Is anyone else an atheist with BC besides me?
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Sheila, I'd like to add my welcome to you. I also find Buddhism interesting and like many of its aspects but just can't accept the whole. I have found meditation to be very helpful but laughing is even more so. Your mileage may vary.
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I really enjoy your "ramblings" Sheila. Great food for thought.
I feel that my bouts with cancer have aged me prematurely, by maybe 10 years. But every time I laugh so hard that I end up gasping for breath, I feel like regained a year on my biological clock.
--CindyMN
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I'm not much for medidating .. it reminds me of praying .. but the laughter I just love. Chumfry, you're right it can take years off .. I love to laugh until I have tears running down my cheeks!
Welcome Sheila .. glad to see you here.
Bren
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Welcome Sheila! and welcome back Flannelette. I was wondering why we hadn't heard from you in a while. I am sorry you sister has not been well, but glad antibiotics did the trick. It is funny about family dynamics. There is often a true sense of comfort in them.
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Bren, I am with you for laughing...when I was going through treatment, emails
from my friends with really good laughing jokes keep me going..it was wonderful
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Sheila, gald to see you over here. Your posts are so thoughtful and intelligent!!
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When I meditate, it is to free myself of thoughts. So I don't feel as if it's prayer or close to prayer. But an emptying of my thoughts, issues, problems.
However, I'll take something funny anytime I can get it. There's nothing so satisfying as a good laugh.
Off to bed. Hoping for a night free of hot flashes.
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Maya2, that's a very good description of meditating. I was trying to decide how to describe it and you did it very well and much more concisely than I would have managed.
And I agree, a good laugh is the best.
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Laughter is a great thing to do as much as possible. A forum I used to use has an ongoing joke thread that always sets me off, do we have one on BCO?
I've always been too busy do find time to meditate, and it was only really effective once, after I got my diagnosis. I lay in bed that night shaking so much I thought I'd fall out of bed. So I started to meditate and the shaking stopped. Each time I started to think or come out of meditation I'd start shaking again so I was able to use the shakes to keep going deeper. I was using visualisations of healing light travelling through my body and really got high on it. I've tried that again numerous times since but just can't get my crazy mind to stop. I also tried guided visualisations either recorded or with a group but the group picks up on my busy mind somehow and I seem to spoil it for them. One day I'll get the knack.
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Don't you think that our subconsciousness still makes us to call to the God/Allah/Whoever with no regards to how much atheists we are? Is it genetically implanted at the dusty basement of our mind?
I call myself "Culturally Jewish but not practising". And still I have those flashes of turning to heaven for help at the hard moments... Go figure.
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I'm so sorry you and your wife are going through this. In times of trouble I find myself praying to Mary without my realizing it. It is implanted.
Edited to add" We don't live far from each other.
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Hi Leprechaun, I didn't know you were on this thread.
There is an area of the brain that ties in with religious or spiritual leanings. It gets bigger as we age and especially in women. That's all I remember from something I read. So yes, it's hard wired into the brain.
Those who have dropped their ego to obtain nirvana / enlightenment / awakening etc, say they are left with the knowledge that we are all one / love / universe / god etc and they say everyone knows that but all the mind clutter hides it. They seem to drop any religious affiliations and only use the religious books to single out those statements and stories that support their own experience. It's interesting that Buddhists don't believe in a god and Hindus believe in many gods and even that everyone is a god. No one overruling god as far as I know.
Einstein was also Jewish in name only and his quotes are full of spiritual statements.
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I think it is a cultural implant, not genetic. In times of hopelessness or extreme distress we may be subconsciously spurred to appeal to this all-powerful entity that has been implanted in our minds since childhood.
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I have been an atheist for a long time although I was raised Catholic and attended parochial schools. When I was diagnosed, I had no urge to pray or think of heaven. I meditated and wished metta to my tumor. (Metta, the Buddhist word for loving kindness). Although I do not want to die, I am not afraid of death.
Taoism and Confucianism are two more "religions", besides Buddhism, that do not have supreme beings, creator gods, or redeemers.
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There's certainly plenty of conditioning to believe in a god. I'd be interested so know if there is any society anywhere that has grown up without any god concept. My son talks about a "god of gaps". We turn to a god or superstition to explain the unexplainable gaps in our knowledge. So at one time it was god that made the moon and sun move across the sky, and with increasing scientific knowledge, god's powers are diminishing.
In a way medicine is similar, historically they came up with weird things like "ether" as a cause for the black death and used lots of superstitious treatments. More recently, anything unexplainable was put down to stress. I'm sure stress plays some part in all illness, not just a select few. These days their god is double blind placebo controlled research and many may be dying because the cost of researching anything is prohibitive and they would rather see someone dying than using serious unconventional or alternative therapies. See the DCA thread on the alt forum for a good example. I believe that anyone who has exhausted conventional treatments and is dying should be able to try alternatives, but better still they could be registered and monitored so that useless treatments would be exposed and promising treatments could then be investigated further.
I must go out now, it's gone 1pm in south east Australia.
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Elizabeth, speaking of childhood... I spent my entire childhood in the Soviet Union. There was hardly more atheistic place on the planet at those times. My parents are both atheists, so I don't think this is something from childhood.
However. I do feel very strong attachment to the Jew in me. And Jewish consciousness cannot be separated from the religious background. It's hard to explain and English is by far not my native language, but here I tried...
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It is possible to be spiritual without being religious. To believe is to trust and sorry I just don't but to say I am not spiritual would be incorrect also.
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I think I know what you mean Yan. Being Jewish is part of your identity even though you're atheist. I never made it past sunday school. Mom said wait a minute, this doesn't make sense. I can't ever remember being religious as a child. I thought sunday school was just crafts and story time and we got a cookie at the end. It was an arrowroot cookie. Strange what we remember.
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arrowroot cookies are good. I still buy them occasionally. .... also teething biscuits.
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It takes trust to plant a garden; trust that the hard work will pay off in a harvest. I enjoy the feeling of being part of the soil, the planet, the solar system and the universe, but I don't consider these things to be greater than myself. They are just part of me and gardening helps me appreciate my belonging to all of existence.
Some would consider these thoughts to be spiritual. I prefer the word philosophical since I see really don't believe in spirits.
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hi everyone: i am a spiritual person by nature, but am religious also. i allow everyone to have thier own conciousness, as i have enough with my own!! i love this thread, bc of the friends i have here, and because im very interested in spirituality. hope its ok that im here... 3jays
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hi everyone, i love coming to this thread where i have many friends. i don't post often, but love the sharing of ideas.. 3jays
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Notself,
Thought of this when I read your last post: I have a picture of it framed on my desk:
"When the world wearies, and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the Garden." Minnie Aumonier
We're still covered with about 2 feet of snow, started out as powder, but after several ice storms it is now solid - tho very white, glistening in the sun, cuz not many cars around where I am in western MA, but OH, how I L-O-N-G for the ground to appear, thaw, and plant sunflowers! Just thinking of sunflowers helps me smile. Happy gardening to us all.
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For Caerus
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Well that might be for Caerus but I'm going to sit here and enjoy it for a moment too! Hi Lisa, love your pics.
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I'm enjoying it too. Aaaaahhh.
I've told this story before, but we have some new people here. There are tribal people (primitive to us) who live on the Marshall Islands. After the 2004 tsunami, a Westerner who they trust and who speaks their language visited their island. (They hate airplanes flying overhead and will shake their spears at them.) He found everyone had survived. He asked what they believe. It is their belief their world is held up by a giant tree. In the root system there are good and bad spirits. When the bad spirits get the upper hand, their world shakes, the sea pulls back and the big wave comes. They know to run for higher ground. When they return the boundaries of their island have been changed.
When I heard this, it really hit me, how we look for beliefs that "fit" our way of thinking and how our world works.
I do believe we can be spiritual without being religious. Just sitting in a park surrounded by trees and nature, helped me get through my treatment. Nature, and the company of animals,continues to be where I seek comfort.
As notself remarked, it takes trust to plant a garden. We are assuming that we will have enough water, compost and sunshine to grow the seeds and seedlings we entrust to the soil. When we befriend an abandoned animal, we can watch this creature come to trust us with every kindness we extend it. I feel this is a spiritual connection--one we can enjoy right here on Earth.
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I should point out that Maya and I have discussed the link I put on (and took off and she put back on). We are good. Tapestry is a CBC radio show that does not take any religious viewpoint- just explores various issues.
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some religions also have cultural systems embedded in them that are not actually
part of the religion..so one must separate the two to understand them..
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Oh Lisa, your photo is so peaceful. I did some paced breathing exercises while looking at it. The petals even form something of a path like a labyrinth heading inward. How beautiful!
--CindyMN
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Hello all - I haven't looked here in a bit - very busy week, but see there is lots to read and that gorgeous rose to take in. I just started reading a book, and there was a passage so lovley, I had to jump up & post it here:(shortened a bit)
In the early 20th century, Roald Amundsen, the Arctic explorer, had to pass a winter among the Inuit. He shared a dwelling with the tribe's shaman. After months of watching the many sleights of hand and minor tricks the shaman used to hold the attention of the tribe with his magic powers, Amundsen could no longer restrain himself. He decided to confront the shaman and ask him: Didn't it bother him that all his "magic powers" were nothing but cheap parlour games? the shaman smiled. He replied, "My magic power is not in my tricks. My real power is that I have gone out on the ice and lived there alone for many months until I could finally hear the voice of the Universe. And the voice of the Universe is that of a mother calling after her beloved children. That is my real magic."
Metta to all,
Arlene
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