Reveal Your Uncool New Age / Spirituality Beliefs

Evan, I think we sort of made that term up as referring to those aforementioned shitbastards.

i thought it was in the dsm-v.

j/k

I guess I just don’t think that the spiritual, supernatural, paranormal, whatever, is the opposite to science and rational thought. I think there’s a bridge and that bridge is knowledge. Like, at one time people thought earthquakes, and thunder, and stars, and certain diseases and all kinds of things were supernatural events.

And I don’t think this makes love or social connections etc less-than.

Yes- it’s not an either/or. I’m not keen live in a society where science, reason and technology have no place and is dominated by superstition, but like a bit of flakiness to be tolerated.

I guess I just don’t think that the spiritual, supernatural, paranormal, whatever, is the opposite to science and rational thought. I think there’s a bridge and that bridge is knowledge.

Oh, yeah. The oldest divination texts show the beginnings of empiricism and science. "The careful observation and recording of nature", "the conviction that there is regularity in natural processes" and "the aspiration to discover the general laws underlying the multiplicity of phenomena" - It's not unscientific, it's proto-scientific.

Joseph Needham and Jean Bottero have written about this.

This isn't meant to single out Aimless, nothing personal. Just some food for my thinking box here.

an attitude that the Chinese are unfit custodians of their own heritage

The Cultural Revolution laid waste to a great many people and institutions where that heritage was valued and preserved. That damage can never be undone.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, October 19, 2021 1:31 AM

I'm definitely not here to take the party line but just as a counterpoint, before the Cultural Revolution Mao organized a veritable army of "barefoot doctors" who used a combination of traditional and western medicine to provide medical care in remote areas where primary care was generally unavailable.

By now it ought to be clear that the best thing that could possibly happen to all non-human life forms on earth is for humans to experience a massive and immediate die-off of about 90% to 100%, without it being caused by a nuclear war....

iow, we're fucked.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, October 21, 2021 10:48 PM

anyone incapable of feeling overwhelming awe when contemplating this earth and all it contains, let alone the rest of what is a functionally infinite universe, is dead to all feeling for what their life is.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, October 19, 2021 6:07 PM

This is what spirituality means to me, I really couldn't give much of a toss about new age associations that the term has been saddled with. It's about a perspective that is literally cosmic. We are nothing in the grand scheme of things, and that framework can be comforting to me -- especially when faced with the kind of existential dread expressed in the previous quote.

Meanwhile via Metafilter, an overview of 'spiritual bypassing'.

Psychologist and spiritual teacher John Welwood initially coined the term “spiritual bypassing” to describe the tendency in spiritual communities to use spiritual practices or beliefs to avoid conflict, bypass painful emotions, keep us out of therapy, and narcotize ourselves out of our pain, rather than treating what hurts. Robert Augustus Masters knows this well. As a reformed cult leader, he knew perfectly well how brainwashing people in the cult he led by teaching them how to spiritually bypass groomed them to tolerate the narcissistic cultic abuse he inflicted. After doing what he could to apologize and make amends to those he harmed in his cult, he wrote the book Spiritual Bypassing to educate people about the harms of spiritual bypassing and teach people how not to be vulnerable to people who abuse their power and expect to be let off the hook of accountability.

Yet, even in the social justice conscious milieu of 2021, people in the New Age world are still parroting these teachings and letting MeToo abusers, pastel QAnon conspiracy theorists, people who spread misinformation and profit from it, white supremacists in yoga clothes, and manipulative con artists off the hook of accountability, even amidst real global catastrophes.

It’s not okay. And those of us who give a shit need to do our part to heal ourselves so we can move beyond spiritual bypassing and take up the mantel of social justice. It is now entirely obvious to me that any spirituality that does not include taking a stand for those who are harmed by abusers of power needs to fall by the wayside.

Falling back on "everything happens for a reason" definitely had a strong appeal for me when I was younger and it still pops up as a desperate coping mechanism occasionally. Now it mostly seems like a very self-centered way to explain a largely uncaring cosmos tho.

We are nothing in the grand scheme of things

The way I see it, the sheer amount and complexity of life on earth, as compared to the relative sterility and emptiness of the vast majority of the observable universe, gives this planet a peculiar kind of energy that, in its own way reduces mere stars to relative insignificance. Just in terms of complex chemical reactions, earth has a MASSIVELY HUGE profile in this part of space. We (Gaia, if you will) seem to be quite prominent in the scheme of things by that yardstick.

Cat Earth Theory

Cat Earth Theory pic.twitter.com/gITengQYau

— Terrible Maps (@TerribleMaps) April 3, 2020

A lot of my friends like to talk about the zodiac and what it means for us and our other friends. I have always been surprised by that. They don’t otherwise seem to have new age beliefs. I think maybe it’s an avenue for finding ways to connect, which I am on board with

sometimes i have uncool new age / spirituality beliefs and sometimes i don't

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81xMur9eyuL._SX679_.jpg

mounds are so good

anyways enjoy this guided meditation, i sure did https://calmtapes.bandcamp.com/album/time-to-let-go-a-guided-meditation

I enjoy a good death/hibernation/rebirth cthonic framework as a way to enjoy the cycles of life and the passage of time. I don't get too specific about it though. Kind of allergic to "joining" vibes after leaving evangelicalism & Christianity altogether.

I've read anecdotally that both zodiac & tarot are enjoying a pandemic-related moment; probably less about genuine mysticism and more about 'what the fuck should I do with my life?'

And in that realm I really don't have a problem with either; in fact I've been looking at the rune stones again recently

Astrology and tarot seem like interesting ways for people to think about and reflect upon their own experiences and actions. What irks me about some people into these esoteric arts is that they take tarot readings or their star charts as determining factors in their lives— in a sense, they put their faith into them, all while being snidely dismissive of more mainstream religious practices. Like, maybe just allow that you're also operating on faith?