their activism succeeds or not, they remain unphased either way. Either outcome is accepted. That doesn't mean they don't care about the outcome. It just means they recognize the futility of becoming attached to it. -- cgit v1.2.3