An approach to spirituality without God

I wanted to share these thoughts with everybody; I think this may help somebody. Any feedback is welcome, even aggressive ones; there is always some point in every opinion.

After the death of my father, almost 30 years ago, I started questioning the reasons why do we have to lose our loved ones. Why death has to exist?

As I went through with life, I figured that suffering and challenges are most of the time constant elements on peoples’ lives with relatively short periods of happiness that depend more on a positive interpretation of the facts than on the quality of the facts themselves.

As we live trying to deal with our daily problems, we slowly get older and weaker. Life makes us give up on many of our childhood dreams. We might never find real love in our lifetime or we might witness the death of our loved ones. All of this in preparation for the final insult: getting sick and die some day. We are usually aware of our own physical and mental deterioration and of the final end that is awaiting us.

Why do we live? Why do we have to suffer so much in life? What is the point of life when it feels it is like a cruel joke?
I, honestly, believe all of the depressed, bipolar, suicidal people might really have a point; they just do not have the answers. Organized religions fail to give real spiritual guidance to answer these questions. They mainly focus on rules and regulations, fear and punishment. They usually develop systems of power to manipulate their followers most of the time with very materialistic goals, far away from the spiritual world. Some will insist that suffering is the decision of a superior being. In this way they are taking away our responsibility for our own pain, as it occurs some times; and the value of the teaching tool that suffering really represents.

I tried to find answers for these questions and for some confusing paranormal experiences I started having. I’ve never found straight answers from organized religions. I really do not care to know who created us, what his/ her name is, nor how he/she did it. I just need to know why I am here in this world? What am I supposed to be doing here? What is all this seemingly nonsense about?

Why do we have to die?
I have a medical education and I have always been amazed by the perfection of the physiology, chemistry and anatomy of our bodies. The precision of the feedback mechanisms of control to keep us alive, the chemical reactions that take place every second in our bodies so we can continue being alive, all of these processes are simply marvelous. It is hard to believe that spontaneous generation is responsible for this perfection. It even makes one think that perhaps there really is a superior intelligence who has created us. I cannot tell… The only thing I can tell is that whoever created us could have made us eternal if he/she wanted, as he/she definitely has the capacity to do it. Yet, he/she does not want us to be eternal, we are programmed to age and die, therefore aging and dying must be part of this perfection.

Why should our lifetime be limited? What would happen if we were eternal? First, the planet will be overpopulated unable to support all of us; perhaps we will be in eternal wars for the resources (unless we would not need to eat - just like spirits do???). Perhaps wars that started thousands of years ago would continue to this day because nobody would have died. Perhaps Hitler and similar monsters would still be living continuing hurting people who perhaps would suffer eternally because they would never be able to die!

I particularly think that if we were eternal we will be bored to death, even suicidal, I believe with no sense of time there is no motivation to action. Having the awareness of an end gives us a deadline, knowing that we will die one day motivates us to get things done before that happens. Getting older, seen our bodies deteriorating and getting weaker and sicker helps us keep track of time.
Still, I hardly believe all of this effort from nature to bring any being to life and to keep it alive for some time, will be totally wasted by its complete disappearance with death. It would make no sense; nature is too intelligent for such a nonsensical program. Unless death really never happens and is only apparent, affecting only part of us: our physical bodies.


Why do we have to suffer?
Coming from a poor family but having big ambitions, added to the fact that I had to live most of my life alone, I was set up for suffering from the beginning. I have been exposed to numerous challenges, disappointments, struggles, and all sorts of stressful situations. When I compared myself to my siblings and friends who had the same basic traits, socio economic class and opportunities than me, it seemed that they had a better life than mine, with fewer problems and less stress.

When I complained about this difference, my mother made me realize that I had reached and accomplished much more in my professional life than they did. I aimed higher and I reached higher in my career. I, some how, “programmed” my suffering. I could have stayed in my hometown and been like everybody else there with an easy life with not much challenges, but I chose a different path.

I suffered because I needed to develop tools such as emotional resilience, spiritual strength, and professional experience to get me to my destination. Disappointment gives us clues about reality, so we correct our course in time and we are alert and make better choices next time we encounter the same situation.

Loneliness teaches us independence which in turn gives us more freedom. Loneliness give us an appropriate background to speed up our spiritual evolution as we do not have to share successes and failures with anyone, therefore the teaching message is more clear, is all on us. If we are alone we can not blame anyone else for our failures, nor can other person take credit for our successes. Of course life is more difficult, not all of us are evolved enough to spend our lives alone, we usually try to have some one around.
New challenges appear once we are about to master the subject we are learning at a particular time. This is to make us aware of our capacity so we could aim higher in life and keep on growing spiritually speaking. Struggles let us develop persistence and spiritual resilience, both of them crucial to achieve any goals.

In my personal life and economic life I am far away from succeeding. Emotional wounds inherited from my parents, made me develop a wrong pattern of dealing with rejection. I tend to block all the learning process in relationships by easily withdrawing emotionally and focusing my life in my career only.

On the other hand I was born in a culture that dictates that being rich some how makes you a bad person. This wrong message, made me not pay attention to economic matters, feeling all right if I lose money, somehow I looked to be punished for being so greedy. Definitely I developed a wrong attitude towards wealth that originated all of my sufferings in this field. As I refused to grow up about this the lessons were tougher and tougher until I started getting the message.

I am not sure if I will have the time to evolve more in these aspects in this life time, but I will surely keep trying. I know I will continue making mistakes, I will continue suffering; but I have learned that instead of getting sad and angry I have to pay attention to what the teaching point of each stressful situation is. I ask myself what is the universe?/ god? trying to make me understand?

I believe this is the reason for suffering. Only pain makes us pay attention to the teachings of life. Happiness only teaches us when it comes after a long period of suffering. Happiness teaches us about hope. It only comes once in a while so we do not lose hope and so we can keep on suffering and learning.

So why do we live?
I believe we live to evolve spiritually, we are here to learn. Learning is mandatory, it could be an intensive course for some. The easier we learn, the tougher life gets and the more we evolve. We are not here to waste our time, the moment we refuse to grow any more, we would die. If we are in the company of someone who is preventing us from evolving, the person will disappear from our lives. When it is time to learn a new lesson, life will first give us a “soft spank” so we get it. If we disregard or do not get it, the spanking gets stronger and stronger until we finally get it.
I believe the word is a huge school where all of the students are mixed up. With spiritual kinder garden students mixed with spiritual graduate school students. All of the students have something to teach to each other. We may see the life lessons of a kinder garden student and think it is unfairly easy compared to ours. But is seems we are the one who chose our life paths even before we are born.

My paranormal experiences have showed me that the real “us” is not our body; our consciousness is in a place separated from our bodies. Our bodies may be half death or unconscious but “we” are aware, we can hear, see, feel happiness, and be in more than one place at a time if we want to. These experiences allowed me to accept the concept of reincarnation. It makes sense to me that our spirit comes back again and again to the school of life so it can continue evolving.

 

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You asked many questions and obviously different people have different answers to them . I do not see any spirituality outside a religious spectrum . Of course religions failed to convince the majority and thanks to science and technology all religions are going to be buried for good . Life is complex . I hope that with science many illnesses will be cured and aging will be fought . There are causes that make us suffer such as poverty, illnesses, wars, loneliness....etc. So if we find answers to what makes us suffer we will not suffer any more . I believe that it is possible that with advanced science people will be able to live happier and longer lives . ...I forget...we have to take care of bad people too and find them solutions . Pantheism is not a religion but a spirituality and I do not subscribe to it and I see it as another kind of simple philosophy based on speculation .

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Thank you for your answer. I think religions exist to somehow explain what our intelligence can't explain. They exist because many times in life we need an external point of view to see our problems. We approach God or religions in times of dispair. I believe any religion defies any intelligent analysis, they could not give any intelligent person solace when in needed. I tried to use my common sense to rationalize pain and suffering and some basic knowledge of psychology to analyze facts. This keeps me balanced . I have friends, most of them atheists, who sometimes ask my opinion, being an atheist and having an important problem in life can be really stressful. We need answers at one point in our lives that our mind can not provide!

 

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A few issues:

1. "The precision of the feedback mechanisms of control to keep us alive, the chemical reactions that take place every second in our bodies so we can continue being alive, all of these processes are simply marvelous. It is hard to believe that spontaneous generation is responsible for this perfection." (My underline)

Spontaneous?

Furthermore, I don't see anything that gives rise to the term 'perfection' - The 'system' that is us rarely works very well. As for your 'perfection of.. anatomy of our bodies' etc: Such statement is utterly meaningless, on what basis does the word perfect apply? Wouldn't having 37 hearts and 25 kidneys and 23 livers and 100 lungs that aren't destroyed by smoke etc be more perfect than our current anatomy? Wouldn't having lungs that could filter toxic gases be more "perfect" than ones that can't? How are you using the word 'perfect'?

The problem here is that christians perceive this very thing - that god does want people to live eternally with no need to breathe, digest dead animals, suffer pain or anything else. In the christian system it just hasn't got around to it yet because we - apparently - need to suffer as much as possible first. I know, it's dumb.

I disagree with the first statement for several reasons: Being eternal, there's no reason to think that we'd have offpsring or to think that the planet wouldn't be created large enough to house however many people were going to inhabit it. As for eternal wars: Inconsequential: being eternal, I'll let you shoot me as many times as you like. As for resources; No reason to suspect they'd run out or would all be piled on one side of the planet instead of the other. Having uninhabitable regions somehwat defies sanity on a planet made specifically for humans.

I see, you've got the Claire from Heroes idea in your head, (can't die, can get hurt). I'd contend otherwise given that nobody can ever die, there's no battle for resources/food and no disagreement on which god is the real one etc, then there's little reason to actually harm people - although you might try it out briefly to escape the boredom of eternality.

I agree - as stated above. Such is the problem with heavens - especially considering you're not going to actually do anything other than the same repetitive action whilst there, (which is forever), perhaps knowing that some of the people you love are burning while you're bowing.

Apologies, I don't understand the statement. Since when was nature "intelligent"?

I wouldn't say that you programmed it but that 'life', 'experience' and 'environment' programmed it. Should you have spent the first 30 years of your life stuck in a cave with a rapist, you'd have an entirely different understanding of existence, (and therefore an entirely different set of 'choices'):

The point. We don't call it 'choice', (well, theists do).

And the day everyone welcomes suffering with open arms is the day I'll concur. When you say "teachings of life" you are of course simply talking about a life that involves suffering. You can't say suffering is necessary, merely that is a factor of this world. Most christians at least can posit a world where there is no suffering and everyone gets along just peachy. One can't claim necessity.

This is of course ridiculous and if it were true, on what basis were you making 'choices'? It's easy to make choices now considering we have experience and knowledge. You "choose" not to stick your foot in the oven because of that experience and knowledge. So how were the choices made before we were born and had experienced/gained knowledge? You could suggest that before we were born we had knowledge but then why get born and lose it especially as in your eyes it seems the goal is to attain knowledge and understanding?

'Pararnormal' really bothers me. About three hours ago my daughter came up to me and said: "I'm sure there's a ghost in the kitchen". I enquired as to why she said "ghost". If there was something there, why would it not be a fairy or an invisible prank playing intelligent cucumber? Why would she say ghost instead of chameleonic unicorn? Why must - whatever it is - be considered a 'dead person'? It could be anything even if it was actually there. That's my main problem with 'paranormal' claims. While I know on what basis we say that an elephant looking creature is an elephant/animal/mammal etc, on what basis does one say that a semi-invisible thingymajig is a dead man?

Having said that, it's also unfortunately a typical position with regards to survival.

You are walking through a field of tall grass and you hear a rustle near you. You instantly believe it's a dangerous animal. I am also walking through this grass and hear a rustle. I believe it's just wind.

You have the greater survival chances simply because of that instant assumption. If I am wrong, I'm dead - if you're wrong, it's irrelevant. So you see, it's standard behaviour for creatures such as ourselves to instantly perceive the threat. A noise in the kitchen = ghosts instead of the cat treading on a plate. Fear of losing life comes before anything else and ultimately for good reason. The side effects of it are plain to see.

Regards,

 

Thank you for your answer, I appreciate the fact you took your time to analyze the post. I do not have much time right now to answer all of your points. I will just start from the last part about the paranormal. (I am sorry I have not been able to post your comment about this, I just could not figure out how to do it) There is a parallel world out there, that does not scare me at all, but I do not understand. I cannot control when I will perceive this world it or not, but I will not deny it. In theory,most of us could have access to these perceptions. I fought against those perceptions for years until I had to give up because most of my family have psychic habilities. I have never seen a ghost, and I hope I never see one. My experiences have been different: out of body experiences, people who would pass away would come and tell me about their death in my dreams, dreams about natural disasters, telekinesis, feel in my body the pain of those who have died, etc. I respect very much your skepticism and I belive every one should be skeptic about this subject. I want to only ask you do you believe in bacterias? do you believe in viruses? do you believe in H1N1, HIV viruses? Can you see them? can you touch them? Do you know that this great doctor Semmelways(?spelling?) in the 1600commited suicide by injecting himself with placenta of women who were dying in hospitals with puerperal fever. He had to do that just because the other doctors did not believe they were carrying the disease in their hands transmitting them from one patient to another. Those doctors did not believe that because they could not see, touch or smell it. I will give up on the idea of the paranormal only when some respectable scientific minds seriouly develop instruments ( just like microscopes were developed to detect bacterias and viruses) that can study these phenomena. Remember, knowledge is like a drop of oil in the water which represents the unknown. The more we know the larger the drop grows and the more points in contact with the unknown. Hold on to your convictions,but keep your mind open.

 

We die because a) we live in a hazardous world and b) we evolved to die after reproducing and raising our young.

All spirituality is actually spirituality without god. I'm glad you've decided to drop the pretence of god as well.

 

Yes, you can have spirituality without deities. Just as there are religious paths without deities.
There is nothing wrong with that; in fact, I know many spiritualistic atheists and agnostics.

 

Like pantheism ?.

 

Yeah, that's one of them. There are many other, more concretely-defined, spiritual and religious paths that don't necessarily avow the existence of deity. Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Spiritualism (the late 19th century one), and some wings of Unitarian Universalism are examples of this.

 

To SnakeLord

Sorry I have not been able to reply to your comments, I am sure I am doing something wrong.
["Furthermore, I don't see anything that gives rise to the term 'perfection' - The 'system' that is us rarely works very well. As for your 'perfection of.. anatomy of our bodies' etc: Such statement is utterly meaningless, on what basis does the word perfect apply? Wouldn't having 37 hearts and 25 kidneys and 23 livers and 100 lungs that aren't destroyed by smoke etc be more perfect than our current anatomy? Wouldn't having lungs that could filter toxic gases be more "perfect" than ones that can't? How are you using the word 'perfect'[/I][/B][/I]"
When the system does not work that is what we call Disease, which again is part of the aging and dying program. I would accept any criticism to the makings of Nature only coming from a scientist or a group or scientists who are able to bring a being to life from scratch ( I am talking from jsut molecules, not using any already made mechanism such as artificial insemination or stem cells) And only when taht living being is able to exist independently. If you know anyone who has been able to do that, give me the refernce, I would like to hear his or her opinion.
"And the day everyone welcomes suffering with open arms is the day I'll concur. When you say "teachings of life" you are of course simply talking about a life that involves suffering. You can't say suffering is necessary, merely that is a factor of this world. Most christians at least can posit a world where there is no suffering and everyone gets along just peachy. One can't claim necessity."
Yes that is my point, by embracing suffering as only a way of the universe to let us know where we need growing, we can go trhough it with life in a more balanced way. If we can see that many of the "bad" things that happen to us perhaps are only ment to protect us from something worse or to put us on the right track in our lives, we can be less bitter and scared, and really enjoy life. I am not sure how you deal with your sufering, but the fact that you are participating in these forums tells me that you are in the search from some anwers, that whatever you have is not enough for you yet.
"You could suggest that before we were born we had knowledge but then why get born and lose it especially as in your eyes it seems the goal is to attain knowledge and understanding?"

Because it would probably not be a "real" learning we may not really evolve, we may fall in the trap of pretending we are evolving. Just like people who go to Church every Sunday and pray to the Lord and pretend to be who they are not. To me ,most of them are not even aware of how hypocritical they are.

 

@Yasmin :
Are you seriously saying that consciousness is completely outside of the human body and with no relation to the brain whatsoever ?.

 

can i play with my weee lil'opinions to these questions?

instinct (to continue)

predeterminations of mind

when not comprehending the 'why's' and giving up (happen(s)(ed) to the majority on earth)

parents combined to continue their life; you were born (welcome to the jungle)

doing 'good' (support life to continue; actions of your choice, that do good for life)

words can mislead (causing a 'loss to the common')

you don't.

That is learned material information; a suffering.

then put your energy into life that continues and you could be

right now is just the period of choice from the perspective of you, the self, the i, but you are not something 'other' than your surroundings (a part of)

the 'i' that is you, has the coherance to "do" by choice (the mass of your body is consciously aware of itself; in many renditions that is what is considered "alive" but fail to share than when asleep; you not aware of self but alive just the same)

Think of your 'life' as the energy maintaining the process upon the mass of your body. Not some magical mystical thing because all you have to do is see a dead body and realize, its all the same mass except the lights are out (the process stopped)

i like to hold a bic lighter and share the analogy; start it and a flame (the life is in process); stop the addition of fuel and the process stops; no more flame.

Seems to be pretty basic.

if the (per se) spirit of darwin (his works left upon existence) were not good then little knowledge would have combined upon the ideology, in which HE lives, within all of us in the knowledge HE left by choice.

Does the spirit eat? We all eat it up if its "good" and we build upon them gifts.

Darwin, WON!

Ya don't

see how learning social 'desires' puts a lot of fuel on the fire of 'suffering'?

learned ideology causes suffering

the truth sets mankind free (my opinion)

what life is

or perhaps ask; is existence defining itself? Why?

I believe it is to comprehend life and 'support life to continue' in and of CHOICE.

instinct

life INTENDS to continue which breaks every LAW in the book

but is pretty self evidenced naturally.

as how can rocks rolls and know it; unless they learn within the evolving knowledge?

 

Spirituality is a disease. It is the lingering remains of supernatural thought, and we don't need it.

 

@ Mike
Yes. You can see your own body as if it someone else's. Wehn I had this experience it took me a while to figure out that all those people on the side walk were around ME??

 

Do you really mean in you too ?. :shrug: .

 

I like your posts. Are you talking about supernatural belief? Supernatural thought how do you describe it?

 

If you believe in a god or gods you try to connect with him or them through prayers and worship....etc . So how can you be connected to any spirituality without a god or gods ?.

 

@ Mike

Let me explain the one experience that let me to think that. So you can draw your own conclusions. I was feeling sick for a few days before this happened. I was too busy and coulnd't pay much attention to it, I did not seek help. One day I felt a terrible pain in my lower abdomen while I was walking on the street. The pain was so intense I passed out on the side walk. When I woke up on the floor, I was surrounded by a group of people who were trying to help me.

I was really weak unable to get up by myself and in a terrible pain. Someone stood me up and suddenly I felt like a rough pull. Immediatelly I felt very happy with no pain at all. While I way enjoying those feelings I heard people shouting, I looked down as I was above everybody else. And I saw my self being held by my waist with my torso bent forward, my head arms and legs were down hanging lose. I did not undertand why was I in 2 different places. I was behind and above everybody else. I was confused. I also wanted to know where was I standing on but I couldn't see my feet. I've got distracted again with the turmoil around my body, that was below.

When I really concentrated on wanting to know where was I standing, I could see my other me? I was not standing on anything, I was like 3 meters tall, I saw may own face and below my head a shiny white light, no hands and no feet. I was really surprised by this image, so I was in 3 places??? and sudddenly I felt again a rough pull and I woke up again on the floor with the abdominal pain. Then they took me to the hospital.

Other times I saw myself from above while I was sleeping but I never pay attention because it was a dream.

 

Wow, a sick person being disoriented, how unusual.

 

Spirituality is the disease of thinking you need to be something other that what you are. Part of this is supernatural thought, like the OP thinking there can be no natural explanation for becoming disoriented and possibly hallucinatory during an incident of extreme pain. Or praying for something and thinking that prayer was the cause of something coming true.