barrelomonkeys wrote:Some Schmo wrote:This is mostly for the atheists / agnostics / humanists / secularists / naturalists among us, but of course, anyone can join in. I'm not a thread nazi.
(Oh oh... thread closed due to Godwin's Law before it even gets started. Crap).
Well, in case they let that one go, tell me: do you think there is such a thing as spirituality which is actually a separate component of a person's being like the physical, emotional or mental? If so, what do you mean by that?
My personal opinion is that it's simply a mental construct, and is just another name for a certain emotional state (perhaps it's an emotional construct?)
What do you think?
Hi Schmo, I saw your question earlier and thought about it some. Spiritual to me means that I'm peaceful and feel elevated in a sense. Of course this is probably because I have done something atrocious to my brain in the past. I am often overcome by euphoria associated with beauty, especially that which is found in nature.
For me it's a feeling that there is purpose and that I'm not alone... when I have these "spiritual" experiences I do not feel alone and actually feel enveloped in warmth and love. I more often than not halt these moments, they startle me, and I hate to really consider that I may be wrong, there is a God and I deny Him. So, that's what it means to me.
So I don't really know how to answer your question. I just know that I have experienced something that I label a spiritual experience.
Book of Mormon, You describe succulently what I would call a connection to the Source. It is what I refer to when discussing spirituality. It is sometimes a feeling, sometimes a physical sensation, sometimes inspiration, but always identifiable. For me, it is the moment when the mind (or consciousness, or whatever) is able to see past the layers of the concentrated atomic matter that I call "me" and dance, groove, harmonize with the underlying energy in that composes reality. It is at once physical and psychological. I first encountered this experience while utilizing canabanoids, as the substance enabled the overtly analytical aspect of the brain (not sure where it lies exactly - left brain, perhaps?) to explore aspects of consciousness through meditation that spread beyond my normal perceptions. Later, with LSD, I was able to travel into deeper levels within myself, and lastly with psilocybin, explored outside of my own personal energy field (realizing, ironically, that all energy fields are in fact, connected on a quantum level, and that in a hokey hippie way - LOL - we are all, in fact, one organism, but I digress).
I think we get a little too caught up in semantics, at times, and miss the subtleties. I have had some of my most profound "Spiritual" or "Source" connections through the practice of Yoga, and I didn't realize at the time that Yoga was what I was doing. I just thought I was stretching to feel comfortable. I see the body as a temple (and I did before I joined the Church) - almost like a collection of little temples - and the cells and organs and whatnot are all subjects of the greater goal (the continuation of life). Energy composes the body (from a scientific perspective) and I believe the idea of "Spirituality" is simply allowing the body to be unified by consciousness, and then to recognize the unity within the greater energy. This is most easily done in nature, surrounded by that which we can not attribute to our "selves", at least for me initially.