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Author Topic: Spirituality and related ideas  (Read 2792 times)

Mathra Hiede

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Spirituality and related ideas
« on: 29 Apr 2010, 08:06 »

Feeding of Mizhara's success with that topic about kinks, fetishes etc. I have decided to post this topic.

As a general disclaimer, and warning - this topic is intended for discussion and thought provoking ideas, and as per the forum rules, please be nice and don't attack anyone for their ideas.

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Spirituality.

NOT religion per-se but the more broad based ideas about how people can have a spiritual/psychic links, feelings, abilities.

Personally, I have had quite a few experiences that hint and show evidence for their being some basis to this "stuff" (for want of a better word)

I won't relate it out here, right now as most of it is highly personal and not entirely good for the internets consumption unless privately requested and granted at my discrestion - however, I am curious to know whether people have experienced similar things or belief there is some validity to the idea of spirituality in the afformentioned ways.


Sooooo.

Do people think that its just a load of codswallop, or is there something to it that maybe, as a human race we have failed to actually attempt to understand as it seems to transcend the number-game we play at while trying to learn more about Physics, Mathematics and such things?
« Last Edit: 29 Apr 2010, 08:09 by Mathra Hiede »
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Natalcya Katla

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #1 on: 29 Apr 2010, 08:34 »

I do find the supernatural a fascinating subject and a valuable concept in some respects (to the point of having studied religion for a year at university), simply because it has inspired so many amazing works of creativity and culture.

However, I don't believe in the existence of supernatural beings or forces (including the human soul), and if I did believe in the supernatural I would probably be opposed to its influence.
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Lillith Blackheart

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #2 on: 29 Apr 2010, 09:13 »

Regardless of the possibilities or not, the vast majority of it is nothing more than intuitive mental processing.
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Kamiko Hautala

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #3 on: 29 Apr 2010, 10:46 »

I'm with Lillith on this one. The brain is amazing, and it can produce some crazy shit.

That's the tl;dr version of what was going to be a rant.
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Wanoah

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #4 on: 29 Apr 2010, 15:54 »

This is possibly a tangent, because I don't really think that spirituality has much to do with the supernatural, but one of the things I find quite interesting is the possible effect of infrasound and how that might be a factor in some (many?) reported sightings of ghosts.

I've had some weird shit happen to me over the years, but I prefer to look for rational explanations rather than jump to supernatural conclusions. Apart from anything else, part of the fun of ghostly happenings is trying to figure out what was really occurring and why. :)

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Casiella

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #5 on: 29 Apr 2010, 16:21 »

I tend to view the "supernatural" as "natural phenomena we don't yet understand".

Similar to how our ancestors viewed thunder and eclipses and hail as 'supernatural', but now we know what's really up, at least more than they did.
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lallara zhuul

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #6 on: 30 Apr 2010, 01:01 »

If you are referring to spiritual things as in something being contacted from afterlife in one way or another, then I certainly do not believe in it. Although it does not change the fact that I most definitely have seen a ghost.

If you are referring to things that are psychic in terms of telepathy, astral projection, ESP and whatnot. Then my answer is pretty much the same as with ghosts and goblins. As psychic stuff is usually connected to UFOs and their inhabitants, I most certainly have seen one.

Personally I believe that for me definitely not believing in either is partly because of Hollywood turning both into nothing but parlor tricks and partly because I have been taught from childhood that being rational is a virtue and nothing that cannot be proven scientifically is suspect.

But I do have empirical evidence about both, although the strength of such induction does not hold when put into scientific scrutiny I have started to doubt the worldview being fed to me since I was a child.

Mainly because of few reasons.
In both cases there was more than one person there who shared the same experience.
In both cases there was at least one person that did not share the experience or denied it afterwards.

As stated before, human brain is a wonderful thing, but lately I have been noticing that even though people can use their brains for wonderful things they are not connected to their bodies and thus their senses.
I'll try to keep this from spiraling down into new age hippie bullshit or coming off like an utter loon.
Human brain is the thing that controls the whole system, some parts through limbic system, some parts through more directly controlled parts of the nervous system (limbic system controls the reflexes and other things, it is usually called the reptilian brain because in evolution it was the first thing that was evolved.)
If the human brain is busy thinking about things, worrying about the future, beating itself up about things what have happened in the past, wondering about what to buy from the store, singing along to the latest pop hit, wondering if you could have sex with that wonderful person, then your body keeps reacting to these stimuli that you are just thinking about.
Basically it is the 'Tiger in the grass' thing that happens to your body, you think there is a tiger in the grass, your body triggers the Fight or Flight reflex, your heartbeat goes up, adrenaline starts flowing, you attention gets focused, your breathing goes up, you may relieve your bladder, muscles get readied for what may be happening next.
Because of the mind having the habit of not being in the present, your body gets flooded with imagined stimuli from moment to moment, day to day, year to year.
It starts to get worn down by being in a state of constant alertness (also known as stress.)
The brains do their wonderful thing and think that this is the norm, not living in the present moment, being focused, having high blood pressure, having panic attacks because of constricted breathing, not being able to release emotional pressure, basically being the robotic guy having his monologue in Radioheads Fitter Happier.

When all of this (and other things I really do not have time to get into) is going on the sensory information that you get is restricted (when your attention is focused then you can only see an area roughly about the size of the television) and therefore unreliable.
On top of that you add the fact that this is the norm, and with science the strength of the induction is determined by on how common some piece of information is.

I'll just leave you with that, I don't want to make 10 foot fiery letters for you to spell it out.
I might tell you the story of the blind flies and the elephant to further drive the thing home but I have run out of time.

tl;dr?
I am full of awesome and Izzeh too.
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Myrhial Arkenath

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #7 on: 30 Apr 2010, 11:22 »

I tend to view the "supernatural" as "natural phenomena we don't yet understand".

Similar to how our ancestors viewed thunder and eclipses and hail as 'supernatural', but now we know what's really up, at least more than they did.

This.

Also, I am of the opinion that everyone is free to believe what they want, as long as they don't harm others with it.

I'll give the example of a friend of mine, who after years of dabbling with "alternative" beliefs turned into a devoted Christian. She suffers from rheumatics (a terrible thing at the age of 24), and there really ain't anything that modern day science could do for her. Now recently she went to a ceremony where hands were laid on her head, and she told me she felt an incredible warmth, like burning, but without pain, and since then she has not suffered from rheumatics anymore.

I personally do not believe in miracle cures, and if they exist it is probably our own power of mind doing it, but the point of this example is that believing in something improved the quality of her life a lot.

I however do worry about the current hype of "ghost whisperer" and similar kind of reality TV shows, because taking something like that for truth can have a terrible effect on people.
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Mathra Hiede

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #8 on: 30 Apr 2010, 21:33 »

I have gone myself with the theory that what seems to happen "Miraculously" is as has been suggested before 'Natural phenomina that are as of yet, unexplainable' many times.

To clarify a bit now that my mind actually works a little better (Yay for sleep x_x)

The seemingly accurate ability that people like "psychics, fortune tellers" etc have to create and understand interpersonal connections and foretell or see things that us as a normal person cannot directly divulge.

However, other ideas regarding spirituality are also welcome to be discussed as there is no real hard line between one or the other untill we can scientifically prove that our minds the physical ability to do these feats, rather than just supposition and suspicion.
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Casiella

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #9 on: 01 May 2010, 07:20 »

This thread title always confuses me before morning coffee, as it seems to me that it revolves more around psychic abilities and the paranormal than what I think of as "spirituality".
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Ashar Kor-Azor

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Re: Spirituality and related ideas
« Reply #10 on: 02 May 2010, 23:34 »

Welp.

I'm a rationalist. I try to be a good one.

I'm also pretty agnostic about things; my skepticism is the classical kind where I gather evidence and try not to be biased about it. Sometimes I fuck up.

I've had kind of an intense life, though, and I've not seen anything that I couldn't really explain. So I'm livin' pretty vanilla here, except that the weirdest and most terrifying things in my world are human beans. And people can be pretty fucking terrifying, and pretty unnatural.