There is only one God. They are [enter place of birth for answer]
- Thread starter Jon
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It is my belief that the selection of a deity depends on to whom you were born, not where or when. I was born to a Christian family (mixed Protestant) so I followed my mother's religion and became a Methodist. As to WHY I am no longer a believer, that can be answered in another thread. But as to why I was not Muslim? Mom wasn't Muslim either.
Yes, I agree with you Doc, on the first part. However, when you zoom out, it is less likely that the DNA of your parents were the choosers of their religion, but more likely a consequence of where they were born. It might explain the 98% Muslim vs 2% other religion discrepancy in Pakistan. Or the reverse in the USA.
If you were born in Europe, you are more likely to be an atheist that if born in the USA. If the country is more advanced, religion plays a lesser role and the number of believers is lower (with the USA being the big exception to the rule). Since the advancement of the society is also a factor, that too plays into the location argument.
What loosens the water-tightness of this view is mass migrations in the modern era. Perhaps that should be discussed in a future thread.
If you were born in Europe, you are more likely to be an atheist that if born in the USA. If the country is more advanced, religion plays a lesser role and the number of believers is lower (with the USA being the big exception to the rule). Since the advancement of the society is also a factor, that too plays into the location argument.
What loosens the water-tightness of this view is mass migrations in the modern era. Perhaps that should be discussed in a future thread.
Since I consider ALL religion to be learned behavior, the only factors of merit are the forces in place where you grew up. Your parents are USUALLY the primary sources of your religion because you spend most of your formative years with them. However, locale can play a role. Some nations and some cultures have an "official" religion and if you don't adopt that religion, you are anywhere from social outcast to a corpse. Muslims are the worst about the "corpse" option these days, though from history, I can't absolve Christians of excessive intolerance. The various Inquisitions were extreme cases of "bringing people to Jesus" via extreme persuasion.
The reason I claim that your parents are the most likely source of your religion is that I use a tri-partite mind model to analyze thought patterns. The child mind is the seat of basic emotions - it feels, wants, needs - but doesn't reason. The parent mind is the mind of a child as it develops to the point that "learned behavior" can take hold. This is the "wash your hands before eating" habit, the "look both ways before crossing the street" habit, and the "say your prayers every night before you go to bed" habit. The parent mind is given instruction from the parents because they are the child's primary companion in that stage, though peer pressure and teachers also have influence. It is not until post-puberty that the adult mind can begin to manifest itself. It is the reasoning, calculating adult mind that can overthrow bad parent-self advice.
The inability to throw off religion is usually the result of a cognitive dissonance where you have the adult mind telling the parent self, "this religion stuff is a bunch of hooey." But the child self reacts very negatively to learn that someone lied to you and that leads to dissonance. If you trusted your parents and loved them deeply, if you respected your minister when you went to church services, if your religious friends reinforced your beliefs by being good companions - these forces lead to the near rabid resistance of religious fundamentalists who don't want to hear that their beliefs are wrong. And the implications there include that the locale may also contribute to the intensity of the parent-self adoption of religious rules, which makes it that much harder for the adult self to overcome the dissonance. Obviously, extreme dissonance leads to anger and there is where the person has lost adult-level control.
The reason I claim that your parents are the most likely source of your religion is that I use a tri-partite mind model to analyze thought patterns. The child mind is the seat of basic emotions - it feels, wants, needs - but doesn't reason. The parent mind is the mind of a child as it develops to the point that "learned behavior" can take hold. This is the "wash your hands before eating" habit, the "look both ways before crossing the street" habit, and the "say your prayers every night before you go to bed" habit. The parent mind is given instruction from the parents because they are the child's primary companion in that stage, though peer pressure and teachers also have influence. It is not until post-puberty that the adult mind can begin to manifest itself. It is the reasoning, calculating adult mind that can overthrow bad parent-self advice.
The inability to throw off religion is usually the result of a cognitive dissonance where you have the adult mind telling the parent self, "this religion stuff is a bunch of hooey." But the child self reacts very negatively to learn that someone lied to you and that leads to dissonance. If you trusted your parents and loved them deeply, if you respected your minister when you went to church services, if your religious friends reinforced your beliefs by being good companions - these forces lead to the near rabid resistance of religious fundamentalists who don't want to hear that their beliefs are wrong. And the implications there include that the locale may also contribute to the intensity of the parent-self adoption of religious rules, which makes it that much harder for the adult self to overcome the dissonance. Obviously, extreme dissonance leads to anger and there is where the person has lost adult-level control.
Actually, Jon, the reason that Pakistan is 98% Muslim is due to the partition of India in 1947. The partition displaced over 14 million people along religious lines with Muslims going to Pakistan and Hindus remaining in India. It created an overwhelming refugee crisis in the newly constituted countries and there was large-scale violence, with estimates of loss of life accompanying or preceding the partition disputed and varying between several hundred thousand and two million. The violent nature of the partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan that exists even today - and is the reason behind the disputed territory of Kashmir.
I say I found "Eckhart Tolle" like people say I found God!
I've learnt most of this from Tolle, I may paraphrase, and I may even get it wrong, but this is the general gist as I understand it..
Take your mind back in time to before man could speak. Now imagine a dog. A dog lives quite happily without a single thought. Well, except maybe "a biscuit? a biscuit? I'd love a biscuit!"
Humans at one time could not speak. However they did develop language and thought, obviously! Some anthropologists believe early humans heard their own thoughts and believed it was an external entity "a God".
As our minds got more proficient at thinking and we got better at talking then our animal mind got pushed more and more to one side and speaking mind got stronger and stronger. These thoughts and speech and later writing allowed ideas to develop, ideas about Society, about gods, about religion, about who is better! And then Wars and fighting and politics and then the first and second world wars where millions upon millions of people lost their lives.
All of this because we learn to think! Now we are starting to pick up ideas from the East, ideas on meditation, on thinking differently about the world, or actually not thinking! That brings us back to the dog, look at the dog and try and imagine, it's not "thinking". Think now about your meditation practice, notice how you are if you manage to allow the thoughts to drift in and out but not follow them. That's the dog mind in you. Look how happy the dog is! No stress just a bundle of fun and love. Now look back to your meditation mind can you see it it's there, the love, and I don't mean lovey-dovey love, I mean acceptance, peace.
Your thinking mind loves to be in control. It is devious and will insidiously bring itself back in charge anyway it can. It likes conflict and to be "better than" somebody or something because that is a powerful position. But also it has an opposite, if it cannot fight and win, then it will play the opposite roll, the oppressed the hurt. You've seen those sort of people I'm sure!
But everyone is the same inside, everyone has both minds, the calm natural mind and the analytic talking programmed mind. Once you understand that, and I guess that you suspected that you are no different than most other people. But once you accept we are all the same underneath, then it makes communication that much easier and better. Now, I'm not here to preach Tolle, I'm here to learn about it. I don't know enough about it, some of it, any of it, part of It, or ALL of It, maybe it's just crap. But I don't think so, but I'm interested in finding the holes and gaps in it...
In answer to your question, There is only one God. They are --- Well, it's Me... That's still part of my mind the Stillness - is God.
I've learnt most of this from Tolle, I may paraphrase, and I may even get it wrong, but this is the general gist as I understand it..
Take your mind back in time to before man could speak. Now imagine a dog. A dog lives quite happily without a single thought. Well, except maybe "a biscuit? a biscuit? I'd love a biscuit!"
Humans at one time could not speak. However they did develop language and thought, obviously! Some anthropologists believe early humans heard their own thoughts and believed it was an external entity "a God".
As our minds got more proficient at thinking and we got better at talking then our animal mind got pushed more and more to one side and speaking mind got stronger and stronger. These thoughts and speech and later writing allowed ideas to develop, ideas about Society, about gods, about religion, about who is better! And then Wars and fighting and politics and then the first and second world wars where millions upon millions of people lost their lives.
All of this because we learn to think! Now we are starting to pick up ideas from the East, ideas on meditation, on thinking differently about the world, or actually not thinking! That brings us back to the dog, look at the dog and try and imagine, it's not "thinking". Think now about your meditation practice, notice how you are if you manage to allow the thoughts to drift in and out but not follow them. That's the dog mind in you. Look how happy the dog is! No stress just a bundle of fun and love. Now look back to your meditation mind can you see it it's there, the love, and I don't mean lovey-dovey love, I mean acceptance, peace.
Your thinking mind loves to be in control. It is devious and will insidiously bring itself back in charge anyway it can. It likes conflict and to be "better than" somebody or something because that is a powerful position. But also it has an opposite, if it cannot fight and win, then it will play the opposite roll, the oppressed the hurt. You've seen those sort of people I'm sure!
But everyone is the same inside, everyone has both minds, the calm natural mind and the analytic talking programmed mind. Once you understand that, and I guess that you suspected that you are no different than most other people. But once you accept we are all the same underneath, then it makes communication that much easier and better. Now, I'm not here to preach Tolle, I'm here to learn about it. I don't know enough about it, some of it, any of it, part of It, or ALL of It, maybe it's just crap. But I don't think so, but I'm interested in finding the holes and gaps in it...
In answer to your question, There is only one God. They are --- Well, it's Me... That's still part of my mind the Stillness - is God.
Do you meditate by any chance?
Yes I do, I do the little meditations that Tolle recommends, like when you are washing your hands, while I'm sat here writing this I pause, relax and let my mind go blank.
I also enjoy the more formal meditation. There's a website called "Excel at Life" run and owned by Monica Frank I believe, where you can download lots of free meditation tapes, mainly spoken by Monica. I started off using these, along with some of Tolle's meditation tapes.
Lately I've been using an app called headspace, it's also available online on your PC. Andy Puddicombe does the speaking, leading you along the meditation path. And he's very good, very hypnotic.
GUIDED 10-MINUTE MEDITATION WITH ANDY PUDDICOMBE
One of the meditations he does is called "appreciation". I mention it because it's very clever, most of the time you sort of meditate to relax, relax your body, relax your mind. However it can be a bit tiresome if you know what I mean, boring probably is a better word... I sometimes find myself drifting off to sleep! But this "appreciation" meditation is WAY different, what Andy wants you to do is focus on "appreciation" get yourself relaxed and then think about something you appreciate, be with that feeling in your meditation, and then in daily life you can more easily find the "appreciation" in a situation. It is very powerful for me and over the last 10 days has made a significant impact on my well-being.
I think I have a slight advantage over most people because I have a lovely dog, a dog so full of love and affection, which I appreciate. It's so easy to go there in my mind, feel that appreciation for the dog and grow it. And then it trickles out through the day into all aspects of my life. I can't rate headspace enough. Headspace were doing a promotion £20 for 6 months, I don't know if it's still going but it's well worth taking up if it's still available...
Yes I do, I do the little meditations that Tolle recommends, like when you are washing your hands, while I'm sat here writing this I pause, relax and let my mind go blank.
I also enjoy the more formal meditation. There's a website called "Excel at Life" run and owned by Monica Frank I believe, where you can download lots of free meditation tapes, mainly spoken by Monica. I started off using these, along with some of Tolle's meditation tapes.
Lately I've been using an app called headspace, it's also available online on your PC. Andy Puddicombe does the speaking, leading you along the meditation path. And he's very good, very hypnotic.
GUIDED 10-MINUTE MEDITATION WITH ANDY PUDDICOMBE
One of the meditations he does is called "appreciation". I mention it because it's very clever, most of the time you sort of meditate to relax, relax your body, relax your mind. However it can be a bit tiresome if you know what I mean, boring probably is a better word... I sometimes find myself drifting off to sleep! But this "appreciation" meditation is WAY different, what Andy wants you to do is focus on "appreciation" get yourself relaxed and then think about something you appreciate, be with that feeling in your meditation, and then in daily life you can more easily find the "appreciation" in a situation. It is very powerful for me and over the last 10 days has made a significant impact on my well-being.
I think I have a slight advantage over most people because I have a lovely dog, a dog so full of love and affection, which I appreciate. It's so easy to go there in my mind, feel that appreciation for the dog and grow it. And then it trickles out through the day into all aspects of my life. I can't rate headspace enough. Headspace were doing a promotion £20 for 6 months, I don't know if it's still going but it's well worth taking up if it's still available...
I will check out the Excel at Life link, thanks. I didn't know about the washing hands one, but using common things as action triggers seems a good idea. I installed Headspace before as an app on my phone, but settled on Insight Timer instead. We have a thread on the forum about meditation. Not sure if you have seen it or not. https://themindtavern.com/community/threads/any-meditators-here.45/
Bee started a thread about pets for therapy which you might find interesting. https://themindtavern.com/community/threads/pets-as-therapy.120/
Bee started a thread about pets for therapy which you might find interesting. https://themindtavern.com/community/threads/pets-as-therapy.120/