SPIRITUAL, BUT NOT RELIGIOUS

The spirit hit him.

LOL I was moved, and heard a voice calling out from the waters saying "build it and they will come" as a giant hand drew cartoons on the walls.

And they came in droves........

First of all, C.I. : well, duh, OF COURSE eating chocolate is spiritual !

Seriously, CDK, am I correct is thinking that you believe we are all entirely physical beings, i.e. we are our bodies ?

Because, as much as I adore my body and I am thankful for all the wonderful sensations it provides, I have always felt that I am MORE than my body. And it is through this non-physical part of me that I have what I believe are spiritual experiences and feelings. Also mental ones.

I guess for me there's a real difference between the brain and the mind, between the body and the spirit.

Not very scientific, nothing I can or need to prove, but, as you said, that's ok, right ?

Yes.

The devil made him do it!


(Angie - I would argue that the mind is our subjective experience of the workings of the brain - but that is ok - lol!)

As a biological animal form, our body and brain are one and the same.

If the Raven's Realm had never existed this aleatory thingy would have more weight - but, as it is, it begins to look much like habit - (or predestination for those of us less materialistically inclined.....)

I'm pretty much with cav and Codeborg on this one. fishin' too, I guess. That moment of awe he described earlier felt very true to me.

but isn't there a real difference between, say, a thought and the electrical synapse that it generates ?

Was it simple boredom, or something else Craven? I follow this thread with much interest and friendly laughter.

Cav - rambling or not, and I do like to ramble, I am not, I think, missing the point. It may seem persnickety to - un-HumptyDumpty-like - (you may recall he was of the opinion that we must be master of our meaning, not the words - but that way lies Babel and such - not communication - ) - insist that certain words have certain meanings - but it is, I believe, necessary to clear thought and discussion. I confess, it is that very fuzziness that I find a bit annoying about the broadly "spiritual" folk, anyway - but that is a different discussion...

But I shall enjoy your attempts to lead Craven down whatever primrose path, or cattle chute, or sweet country ramble, you are proposing.

Where are my Jaffas and choc-ice?

My answer was about the Raven's Realm. Able2Know is the continuation of the Raven's Realm. The reason I started A2K was because I outgrew the free hosting limitations and wanted to learn more.



Yes, there is also a difference between an electric spark and one that is felt.



Boredom is never simple. Is there an answer in particular you are looking for?

A bunny that's annoyed by fuzziness? But ... it's so cute! :-D

Actually, I'm still pondering definitions and use of a purely physical framework. That might be a very clean paradigm, but I want to be sure it can express all the same concepts. Still thinking...




PS -- I don't believe in spirits but I do believe in spirit. If that makes sense to anyone.

PPS -- dlowan, I may have cheated a bit with definitions 4 and 5, but I don't go to church much, so the religious overtones in the word "sacred" are missing for me. To me it's a metaphor, "sacred" as if we were religious, as if we were going to church, as if there was a god. In that sense, anything that's precious and well taken care of can be "sacred" without it actually being a sacrament or religious doodad. Uhhhh... that's my personal grammer though. Plus, I like the irony of saying "too sacred to involve religion in it".

Makes perfect sense (though for the life of my I can't decribe it as "spiritual").

Cheerleaders would be the most spiritual of them all.

"You suffer from an excess of school spirit."

"It's not something I can turn on an off!"

---

"I got caught up in the spirit of the moment."

etc etc.

There is a big difference between the metaphorical use of the word spirit to me and the true meaning of the word.

CB - LOL - I aim for furriness, not fuzziness!

Yes - I know what you are doing with sacred - and it is quite understandable (which I guess meets my criterion) - but, its more generalized meanings (or ironic ones) still depend on the base meaning.

espirit de corps?

That difference is worth really thinking about.

I'll have to mull for a day or two.
What are people actually doing with the metaphorical use vs. the true use?
How is the process and the result different, or the same?
Mmmm, food for thought... wondering out loud...



c.i. -- Morale vs. morality. Different words, completely different fields? Are both spiritual?
Yeah, English is much too fuzzy.



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Fur is good.

I think there is a big difference between using the word 'spirit' as a metaphor and defining oneself as being 'spiritual'. I don't think it's that fuzzy either.

To say "I have school spirit" doesn't reify spirits. To profess a belief in the spiritual, IMO, reifies the spiritual realm.

Do the people here who describe themselves as spiritual believe they have a soul?

i believe
I belive that I have spritual energy, and so does everyting else. Now I cant say that I know how to define it except for the fact that everything has a projected electrical/magnetical field around it. This is evidence that it exists, not evidence of what it is. But I dont know, for I am young in my experience. This is where I hope gnosis will prevale because it is possible for one to attain.