Spirituality for Living

The spiritual concept of non-doing. It’s the principle of natural action. Doing from a point of being. Known in Taoism as wu wei, but more specifically I will be talking of wei wu wei. It is a sort of paradoxical concept, but one I find very helpful. Doing non doing. There is a lot of concern [...]

We are overconfident of human independence. Even modern psychological research suggest that it’s a half truth at best.  Then you could delve rationalistically into why that is and why we have what subconscious influences that we do. Does that invalidate spiritual experience and make the ancients foolish?  Maybe they were more expedient and direct in some ways. [...]

Your actions are based on your thoughts and feelings. I always thought it was strange to say “you have no reason …”. It is a very strange statement. You may have no reason from their point of view, but you don’t live from their point of view. Your reasons are your own, and you live [...]

Is the sole purposes of most religions to explain the universe and crowd control? Hmm, yes, except for explaining the universe. Religion sets up a paradigm that supports the temporal authority of that institution whatever body politic.
Religion as a primitive physics? Physics isn’t primitive? Why to date is cold fusion supposedly untenable? Why do we implement [...]

Mortification of the flesh to what purpose, disidentification? Yes indeed.  When people still undertook it with the proper intent, but it has no merit if it’s merely a self destructive act.
Are there not other ways less destructive to disidentify? Yes, and ’destructiveness’ is a key concept. It is not the key concept of self mortification. [...]

Questions come from quest, from seeking, not identifying what we disengage from and don’t believe in. We question based on what we believe might be true. Perhaps we know nothing at all, and all our knowing is just self expression. Does that invalidate it? I would put forth that there is no reality in an [...]

Hope in this day and age seems a much maligned feeling. Yet we deal with levels of mental illness that have never been known before. Stress related illnesses are our biggest killers, and yet we are admonished to be realistic, be rational.  How realistic is it to say that we should be rational first and [...]

Choice seems so readily obvious. People claim to make choices, and then complain about the consequences of those choices. We make choices every day if only minor ones, but do people really choose? Do they take the action that choice supposedly is? In my experience people tend to choose by habit not by thought, so [...]

Many people think a resolution can succeed by force of will. Has anyone had that work?
I remember a man saying that he had to quit smoking, just by being stubborn. He went back to smoking and died of lung cancer a year later. Had he not had such an extreme stance, he might not have [...]

Ever notice those who seem to have a lot don’t seem to really want it? Those who want a lot never seem to have enough? The problem is not wanting or having no wants. Wanting is pretty irrelevant, and this is a good thing. There is an old Sufi curse, ‘may your every wish be [...]

What if in the course of acting out animal instinct, one fails to see beyond their own desires and harms others? That is a valid point. Can you avoid doing any harm? In trying to avoid harm, is it proof against your harm? If you refuse to engage, can that not itself cause harm? In pursuing [...]

We were all at one point happy. Literally all of us have been happy at least at one point in our lives. The reason being is that happiness is a natural state of being. It isn’t an emotion. It’s not a mood that comes and goes. Moodiness comes to replace happiness when we are taught [...]

What it comes down to, and hypnosis proves this, is what you don’t know and what you ignore, can and does hurt you. What you are pushing away continues to operate on its own even without your understanding. Thus we have episodes when we “act out of character”. We “don’t know why I did that”. [...]

Any student of logic knows that logic is just a form of cognitive reality checking.  It is a function of the monkey mind taken to a cerebral level, and logic can be satisfied by any consistency. This is why even now psychology says that any belief that is commonly held by your culture cannot be [...]

Who is actually fascinated with their own minds? Because your mind is your world, and you are response able people. If you would have a hand in change then realize that what you have, and what you feel, is where you are at, and by that same power that you change your feelings and change your [...]

Trust isn’t foolishness. Trust isn’t being a martyr or a sucker. Those come about when you don’t trust. When you perceive and then rationalize; “Well, maybe I’m wrong“, “Well, maybe they have changed“. Oh, the list of rationalizations is endless. If you trust you give place to the truth. You allow it to show itself [...]

Freedom is really sort of a nebulous idea and touted a lot, but do we really have it? If you could have freedom from everything, would you really want it?
Would you be dead? Basically yes, you would.
Likely are rules there too? Yes, this is also right. No energy escapes the universe and order touches everything.
People [...]

Something said to me the other day that they ‘reason’ their way out of worry. Do you think that can work? Reasoning your way out of worry? No. Worry patterns are habits of thought, and a logical process can seem to justify a worried stance. Worry is really only avoided by a recognition of your [...]

One thing about some religions is they require submission to the male, the husband. This was one reason I couldn’t stay in that culture. There are cultures, though more rare, that were matriarchies.  Yes, it seems like these codifications happen. To address the issue of codification there is cognition and there is recognition. Cognition can [...]

Being alone, as I understand it, is often a production of our thoughts making us think we’re alone? Yes, I agree, but it’s not an original thought. It’s an afterthought that arises from the series of expectations we are taught, and seems true in that system of thinking, though it is in no way factually [...]