Death sucks, but death is. Death is the mother of all fears, and a bedfellow of existence. We can acknowledge and accept what is, or…
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Negative emotions are a mixed bag: they give us feedback on what is wrong, but they are also noxious. When should we listen to them, when do we suppress them, and how do we learn to stop manufacturing them. In addition to examining this broader question, we will delve into anger and frustration today, and the cognitive processes that fuel them: blame and expectations.
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We all want love, and it is one of a handful of spiritual emotions (along with awe, existential joy and dread, gratitude, and humility). Spirituality celebrates both consciousness and connectedness. Love involves connecting via shared consciousness. Thus, love, at its best, can be a very spiritual experience. But what is it, and how do we find safe love?
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By now, we’ve all heard about mindfulness, and we’ve been warned as children about mindlessness, but how can they each add to our spirituality? Both meditation practices, and “higher” spiritual practices, can be categorized in different ways, and understood from different perspectives. One such perspective is whether they expand our consciousness, as in mindfulness, or whether they narrow our consciousness, as in concentrative meditation.
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Yes, atheism is a reasonable response to the emotion/need-driven fantasies and delusions of religions. It is a decent starting point, but it is not a destination, any more than adolescence is a destination in life. It is merely a departure gate for your spiritual exploration. … Spirituality is a much larger tent than religion, and there are many non-religious avenues toward spirituality. If you reject religion, …
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So imagine that you are a scribe, sitting cross-legged in a large tent, in the shadow of the mighty Sphinx, in a desert landscape dotted with pyramids. You are one of the select few men invited to a private conference thirty-three centuries ago, addressing the problem of sacrifices to the gods. …
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Anthropocentrism can be viewed as an unspoken, hidden prejudice involving the valuing of humans over all other life forms.
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Spirituality and religion are not synonymous. Religion is the most popular form of spirituality, and encompasses many different faiths. Spirituality is a broader concept, which includes religious spirituality, but also encompasses secular methods of connecting to something or someone greater than oneself.
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