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The certainty of truth

Many people believe in old myths that contradict other beliefs and scientific evidence, and this causes division. Religious dogmas and myths were created before people had the benefit of modern science. Science attempts to objectively discover how life works, and religion attempts to subjectively find a way to live in harmony with life, so they both have [...]

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Free will, culture and responsibility

There is a consistent stream in our culture that everything is determined by circumstance: genes, conditioning, wealth… But most aside from genes, all those are the product of people acting on each other. The free will debate can also be framed as a responsibility debate. Who is responsible? If there is no free will, does [...]

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What’s normal – about conditioning

Religion and social pressure are two sides of the same coin. Religion gives meaning to our lives, shapes our actions – which means that people who let their lives be shaped by other pressures than our own, are by definition strange. Hard to deal with. This comes out, in the USA, in people pretending they’re [...]

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Desire & spiritual development, some thoughts

Desire has a bad name in certain spiritual circles – but in others it’s hailed as the fundamental source of all spiritual growth. In that debate I’ve always stood in the first group, but from reading I.K. Taimni’s ‘The Science of Yoga’ (a commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali), I see that it’s really [...]

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Disadvantages to kindness…

Alright – that title is a bit over the top. The thing is, I’ve been pondering the difficulty of managing groups filled with people who all mean well (you’ll read why later on). Or rather – the majority means well, wants to be kind and all that. The disadvantage is… that unkind people can create [...]

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Inspiration and intuition – spiritual value no.6

Intuition is perhaps the most central of spiritual values. I was reading a piece about a college graduate business man who was into reiki and such. Why was he doing all that? Because he wanted to get in touch with a wisdom beyond intelligence. The fact is that our culture stimulates thinking. We learn by [...]

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Gratitude – spiritual virtue 3

This was one was derived directly from ‘The Secret’. It really is a virtue, not a value or anything like that (though I value it). Those who are grateful, can stop striving. When you’re grateful, you can accept and live with what is in your life. If you’re grateful, you’re not annoyed. When you’re grateful, [...]

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Freedom – spiritual virtue, value or norm no. 1

In my series about spiritual values I want to start out with a virtue that is perhaps the strongest ideal in the series. Is freedom a virtue? In a traditional religious setting taking responsibility would be considered a virtue. Freedom and responsibility can’t be separated. Those who have freedom, have a lot of responsibility. With [...]

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