If it were not so, would you still believe?

[Cino]

@CinoYou dont think it is nourishing to be compassionate in a non material sense? How is being compassionate material?

I did not say that. I was going on about something else, go back and reread it if you wish. I was not criticizing the exercises or outcomes, but the attitude of "if you do this, you will gain something", which is in my eyes the materialist frame of reference par excellence.

The heroin addict saves himself, he helps himself. You do a great disservice by telling the heroin addict that he is a spiritual materialist because he wants to do better with his life. Let him save himself, encourage his restraining of the senses, give him the knowledge that the agregates are not the heart, that in the heart "The Kingdom of Heaven" lies.

I wish for any person struggling with addiction that they have access to the resources they need to improve their situation. It is a palpable, real miracle each time someone overcomes addiction.

I do think however that self-improvement and spirituality or religion or whatever you want to call it, are two fundamentally separate endeavors, and that we all lose something when we mix them up or equate them.

 

[Beautiful]

@Cino I think I have understood correctly, yet I see that I have not made a clear, good answer. To keep it short: "If you do this you will get something" is a true statement (seed=crop.) You cant argue with a fact. Further, spiritual people are well known for doing good acts with no desire of reward (this knowledge of Altruism underlies all philosophy and all religion, negating spiritual materialism, as if the wise of the world had already seen this pitfall in the path) Does spiritual materialism exist? Yes. I have a book called McMindfulness which talks about this stuff.

When people live and die here on earth, all life is 'spiritual.' Everyone wants to die with dignity and meaning, and so we wish to live with dignity and meaning. I dont believe understanding how to live life correctly can be called self improvement, because it isnt about the self. To learn, to grow, to discover goodness and truth, is essential for our well being as much as for the wellbeing of all other life. What distinction is there to be made between being good and spirituality? between being good and ethics? between ethics and spirituality?

 

[Beautiful]

If it were not so, would you still believe?

I wouldn't. Being indoctrinated into the whole Biological Robot/reductionist materialist thing and influenced by the popularity of atheism in the first world (which says something about what makes humans lose connection to themselves and their role in the universe) I would never have imagined that this stuff existed. Like Thomas the Doubter, I had to see and feel the wounds of the resurected to believe. We think it looks bad on Thomas that he didnt have faith when this obviously existed. Yet it was Thomas' skepticism which made him touch the wounds of the resurected one. No one else, not his most faithful followers, got that priviledge. But who got it? Thomas the Doubter. The one who didnt believe recieved the highest priviledge.

 

[Cino]

The unexpected seems to play a major role, I've noticed.