1. Spirituality

Category Archives: Spirituality

2013 VIFF: Festival offers films that explore spirituality and dignity

Posted on by

Given the state of the industry, it is more than refreshing to have the Vancouver International Film Festival. And it is even better that VIFF consistently picks impressive films ... with explicit or implicit spiritual themes.

It has become fashionable to trash Hollywood movies. And alas, Im becoming one of the not-so-merry band of trashers. Words cannot convey the emotional and intellectual emptiness I often feel after experiencing most mainstream Hollywood movies.

My cringing is not necessarily in reaction to the artistic quality of the movies, since some are professional and polished. It is mostly a response to their meaning quotient.

So many mainstream American films indulge in cynicism, nihilism, hedonism, escapism, revenge, consumption, or cheap despair. And those movies that actually do try to be positive mostly end up being sentimental.

Would the world be worse off without the likes of Scary Movie 5, G.I. Joe Retaliation, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, or even the clever Bling Ring?

Given the state of the industry, it is more than refreshing to have the Vancouver International Film Festival. And it is even better that VIFF consistently picks impressive films from around the world with explicit or implicit spiritual themes.

VIFF has so far not chosen to go the route of the Cannes, Berlin and Montreal film festivals, which award a so-called ecumenical prize each year, for best movie delving into a spiritual subject. (Recent winners have been The Hunt, Adoration and Babel.)

Still, this years VIFF catalogue counts 15 of the feature films it is showing from Sept. 26 to Oct. 11 in the category of religion, spirituality and myth.

Most of the 15 are about clear religious subjects, like missionaries or the Bahai faith. Which is great. But I maintain there are many other powerful spiritual films in the VIFF catalogue, which deal more subtly with meaning, purpose and the sacred.

The rest is here:

2013 VIFF: Festival offers films that explore spirituality and dignity

No God? No problem, says god-free thinker Sam Harris

Posted on by

Sam Harris isn't quite the atheist provocateur that Christopher Hitchens was nor the militant that Richard Dawkins is. But he is building his place in the pantheon of god-free thinkers book by book. His latest is "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion." As a California native, he grew up with the Golden State's alternative ideas. His own ideas among them, that morality and spirituality can have a secular, scientific foundation rather than a religious one are rooted in his UCLA neuroscience degree and his years'-long studies of meditation in places such as Tibet and India, including a brief gig on the security team for the Dalai Lama.

You write that you want this book to "pluck the diamond from the esoteric dunghill of religion." What is the diamond of spirituality?

It's the phenomenon of self-transcendence. Introspection is a domain of real discovery and consequential changes in your conscious life. Many people are uncomfortable with the term "spirituality," and frankly I'm uncomfortable with it. I'm not the first atheist to use it somewhat defiantly. Christopher Hitchens and Carl Sagan didn't use it quite the way I do, but they felt it was a word we had to reclaim and strip of its spooky associations.

What do people mean when they say, "I'm spiritual but not religious"?

Many things people mean by "spiritual" are every bit as incredible as religion. I divorce myself from the crazy claims about crystals and Atlantis and the things you find in the spiritual section of a bookstore.

The line between spirituality and religion for me really comes down to the former making claims about the nature of human consciousness and its possibilities, and the latter making claims about the nature of reality the divine origin of certain books or the virgin birth or the way the world is going to end.

If you have an experience of unconditional love, that's a spiritual experience; it tells you about the nature of human experience, about the potential of the human mind and human relationships, but it doesn't tell you anything about the cosmos. You can value it and seek it out, but if you start making claims like "love pervades the universe," then you're just making spooky claims that by their very nature trespass upon the territory of physics and the rest of science.

Many people naturally conflate spiritual and religious feelings.

The problem is, everyone is living in the context of some religious indoctrination, so when they have these experiences, they count them as data in favor of religion. If you're a Christian praying in church and you feel bliss, you're going to start talking about the grace of God. If you're a Hindu praying to Shiva, you're going to have a very different interpretation for the same experience.

There are mental states that people from athletes to writers call "the zone" or "alpha state" that pass for spiritual experiences.

More:

No God? No problem, says god-free thinker Sam Harris

More of the station you love. Fewer pledge drives.

Posted on by

Listen Now [23 min 34 sec]

"Waking Up" by Sam Harris explores the concept of spirituality without religion.

In his new book, Waking Up, neuroscientist and author Sam Harris explores the concept of spirituality without religion. An atheist and frequent critic of religion, Harris argues that for the human mind to reach its potential, religion and spirituality must exist separately.

Harris focuses on Buddhist mindfulness meditation, a key part of his own spirituality, as a way to achieve a shift in perspective and attain illuminating, connected spirituality. To Harris, spirituality is the gold in a mine of religion. Will the idea of spirituality and transcendence without religion resonate with atheists, or believers? What are the best ways to connect spiritually?

Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author of bestselling books "The End Of Faith", "Letter To A Christian Nation," "The Moral Landscape," "Free Will" and "Lying"

Go here to see the original:

More of the station you love. Fewer pledge drives.

The Long Rant; Spirituality, Illuminati, fear, mongering ……fun stuff – Video

Posted on by


The Long Rant; Spirituality, Illuminati, fear, mongering ......fun stuff
Along with tons of other stuff.... I kinda outdid it on this one. It #39;s long. But it was fun to make 😉 Sorry people disagree...but that #39;s the world we live in. I welcome your opinion, if you...

By: carpo719

Continued here:

The Long Rant; Spirituality, Illuminati, fear, mongering ......fun stuff - Video

How to KNOW God || Active Spirituality The 4 Pillars Of Your Life: Marshall Vian Summers – Video

Posted on by


How to KNOW God || Active Spirituality The 4 Pillars Of Your Life: Marshall Vian Summers
http://www.NewMessage.org is a path to God and a path of contribution in the world. It engages you in solving the two most fundamental questions in life: Who am I? and Why am I here?

By: How To KNOW God

More:

How to KNOW God || Active Spirituality The 4 Pillars Of Your Life: Marshall Vian Summers - Video

CNU Prof. Schweig talks religion and spirituality

Posted on by

Spirituality 'understood by what it is not' by Urvi Singhania | Sep 21 2014 | 2 hours ago

Christopher Newport Religion Prof. Graham Schweig gave a lecture in Newcomb Friday titled Spiritual but Not Religious. Schweig, who earned a doctorate degree in comparative religion from Harvard, is an author, a scholar and a yogi. His books, including his translation of the Bhagavad Gita, are widely acclaimed.

His talk focused on the distinction people make between spiritualism and religiosity. Religion, derived from the word religare, meaning to connect, is something understood by all. However, he said spirituality tends to be understood by what it is not, hence spiritual but not religious.

He highlighted the nature of religion and spirituality as an art, rather than science, as religion cannot be objectified.

What one loves is not debatable, Schweig said. What one holds as truth is not arguable; how one acts out of faith is non-negotiable.

He likened religion to art in a picture in a frame or silence surrounding music, saying religion helps people put their world in context.

He went on to briefly narrate the tale of Six Blind Men and the Elephant, where each of the men thought the elephant was something different including a fan and a wall rope depending on the part of it they touched. Individually, in Schweigs opinion, they were all correct in their own ways, calling truth a matter of perception.

Schweig said different religions do the same thing thinking their religion is the whole, rather than a part of a whole.

God is too big to fit into one religion, he said.

Schweig also spoke about the differences in religious beliefs between the West and the East.

View original post here:

CNU Prof. Schweig talks religion and spirituality

Eben Alexander – Synthesis of Science and Spirituality: The Arc of Human Destiny over Milennia – Video

Posted on by


Eben Alexander - Synthesis of Science and Spirituality: The Arc of Human Destiny over Milennia
Distinguished scholars and scientists at the 128th Summer Convention of the Theosophical Society in America discuss the implications of the near-death experience and more! In this program,...

By: TheosophicalSociety

Original post:

Eben Alexander - Synthesis of Science and Spirituality: The Arc of Human Destiny over Milennia - Video

Paths of the Spirit: Finding a place for secular spirituality

Posted on by

Sam Harris has a new book out. He's arguably our most prominent, prolific and articulate American atheist. The book is "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion." Actually he's a bit late with this, since there have been numerous other books published in recent decades extolling the virtues of spirituality without religion and/or religion without God. But Harris is popular and has a large following, so what he writes will seem novel to those unfamiliar with the turf.

Harris' thesis is not novel, but in fact, quite familiar. Spirituality without religion be it Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism, to name a few is capable of construction. William James in "The Varieties of Religious Experience" more than a century ago catalogued ordinary mysticism, with or without religion. Stephen Batchelor has written brilliantly on "Buddhism without Beliefs" (anyway, Buddhism sidesteps the God issue). Thomas J. J. Altizer is dean of theologians who writes beyond "the death of God." There's lots on the market that dismisses the necessity of either God or religion as foundational for a spiritual life.

What's new is Harris' approach. He says he has given up riding his older hobbyhorse of criticizing organized religion. Now he wants to turn in a positive direction to assist those many people whom, we know, cannot quite find a way to fit into any organization. I applaud this move.

The sense of transcendence may occur in anyone's life. W. H. Auden, a mean thinker as well as an extraordinary poet, wrote of it as "the vision of Dame Kind," in which the universe seems to be integrated and fully alive and you become part of it, merge into it and lose all sense of separateness. Essayist farmer Wendell Berry has put this in an epithet: we are not apart from nature; we are a part of nature.

Feelings of transcendence may occur prior to any experience of, much less commitment to, a religious organization or set of teachings. In fact, in some religions, they have been discouraged because they are free for the taking and exist outside the framework of dogmatic teachings. They are "spiritual" in the sense Jesus meant when he spoke of the wind of God that blows where it wants and no one can control it.

Some churches have invalidated this entryway to the religious life. By insisting on a set of doctrines to be accepted as the threshold to the institution, we turn aside people who otherwise are thirsting and hungering for the depths that our traditions really do hold. So often we forget to tell people that doctrine is an invitation, not a barrier.

On the other hand, I don't find a great deal of comfort in the secular arena either. People who have experiences of transcendence are just as likely to feel embarrassed or timid or even fearful about sharing them at a pub as they are in a church, for fear of ridicule. Most secular settings rule out any discussion of spiritual matters, whether tied to an institution or not.

We need safe havens where people can explore experiences beyond their own small lives that bind them to the universal love or unity. Many people receive these cosmic nudges through science and we should underscore that science and religion do not have to be enemies. But if religious institutions are not going to provide these safe havens, then the culture will move to invent its own. Sam Harris is definitely onto a movement the beginnings of which we may be seeing right before us. The need clearly exists. Will religious institutions find ways to respond to the need that maintain integrity with their own traditions?

Fr. Gabriel Rochelle is pastor of St Anthony of the Desert Orthodox Mission. The church web site is stanthonylc.org.

Read the original here:

Paths of the Spirit: Finding a place for secular spirituality


  1. Spirituality