Carl-Richard

I don't see at all how the spiritual teacher pointing their finger at the absolute changes the fact that they're pointing with their human fingers for other humans to look, all in the relative realm, and that this is a source of problems.

Are the spiritual teachers backing the ASI clueless? Who passes your bar? It isn't a magic pill. It just helps.

Ask ChatGPT ?

"Hua-hua, you puny human! When only you see through your human limitations, you'll be laughing like me!" *sips orange juice through his human mouth hole*

Says the human.

This absolute-relative conflation brain rot should literally be bannable. To even allow it to spread is ethically dubious in itself. We're humans, teachers exist, students exist — end of story. Spirituality is a human need. That's why you're here. It doesn't have privilege over other human needs. It doesn't get special treatment. You can let psychopathic teachers mindfuck you all you want, but I will fight that shit to the death.

You start to wonder though when people start insinuating that abuse at the hands of a teacher might be a necessary part of awakening.

Healthier. You don't raise consciousness by raping people.

Most people imprint a large amount of society's values as they grow up. For these people, joining a cult is not a neutral thing. If they were instead brought up in a cult, then the cult becomes more analogous to the larger culture. It's mainly the process of exposing people to experiences that radically offends their values which starts to become ethically concerning, e.g. the process of being separated from one's community, one's family, one's friends, one's notions of bodily autonomy and sense of reality. That is the main reason why "cult" is such a naughty word and why it matters. And this is only a culturally relativistic analysis. You can certainly make more absolute cases for things like sexual abuse. You can also make the case that society is inherently healthier than a cult, because its values are relatively stable through time and need to reflect the inherent needs of the people on at least a basic level. The reason why cults often collapse is because they fail to do that.

Vague? Maybe in some places. Simple? Sure. But we still see those kinds of violations happening. History tells us that. We're simple creatures, and people who adopt teacher positions are certainly very often not saints. The fact that the codes are "obvious" and that the violations are taboo creates very nefarious dynamics for when the violations do happen: the social stigma and the reputation risk around speaking up, real victims not speaking up or not being believed, etc.

Point out which of the 24 codes you find problematic.

They're experts on religion, and it makes sense to me. You didn't derive your ideas on spirituality and religion completely by yourself either. Hyper-individualism has a limit ? The scientific literature on secularization points to concepts like "religious complexity", which describes among other things a shift away from traditional and collective types of religion towards new individualistic types ("New Age"). So at least in countries with increasing secularization, this is a trend. You can keep telling people that, but they'll still log on Actualized.org every day.

The problem with old religion is mainly the mismatch with the current culture. Other than that, the rigidity could be attributed to the traditionalist and authoritarian worldview. If we replace it with liberal values, it'll probably be less stagnant, kinda like our democratic institutions.

You're talking about the mystical experience of pure oneness. Spirituality has beliefs and practices just like religion. I subscribe to the understanding of Kenneth Pargament and Brian Zinnbauer. They both agree on their definition of spirituality: "an individual or collective search for the sacred". They disagree on the definition of religion. Pargament defines it as "a search for significance in ways related to the sacred", while Zinnbauer defines it as "a search for the sacred within a traditional context". In any case, spirituality is treated as a central sub-component of religion. My and others' wish to revitalize religion is just to replace the collective/traditional components with something that is more relevant to current society, and attempts at establishing universalized ethics that is grounded in some of society's values is a step in this direction. The growing popularity of a hyper-individualistic spirituality is a byproduct of our culture evolving past the rigidity of old institutions, and it's only a transitory period. The end result is necessary and inevitable. The mental and social isolation that modern spiritual people are subjected to is hugely detrimental, and that is why we flock to this forum. The insistance that individualism will keep the teachings pure or unridden from dogma is short-sighted, because it's really only a question about scale. Dogma is inevitable when people have an innate need to seek guidance and grounding from outside sources. There are only two choices — culture or cults, roughly speaking.

Says the libertarian ?

Why?

I'm 100% describing religion. We just need an updated version, not the 2000 year old stale versions.

This is exactly why spirituality and cults go hand in hand. Once you separate spirituality from all notions of social responsibility, you need to reconstruct the needs that society fulfills outside of society. Instead of doing that, see the needs for spirituality and the needs for safety and integrate them.

Damaging the ego does not benefit spiritual growth. Transcending the ego does.

"To awaken, just must guzzle buckets of my cum. What — are you attached to the idea of right and wrong?"

Spirituality is not special. It doesn't need special treatment.

Yes it is.

In fact, what is society? Safety. You can decide to not participate, but don't pretend it's not dangerous.

Is truth being outlawed if somebody tells me I probably shouldn't fuck my students? Stop being so dramatic lol. It's ethics, not law.

Tell me, in what other facet of life is seeking guidance looked upon with suspicion? Especially when it comes to something dangerous like spirituality, where you're deconstructing your sense of reality. It's quite ridiculous.