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If only people could leave their religious and spiritual opinions to themselves, the world would be a much better place. Whether it’s religion or spiritualism, the drive to proselytize is the problem.
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People like to feel superior to other people. Spiritual superiority is cheap and easy. I can ommmmm longer than you and I don’t even have to pay a guru. I’m reminded of my early days in Santa Cruz CA where everyone had a mantra. Owa tagu siam (oh what a goose I am) did not rate highly.
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Holy Crap! Do the candles really smell like her you know…
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Seems like all religions, once they become institutionalized, become corrupt and start to work against their own teachings. As you note, it’s not limited to any particular tradition.
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A religion is a cult with an army. It’s all about power.
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The history of monastic orders usually start with a bunch of True Believers that wanted to strickly follow all the rules and actually lead a modest life of contemplation. And then, after a few generations, those rules would relax, people would enjoy the wealth that the order had accumulated, and the leaders would revel in their power. Which would lead to monks breaking off to form a NEW order that was serious about living a contemplative life.
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Repressive desublimization is a hell of a drug.
Thus repulsed, aggression is again introjected: not suppression but the suppressed is guilty. Guilty of what? Material and intellectual progress has weakened the force of religion below the point where it can sufficiently explain the sense of guilt. The aggressiveness turned against the ego threatens to become senseless: with his consciousness co-ordinated, his privacy abolished, his emotions integrated into conformity, the individual has no longer enough " mental space " for developing himself against his of guilt, for living with a conscience of his own. His ego has shrunk
to such a degree that the multiform antagonistic processes between id, ego, and superego cannot unfold themselves in their classic form.
Herbert Marcuse Eros and Civilization
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Soon after moving to Northern California and buying in, I got a vanity plate saying ‘NO SELF’. My biggest revelation along those lines came when a friend couldn’t stop laughing at it.
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I have all the answers. And the answer to the question of the meaning of life is: Maybe, I guess. Whatever.
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Clue is in the name.
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The point is that, unlike other religions, evangelical Christianity does not teach that ego and spirituality are antithetical.
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If she was Goopy I’d be figuring out a way to get a piece of the action. This is just a small-scale guru/spiritual advisor scam that’s allowing her to support herself for the first time in a decade.
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What the article describes is Gnosticism or Esotericism, the belief that there is a secret level of knowledge available only to the elect. Gnosticism itself is a memetic virus that infects other religions, but is not required for smug self-righteousness to develop.
There’s a reason why Judaism, Catholicism or Islam insist faith alone is not sufficient but must be accompanied by good works.
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Tofino, BC actually. I suspect small towns full of flakier than thou types are a common theme in some areas.
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All institutions thus far are filled with humans, who have human failings.
For some reason, any concentration of power attracts those who want power. Like flies to shit. This basic function explains a lot of the last 40 years of global politics, and almost all of the last 5 years of US politics.
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Why do you assume that esotericism is not the default mode?
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