What I find myself wondering is how many of the people posting here can spell "cognitive dissonance" or understand what the terms mean? Cognitive dissonance is the confusion arising from a belief in two conflicting beliefs, both at the same time.
The word "spiritual" usually implies a belief in "spirits", especially the ability to communicate with the "souls" of the dead - spirits from beyond or "transcendental' to the material world. Or, the term spiritual is a belief that humans have a soul or that a higher spirit permeates existence relative to human life. Also, I sometimes wonder how people can believe in "souls" and still call themselves "atheists", since a belief in a soul or spirit logically implies there being an innate absolute "soul-monad" that exist in everyone that gets "reborn". If a person believes in a "reincarnating" soul that comes back to life following physical death or after spending about nine days existing in a Tibetan "bardo" state, how could those people be non-believers in the spiritual life and believers in a soul - both at the same time? It just doesn't make any sense - how could there be a soul that reincarnates, but yet at the same time, doesn't even exist? What is the difference between a "spirit" and the "gods"? Other questions I sometimes wonder about: Do humans have an inborn spirit or soul that survives human death? If so, can we communicate with it? Can a human die and then come back to life later as another person? If so, how would anyone know about their previous life or lives? Doesn't a belief in a spiritual life imply that there are spirits, entities we can't see, but yet can be experienced and known? How could a person describe themselves as a "Buddhist" and yet not believe in Buddhas? Is a Buddha a spirit? And, how can some people get so mixed up that they would subscribe to a spiritual group and then go on to post a critique someone's spiritual beliefs or their spiritual path? Go figure. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : I find myself wondering how many of the people who seem to be climbing on the "This newsgroup isn't spiritual enough for me because people aren't treated the way they 'should' be treated here" bus are believers in God. I would guess that almost by definition, ALL of them riding that silly short bus are. You'd kinda *have* to believe in the idea that there is an invisible being looking out for you (because you're so important and all) and arranging reality so that it works out "fairly" and so that you are treated with the respect you think you deserve in the rest of life (again, because you're so important and all) to believe that this should also be true on a minor Internet newsgroup that almost no one reads. Those of us who believe that life just turns out the way it turns out and that there is no such thing as the way it "should" be have an easier time in Internet environments. Just as there ain't no Perfect God running things in outer life, there ain't no Perfect Moderator running things on Internet forums. Internet forums, in fact, act pretty much like a perfect model of the Buddhist concept of Interdependent Origination. There ain't no predicting how they'll turn out, because there is no Plan as to how they'll turn out. They may start with an idea of what the group is "about" and what it is "supposed" to discuss, but that changes within a month or two as the different personalities actually doing the discussing start exerting their will on things. Interdependent Origination says that the universe is essentially a form of consensus reality, with what we call "reality" being determined by the combined totality of all the wills of all the sentient beings in that universe. There ain't no Plan...there is only what happens when all these wills intersect. Because there is no Plan, there also ain't no "right" or "wrong" about how things turn out. They turn out perfectly -- a perfect mirror of the combined wills of ALL of the combined sentient beings -- because that's just how things turn out in those situations. Same with Internet discussion groups, as far as I can tell. It strikes me that Fairfield Life is a perfect representation of the differing wills of the differing sentient beings posting to it. Feeling as if it "should" be something other than what it is seems to be missing the whole *point*, and represents a longing for the fantasy of a Perfect Moderator who does not and can not ever exist. It also strikes me that those who feel that *they* should be (or are capable of being) the Perfect Moderator they're longing for have made a fairly fundamental error of judgment, and have confused themselves with their fantasies of a Perfect God...who *also* doesn't exist. :-)
