Can you find spirituality?

[1smartdodog]

Sometimes I think it would be nice to believe in some spirituality again. Something akin to the promises of Mormonism without all the baggage. But I am afraid the church ruined that for me. I have become to much a skeptic.

As it is I get my religion from nature. It works for me but is Lonely at times.

What works for you to fill that need? If even you need anything. Maybe the relief of escaping Mormonism is relief enough.

[dogbite]

Imagine we had a technological brain interface. This interface had a slider for every emotion and feeling we can perceive. The interface queries your natural state and sets the sliders at those points for your default. Now at your whim you can move a slider to feel how you want to feel when you want or what you want to be sensitive to for the particular moment.

Now further imagine the hacked app that would quickly become available. This one removes the end point of the sliders. You can be more sensitive to or experience things beyond the realm of normal humans and do so at your whim. You might even allow others to manipulate your experience for you as part of the relationship or a game.

Is any real meaning left if this is our experience? What was does this say about what our experience was before? Why does a particular act or location have the power to induce a feeling we would pursue? Is it the pursuit or the achievement that matters? Does this make the act or the location meaningful or is the experience itself meaningful?

The experience of the numinous and awe many feel in natural settings is well documented. I too get that in particular natural environments. I hesitate to label it spirituality. That term is too loaded for me for reasons hinted at above.

[Palerider]

I think the desire for a spiritual connection between ourselves and God and other humans is a built in godly characteristic. I learned how to stand alone when necessary when I was in high school but being part of a supportive and similar thinking group is always better.

The problem with Christianity right now is that all churches are imperfect and because they are run by men they carry their baggage along with them.

One of the reasons George Washington stopped attending a church was because he received pressure from the minister to take the communion he was offering. Some thought it might have been because Washington didn't feel worthy. I think that's nonsense.

I think he didn't recognize the minister's "authority". I'd have to check but I don't think Washington attended an organized religion much after that.

For me I find my spiritual connection through my family, the scriptures and through a non-organizational association with good people. Would it be better to be part of a more formal group? I think so. But I haven't found one yet. I think Mormonism has spoiled that for me to a degree as well. Not saying I've closed the door to all organizations but I'm being VERY cautious about who the door opens for.

[dogbite]

I think the desire for a spiritual connection between ourselves and God and other humans is a built in godly characteristic.

I think it's evolved. But that not saying anything particularly different.

Except that evolution is blind to things that don't provide advantages. Whether by godly design or evolution we are unaware of things that don't affect our survivability. We don't perceive gamma-rays because we don't live in an environment where that was an advantageous feature. Until we built nuclear weapons. Our hyperactive agency detector doesn't serve a lot of purpose in identifying tigers and crocodiles on pavement. Maybe it helps in recognizing an oncoming car as a threat but I think I had to learn that more than have that built in.

We are social creatures such that solitary punishment can be cruel and unusual. We evolved to be together. Yet we can be connected alone.

So there are areas of neglect and blindness to our psyche, in our social ability, and our very perception. We are quickly exceeding the parameters that we evolved for or were designed to live as. We are not equipped to live in the world we're building. It's happening faster than evolutionary change. The growing religious nones might indicate that structured spirituality is not supplying functional support either.

We are blind to our unkowns. Is spirituality a sufficient known to the coming task?

[wtfluff]

That term is too loaded for me for reasons hinted at above.

This ^

Give me a solid definition of what spirituality is. Maybe then I can tell you if I can find it.

[BriansThoughtMirror]

Dogbite- is that like mushrooms?

[BriansThoughtMirror]

I have also had a sense of something spiritual missing. I think part of it was the experience of sharing moral emotion with a large community and having a shared sense of purpose and identity that went beyond this life. I'm not sure how to replicate that outside of any religion.

Have you seen this Ted talk? Jonathan Haidt has done a lot of research on this stuff, and the way he describes spirituality resonates a lot with me.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haid ... anguage=en

[dogbite]

Dogbite- is that like mushrooms?

Never had shrooms. It's a thought experiment taken from a short story.

While this didn't happen in the story, with such a device you can turn up your spirituality so that everything was holy.

I'm reading the Moral Animal. The terms she uses are that the evolutionary knobs are beginning to be exposed and we can see a few of the settings. Scarily analogous to the short story. The author of the story happens also to be strongly influenced by Jonathan Haidt. And what I've read of his work is also highly influential to me.

[LSOF]

What works for you to fill that need?

I have no need.

[Dravin]

Give me a solid definition of what spirituality is. Maybe then I can tell you if I can find it.

This. You'll find people who use the term for feelings of awe, wonder, connectedness, humility, or a host of other emotions that I most certainly feel even as an atheist. I'm loathe to adopt the term for the inevitable miscommunication with something who uses it to refer specifically to matters of religion. If I told my mother I had a spiritual moment watching the stars or visiting some state park because they left me with a sense of awe at the universe, my existence in it, the history and future of such a wonderful place and the humbling realization of what a small part of it I was she'd be asking me to show her on the doll where the Holy Ghost touched me.

[Emower]

Imagine we had a technological brain interface. This interface had a slider for every emotion and feeling we can perceive. The interface queries your natural state and sets the sliders at those points for your default. Now at your whim you can move a slider to feel how you want to feel when you want or what you want to be sensitive to for the particular moment.

Now further imagine the hacked app that would quickly become available. This one removes the end point of the sliders. You can be more sensitive to or experience things beyond the realm of normal humans and do so at your whim. You might even allow others to manipulate your experience for you as part of the relationship or a game.

Is any real meaning left if this is our experience? What was does this say about what our experience was before? Why does a particular act or location have the power to induce a feeling we would pursue? Is it the pursuit or the achievement that matters? Does this make the act or the location meaningful or is the experience itself meaningful?

I really like this allegory or whatever it is. It captures the religious experience fairly well I think.

[wtfluff]

asking me to show her on the doll where the Holy Ghost touched me.

Love it!!!

[Mad Jax]

As time has passed it has become more apparent to me that we exist in a purely naturalistic universe. It isn't what I wanted to find, but it does appear to me to be the case. But that said, over time I've become more zen with the idea. That in the end our existence is merely matter and energy. And yet despite being in a state of acceptance that there is no greater meaning to experience than a high energy chemical interaction, that our consciousness is explainable as a complex and sophisticated interplay of highly evolved stimuli, the moment I try to rationalize that conclusion and see it with perfect clarity, it shatters. My mind rejects it on an instinctive level, and I go back to trying to figure it out - like a traveler caught in a temporal loop which brings him back to the same singular point in time.

What I suppose might be the greatest irony is that in this bizarre drama, I find the greatest potential for meaning to my existence. In examining the never ending series of slow withdrawals from some sense of there being a supernal purpose, and moving toward the mundane mechanistic view of everything, to the sudden shattering of that total belief in pure naturalism and return to a sense of wonder, I get a sense of there being some sort of reason for this cycle. As if the cosmos knows what I need and is providing it; in a sense, it's the cosmos leading me to that constant process of examination because, for some unknown reason, it's what is necessary for my own spiritual development.

Do I know for sure this is the case? Of course not, because if I did, the cycle would end. But I don't think it matters if it's true or not. It suffices as a form of spirituality for me. As strange as that may sound.

[didyoumythme]

I don't seem to need anything really because I have grown comfortable with uncertainty. I do miss the warm fuzzies from those church meetings where everything aligned sometimes, but it all feels too much like a huge fairy tale now to get any fulfillment out of it.

I have enjoyed learning about secular Buddhism recently. Learning about mindfulness and other psychologically supported ways of finding peace. Check out the 'secular buddhism' podcast for more info.

[Red Ryder]

Who needs a solid definition of spirituality when you have a high speed internet connection?

Spirituality can be anything we want it to be and fortunately for us we have the internet to go find and learn all about it!

My spirituality is developing through the cycle Mad Jax described above only in a sense that my high energy chemical reactions are peaked when I'm learning new things. My brain starts to provide the same feelings and emotions that church spirituality once provided but without the fear, guilt, and strive for all things heavenly.

Maybe someday I'll feel the need again to be more spiritual but right now I think I wasted enough of my life chasing that. So now I'm focused on things that interest me.

I guess I'm selfish.

[oliver_denom]

What works for you to fill that need? If even you need anything. Maybe the relief of escaping Mormonism is relief enough.

For me it begins by accepting that the spiritual experiences I've had in the past were all real, but not correctly understood. Maybe they didn't come from god, but it wasn't nothing. Next, if I can accept that the experience happened and that it wasn't because of Mormonism or the Mormon conception of God, then maybe I can accept that I haven't lost that ability to feel those things.

What was it that used to trigger feelings of the spirit? Well, for one thing, it was the overwhelming feeling of oneness that let me know I wasn't alone in the world. If you seek out people, friends, and family, and look for things that reinforce this belief, then you'll feel it again. For me, this means intentionally engaging with people in an authentic and connected way. Mormonism produces this feeling by mimicking unity through conformity. It's felt more deeply and more satisfying when the bonds are based in honesty. If I don't have to lie or cover up in order to be accepted, then I'm more open to the experience.

You also have the spiritual feeling associated with having your beliefs confirmed. No one wants to be fundamentally wrong about how the world works, so anytime something can confirm our existing belief, we'll grab onto it and experience a little bit of bliss. This happens in testimony meeting where your belief is reinforced. It happens when reading clever apologetics, or when bad things happen to those who disagree with you, and good things happen to those who don't. You can have this same experience outside the church, but I would suggest an addition to your belief that makes this less about fearing error, and more about truth. One of my core beliefs is that I'm likely wrong about most things. If you're always on the lookout for things that run counter to your belief, then there comes a sense of wonder and discovery when you find out you may have been wrong. Instead of retrenching false belief, you feel confirmatory bliss by getting rid of it.

There were spiritual feelings associated with music. That doesn't have to stop.

There were spiritual feelings associated with inspirational movies and videos. That doesn't have to stop.

Did you feel the spirit while praying? If so, then why stop? If you don't believe in god, then pray anyway, what's it going to hurt? Long after I stopped believing in the ontological existence of the Mormon god, I tried kneeling and praying, knowing that only I would hear what was said. The experience was just as transformative as it had always been.

I used to feel the spirit while reading scriptures, not dissecting them, but reading them almost in a trance like state. I wouldn't always remember what I read, but it provided white noise to allow my mind to wander. This was a spiritual experience in and of itself, and I still do it, even after knowing the many problems associated with the text. In many ways, it was never the text I was engaging with, at least not in a literal historical way. That doesn't need to stop.

To cut this short, anything you did as a believe that made you feel spirituality, you can still do. You don't have to ask anyone's permission to sing a damn hymn or pray, and you don't have to justify it because you no longer believe in the reality of things like angels, demons, and gods. These are tools you can use to engage with the world through your spiritual or creative self, and you don't have to find replacements, you can just use what you've got. If Joseph Smith could produce a spiritual experience with a rock in a hat, then I'm sure we're perfectly capable of doing the same with things just as mundane.

[wtfluff]

Who needs a solid definition of spirituality when you have a high speed internet connection?

Spirituality can be anything we want it to be and fortunately for us we have the internet to go find and learn all about it!

Ah yes: Spirituality is anything you want it to be, or: Spirituality has an infinite amount of different definitions.

Fluffy Opinion: If spirituality can't be defined, then there's no way to "find" it, so "looking" for it is a complete waste of time. Since I also don't believe in ghosts any more (spirits) I see no reason to pursue ghostuality.

I suspect that what most of us view as "spirituality" is simply feeling elevated emotions. If that's the case, lets stop calling it "spirituality" and just call it elevated emotions. If there's a difference between feeling elevated emotions, and ghostuality, someone please explain to me what that difference is. ("It's just different" doesn't work BTW.) I know of plenty of things that cause me to feel elevated emotions, and I can recreate those elevated emotions at the drop of a hat if I feel the need.

[BriansThoughtMirror]

Oliver-denom,
I've found that the Mormony things that used to give me those feelings often make me feel frustrated instead, these days. I think I'll only feel "spiritual" feelings like that about something I really believe in, and I'm running low on those sorts of things. For example, the spiritual feelings I once felt while standing with a group of thousands of elders in white shirts and ties singing "The Spirit of God" at a general priesthood meeting were undeniable. But, if I were to do that right now, I'd probably feel very uncomfortable. I certainly wouldn't feel a sense of unity or group righteousness. I also doubt I'll ever feel like that again, simply because I don't expect to find a huge group with whom I agree on something enough to sing hymns about it together.

[Newme]

Sometimes I think it would be nice to believe in some spirituality again. Something akin to the promises of Mormonism without all the baggage. But I am afraid the church ruined that for me. I have become to much a skeptic.

As it is I get my religion from nature. It works for me but is Lonely at times.

What works for you to fill that need? If even you need anything. Maybe the relief of escaping Mormonism is relief enough.

It is lonely sometimes. I think as a TBM, I assumed everyone thought as I did - because in many ways they were taught to. At the loss of critical thinking and a sense of autonomy - I felt a sense of belonging and communion with others. But deep down, I knew it was superficial and few, if anyone, in our ward would still be friends if they knew I didn't believe in Mormon-approved BS.

I've found spirituality more genuinely after my faith crisis - & as I'm overcoming skepticism.
Nature is my temple - it really helps me feel grounded, sort & collect my thoughts and feelings and feel the spirit/intuition/peace/motivation.
Yoga has taught me how to breath through stress - and I'm trying to apply other meditation principles.
I've practiced Tai Chi on my own and with a couple different groups in parks.

But in some ways it's even more lonely - at least irl - because it seems few can relate with me as believing in God/spirituality yet not in organized religion and not being really liberal nor conservative - though mostly conservative. It's making me look for how I do relate with others -which is never 100% on every issue - but here & there... and navigating mine fields (which I haven't mastered ).

[NOMormon]

I've never felt the spirit. I don't know what it means to feel the spirit nor why it matters. Really, what does a warm feeling signify anyway? I've felt an emotional resonance a few times that I've decided must be what people are experiencing when they say the spirit is really strong right now, but it's never made me think A-ha, so Mormonism really is the true religion.

I teach my children and it feels true to me that spirituality is simply a sense of respect for life and for nature. I mean a very deep and profound feeling of respect for other individuals regardless who they are or what they believe and a similar attitude of kindness for the life of animals, excluding insects and certain reptiles.
I realize my definition is my own but to me this idea of honoring life is the most noble state we can achieve.