https://dialecticalbehaviortherapy.com/distress-tolerance/radical-acceptance/

Acceptance of life is generally a good idea. That doesn’t mean passivity, nor does it mean never changing anything. It’s about not arguing with reality.

I recommend you read Spell of The Sensuous

Religions aren’t necessarily just picking some superhuman being to worship. There’s a lot about spirituality that’s simply trying to be in harmony with the world you find yourself in. Reviving paganism as it was might be hard (though there are revivalist groups that might be worth connecting with) but you can try to understand what experience of life made your ancestors characterize their understanding of metaphysics in whatever way they did. Meditate in nature etc. Find out if there are still any old holy sites in your region and see if you can’t visit them. If you have elderly relatives, you can just try asking them about superstitions etc. that they used to have as kids - there might be some grain of wisdom there that’s worth thinking about. Not as a belief to adopt but to wonder, what gave rise to the superstition and did behaving in accordance to it give beneficial results (for totally non-magical reasons). A good example of a superstition that may have had practical roots is whistling at night. It’s an easy way of coordinate and communicate if you’re thieving, raiding etc. so hearing whistling at night might be a sign of legitimate danger. That then may have morphed into various beliefs about whistling at night bringing evil spirits etc.

I realize you might be joking but if you really want a god or goddess to worship, go ahead. Just think about what you want it to symbolize for yourself. Gods have realms of influence for a reason - and it’s that tangible realm that should be what your worship centers around, not the symbol. Want a Goddess of Love? Focus on Love, not the Goddess. Want a God of Bravery? Focus on Bravery. And so on. How much you want to use a symbol to help you orient towards the realm that symbol points to is up to you.

Grab a rock you like from a place you like, put it on an altar. Symbolizes your connection to your land. Put a flower on it every week. Symbolizes your commitment to keeping your land beautiful. Do it with a presence of mind, not as an empty ritual. The magic is in the psychology.

Love this!

YES!!! Dancing has been a huge part of many cultures in the world since time immemorial. For every occasion and emotion! My pet hypothesis is that it particularly fell out of favor in the west (as a purposeful practice) because of Christian influence and the mind-body split. Some peoples even dance in funerals as an expression of grief.

It’s coming back a bit now but though it’s slightly hindered by the associations with new ageism etc. but I really wish people didn’t let that stop them from trying it. It does have clear benefits. You can use any kind of music. You don’t have to know how to dance. Just move the body with whatever music you like.

I dance at least a little every day, even if I don’t feel like it. And I very purposefully dance to aggressive music when I’m angry because I have a temper, and I don’t want it get the better of me. It has worked really well.

Edit: Not to devalue talking about your feelings at all btw. But a lot of people struggle with intellectualizing their emotions to the point they can’t connect to them at all in their body. You need a balance.

Definitely true, you’re right. But I’ve not heard of one that specifically aims to completely stop thoughts. And as I said, it’s a common and unfortunate misconception that that’s the most general goal of it.

I banned this user as I have little reason to think he’ll participate in the community with any degree of decency. As already evident. Also see their modlogs.

The question in particular is fine though.

General conduct. You made it clear you’re not interested in meditation as a spiritual practice and then use unnecessarily crass language. If you are unable to participate in a good faith, rational discussion, this space is not for you.

Don’t try me.

Edit: They tried me.

Please keep civil. Note that this is a spirituality community. If you wish to discuss meditation as a self-improvement practice, you might try !mentalhealth@lemmy.world instead.

Just gave my view on the matter with precise language.

I made a distinction between a description of a subjective experience, and a claim about consensus reality.

People experience something and then use the best language available to talk about it. These experiences are viscerally real to the experiencer.

Vast majority of people will reasonably make a claim about consensus reality if they experience something that feels very real. Because vast majority of people don’t know or understand that you CAN have a very visceral subjective experience that only happens in the brain. Or to put it another way: the brain behaves in a way that gives one every reason to think the experience happened in consensus reality.

It doesn’t make them “crazy” or “stupid”. But again, because most people don’t understand the distinction between a subjective experience and consensus reality, it’s easy to be dismissive of people who talk about outlandish experiences.

It would be more rational and kind to meet in the middle: “I believe you had an experience, but I don’t believe it means Aliens exist in consensus reality.”

I meant that to have the subjective experience of aliens to be considered to have the same level of reality as emotions, 99% of people would have to experience it.

I know I already experience things that vast majority of people don’t. It doesn’t bother me because there are people who experience things I don’t. Consensus reality is fine for general use but the range of human experience is incredibly diverse.

The goal of meditation isn’t an empty mind though. It’s a common misconception. Not sure if this is your case of course.

Flow state is considered spiritual though, yes. But it’s not necessarily the state all meditations seek.

Flow state is a hyper focused meditative state. It’s also possible to have a hyper open meditative state, such as noticing thoughts and everything else that arises.

People interested in spirituality usually practice both 🙂

99% or so. Leaving just a tiny bit of room for outliers which always seem to exist.

Yes, though honestly been a bit sloppy about it lately. But I stay in meditative awareness quite a lot without sitting formally at this point. And I “drop in” through the day.

I’d say we’d need to be able to consistently capture it in some way other than the human mind:

any type of a recording. From basic audio/photo/video to fancy science gadgets.

Else, it’s just a blip in the brain. A very real blip for those who experience it but again, not consensus reality. Of course if there was some kind of an universalish experience of aliens comparable to an emotional state like love, then we’d probably have to revise.

So there are aliens, just maybe not in the direction that is popularly assumed

There are subjective experiences that people characterize as “aliens”. And the more people talk about aliens, the more exposure there is to the idea of aliens, which leads to more people describing a certain kind of subjective experience as “aliens”.

Subjective experience of something some people characterize as aliens is real (as in: people genuinely have an experience). Does not mean aliens exist in consensus reality.

I’m not setting myself up as a teacher, more like my guide is an info board outside the city.

And anonymous community shouldn’t be one’s primary spiritual community anyway. Place like this is fine for abstractly discussing teachings and finding resources but more personal discussion should happen with people you can be face to face with, at least sometimes.

Thank you for the questions!

You tell people to look up teachers online but that smacks a bit like creeping and the contrapoints video points this out as well.

Yeah there’s a point there but there’s also a world of difference between sleuthing some random person online (even if they are a bit of an influencer) and a spiritual teacher who may end up having significant power over your well-being. NOT to say that it’s a binary that’s only 0 or 100. Please don’t do that. Look them up enough to make sure that YOU are comfortable with at least taking part in their community, then get more familiar with them like you would with any person. And you can always draw a line. I’ve had secondary teachers that I wouldn’t recommend due to issues with their conduct that only became apparent later but they did relay a couple of very useful teachings - and they weren’t “their” teachings, it’s just that the way they taught a couple of ideas from nonduality for whatever reason got through to me better than they did from my primary teacher. That happens frequently. Please do not buy into this idea that if you find a teacher that passes your preliminary tests, you must then unquestioningly follow them forever. You take your time (years) with teachers and get what you can from them, disregard what’s useless and maybe one of them emerges as your primary teacher that you can generally speaking trust to genuinely care about your well-being. But never forget all teachers are still human. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be able to teach humans. And as such, they are fallible, and they are NOT all-knowing. I’ve seen this flipside too where people completely unnecessarily idolize a legitimately good teacher, and then the teacher does something like recommends a book by an author who later turns out to be sexual predator. They had no way of knowing this about the book author but the expectation somehow was that because they’re a spiritual teacher, they should’ve just magically known that the author was dangerous. The pedestal topples and now the spiritual teacher is fake and probably a rapist too. Went slightly on a tangent but the point is: do what you can to make wise decisions over how much influence you let any one person have over you. Yes, the teacher needs to be responsible, but so does the student.

You mention that spiritual practice can bring up a lot of bullshit and that spirituality is in lockstep with therapy. What if i can’t afford therapy?

This is also where having a community is a good thing. I’ve seen donation drives etc. to help a struggling community member. I’ve known a teacher to pay for their student’s therapy (with a therapist the student chose independently). I know in this anonymous online world that tends towards cynicism, it may seem unimaginable and even nefarious but in a healthy, caring community, people do actually help each other out. Again of course there’s the flipside that you can’t just hang out in a community for few weeks and then ask for money. You need to actually keep showing up so people know you’re not just trying to take advantage of their goodwill.

How does a community call you out on bullshit but doesn’t “make” you deal with it? Also how do I know I won’t just be gaslit to buy into whatever belief the group holds? What if healthy skepticism gets called a “problem” I need to stop doing?

It’s a matter of scale. “Calling out your bullshit” doesn’t have to mean a full on intervention. It’s just pointing out that your conduct may be hurtful to others, or counterproductive on the path you yourself have chosen to walk. Of course if you become straight up abusive, then the community will understandably invite you to leave, as they should. Being politely skeptical of teachings or generally struggling with them should never be seen as problematic. It’s more the interpersonal stuff that by definition does not show up if you’re just by yourself. That said, I have actually have a great example of challenging teachings that people can get very stuck in, which people may start calling out sooner or later if you keep bringing it up again and again. It goes right into the argument with reality. People really struggle with acceptance vs. approval. Many people seem to have this desire to have spiritual teachings that somehow resolve all the problems in the world. But none can. No amount of philosophy is going to stop people from hurting each other and this is something you need to accept, which does NOT mean that you approve. Some people get really really stuck on this, which manifests as the teacher speaking about compassion, acceptance, surrender and the student then always brings up the objection “but what about this horrible thing in the world”. A good teacher will humor the argument for some time so the student can realize for themselves that no amount of intellectualizing will bring about world peace. And the irony is that I can say this, I can break down the whole cycle of argumentation, lay it all out for you but you still need to figure it out for yourself. That’s where you need the Opening practices I talk about in the guide, and that’s something the teacher and the community will start to gently poke you towards if you get really stuck in the cycle of rationalization. But they won’t force you, and indeed you can always leave if you’re not satisfied.

I’d like to think that there are inclusive Christian communities. In fact I know there are (just not on Lemmy I guess). And I don’t want to encourage painting all groups with the same brush, and would ask that you don’t either, not in this community. But yes, in this case there was a miss on my part, now rectified.

…Good point. I should’ve been more attentive. Thanks for pointing it out!

True, but I just wanted to link the Communities that have at least one active mod.