for - spiritual collectives - non-dogmatic spirituality

summary adjacency between - spiritual collectives - Deep Humanity - Adjacency statement - There is a growing movement of people disenchanted with the contradictions, trauma or dogma of many mainstream religions. - Evangelical pastors and followers are converting to a more open and inclusive spiritual practice. - This growing movement has close resemblance to Deep Humanity in its openess to all religions and spiritual practices as long as they do not bring harm, and the lack of dogmatism. - There could be a good opportunity for synergies since spiritual collectives take an open source / commons approach to spiritual practice wherein we collaborate to surface the best principles to live by. - From a commons / open source perspective, we give this the name - open source religion - open source spirituality

• for: science and spirituality, business and spirituality, spirituality and sustainability, Tom Greenwood, annotated,
• comment
  • annotated this article:
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftomgreenwood.substack.com%2Fp%2Fis-spirituality-the-missing-pillar&group=world

• for: science - religion, science - spirituality, science and religion, science and spirituality, Isaac Newton - spirituality, Isaac Newton - religion

• comment

  • don't forget Isaac Newton!
• reference
  • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Frsc.byu.edu%2Fconverging-paths-truth%2Fbrief-survey-sir-isaac-newtons-views-religion&group=world

• for: quote, quote - spirituality, quote - Tom Greenwood, triple bottom line, spirituality and business

• paraphrase

• quote

  • spirituality is not even a fourth pillar of sustainability,
    • but is instead the foundation upon which the pillars of
      • people,
      • planet and
      • profit
    • must be constructed.
  • To succeed on the triple bottom line,
    • we must build a strong spiritual foundation.
  • To do that, we must look inwards.

• comment

  • We could express this succinctly in a new phrase:
    • The bottom line of the triple bottom line is spirituality

• for: quote, quote - dogma, quote - wonder, quote - spirituality, quote- Tom Greenwood
• quote
  • I think if we stripped away
    • the social stigma and
    • stereotypes,
  • we would find that most people have some personal beliefs about
    • life,
    • death and
    • the universe
  • that could be considered spiritual.
  • In fact, I would bet that
    • the number of people who never wonder about any of these things would be close to zero.
  • Spirituality then, is really the exploration of the other half of life
    • that our society isn’t comfortable exploring.
  • And that’s where it gets interesting.
• author: Tom Greenwood
• date: aug. 23, 2023

• for: quote, quote - dogma, quote - wonder, quote - spirituality, quote- Tom Greenwood
• quote
  • The problem is that in rejecting the dogma,
  • we too have created dogma.
  • A dogma that shuts down our natural human inclination to explore the mysteries of life,
    • of our own inner worlds and
    • of our deep connection to nature and each other.
• author: Tom Greenwood
• date: aug. 23, 2023

• for: definition, definition - spirituality
• definition
• paraphrase
  • spirituality is simply
    • the process of exploring the mysteries of the self and the universe, and
    • believing that there is more to life than material survival,
    • even if we don’t know what.
    • If the material world is what we can observe with our five physical senses,
    • the spiritual world is everything else.
• author: Tom Greenwood

• date: Aug. 23, 2023

• comment

  • Tom'w working definition is similiar to neuroscientist David Eangleman's definition of possibilian and possibilianism
• reference
  • David Eagleman's Possibilian website:
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.possibilian.com%2F&group=world

• for: insight, insight - spirituality - business, quote, quote - spirituality and business
• adjacency
  • spirituality
  • business
  • comfortable
• quote
  • I have to admit that it feels uncomfortable even writing this. Somehow we need to get comfortable talking about spirituality.
• author: Tom Greenwood
• date: Aug 24, 2023
• source
  • https://tomgreenwood.substack.com/p/is-spirituality-the-missing-pillar?r=wsvz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

• for: quote, quote Satish Kumar, quote - spirituality
• quote
  • all good regenerative businesses are built on four pillars: ecological, social, spiritual and financial
• author: Satish Kumar

• for: spirituality and science, spirituality and sustainability, spirituality - missing link, Isaac Newton
• title: Is spirituality the missing pillar of sustainability?
• author: Tom Greenwood
• date: Aug. 24, 2023

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • • for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • When I wrote my treatise about our system
  • I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity;
  • and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose..
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Principia, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002), 426–27.
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Original letter from Isaac Newton to Richard Bentley, 189.R.4.47, ff. 4A-5, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, UK; found on the Newton Project website: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00254; spelling and punctuation modernized.

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • This Being governs all things,
    • not as the soul of the world,
    • but as Lord over all.
  • . . . The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect
  • . . . and from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a
    • living,
    • intelligent, and
    • powerful Being.
  • . . . He is not
    • eternity and
    • infinity, -but
    • eternal and
    • infinite;
  • he is not
    • duration or
    • space,
  • but he
    • endures and
    • is present.
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Principia, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002), 426–27.

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • Does it not appear from phenomena
  • that there is a Being
    • incorporeal,
    • living,
    • intelligent,
    • omnipresent,
  • who in infinite space
  • sees the things themselves intimately, and
  • thoroughly perceives them, and
  • comprehends them wholly.
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: William Innys, 1730), 344; spelling and punctuation modernized.

• for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
• quote
  • Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain?
  • And whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?
  • Was the eye contrived without skill in optics?
  • And the ear without knowledge of sounds?
• author: Isaac Newton
• reference
  • Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: William Innys, 1730), 344; spelling and punctuation modernized.

• for: spirituality and science, spirituality - science, science and religion, Isaac Newton - spirituality, Isaac Newton - religion
• title: A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton's Views on Religion
• author: Steven E. Jones
• source:
  • https://rsc.byu.edu/converging-paths-truth/brief-survey-sir-isaac-newtons-views-religion
• comment
  • Newton was a serious theological scholar who was driven to use science to validate his conception of God
  • Newton's scientific work is therefore a testament to the union between the deepest, common aspiration and motivations for science and religion, that is universal wonder of being

• for: spirituality, defintion, definition - possibilian, defintion - possibilanism, possibliian, possibilianism, David Eagleman, philosophy, quote, quote - David Eagleman, quote - possibilian, quote - possibilianism
• definition
• paraphrase Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects
  • both
    • the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and
    • the positions of certainty in atheism
  • in favor of a middle, exploratory ground.
  • The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum.
  • Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in 2009, he replied
  • quote
    • I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now.
  • end quote
  • In an interview with the New York Times, he expanded upon this:
  • quote
    • Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet
    • we know too much to commit to a particular religion.
    • A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story
      • (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true.
    • But with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position
      • one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities.
    • Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind;
    • it is not interested in committing to any particular story.
  • end quote

Auto pilot questions for silencing thoughts - are my thoughts useful? - how do they behave?

This kind of speaks to having awareness, and the ability to neutralise thoughts, using self-inquiry (not destroying thoughts, as Eckhardt Tolle does seem to suggest)

• not learning oneself, self-master as self-discovery & self-awareness
• spirituality as learning of oneself
• enjoy time doing nothing, also find things you like to do
• each person find way to climb the mountain (gaining clarity on top of mountain)
• 5 hindrances as challenges to journey (state of mind, not having/getting clarity)
• (1) sensual desire
• 2 ill will (rejection, also see my ideas on madness) "let go"
• 3 sloth (dullness of mind/body) lack if motivation/energy (see flow)
• 4 restlessness (not being in present)
• 5 sceptical doubt (being indecisive, getting lost in thoughts)
• structure/design life to prevent hindrances from arising (see my way of life as making environments/practices to prevent?) "techniques to remove them"
• (4 steps to prevent the hindrances)
• 1 what is your state of mind
• 2 accept the situation/someone/something to be they way it is/the way they are
• 3 emotional & mental questioning (why did it come up? understanding it, what will happen if it remains?)
• 4 non-identification (I am not my mind, my body, or my emotions, it is just that I am there to observe them all)

I seem to recall a book or two like this that were on the best seller list in the 1990s and early 2000s based on a best selling Christian self help book, but with an edition that had a journal like reflection space. Other than the old word rapiaria, is there a word for this broad genre besides self-help journal?

An example might be Rhonda Byrne's book The Secret (Atria Books, 2006) which had a gratitude journal version (Atria Books, 2007, 978-1582702087).

Another example includes Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan, 2002) with a journal version (Zondervan, 2002, 978-0310807186).

There's also a sub-genre of diaries and journals that have these sort of preprinted quotes/reflections for each day in addition to space for one to write their own reflections.

Has anyone created a daily blogging/reflection platform that includes these sorts of things? One might repurpose the Hello Dolly WordPress plugin to create journal prompts for everyday writing and reflection.

my preaching Brahmam

Wiseman, E. (2021, October 17). The dark side of wellness: The overlap between spiritual thinking and far-right conspiracies. The Observer. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/17/eva-wiseman-conspirituality-the-dark-side-of-wellness-how-it-all-got-so-toxic

Collecting objects, here in an act of boredom, removes them from their function.

Craig Dworkin wrotes Arcades in Zero Kerning: "What is decisive in collecting is that the object is detached from all its original functions in order to enter into the closest conceivable relation to things of the same kind. The relation is the diametric opposite of any utility, and falls into the peculiar category of completeness."

The act of collecting has the potential to transform objects into a function outside of everyday utility and monotony, and fulfill a spiritual need of completeness.

Foster Wallace contrasts the boy's work here with working at the IRS. While both are impossible to complete, the boy's repetitive actions are working towards a spiritual goal: loosening the body's grip on itself.

“Andrew Harvey is Founder and Director of The Institute for Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective, and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability.”

Im, H., Wang, P., & Chen, C. (2021). The Partisan Mask: Political Orientation, Collectivism, and Religiosity Predict Mask Use During COVID-19. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/9s58f

Rigoli, F. (2020). The link between coronavirus, anxiety, and religious beliefs in the United States and United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/wykeq

Galbadage, T., Peterson, B. M., Wang, D. C., Wang, J. S., & Gunasekera, R. S. (2020). Biopsychosocial and Spiritual Implications of Patients with COVID-19 Dying in Isolation [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7um3x

Flashes of meaning persist despite an attempt to eliminate meaning. Perhaps this suggests that meaning is impossible to eradicate?

Connection to Underworld, "hope of finding patterns where there seems to be nothing but noise".

Interweaving real and made up authors could be another form of haunting. Mark Taylor describes "the real" and "god" as synonymous in Rewiring the Real. Sparsely including the real may be a way to draw attention to it.

In Re-writing Freud by Simon Morris, words are randomly selected from Interpretation of Dreams, although "flashes of meaning persist, haunting the text."

Foster Wallace contrasts the boy's work here with working at the IRS. While both are impossible to complete, the boy's repetitive actions are working towards a spiritual goal: loosening the body's grip on itself.

Collecting objects, here in an act of boredom, removes them from their function.

Craig Dworkin wrotes Arcades in Zero Kerning: "What is decisive in collecting is that the object is detached from all its original functions in order to enter into the closest conceivable relation to things of the same kind. The relation is the diametric opposite of any utility, and falls into the peculiar category of completeness."

The act of collecting has the potential to transform objects into a function outside of everyday utility and monotony, and fulfill a spiritual need of completeness.

"Howl" provides plenty of instances of this. See also, for instance, the line "who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom" (52), with a reference to Hinduism (in vegetarianism) which clearly connects to spiritual aspirations.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl.

This is a central point. Criminality and madness are means to get to a consciousness which is spiritual in nature.

A clear division into different categories seems to be central to the argument of why Beat spirituality has not been taken seriously. Not only eclectic/synchretic faiths range across different "categories" of religion (e.g. monotheistic and politheistic, perhaps), but their beliefs probably did not conform to the rules which define different categories.

This connects to the idea of syncretic faiths.

Again, some theoretical/anthropological background considering distinctions between spirituality and religion would be useful, although it would admittedly take much space.

Again, this would be interesting to include when considering more anthropological notions. The writer here seems to be Jonathan Z. Smith, an American historian of religion (contemporary: he died las year). This could be an interesting essay by him on the topic of religions (quote comes from here): http://www.iupui.edu/~womrel/Rel433%20Readings/SearchableTextFiles/Smith_ReligionReligionsReligious.pdf.

This would support my view of religion as applied to the Beats.

This could be very interesting and useful to my argument. In fact, if I want to make a point about Beat "embodiment" of their philosophy and literature, I might consider some anthropological notions which go back to performance and embodiment of abstract things by figures such as the shaman or the fool. Including anthropology (in this case anthropologist Durkheim) in ways which would oppose my thesis could be interesting as well, especially if I illustrate how this has been done by other scholars.

The book is called "Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation" (Carole Tonkinson). Consider finding or getting: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Sky-Mind-Buddhism-Generation/dp/1573225010. It contains essays, poems, photographs, and letters between different authors: seems very interesting and useful!

How does this relate to my thesis? Spirituality would need to be an essential part of my thesis, since I wish to consider how the lifestyle of authors of the Beat Generation blurs the defines between what is usually considered "life" and what is usually considered "literature". If I aim to show that they were "practical artists", or "performative artists" in some way (need theoretical background here), their spirituality would be an essential part of this definition, as it was an essential part of their life.

See how in the essay "Prose Contribution to the Cuban Revolution" he says "That's the karma I wanted, to be a saint" (The Essential Ginsberg). Being a saint comes before being a writer.

Why have they not been taken seriously? This could be an interesting question to ask. Some ideas could be:

• Beat religiosity has not been taken seriously because it did not usually focus on one religion only, but moved across different faiths (in Kerouac's case, mainly Buddhism and Christianity, and in Ginsberg's Hinduism was an influence as well as Buddhism, if I remember correctly).
• It has not been taken seriously because of the lifestyle which the Beats were known for, which was somehow often lascivious.

It is then interesting to include these aspects in an evaluation of Beat spirituality and then prove that it was nonetheless taken seriously by the authors.

Biblical Series III: God and the Hierarchy of Authority

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_GPAl_q2QQ

Miranda suggests "being honest about where we don't always tell the truth" to others or to ourselves, because of shame, fear, or other long held pain.

She talks about her spiritual experiences, including a challenging experience of "dark night of the soul" and how she navigated that by continual acceptance practice: "feeling everything".

The partial truth of the self-talk of "I'm not good enough", is that the separate self actually cannot, because it is illusory.

would be interesting to find and talk to her. Left a NIH postdoctoral position for a life in a monastery

Related Link: Kierkegaard on the Information Highway

(paraphrase) it could also be awe