If you aren't religious, do you have a source of spiritual growth?

I don’t believe in religion as it pertains only to humans, but I’m very spiritual. If an animal gets killed on my road, they get a prayer from me to the Great Spirit. Call me nuts, but I like my views.

CNN. And I used to read value tale books.

@Adirondackwannabe Eh, I like that too. Don’t believe in nothing myself, but I think Indians and pagans were on to something.

@Symbeline Yeah, I think there is some energy in all living things, it varies in intensity, but all life deserves respect. I don’t know if the pagans were right or wrong, but I’ll respect their views.

I am spiritual in the sense that I believe that life literally is a game. We cannot know why we are playing but there are clues when we get outside of distractions. Spending time outside in nature is my “church.”

@Adirondackwannabe And it’s nature. If you’re gonna worship something, might as well be something that’s real, all around you and provides for you.

Working out. And psychedelic drugs lol.

@Symbeline Excellent answer, although now I’m hungry. :)

My spiritual growth comes from the trees, forests, lakes, flower…. all of nature.

And my hope for humanity comes from my children and grandchildren.

@Adirondackwannabe Me too. Now I want to attend a Gaulish bread harvest festival damnit.

I don’t believe in any religion, but I believe that there is actually a “God”, or at least a hidden entity that is watching over people and guide them to safety. This god doesn’t work like any religion thinks, and doesn’t approve of brain-washing people into following religion. They want to be treated as a normal person who gives random kindness to people they see fit.

Not at all.

What’s a Gaulish bread festival?

To me our source of our individual beliefs transcends any religious doctrine laid before us. Human life started hundreds of thousand years before any documented religion came to fruition. This is fact. From that point forward we all have had the opportunity of choice of where to hang our hats where and what we believe in. And IMHO none of the wide variety of religious/spiritual beliefs we all may hold near and dear should not color nor polarize how we as a society should cast judgement on what anyone believes in a religious or spiritual sense. These beliefs, thoughts and feelings are what each and everyone of us holds near and dear and should be held sacred and irreproachable .

There is no ultimate meaning. The Universe, or at least the visible portion of it, will eventually fade into the void. I recently came across the Web site Exit Mundi, which takes a macabrely humorous look at the various ways in which humanity may disappear.

Given that there is no Great Truth, the best we can do is to make the most of the limited time we have and connect with those we come in contact with. Love is all that matters. That and mathematics. I like to believe that mathematical truth transcends physical reality.

I believe in the interconnectedness of everything, that all life springs from the one life, the original manifestation of life. Nature is my “church” as well. I also believe that psychological growth, is an opening to enhancing our spiritual growth.

Science, nature, art, philosophy, meditation. All of them border on “spiritual” for me, for lack of a better word. When I choose to positively focus on any of them, an indescribable inner peace washes over me. The universe, in and of itself, is awe-inspiring.

I’ve been to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques and covens.
I’ve read the New Age books as well as the Bible along with large portions of the Bhagavid Gita as well as the Koran. I’ve attended Mystery School and seen channellers.

And I’ve seen a lot of dancing around the the issue. I’ve seen a lot of preaching and a lot of authoritative talking…. mostly leading to emptiness along with bits of wisdom.

But nothing… and I mean nothing… has gotten me to the heart of the matter the way LSD and magic mushrooms have. Nothing came close to being as real and deeply edifying as those psychedelic helpers. I wanted something real, and something that got me there. Something that truly works and is truly miraculous. I wanted to see what we would call “God” and be able to partially stop theorizing.

The magic mushrooms and the LSD work like nothing else. They’re not necessarily the only way. But so far I haven’t seen anything else that comes close.

For me, aging is producing an increasingly louder call to return to my religious roots.

For me, spiritual growth is to what degree I shift my conscious focus from self to others. Most, if not all religions promote mitigating the suffering of others. I view spirituality as consciousness, compassion and caring about their needs, whether a God or Gods exist.

Looking at the Universe and learning about how it all works or ideas about how it works. Trying to keep up with advances and discoveries and thinking how far we’ve come in understanding, but always questioning.

I guess you could, but the spirit you might have growth in you may regret.

@Adirondackwannabe Uh…hm. lol I denno.

@Symbeline I found part of it. Gaul was a celtic region of ancient western Europe. I thought the Gauls rang a bell. I love bread, so let’s go to the bread festival.

Yeah, Gauls are my ancestors. (If I aint mistaken) But I remember some video on YT of a movie about Gauls celebrating some solstice shit about harvest and now I can’t find it.

I found this, not YT but interesting.
http://www.druidschool.com/site/1030100/page/846679

Life experience.

@Adirondackwannabe Dude, Samhain, that’s like Halloween and shit.

@Symbeline Keep digging up stuff like this. I love it so much. Conventional religion bores me to tears, but this stuff is so interesting. I was known in our golf league as a druid, because I worshipped trees and they always gave me favorable bounces. I hit a shot headed out of bounds, and it hit a tree and landed on the green. The guy I was playing against started believing in it. And if my partner was having a bad round I’d take his club, say a druid prayer, and rub the club against the tree. It worked every time. It was all in our heads but it worked because we believed. Now hide me from the religious peeps.

My next celebration of the planet is equinox which is coming up in a few days. It is bitter sweet because from that day my hours of dark begin to be greater than my hours of light until Solstice. (Which became hijacked by a little cult that grew and was optioned into something called Christmas )

Everyday of our life we are growing no matter what we do you do know that, right?
Psychology is a good way I think

Well I’m a deist which is technically not really a religion. A lot of my beliefs are more philosophically rooted.

So the closest thing I get to spiritual growth is when I’m learning about my faith through the writings of other deists or scientific principles relivent to deism.

As for the big questions? My mentality is not much different from your average atheist. I make my own meaning in life and cease the day.

Morality is inspired by others, empathy and my upbringing.

My Polish mother usually attended church only on High Holidays, such as Easter and Christmas—father was an agnostic, but did not share his belief until I was an adult—though not baptized there until I was thirteen as a child I attended the Roman Catholic Church. I found Mass emotionally sterile and sought without success a Christian Church that might resonate with my emerging spiritual views. While in high school, a friend introduced me to Unitarianism where I found my peers there shared my intellectual misgivings with traditional beliefs.

After military service, I attended college in the sixties and embraced “new age” perspectives including Eastern mysticism, Buddhism and Theosophy. This spiritual journey has brought be to an understanding that a creative force exists that one can add to or conflict with. The root of most religions is caring more about the needs of others than one’s wants. I now believe that while few can live wholly altruistic lives, the spiritual path leads to an increased consciousness of how unimportant an individual is relative to the evolving universe and how important it is to be aware of the need to nurture all life including that of our planet.