I don’t start threads about those kinds of things generally because I’m not open to neckbeards trampling my flowers. 
Maybe you should use less fertilizer.
Exactly, thank you Cagey.
Right on BG.
Or at least to think you are so attuned.
What are the “laws of spirituality” exactly?
If I follow them, can I see things that other people do not? Do things other people are unable to? Examples welcome.
As I said, people who are “spiritual but not religeous” believe that there is some higher power or force that one can become more atuned to by behaving in a certain way. While they believe it is a natural part of the universe, the fact that it is unmeasurable and undetectable by know scientific methods would make it supernatural.
At best, spiritual people are like anyone who believes in some abstract concept like “good” or “justice”. You cannot measure good or justice. You can’t see or touch it. There are no goodyon or justitron particles. But you can behave in ways that most people would define as good or just.
Spiritual people just take it a few steps further by objectifying these abstract ideas to make them appear more tangible. And I suppose it fulfulls some emotional need that makes them think that they know or see things that others do not.
Stop being so angry just because you don’t believe in love.
I suppose a good counter-example would be a person who claims to be spiritually attuned to the universal concepts of love and harmony yet has no friends because nobody likes him.
No, I’ve noticed it being an actual thing from watching groups behave. The way people who have a common spiritual bond behave together, and watching the inept flailing of the person who isn’t attuned to it.
Oftentimes skeptical detractors will offer a completely irrelevant criticism trying to debunk something they simply do not understand.
Yes, that’s a good example, but love =/= like. I’ve found that to be a common conception of love that I don’t see reflected in the wider body of literature on the subject. A very common theme is people who love each other but actually cannot stand one another interpersonally.
My criticism to this “spiritual bond” thing is that communal groups will tend to operate on shared traditions and unspoken conventions and familiarities that outsiders would lack; additionally communal groups will have a shared level of familiarity and trust which will not be shared by, or even necessarily with, a newcomer.
This is the case for every kind of communal group from churches to families to football teams to debate clubs to violent street gangs. I am therefore doubtful that it is necessary or reasonable to blame such communal behavior on something that would not be possessed by all those groups.
Love is arguably one of the most poorly- and vaguely-defined words in the english language. (Much more so than, say, “supernatural”.) It personally took me several months of back-of-the-mind consideration before I found a definition that I consider accurate - and I doubt most people share that definition. (I do keep that last fact in mind when using or hearing the word in conversation, though.)
Though regarding the ‘counter-example’ itself, love needn’t be two-directional. It would be quite possible by most people’s definitions to have somebody who loved everyone but was universally hated. The contradiction would be somebody who claims to be spiritually attuned to the universal concepts of love and harmony but then didn’t act like they were.
Why would I need to believe in love? It kept my cat alive this morning when the little bastard got out and I had to chase it down before I could leave for work. Believing in love would be like believing in skin or hair.
LOL, I’m not even going to touch the logical inconsistencies in that one.
begbert2 I guess we need a common definition of ‘spirit’ then. Because people often refer to the ‘spirit’ of a law, or the ‘spirit’, of a nation, or the ‘spirit’ of a family.
Whether or not there’s a difference between “like” and “love”, I don’t know that there’s a difference between being attuned to the universe (or whatever) and only thinking you’re attuned to the universe (or whatever), especially if the latter person simply assumes that negativity is due to bad karma rather than him being a socially clueless numpty.
Agreed. For me being in tune with the universe is judged by how often I bump into things. I mean literally bump into things. The more aware I am the less likely I am to bump into something.
Couldn’t hurt. Though, it may not always help - those who consider themselves spiritual because they feel awe when they look at a sunset or a particularly awesome sorting algorithm are unlikely to relate their spirituality to spirits of any kind.
Or more accurately, to be attuned to subtle aspects of life that you think cannot be fully described in material terms.
ETA: Oh, and I’m still waiting for panache45 to explain why, if I think love is a material process, that means that I don’t believe in love.
You don’t believe in material things. That chair you’re sitting on? Material. So you don’t believe in it.
More seriously, I suspect the reasoning was that you believe that love is a material process (but you’re wrong and it’s not), so you don’t believe in love (which is something which isn’t a material process). Basically it’s like saying that if you believe in a God that won’t send unbelievers to hell, you don’t actually believe in God - you believe in something else by the same name.
Myself I still want to know what love is, if not an emotion entirely contained in the mind (and of course, since the mind is embodied by material processes, that means love is too).
I was serious when I wanted to know if it could be spread on a cracker.
To me the term spirit can largely be interchangeable with ‘mood’. Some sort of emergent property that makes seemingly independent units into a cohesive whole. Like a human as a person, their individuality, their personality is their ‘spirit’. The cohesion of a nation would be a ‘mood’ or a ‘spirit’.
A word I like is the occult term: Egregore.
I think we are all talking about a spiritual concept when we talk about countries wanting things, ‘What China/Iran/America/Europe wants is…’