Are You Spiritual?

[JaysonR]

Navigator;

Can you describe your term, "Consciousness", a bit in context to the tangent?
You refer to it satisfying the same matter as "Spiritual", but I don't feel that I understand your term well enough to determine what I think on the idea.

 

[Navigator]

Navigator;

Can you describe your term, "Consciousness", a bit in context to the tangent?
You refer to it satisfying the same matter as "Spiritual", but I don't feel that I understand your term well enough to determine what I think on the idea.

Geez JasonR! You ask the BIG questions.

Okay - here goes...

Recently I have come to some conclusions about me and my place in the scheme of things.

I have asked myself "Essentially...Who am I?" and have had to tweak the question so that it becomes more a reflection of the logical, therefore the question is now "Essentially...What am I?"

The answer can only be this: "I am Consciousness."

Okaaaaaaayyy....so what does that mean exactly?

Essentially it means I am not the brain. I am that which decides what I am, and the brain is not the organ which can explain that to me, or make that decision on my behalf, and that is one reason why I can say quite confidently and truthfully that "I am" not a brain.
Furthermore, for me or anyone else to suggest that I SHOULD in all honesty think of myself primarily as a brain, I answer, "No way! That is as ridiculous as claiming I am the 'heart' or 'the legs' or 'the testicles' " etc...

I am - for all intent and purpose, an invisible ghost of a thing which is inside a human form and that is inside a Physical Universe. (to cut a long journey short)

How much AWE I get from that realization is completely up to ME.

That too, fills me with AWE.

The realization may in itself, BE the pinnacle of 'spirituality'...and if so, then not only "where to from here?" but as importantly, "how will these subsequent decisions influence the development of this 'I am' as it procures 'labels' in which to define itself to others of its 'kind' ?"
(which on principle must included all Creatures of Consciousness, especially of the Human variety.)

On that subject, I cannot say with much certainly what it is like, or how I might THINK, as say - Consciousness in Elephant form, but I do acknowledge that an Elephant is Conscious... and have the ability to imagine and get a rough estimate how they might think - , based on my knowledge not so much of Consciousness, but of being Conscious, and observing Elephants.

The same might apply to being an Extraterrestrial - at least ones which might have humanoid form, with perhaps more certainty in some regards, and far less in others.

But I DO know what it is like to be Consciousness in Human form, for I am experiencing that AS the Consciousness - in Human form.

I cannot provide evidence to prove that this is so of course, even if we were to meet face to face. This is simply because for all you know, I am an Extraterrestrial who is under house arrest somewhere way underground in the province of Area 51 and have found a way to communicate with you this way without the need for even a keyboard, let alone a screen and internet connection.

(My captors are not aware I am doing this. They just think I am asleep.)


For all you know.



My major point being, it matters not who I am, other than I am obviously Consciousness, attempting to build sturdy bridges between me and other Consciousnesses, as best as my evolving methods will allow...That is WHAT I am.

 

[JaysonR]

Thank you.
That's helpful.

I'll try to explain how I see things based on your input.

Rhetorically; what is a wave?
It isn't a thing, not properly anyway.
You can't hold a wave, and it isn't a thing unto itself.

We'll take water, since it's easy to relate to.
Water has molecules, and we can break that down and say this is a wave.
But we would be wrong, as molecules of water are just that.

Water has current, so we might say this is a wave, but this is wrong as well.
Current is saying that the molecules have motion which acts upon them and causes them to move, as well as it says that molecules have movement themselves and aid in causing motion.

But neither of these are a wave.

A wave is an action, and it is transient.
It is not just the water, nor is it just the current.
It is a singular instance of current in a body of water, more or less.

That is to say, it is not a physical thing in itself, though it requires all of the physical constituents to be what it is.

Similarly, so is consciousness.
It is as to say, "running".
It is a state of action, not a state of thing.


I would not equate this directly to spirituality, however.
To continue the analogy, the wave continues to move along as it does.
When it hits a shelf of land under the water that radically takes volume away from the water, then the wave builds and swells because it must place the water in its motion somewhere and it cannot retain it where land is now in the way "under" it.

This interaction does not define a wave; it defines a kind of wave of measured value greater in height and alarm than was worth noting before it ran out of volume "below it".

Similarly, consciousness (us) moves along until something grabs its attention.
When something consumes its attention strongly enough, it swells in consumption of that experience.
Its emotions set to move the same volume of consciousness around to continue a flow in light of the new impedance (an actionable experience or the experience of an idea), but now the consciousness is constrained into only a particular range rather than freely ranging as before.
The momentum of the experience increases in value and alarm because the focal of the consciousness has become "pressurized"; conceptually similar to how the wave became constrained to a finite boundary and therefore became larger in a unified force of the singular wave event.

Spirituality is this then; the consciousness being swelled with meaning and attention.
Meanwhile, consciousness is, rather not simply, purely the motion of our thought; a repeating array of waves.


It is, then, of no surprise that very strong emotions are found in the list of spirituality; awe, grand gratitude, dread, joy, enthrallment, despair, etc...

These are moments of near to absolute consumption; where a conceptual boundary of experiential "land" removes the dispersed volume of space where our waves normally would freely flow. This, thereby, builds a remarkable wave.

When we have such remarkable waves experientially, we are said to have a spiritual experience.

 

[Navigator]

Thank you.
That's helpful.

I'll try to explain how I see things based on your input.

Rhetorically; what is a wave?
It isn't a thing, not properly anyway.
You can't hold a wave, and it isn't a thing unto itself.

We'll take water, since it's easy to relate to.
Water has molecules, and we can break that down and say this is a wave.
But we would be wrong, as molecules of water are just that.

Water has current, so we might say this is a wave, but this is wrong as well.
Current is saying that the molecules have motion which acts upon them and causes them to move, as well as it says that molecules have movement themselves and aid in causing motion.

But neither of these are a wave.

A wave is an action, and it is transient.
It is not just the water, nor is it just the current.
It is a singular instance of current in a body of water, more or less.

That is to say, it is not a physical thing in itself, though it requires all of the physical constituents to be what it is.

Similarly, so is consciousness.
It is as to say, "running".
It is a state of action, not a state of thing.


I would not equate this directly to spirituality, however.
To continue the analogy, the wave continues to move along as it does.
When it hits a shelf of land under the water that radically takes volume away from the water, then the wave builds and swells because it must place the water in its motion somewhere and it cannot retain it where land is now in the way "under" it.

This interaction does not define a wave; it defines a kind of wave of measured value greater in height and alarm than was worth noting before it ran out of volume "below it".

Similarly, consciousness (us) moves along until something grabs its attention.
When something consumes its attention strongly enough, it swells in consumption of that experience.
Its emotions set to move the same volume of consciousness around to continue a flow in light of the new impedance (an actionable experience or the experience of an idea), but now the consciousness is constrained into only a particular range rather than freely ranging as before.
The momentum of the experience increases in value and alarm because the focal of the consciousness has become "pressurized"; conceptually similar to how the wave became constrained to a finite boundary and therefore became larger in a unified force of the singular wave event.

Spirituality is this then; the consciousness being swelled with meaning and attention.
Meanwhile, consciousness is, rather not simply, purely the motion of our thought; a repeating array of waves.


It is, then, of no surprise that very strong emotions are found in the list of spirituality; awe, grand gratitude, dread, joy, enthrallment, despair, etc...

These are moments of near to absolute consumption; where a conceptual boundary of experiential "land" removes the dispersed volume of space where our waves normally would freely flow. This, thereby, builds a remarkable wave.

When we have such remarkable waves experientially, we are said to have a spiritual experience.

Like a wave, that went over my head.

However to say that consciousness is the invisible which uses materials in order to experience, and in this is powerless as to the experience rather than being some 'thing' which has a variety of possible choices within any experience it finds itself within, is not accurate.

What in this universe is not a 'thing' even be that it is invisible or only visible when it interacts through material, such as the Human Body?
Is the body to be regarded as the 'thing' and thus somehow the predominant feature, the important THING?

Is it not an opportunity for Consciousness to declare ITSELF a 'thing' as well, and furthermore a THING which IS that which determines what all other THINGS are in relation to it?

While water is a good analogy of Consciousness, one has to be careful when identifying with it that we don't forget everyTHING else.

 

[JaysonR]

Interesting; you are essentially a sort of Platonic individual, holding that the ideal enters into the actual; or, the non-physical enters into and uses the physical, rather than the non-physical arriving out from the physical.

If so, this was a very popular perspective of many early and impressive civilizations in and around the Near East Asia.

 

[Navigator]

Interesting; you are essentially a sort of Platonic individual, holding that the ideal enters into the actual; or, the non-physical enters into and uses the physical, rather than the non-physical arriving out from the physical.

If so, this was a very popular perspective of many early and impressive civilizations in and around the Near East Asia.

No. I have believed it as so (but don't anymore) I do not discount it as possible, but prefer to enjoy the delights of thinking that the evolution process mindlessly (accidentally or not purposefully), brought about all that is (The Physical Universe) and am especially interested in Consciousness because it is essentially the mind of the mindless thing and is that which is able to acknowledge everything (including of course it self) existing. (within the limitations of its observable reach, of course)

So I am very much enthusiastic about the idea of the non physical (Consciousness) arriving out from the physical. Its almost 'magic' and for many centuries has been treated as such, but bear in mind please that absolutely every concept to do with magical, mystical, spiritual, religious cultural, mythology and belief is derived through consciousness, and is both understandable and forgivable as a process of the evolution of Consciousness, as it pertains to this planet.

The AWE remains in regard to the magic of not only the fact that the physical universe came from no thing, but that the mindful (Consciousness) came from the mindless. That is magical it the truest sense of the word.

Further more, we all are that.

When it comes to 'ideal entering into the physical' it is perhaps better to assume that nothing can 'enter into' this Universe because it alone is the only Universe in existence and therefore everything IN it came FROM it, apart from itself as far as we can tell - it LOOKS like a Big Bang (which denotes something entering and reacting) but lets not assume to much about how things might look.

My focus is on the fact of Consciousness is the ONLY thing which is able to say what it, and everything else is.

That is AWESOME.

 

[JaysonR]

Ah, OK; so consciousness is your spirituality.
Ontology has definitely been at the root of spirituality since probably its inception, so I could understand considering it to be equal to spirituality.

I'm not certain I would identify spirituality as consciousness systemically, but conceptually, I could easily go along with that.

 

[Morchella]

Thank you all for the lively discussion. I can't say I see the word "spiritual" any less ambiguous than when I started his thread. That's OK. I really didn't expect much clarity although there were many posts expressing profound ideas with clarity. The closest definition in a secular sense I took away from this thread was the feeling of Awe.
The people commonly using the word spiritual imply that it means thinking on some mythical higher plane that only the few privileged can feel. Often these same people are illiterate in science and might see the rainbow as Godly thus subconsciously dismissing it while people like me lean toward the type of awe about rainbows as expressed by Feynman.
Consciousness like pornography is hard to explain but we know it when we see it. Humans go wrong when they try like Deepak Chopra to explain consciousness outside the brain. Blah blah... therefore God. Skeptics need to own the word before Chopra and his minions abscond with it. Human consciousness appears more sophisticated from our perspective but like S. J. Gould said, "We are not some discontinuous cherry atop the evolutionary tree". Animals have a form of consciousness too along the continuum. Are animals spiritual? I think not, which implies to me that it's glorified hooey.

 

[Cain]

I'm not spiritual; I'm religious.

 

[JaysonR]

I'm not spiritual; I'm religious.

Interestingly, this is fairly quite common.

 

[JaysonR]

Thank you all for the lively discussion. I can't say I see the word "spiritual" any less ambiguous than when I started his thread. That's OK. I really didn't expect much clarity although there were many posts expressing profound ideas with clarity. The closest definition in a secular sense I took away from this thread was the feeling of Awe.
The people commonly using the word spiritual imply that it means thinking on some mythical higher plane that only the few privileged can feel. Often these same people are illiterate in science and might see the rainbow as Godly thus subconsciously dismissing it while people like me lean toward the type of awe about rainbows as expressed by Feynman.
Consciousness like pornography is hard to explain but we know it when we see it. Humans go wrong when they try like Deepak Chopra to explain consciousness outside the brain. Blah blah... therefore God. Skeptics need to own the word before Chopra and his minions abscond with it. Human consciousness appears more sophisticated from our perspective but like S. J. Gould said, "We are not some discontinuous cherry atop the evolutionary tree". Animals have a form of consciousness too along the continuum. Are animals spiritual? I think not, which implies to me that it's glorified hooey.

I tend to think the word is about as definitively useful as the word, "art", and suffers the same level of ambiguity due to both concepts being defined heavily by their emotional involvement and not a critical assessment of measure.

If I had to pick a word to replace "spiritual" with, I would choose, "emotion"; to move out from, or to cause to move out of.
Spirituality is a behavior that is impossible without a distinct emotional provocation sparked from a relationship with a given person, place, object, state, or idea.

 

[Navigator]

Are animals spiritual?

In relation to animals, what is 'spiritual'?

Are Human Animals the only ones able to experience Awe?

 

[Navigator]

I tend to think the word is about as definitively useful as the word, "art", and suffers the same level of ambiguity due to both concepts being defined heavily by their emotional involvement and not a critical assessment of measure.

Are you speaking of the word Awe or the word Consciousness?

If I had to pick a word to replace "spiritual" with, I would choose, "emotion"; to move out from, or to cause to move out of.
Spirituality is a behavior that is impossible without a distinct emotional provocation sparked from a relationship with a given person, place, object, state, or idea.

Emotion lends itself also to opposites. What is the opposite of 'Awe' in relation to emotion?

I think it is so much more than emotion. Emotion is a mindless thing. It requires Consciousness to understand the different emotions and often emotions are given control rather than being controlled.

When mind allows the mindless thing to control it, then it is confused.

 

[Pup]

I tend to think the word is about as definitively useful as the word, "art", and suffers the same level of ambiguity due to both concepts being defined heavily by their emotional involvement and not a critical assessment of measure.

If I had to pick a word to replace "spiritual" with, I would choose, "emotion"; to move out from, or to cause to move out of.
Spirituality is a behavior that is impossible without a distinct emotional provocation sparked from a relationship with a given person, place, object, state, or idea.

I like that. "Emotion" is a more neutral word, with even a slightly negative connotation, so it removes the positive bias surrounding "spiritual." It also conveys better the meaning that everyone has emotions, but being "emotional" means being affected by emotions more than average.

Imagine being asked, "Are you emotional?"

Would those who answer "yes" to "are you spiritual?" also answer "yes" to that? Would the answer "no, I'm not emotional" make you feel the same about a person as if he said, "no, I'm not spiritual?"

 

[Vic333]

I have been asked if I was spiritual. Quite a bit. Each time I ask what the questioner means by "spiritual". I've never gotten an answer. I've gotten my shoulders grabbed while being asked more intensely, but I don't think that counts.

 

[SusanB-M1]

Other words might perform a similar function, but I think scientists, atheists, humanists, all non-believers in fact, should use the word spiritual as often as possible in as many contexts as possible, so that its use does not remain as the prerogative of believers

 

[tsig]

I have been asked if I was spiritual. Quite a bit. Each time I ask what the questioner means by "spiritual". I've never gotten an answer. I've gotten my shoulders grabbed while being asked more intensely, but I don't think that counts.

Being spiritual means you can spout complete BS and not be called on it.

 

[sowhat]

Being spiritual means you can spout complete BS and not be called on it.

I agree with that; but outright charlatans aside, I feel certain that most people doing the spouting sincerely believe what they are saying. While its hard to listen to, they have their reasons and every right to do so.

As has been said by others, the word is open to a lot of interpretation.
My own feeling is that its really about emotions caused by chemical reactions in the body.
What isn't?
Understanding that, I still enjoy the feelings.

 

[Arcade22]

Now when I see this image in relation to my part on it as a Consciousness of entity/entity of Consciousness I am filled with AWE. It may be that the human form is hardwired to react so, but there is no reason why its Consciousness (me) cannot share in that emotion.

Sure, although it wouldn't describe you as a "Consciousness".

It's just like most people find certain things sexually attractive or hot. Or a painting or car to be really pretty or good looking. I think people very rarely lack such an ability to automatically feel such emotions when looking at such stimuli (if it could be called such).

But when you look at how things really are in nature, it becomes apparent that what we find hot, pretty, good looking, aesthetically pleasing and so on has no special meaning outside of the brain. It's just a bunch of molecules. That pretty, androgynous youthful boy? Just a group of chemical processes.

The emotion might lead the Consciousness witnessing and experiencing AWE/WONDER into embracing it as being 'special.'

It's not a "Consciousness" that's doing that, it's a part of brain associating the awe with special. The utility in doing that is because if we think things like a special place or special thing is, well special, we usually take greater care when we notice it or think about it.

It could work in favor of say...actually preserving it so that Consciousness at least has the best chance of actually eventually leaving it and going out from it into the larger reality which - while mainly rock and gas and dust, (with faces in the dust which look like things) is still nonetheless AWESOME.

That's seems a little far-fetched to be honest. The human brain didn't evolve so it could make us fly out into space because we view the earth as pretty, nor did it evolve so it could protect the earths environment and eco-systems. Although that could very well be the end result, it's no something pre-planned.

 

[tsig]

I agree with that; but outright charlatans aside, I feel certain that most people doing the spouting sincerely believe what they are saying. While its hard to listen to, they have their reasons and every right to do so.

As has been said by others, the word is open to a lot of interpretation.
My own feeling is that its really about emotions caused by chemical reactions in the body.
What isn't?
Understanding that, I still enjoy the feelings.

You can sincerely believe what your saying and it can still be complete BS. I see no point in trying to differentiate between those who are trying to delude others and those who are self deluded, the end result is the same.