Nemra

@Vrubel God is Christian, and my people were the first to accept. So we are the first and true ones. I'm so lucky that I'm superior to others.

Age 5 or 6. 1) I was questioning time. Even though I had a limited understanding of time, I was still amazed at how relative it is. 2) I was going home from the shop, and on the way I got a solipsistic experience. Age 10-14 3) I started to get a mystical experience of love when suffering was starting to get too much. These are reminders for me now.

@Gennadiy1981 Being god's chosen people is a coping mechanism to not self-reflect, and thinking that people were more truthful by being religious and knew the things that are talked about here back then is just hilarious. Tell that to yogis or the first humans who did psychedelics.

@Razard86 That could be said of every kind of group or individual. It's interesting to know why they are so bought into that idea. I feel that there is something unique about being a physicist compared to other domains of science and non-scientific domains.

I still don't get why physicists are more biased to explain things by dividing things up, and why they think that doing that will lead to more fundamental answers about reality.

What if seeing the apple and then the elephant is the transformation.

@PurpleTree I was agreeing with you.

@Princess Arabia Depends on the situation. Imagine something that you don't know and have been acting in a way that makes you think you know about it. Also, there are things that are beyond our capabilities to know, so we are automatically being dumb about them. But we don't, couldn't, or shouldn't care about it.

It's not easy to see that when you think of yourself as more objective than others.

I agree. Brutal brainwashing happens when minorities face extinction. Dude, I get what you're saying. I don't need to justify my whole existence with group thinking because I have the luxury to do so. I just don't buy that BS.

Idk, I like the word fantasy. It reminds me of cartoons that are meant to be apparently silly.

@Gennadiy1981 Be careful about spiritual fantasies; they could destroy a whole country. You won't be able to hold them when your country can't defend itself. People in my country still have spiritual and nationalistic fantasies about how the country should be; they cherry-pick some historical facts to justify them. They are in a worse situation right now.

@Princess Arabia Yes and/or No

😂 Basically, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The holy trinity of the war.

@nhoktinvt Realizes that masculinity isn't the end all be all and understands that he can embody it in different and healthy ways that might not be considered masculine by people. His understanding of masculinity or femininity comes from self-reflection, and he doesn't view the world from those perspectives all the time. Also, your question depends on where people live and how developed they are. In less developed countries, people have very narrow and dogmatic views about it, even if they work. It's more fear-based.

@Princess Arabia Maybe. I don't remember. I also lived with Muslims and Coptic Christians. But that was before living with Orthodox Christians.

@Princess Arabia I could, but it's still useful. I got a real-time understanding of religious people's minds. I can talk with them, but they are so arrogant about their views about spirituality that it makes me sick. I enjoy talking with atheists or agnostics more. I live in a third-world country, which is the first Christian nation. They don't know what direct experience even means. They still believe that meditation is satanic, are conspiratorial-minded, and, especially the priests, project their fears on non-religious or other religious people by having read some occult stuff in a superficial way (of course, judging from their limited Christian perspective).

Sorry, I'm also allergic to the word religion. Got a huge dose of it back then.

@vibv @Princess Arabia The question is: How much and what change is good? @vibv I think that those kind of communities already exist.

@vibv I don't think there can be a "religion" without a leader. @Princess Arabia Then we should specify what kind of religion we are talking about. I'm not against it.

@Princess Arabia Well, we can change the definition, but wouldn't that make it complicated? Why not say spiritual community? Or maybe a word that is more direct.

@vibv Everything depends on how you define it. Maybe religions are having trouble surviving in this era. It doesn't matter how pure or corrupt they are; they are meant for ignorant people. The pollution starts when people who have some direct experience start teaching others without giving them the ways to do that or just by telling them. How can you trust that all of them got you? How would they know what direct experience is? That process is so internal that you can't prove to others whether you get it or not, even if you say the right words. When religion is formed on it, don't you see that the pollution gets polluted, no matter how the spiritual texts are written—with the same words or changed? And this is only the spiritual aspect of religion. A lot of religious people believe that they are the chosen and most truthful ones, but they don't really think through that, not even the teachers. Nowadays, they can openly tell others that there can be many truths, but they believe otherwise. Maybe in the past, religions were useful for people, but they were still dumb to the people who actually had the luxury to experience life more fully.

@vibv Religion can't exist without dogma. You have to be religious in order to have a religious experience. Those people cannot tolerate, from their point of view, such vulgar and filthy environments.

Nooooooo.... ?

@Incognito It's one of the best tactics religions use to keep their followers dumb, and it's how they generally survive. The interesting thing is that you don't have to be or act like a madman to get the same or "better" result. That's way more sneaky.