What is a 'spiritual path'?

mossieh

Ok, against my better judgement I'll respond once more.

Thaedydal wrote:

I don't see how asking someone who has a spiritual dimension to thier life about living thier life with out one would be able to explain that spiritual dimension.

I don't claim it would explain it, but it might help to clarify how it is you actually benefit from having this 'spiritual dimension'. By imagining your life without it, maybe it would be easier to see what it gives you. I don't think this is a particularly challenging concept. I may be wrong.

Thaedydal wrote:

I would say that the difference between having a spiritual dimension and walking a spiritual path is that walking a spiritual path is working towards what ever spiritual goals you set for yourself and those can vary, so can the journey and how long it takes.

I've read this sentence several times now. I understand each of the words. I am failing completely to detect it's overall meaning. My lack of a spiritual dimension or path is seeming more like a blessing(steady) each time I read it.

Thank you for replying to my questions anyway, it has in it's own way, been a very educational experience.

Nevyn

mossieh wrote:

Ok, against my better judgement I'll respond once more.

I don't claim it would explain it, but it might help to clarify how it is you actually benefit from having this 'spiritual dimension'. By imagining your life without it, maybe it would be easier to see what it gives you. I don't think this is a particularly challenging concept. I may be wrong.

It makes my life and my interaction with the universe make sense to me.

mossieh wrote:

I've read this sentence several times now. I understand each of the words. I am failing completely to detect it's overall meaning. My lack of a spiritual dimension or path is seeming more like a blessing(steady) each time I read it.

Oh well, the debate about a having or not a spiritual life and wether it is a blessing or a curse is one people having been having long before the internet.

We all interpt the universe and life trough our senses and brain and each is differnt and so it subjective.

Sapien

mossieh wrote:

Hmmm... a yoda-like response if ever I heard one. 'You may have an answer, if you ask the right question.' I think I've asked reasonably straightforward questions here but it seems to take several attempts to get a 'substantive' answer. Smoke and mirrors come to mind, or possibly a failure to understand relatively simple questions is indicative of something else, who knows? Anyway, I've kept you from your esoteric studies long enough, I'll reverse my puny logic-based intellect out of here.

Politeness 0, Condesencion 1.

I really would be quite happy to answer reasonably well-defined questions. Did you perhaps consider that you might have been asking too much of people with these hypothetical questions? How much introspection do you really believe your curiosity warrants?

I do not, however, respond well to snide ridicule or accusations of low intelligence. It is clear what you want from this dialogue - at least give yourself a chance to earn it.

Nevyn

Nah he asks flakey questions which don't have precise answers to that he can infer that we are flakes.
Just as long as I am a dark chocolate flake and not a lepers leavings I can live with it

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

he said I was right, so back off the guy.. he clearly knows what he's talking about

Marksie

Trinity1 wrote:

It can be hard to label spirituality. My own definition of it is just being in touch with yourself, your inner self and the world around you. Its also the knowledge that its not just the physical happiness that matters.

The others who have studied i have great respect for them. and accept that i am possibly talking ****e :-)

No trinity1. Your definition is one that works for you. Mine is intensely personal to me and hard to explain. What i do to develop that again is drawn from several sources and does involve major aspects of what you have posted.

The best way i can explain about the whole spiritual path idea is what a dear friend said to me.

"there are many paths to the top of the mountain, but they all lead to the same place".

How you choose to develop and express is therefore entirely personal based on the Your essential self.

Is a spiritual dimension therefore the connectedness i feel to life around me, and the nature and the world and beyond?

I haven't had to try and express this before as i hadn't really thought of the two as separate, in that my beliefs and my inner self tend to compliment each other.

SkepticOne

A more common word for what people are talking about here would be superstition.

Nevyn

I find that term in the context of this forum to be offensvie.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

from dictionary.com

1. a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like.

2. a system or collection of such beliefs.
3. a custom or act based on such a belief.
4. irrational fear of what is unknown or mysterious, esp. in connection with religion.
5. any blindly accepted belief or notion.

seems pretty reasonable to me
what was it you found offensive?

Nevyn

No one would get away with saying that on any of the other forums in this catagory.
It is not an acceptible comment.
Same as going into any sports forum and wholesale trashing the sport.

Sapien

Mordeth wrote:

from dictionary.com

1. a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like.

2. a system or collection of such beliefs.
3. a custom or act based on such a belief.
4. irrational fear of what is unknown or mysterious, esp. in connection with religion.
5. any blindly accepted belief or notion.

seems pretty reasonable to me
what was it you found offensive?

I don't understand. Why are spiritual beliefs necessarily superstitious? To my mind nobody on this thread has yet sufficiently defined what spirituality is, so to proffer superstition as a simple synonym seems to beg the question in a rather assinine way.

As I have said before, the skeptic tendency to immediately reject any concept that is perceived to be of a spiritual bent, without any real knowledge of that concept or its context, without any articulated reason, is as clear a manifestation of superstition as any I know.

Mordeth, if it satisfies your intellectual standards to cut and paste your argument from online dictionaries, then you should know that dictionary.com offers this rather diffuse set of definitions for "spiritual";

1. of, pertaining to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal.
2. of or pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature: a spiritual approach to life.
3. closely akin in interests, attitude, outlook, etc.: the professor's spiritual heir in linguistics.
4. of or pertaining to spirits or to spiritualists; supernatural or spiritualistic.
5. characterized by or suggesting predominance of the spirit; ethereal or delicately refined: She is more of a spiritual type than her rowdy brother.
6. of or pertaining to the spirit as the seat of the moral or religious nature.
7. of or pertaining to sacred things or matters; religious; devotional; sacred.
8. of or belonging to the church; ecclesiastical: lords spiritual and temporal.
9. of or relating to the mind or intellect.
–noun
10. a spiritual or religious song: authentic folk spirituals.
11. spirituals, affairs of the church.
12. a spiritual thing or matter.

Your argument doesn't really amount to much.

SkepticOne

Although the word superstition may be used in an offensive way that is not the intention here. I think it reasonably accurately describes a lot of what is being said in this thread. I agree with Sapien that it does not reflect every aspect of what we might call the spiritual but rather a subset.

knird evol

Mordeth wrote:

when someone says they are spiritual it means they take pride in the fact that they believe things without proper grounds for believing these things.

The only thing you have proper grounds for believing in is your own spirit which you are presently experiencing the existence of - direct experience - and the unified cosmic conciousness that each is a part of and all of - which you can also experience perhaps if you follow a Path in that direction.

Other things, a glass on the bar in front of you, mordeth or an lcd screen are external objects. These may or may not exist, as you only experience them as secondary phenomina. Essentially signals that pass on neural pathways from your sense organs through sight, sound, touch to your brain and can be duplicated in dreams or under hallucinagenic drugs and in other ways.

You should read Wittgensteins explanations on the relativity of language to avoid making mistakes like quoting 'dictionary.com' 'definitions'

knird evol

Mordeth wrote:

when someone says they are spiritual it means they take pride in the fact that they believe things without proper grounds for believing these things.

The only thing you have proper grounds for believing in is your own spirit which you are presently experiencing the existence of - direct experience - and the unified cosmic conciousness that each is a part of and all of - which you can also experience perhaps if you follow a Path in that direction.

Other things, a glass on the bar in front of you, mordeth or an lcd screen are external objects. These may or may not exist, as you only experience them as secondary phenomina. Essentially signals that pass on neural pathways from your sense organs through sight, sound, touch to your brain and can be duplicated in dreams or under hallucinagenic drugs and in other ways.

You should read Wittgensteins explanations on the relativity of language to avoid making mistakes like quoting 'dictionary.com' 'definitions'