I believe a lot of stuff, but predominantly I believe that my beliefs are somewhat irrelevant, and that what's not irrelevant is what I Know.

The only thing I Know is that there is experience: something, someone that experience, is conscious, and I normally believe that to be 'me' and/or 'I'. (I suppose I don't have to put the matrix(movie), solipsism etc. examples of why we can't know anything but this up in this forum?)

I believe that the only thing that isn't somewhat irrelevant 'to do' is to focus on what this consciousness/experience/experiencer is.

I try to always focus on who's experiencing, focus on this consciousness, and I've found a paradox in this 'quest': Whenever I focus on who I am, on who's experiencing, on the consciousness that perceives, on Rigpa, whatever you wanna call it, whenever I focus on That, it becomes an object that I'm conscious about, and it can't be an object! Because it's whats experiencing this object! So I try to focus on what is experiencing this experience of who I am, and then that to becomes an object etc. etc.

I love that paradox! And the more I try so 'solve' it the more I love it!

Love most importantly!
Panthiest.
Learning Buddhist.
Christ was a good man, so are you all.

<3

Missing Option: Gnosticism
Which would be mine, of course.

Entheogens can provide some of the purest Gnostic Experiences in the most clear and perfect definition of the term.

Atheist completely and totally. Although I do realise that I really don't know (as in the nature of the question, so neither does anyone) I cannot believe in any of the religious explanations that are being banded around today or in the past. Neither does the spiritual aspect (define spiritual???) of many peoples beliefs seem very likely to me.

I suppose its all down to subjective experience et all but I see nothing convincing in any 'supernatural' explanations.

At this point in life I'm inclined to believe that everything is one consciousness experiencing itself in an infinite number of ways in an infinite number of dimensions with an infinite amount of truths.


In an infinite universe why would there be one truth?

just my thoughts on it.

i have no belief system .....i either know or i don't know or make and educated guess
rotflmao

..this is where i often stand, along with some so-called 'animist' principles..though most ancient spiritual traditions have things i have taken from..
it would be nice to have had more options in the poll than the mysterious 70% "other"..though i guess this is because these days most of us take what we can from a variety of spiritual perspectives without following a single 'ism'..

i hope in this new sub-forum we can garner an idea of the diverse kinds of beliefs the poll suggests..
the mystical experience cannot be 'proven', but can sometimes be demonstrated..
.

I will be uncharacteristically brief in this reply. I honestly seem to have many levels of belief, stacked one upon another. When I am floating within what I have encountered to be the highest known levels of my awareness, I do not think I am anything. I do not think at all. I am aware and I am One. I exist in unbound bliss... I am interconnected with all that I sense exists and all that remains unmanifested mystery. But we all come down, eh?

When I settle into more active levels of thought process, I begin to elaborate upon the Great Spirit of emptiness which I have touched. Paradoxically, it is not "emptiness" at all. The Void was necessary within my sentient mind, as the eclipsing took place, allowing for a blinding flash of seeming limitless spiritual expansion.

I still call this presence God, the Divine, the Sacred, the Tao, or as is my penchant... the Omniself. If this is being a Theist or Pantheist, so be it. I have come to many conclusions and have had many epiphanies about what this Godhead truly is... within myself. And as a mortal man, I will truly never know. I experience a similar paradigm when I look too deeply into the mirror.

I may think I know but that is yet another illusion perpetuated by my desire to label what I perceive as a cohesive system of being, based on my subjective observations. I do, however, FEEL this living Spirit in all things that are within the field of the known and sense that it hints to regions beyond the boundaries of what can ever be know. Ain't life grand?


Happy New Year Nexians, one and all!

Have you ever pondered what it is about the prospect of something outside the material world that bothers you?

For me it was God. God bothered me. God as defined in my Christian upbringing really bothered me to the point of being full on atheist for a while. I mean the contradictions and dogma would have never worked with my questioning mind. But once I allowed my mind to embrace a concept of God not bound by any dogma I was able to open up and realize the profoundly obvious...

I am spiritual because of science not in spite of it.

Peace

What is this concept of God, joedirt, and what is it that is so obvious?

I think there's nothing obvious or certain about nature of god... I guess I'm agnostic.

Try as I may, there is unfortunately nothing I could possible say or do to show you the profound obviousness of it.
You and you alone have to make the observation.

I suppose there is a buddhist statement that is appropriate for this situation.



When you are ready to embrace it for what it is you will understand what I'm talking about.

Oh one last point. I am in no way claiming to have something you lack.

Peace

This is all too diffuse, joedirt, especially coming from you. I see you promote a matured science of the mind to incorporate the empirical nature of spirituality and mysticism. I do agree with you on this, and I think we stand on common ground when we wish for more rational discourse in these matters. But when I ask what concept of God is that you have, and what obviousness you have realized, and you reply to me in such a diffuse way you have just pulled down the curtain for any rational discourse on the matter. How are we supposed to mature the science of mind if we reply in this way? How is any of this supposed to be taken seriously when replying in this way?

surprised there aren't more pantheists on the nexus
♥

Not really. I've only pulled the lab testable experimental curtain down, but I've replaced it with the experiential curtain. The problem by definition is that experience lies outside the scope of the current scientific method. Unless you are willing to suspend rational thought for a spell it's unlikely you will make the connection. Though, even as I say that I realize that you have likely made the connection countless times in your life already...yet you just haven't had the moment were you go...ah ha....and then grin ear to ear for day's at a time. Precious experience.

For what it's worth I don't think you are wrong or anything like that.
You are experiencing EXACTLY what you need to to advance down YOUR path of truth.



Experience. All else matter not.

You are still dodging the essential point. As I've said, I've seen you promote a matured science of the mind to incorporate the empirical nature of spirituality and mysticism, and I agree that this is important. To fuse spirituality, ethics and reason together in our thinking of the world must clearly be possible, and it would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. However, we can't do this in such a diffuse and "I am enlightened, you are not yet so" type of way, we must be able to discuss these things with some scrutiny. When you reply in this way, you do nothing to advance any kind of understanding of these deep issues with consciousness, and you sound just like any random new age guru out there.

As in any other field, the spiritual intuitions that you are obviously refering to are amenable to intersubjective consensus, as well as refutation. But this is not so much so unless we can start having rational discourse about these matters and stay away from such diffuse answers as you serve here. Do you not see the problem?

For the record, nowhere did I imply labwork or any such thing, as I started my post by talking about empiricism.

I am not dodging the point. I am however dodging your world view.



I am a bona fide paid scientist. Science is awesome. Science is not everything.



Must it? what evidence do you see that this must happen?



And thus you fail to see. You should question endlessly. never in a million years did I say don't scrutinize or question. In fact you absolutely MUST do those things. I just said that what I have observed will fall outside of your scientific scrutiny.



No I simply do not advance your world view. Period. I've said nothing about guru's or anything like that. I put individual experience and realization as KING.



Absolutely! I have just chosen to move past it.
I no longer cling to the need to force all of reality into a scientific box. Period.
I've simply moved past it.



Indeed I added the words "lab work" to help show the absurdity of expecting that someone can debate their way to the ultimate realization.

You need to travel your path for now. I understand this as I've been there....and in fact I'm still there/here...walking my path, but as of recently I've let go of a few things that have held me back. Because of this I am able to more fully embrace what to me has become the most obvious of all truths. And no I'm not going to put it in writing just to appease you. I, and others, have all tried countless times to express the ineffable and each time it ends in ugly discourse...and eventually we have to send the spiritualists and the materialists to separate corners...yet I still laugh as I happily leave one feet in each camp.

I sincerely wish you well on your quest for truth.
I honestly believe it will set you free.

Peace my friend.

I think you keep on misunderstanding my intentions, joedirt. There is no point in discussing further, and we've already hijacked the thread anyway.

Peace

The reason why putting the experience of God into words is so ineffable is because God and the concepts that come with it are largely right brain phenomena where your brain processes the experience as wholes instead of analytically dissecting them into it's components. Whereas the left brain process 3 connected lines as 3 lines, the right brain runs different processing that shows them as a triangle. Being that adults tend to be left brain dominant where the left hemisphere develops faster than the right following the acquisition of language, it is very hard to break down the concepts into individual words. It is best processed as a whole experience which words would fall short on because it deals with an ontologically odd category for left hemispherical processing.

Pardon my intrusion into this intriguing conversation, but I feel that some experiences human beings have cannot be aptly put into the objective construct of the human language. After all, epiphanies are subjective, as is reality.

I honestly don't sense that joedirt is intentionally being diffusive or mysterious. On the contrary and IMO, by not speaking of this spiritual communion as if it were a logical ideology or scientific formula, I suspect he is expressing volumes about HOW one gains insight into such realms of Omniscient being (but I wouldn't dare feel I properly interpret his statements, as I respect him far too much).

And we can only access rationale enough to process through our usual mentality and cognitive functions, when our mind is back into it's routine conditioning and the realm of the known. Reason is a vital part of forming our world view and coalescing our ideas about the material multiverse... but one must use the appropriate region of specificity, within the brain, to perceive the Insubstantial Essence. Sound like a reasonable hypothesis?



We can describe our impressions of certain aspects of our spiritual insights and resulting cosmology, but when one goes into immersion with the Spirit... there is no conceptual formatting, no definitive quantification, no pragmatic analysis. The mind stops and awareness blossoms exponentially. Or as gibran2 so beautifully says, it "blooms".

I am personally, frequently caught in the age-old, catch 22 of attempting to REMEMBER just what such an expanded state of being is like, when I am once more compressed into my ordinary mode of thinking. Frankly, I don't currently feel compressed but from THAT state of mind expansion, I certainly am.

So, other than presenting conceptual shadows of this transcendental level of awareness, how does one encapsulate the infinite nature of the Divine into a rational philosophy? All attempts are mere echoes and reflections of the immediacy of the spiritual immersion.

We can witness it within ourselves, merge into it depth, become shattered by it's immeasurable power... but we cannot turn it into a logical equation, which can be understood by any other beings. Unless of course, they have likewise been in the fulcrum of such an eclipsing. Then it does becomes so obvious and self-evident in all we hold as most Sacred and intuitively FEEL all around us, in the natural balance of things. :idea: