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> To me, spirituality is about pausing the labeling and interpreting part of my brain, and... No need for "and", just stick with that.

serialNumber 3y ago
This comment is a beautiful example of just that - if I read this correctly, you're already judging them for their take on spirituality . Please correct me if I'm wrong - but personally, approaching new ideas with an open mind, instead of a mind that has already come to a judgement, has served me very well .
- nprateem 3y ago
  Not judging, just pointing out it's possible to go further and just hang out in the present moment. That can bring the experience to daily activities, which can bring about surprising changes. In fact, it's not even necessary to switch off thinking. The key is to give no value to thoughts that come up (unless you're actually engaged in focussed thinking, eg intentional planning, problem solving, etc), or emotions. It changes everything. An example: I've been suffering from melancholic thoughts for some months, carrying a heaviness with me I couldn't shed. I recently decided I'd had enough and I didn't want them any more. I decided they were nothing to do with me, much in the same way as I'd treat a fart - some process that occurs but which passes and I forget about. This has resulted in a subtle but significant transformation. The melancholy has been replaced by something difficult to describe but no longer heavy and depressing, and at times elating.
  - haswell 3y ago
    As someone who practices meditation regularly, I’m in agreement that coming in direct contact with the present moment without judging is incredibly useful. But I think that in the context of science, a deepening understanding of the complexity of existence or interconnectedness brings with it a kind of awe and wonder in and of itself which further enhances the impact of such practices. I think there’s a certain irony in trying to put the notion of spirituality into a box, when I think the notion is about worrying less about the existence of boxes.
    - swayvil 3y ago
      Hey I meditate too. Vipassana. You?
      - haswell 3y ago
        A mix of Vipassana and Zen with a side of Dzogchen philosophy. I’ve found that exploring a few paths has had a kind of triangulation effect that has helped me better understand the core ideas.
haswell 3y ago
The point is that what comes before the “and” is what leads to what comes after the and. Music has existed for far longer than we’ve had the ability to scientifically describe the acoustic properties of music. If I described Beethoven’s 9th symphony to someone who’d never heard it in terms of frequencies/pitches and durations, or handed them a piece of sheet music (assuming they don’t have the training/ability to read music and hear it in their head), they might conclude that music is fundamentally boring. If that same person sits in a concert hall and hears the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform the piece, only then would they understand the impact of the music. The emotion, the resonance, the beauty, and all of the feelings that come with that as a listener. This doesn’t mean that the musical notation or a more technical analysis of the sound has no place. Just that they provide a fundamentally incomplete understanding of the phenomena of music. My point is that labeling and interpreting reduces reality to something less than it actually is. And when you stop limiting your experience of a thing to a low resolution description of it, it tends to inspire a sense of awe and wonder (at least for me). And much like music tends to inspire people to create their own, or to play the music conceived by others, and much like musical notation enables the transfer of musical knowledge between humans, I think a scientific mindset and some kind of “spirituality” go hand in hand. They’re not mutually exclusive, and each enhances the other. To take all of this one step further, the awe and wonder increases when I contemplate my ability to contemplate all of this. There’s a time for labels, and a time for raw experience, and a time for appreciating the fact that I can label raw experience.
- breuleux 3y ago
  > And when you stop limiting your experience of a thing to a low resolution description of it, it tends to inspire a sense of awe and wonder (at least for me). That's interesting, because to me awe and wonder are a low-resolution description of a thing. Yes, the world is immense, indescribably complex, it largely cannot be labelled or interpreted, but that is not surprising, profound or interesting. Awe fetishizes the unknown: upon realizing that the universe is not fully intelligible to the human mind, we immediately put that realization in a box and make it into an experience. The truth is, the world is what it is, and what it is is too large to fit in any mind. In that sense, your statement that "you stop limiting your experience of a thing to a low resolution description of it" is actually impossible. No human mind can possibly do this. Anything we think or feel about the world is a flawed and limited interpretation, including awe and wonder.
swayvil 3y ago
Well there are shifts of perspective other than labeling. Just as abstracted and deranging. Those are good to pause too. Buy ya, we are good to pause the entire mess.

serialNumber 3y ago

This comment is a beautiful example of just that - if I read this correctly, you're already judging them for their take on spirituality . Please correct me if I'm wrong - but personally, approaching new ideas with an open mind, instead of a mind that has already come to a judgement, has served me very well .

nprateem 3y ago
Not judging, just pointing out it's possible to go further and just hang out in the present moment. That can bring the experience to daily activities, which can bring about surprising changes. In fact, it's not even necessary to switch off thinking. The key is to give no value to thoughts that come up (unless you're actually engaged in focussed thinking, eg intentional planning, problem solving, etc), or emotions. It changes everything. An example: I've been suffering from melancholic thoughts for some months, carrying a heaviness with me I couldn't shed. I recently decided I'd had enough and I didn't want them any more. I decided they were nothing to do with me, much in the same way as I'd treat a fart - some process that occurs but which passes and I forget about. This has resulted in a subtle but significant transformation. The melancholy has been replaced by something difficult to describe but no longer heavy and depressing, and at times elating.
- haswell 3y ago
  As someone who practices meditation regularly, I’m in agreement that coming in direct contact with the present moment without judging is incredibly useful. But I think that in the context of science, a deepening understanding of the complexity of existence or interconnectedness brings with it a kind of awe and wonder in and of itself which further enhances the impact of such practices. I think there’s a certain irony in trying to put the notion of spirituality into a box, when I think the notion is about worrying less about the existence of boxes.
  - swayvil 3y ago
    Hey I meditate too. Vipassana. You?
    - haswell 3y ago
      A mix of Vipassana and Zen with a side of Dzogchen philosophy. I’ve found that exploring a few paths has had a kind of triangulation effect that has helped me better understand the core ideas.

haswell 3y ago

The point is that what comes before the “and” is what leads to what comes after the and. Music has existed for far longer than we’ve had the ability to scientifically describe the acoustic properties of music. If I described Beethoven’s 9th symphony to someone who’d never heard it in terms of frequencies/pitches and durations, or handed them a piece of sheet music (assuming they don’t have the training/ability to read music and hear it in their head), they might conclude that music is fundamentally boring. If that same person sits in a concert hall and hears the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform the piece, only then would they understand the impact of the music. The emotion, the resonance, the beauty, and all of the feelings that come with that as a listener. This doesn’t mean that the musical notation or a more technical analysis of the sound has no place. Just that they provide a fundamentally incomplete understanding of the phenomena of music. My point is that labeling and interpreting reduces reality to something less than it actually is. And when you stop limiting your experience of a thing to a low resolution description of it, it tends to inspire a sense of awe and wonder (at least for me). And much like music tends to inspire people to create their own, or to play the music conceived by others, and much like musical notation enables the transfer of musical knowledge between humans, I think a scientific mindset and some kind of “spirituality” go hand in hand. They’re not mutually exclusive, and each enhances the other. To take all of this one step further, the awe and wonder increases when I contemplate my ability to contemplate all of this. There’s a time for labels, and a time for raw experience, and a time for appreciating the fact that I can label raw experience.

breuleux 3y ago
> And when you stop limiting your experience of a thing to a low resolution description of it, it tends to inspire a sense of awe and wonder (at least for me). That's interesting, because to me awe and wonder are a low-resolution description of a thing. Yes, the world is immense, indescribably complex, it largely cannot be labelled or interpreted, but that is not surprising, profound or interesting. Awe fetishizes the unknown: upon realizing that the universe is not fully intelligible to the human mind, we immediately put that realization in a box and make it into an experience. The truth is, the world is what it is, and what it is is too large to fit in any mind. In that sense, your statement that "you stop limiting your experience of a thing to a low resolution description of it" is actually impossible. No human mind can possibly do this. Anything we think or feel about the world is a flawed and limited interpretation, including awe and wonder.

swayvil 3y ago

Well there are shifts of perspective other than labeling. Just as abstracted and deranging. Those are good to pause too. Buy ya, we are good to pause the entire mess.