The Future of "Spiritual But Not Religious"

[@santanudutta2555]

SPNR sounds very similar to the more philosophical forms of Hinduism (e.g. Advaita Vedanta) and Buddhism. The narrated dissatisfactions that caused people in the West to develop SPNR might cause a Hindu to simply shift from the path of Bhakti, or Faith/Love (which is similar to the Abrahamic religions) to the path of Gyana, or Knowledge, which is what SPNR appears to be rediscovering. I don’t say this from a position of smug superiority, having been born Hindu, but a respectful acknowledgment that some of the best teachers of Hinduism are Western people like Alan Watts. In summary, I am left with a feeling of “been there before”.

[@herambaanjaneya2041]

I would imagine that most people who're "spiritual but not religious" are folk who've become very disillusioned and disenchanted by the religions into which they were born. Being born and raised in a particular religion can be hugely problematic within the Abrahamic Religions replete as they are with their stubborn dogmas which often don't survive close inspection and are eclipsed once adolescence and young adulthood is reached and critical thinking faculties are employed. Because Christendom is so pervasive most are ex-Christian. It's particularly problematic under Islam to be SBNR due to severe sanctions otherwise there would be many millions or is that billions more?

[@wilhouts6173]

“…what you see is not all you can.” What a great closing thought. THANK YOU. I had to listen to that twice to make sure I got it. Got me thinkin’.!

[@zehrajafri9252]

Religion is mainly that which Prophets taught through teachings and example. It was simple rules for a good, clean life, with human rights, kindness and justice for all living things. The rest of the mumbo jumbo was added later by followers that turned religion to their personal benefit. The prophets were spiritual, the religions,once institutionalized were about financial benefit for those who controlled them, bringing cruelty and injustice in the name of religion.

[@TawsifEC]

Great lecture and discussion.

[@ericschnipke874]

Thank you for providing a platform for these topics to be discussed!

[@leslampkin9023]

Being struck by lighting. Here's a thought, way back in the 80's I first showed the symptoms of epilepsy. All of a sudden right out of the blue, deja vu after deja vu started to happen. This went on for decades until in 2007 seizures took a whole new twist. Wow what a trip.

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

Hope you´re well. I´m interested in psychosomatic medicine and the like. I always imagine that spiritual practices, possibly in combinations like yoga, tai chi, buddhism, shamanism, and Christian versions, et al all can heal such conditions in spiritually satisfying ways.

[@leslampkin9023]

@@robinhoodstfrancis I'm doing amazingly well thank-you. Just prior to this lock down I knew everything there was about covid then a seizure would hit and I lost all memory of it. But I had also started a walk prior to the seizure, no destination in mind but it's turned out to be a 16 000 km (and counting) walk around the city I live in. This isn't the first such walk, between 2015 and 2017 I did another one as well, a 14 000 km walk in support of clean drinking water. As a teenager I was very inspired by Terry Fox and his run across Canada and still am today.

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

@@leslampkin9023 I´m a fan of hiking, now greatly restricted due to family with kids and other demands. John Muir walked from Kentucky to Florida then took a boat to Cuba back in the 1860s. Muir became an eco-spiritual post-Presbyterian. Stay connected to Divine Love. I also recommend Christian Science Reading Rooms!

[@lisagonder4097]

The mind is a powerful thing...

[@SeekersofUnity]

Brilliant. Thank you

[@traviswadezinn]

Very important topic, excellent presentations

[@augustas9844]

I would like to make a non-educated comment (I only have a high school diploma).I think one big reason this mantra is so popular today is because teens and young adults experience social awkwardness. I believe they Jump on this bandwagon to fully or partially justify their decision to avoid church worship. My parents we’re Christians in name only. But even as a young child I was deeply spiritual and longed to attend church. I would never consider attending however because I had a birthmark on my calf which I was very self-conscious about, and back then girls did NOT go to church in pants! In the 80s they instead would say “I don’t believe In organized religion.” Same difference. So I identified with them because there was no way to deal with my real issue. Thank goodness the social norms have changed and the dress codes aren’t as strict today.

[@wilhouts6173]

Yes, as one of the presenters mentioned there is a biological urge. First to understand our surroundings for survival, then eventually to make sense of it all. Fear keeps us constricted in appeasement. It is part of our growth and development to go thru stages. We are all on our individual path in this. Very helpful to be still, have an inner life. There is more than us.

[@MaryJaneHancock]

Fascinating presentation. Thought provoking. How about those of us who identify as recovering 'fill on the blank.' Such as a recovering catholic? Or recovering baptist? Thank you for hosting & posting. Some brilliant minds in that room

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

Well, you have to get a little clearer about what you mean. If you mean you´re still yearning for your upbringing denomination, you sound interested in spiritualizing your experience in that denomination. I was raised atheist humanist by an educationalist, and found an interfaith scholar Huston Smith´s description of the Chinese Tao, and Unitarian Universalist interfaith´s congregation and statement of support for spiritual paths. What are your feelings and beliefs? Whatever they are, you, and we in the US, with the UN giving a still broader reference with US origins, are in a context of REligious Freedom. Catholics are lobbying for women ministers. Some of them are not yet considering leaving their denomination, again, yet.

[@christianorthodoxy4769]

​@@robinhoodstfrancisWe are not a denomination. The fact you said that, shows your knowledge of history and fact' to be Poor.

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

@@christianorthodoxy4769 Well, as knowledge of anything and everyrhing including history goes, your own "rush to judgment" shows how you get things wrong, clearly out of pride and neglect of education's basic and essential role in modern society. And spirituality. I evaluated the comment Iwas responding to, dear misguided "orthodox" soul, and commented about "spirituality WITHIN a denomination of their upbringing." That was the focus of MY response. And one important issue in a world where denominations have history and value, as in "social capital." Customized trauma recovery I would think is more normally part of conservative evangelicalism, or even more extreme cultish denoms like J Witnesses. I'm an unaffiliated interfaith UU Quaker Christian plus, Son. My University education is what I had to include in my self-awareness for its very specific role, and my good sense of choice. I'm like a new subspecies of human being. Read some Fritjof Capra, J Campbell, K Armstrong, JB Cobb, OC Simonton MD, and VG Tucker's Healer in Harm's Way about a Christian Scientist who just stayed there despite her experiences and activist values. You've got a number of things to learn, and with a username like yours, need to learn rhe meaning of Jesus' loving and just integrity standard, and how his atonement has most significantly a potentializing role. And actually trying to help people, and transform profiteering, materialistic culture as in homeless shelter volunteering and Greenpeace-Oxfam type activism in food co-op grocery stores, credit union local co-op banks and so on. You need it, dear "poor" judge of issues.

[@aidanmckeown]

Thank you for a fascinating discussion.

[@msalama6074]

Wonderful presentation

[@peterblock6964]

Another perspective to consider is the analogy of sports and the arts. So many people enjoy watching athletes do their thing and support their favorite teams with a religious zeal. - even to the point of starting fights with adherents of opposing teams. People practically worship their favorite artists, especially actors and musicians. In all these variations it is extremely common for people to consider their favorite athlete, team, actor/actress, musician, band, etc. to be the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time)-practically a god or at least a demi-god. Out of every million of these fans, maybe a few thousand get inspired to try their hand at the sport or art they admire. Out of those thousands of dabblers perhaps a couple dozen take it seriously enough to attempt the work. Out of hundreds of those, one or two are serious enough to continue the work required for mastery after initial failures or setbacks. Out of those, perhaps a few have enough perseverance, patience, persistence, and capability to accomplish something significant. (This is a loose paraphrase of an Indian description of the spiritual life.) 99.99% of religious people (no matter the religion) are really nothing more than fans. Hopefully benign, but in the current era they are getting increasingly malignant. Many of these cannot discern the difference between being a malignant dangerous "fan" of their religion and actually spiritually transforming. SBNR people may be attempting to live outside of these various religious "fan" clubs, but that doesn't mean they haven't simply created their own new "spiritual" fan club. Membership in any religion or SBNR philosophy is no guarantee of achieving something spiritually significant nor is membership in any particular religion a guarantee of NOT achieving something spiritually significant. The current state of religion and spirituality requires something like a SBNR movement to prevent complete malignant calcification of existing religions.

[@wilhouts6173]

Yes, what you are touching on is how individual the inner life is. We are in community, experiencing effort, conflict and struggle - just the right environment/conditions for growth/to be grown, while loving and serving our fellow man/beings.! It’s a full life, with free-choice and decisions galore. &Just enough time.

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

Great point. I have been and continue to be a fan of University-based culture, and have seen the necessity to integrate and resacralize all my secularized, desacralized cultural inputs and common notions. Thus, in responding to anti-theists, mostly scientific materialists, but also fundamentalists, I´ve drawn on my own background to identify the need to supersede "science" as the prime source of status academic work. Comparative Religious Studies actually is part of what I recognize, but even more broadly, to capture liberal arts and sciences, as Multidisciplinary Philosophy, and Theology, and in fact noting that it is in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity of structured pluralism. They were talking about the compartmentalization factor, and trying to get into activating comparative thinking. It´s a modernized Christian impulse advancing in the end Christianity´s trump card. It operates around Jesus´ two loving Commandments, with no 2 being "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Thus, colonialism was perpetrated by nominal Christians prioritizing merchant, soldier, and political power motivations. Christianity has its self-correcting empirical mechanisms in resurgent integrity, with University-based philosophical scholarship central to that, US based constitutional democracy and Civil Rights, and its elevation to UN human rights and sustainability. Thus, globalized secularized Christianity has been established with its strengths and weaknesses. Unsustainability and human rights abuses, by the UN related University-based standards with structured pluralism, allow for diversity, but require modernization under pressure of existing problems and the Christian basis of secularized educational and western cultural tools and sustainability standards. Gandhi´s interfaith Christian Hinduism was something he developed with a law school education and Jesus´ Jewish heritage and legacy in social justice prophetic justice as essential and unique. Even Buddhism´s high lovingkindness integrity failed to impact India much, or achieve extensive development on its own. Prophetic social action was pioneered by Elijah under God´s influence, so that he spoke truth to power, to King Ahab, and was protected. Key associations and causal connections through spiritual-religious practice, study, experience, and phenomena.

[@peterblock6964]

@@robinhoodstfrancis I'm definitely in the camp of those who insist on a transformation and evolution of consciousness. Ideas have to serve that. The current environment in the United States has Christianity going completely off the rails and heading for an abyss. Truly spiritual Christians are the exception rather than the rule and they don't seem to have much clout on the world stage but are being drowned out by the belligerent cacophony of phonies. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is ignored and opposed even at the most superficial level of implementation. At its roots this teaching is from Adwaita Vedanta and requires that direct realization to truly appreciate and implement. Personally, I see the present spiritual crisis as an inflection point. Humanity can look at itself and its religions with clear eyed critical thinking and step up to a deeper/higher/broader level of spiritual evolution, or fall back as a failure. On the surface it looks like we're in store for failure just based on the superficial noise. Those that can lead in a positive direction tend to get ignored generally. We can also imagine, and hopefully experience, a spiritual force working behind the scenes and behind ordinary human awareness that is forcing the religious nonsense to the surface to be dealt with definitively instead of hiding it in the closet and simply spraying pleasant "perfume" over the stench of corruption. My strategy is attempting to connect with that so far largely hidden spiritual evolutionary force directly and not be satisfied with just lofty mental ideas.

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

@@peterblock6964 Good impulse to seek the Transcendental spiritual connection. I built up over the years, from interest in the Tao and Tao Te Ching, and a little reading around, a Kung Fu class, the 12 step groups, Buddhist temples, shamanism, and other workshops. And reading in psychology, and activism. The Quaker Friends have an amazing tradition, starting with George Fox´s leading their co-founding and his influential activism . Western Civilization´s heritage is Jesus´ legacy, and my degrees from Bio Anthro to a masters in International Relations were powerful intellectual viewpoints that have made me a formidable "-philosopher-theologian" now, I also have valued the role of psychosomatic medicine on top of therapeutic psychology. My intellectual insight has been a key fruit of it all in recent years. The need to acknowledge Multidisciplinary Philosophy, with contemplative methodology and combining disciplinary insights, not just "science," and the like. The guy´s comment about Unitarian Universalism at the end was appropriate, but exaggerated. UUs are way too overintellectualized and complacently humanist overall, I found, so that my enthusiasm for their insights have me identifying as an unaffiliated interfaith UU Christian! Liberal Christianity seems to me the institutional structure that can remain fairly sturdy as individuals do their thing in modern society. Don´t confuse the right wing, funded by the business profiteers directly, with progressives. Barack Obama and Biden are great examples of progressive Christians, albeit complacent. The key is to identify activist activities, like the PIRGs, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace, Oxfam, too, and start to associate them with spiritual practitioners, and gradually people will start connecting the dots of historical sociology in the Christian realm, first of all. Gandhi seems to have represented some slice of winners of prizes like the Right Livelihood Award, maybe the Goldman Environmental Prize. Good luck. God bless. I like this formulation: Stay kind, stay curious, and stay connected to Divine Love in spiritual-religious tradition of structured pluralism in Universities through Jesus. Just like a monk, Buddhist even.

[@aprilstearns9104]

I've identified as spiritual but not religious for at least 50 years, although I do like the version that omits the "but".

[@lisagonder4097]

This resonates so much with my higher power and I would love to have a community of like minded people to explore our history and I believe we are not god but we are an image of god/higher power. A humanistic community. Not a narssasitic community. A community that encompasses civility who understands that humans experiences life through emotions, the foundation of human wellness starts when you can be empathic, love, care and be compassionate to self, a community that encourages and challenges growth and understand of life the after life beliefs, thoughts and actions humans make. I disagree with the religion I was born into and Roman Catholic because it not about emotions it's too cult, judgemental and bureaucratic, political and materialistic. It always boils down to my way or the highway and that does not sit well with me. We are moving towards the stage of Wisdom we cannot live the way people lived in the 1500's. That's the reality. Energy is our beliefs,thoughts and actions, the world we live in have to align for our time. In spiral dianamics we are moving into community, synergy follows and holistic living follows that... Thank you for your presentation... it's a movement worth work in on...

[@thedoubtfuls]

Nice discussion. I like Linda AM, her tongue in cheek opener: "Saladbar spiritualists, narcissicistic commitment phobes, antidogma experience seekers, victims of religious abuse, rich white women in expensive yoga outfits" hahaha very good. SBNRs: "we are all born good...as a reaction to original sin" - I'd like that.

[@corneliuscorcoran9900]

I would love to have heard something about SBNR beliefs around health, medicine, 'healing' and 'wellness'. How many believe in the power of crystals, reiki, homeopathy, reflexology etc. (unforunately) etc? How many have 'spiritual' artefacts displayed in their homes, generally lifted directly from Asian religions- Buddha statues, Mandalas, candles, incense and so on? I suspect that an inordinately high number, would believe in and/or possess, many/all of the above. Possibly their anti-institutional bent, makes them distrust 'Big Pharma, hospitals, doctors who all have the same scientific 'dogma'.... or perhaps G K Chesterton was right: "When (wo)men stop believeing in God, it's not that they believe in nothing; they believe in anything."

[@lizgichora6472]

Thank you very much.

[@macavelli8905]

Interesting conversation

[@petermeyer6873]

WOW, the story given at around 15:00 has all the explanation right there: A woman is struck by lightning. Bevore she was using her mind, beeing sceptic of religious/spiritual claims. After the strike, she suffers severe mental limittations. As it is clearly said, she struggles in her memory to distinguish the present from the past and has lost most of her capabilities to think things through. That state is then called "spritual" instead of simply "unsuspicious".

[@melissamybubbles6139]

What about the religious but not spiritual?

[@betadryl]

Or spiritual and omni religious? Alan Watts / Joseph Campbell kind of spirituality.

[@peggyharris3815]

Popthebubble...lol. How true. Religion as a social club and afterlife insurance policy.

[@brianharris6437]

There are hundreds of millions of people who fit that description, including but not limited to fundamentalists of all stripes.

[@muzwot9603]

DAMN RIGHT Spiritual but NOT religious

[@wilhouts6173]

Terms break down. It is a matter of the heart intent. Sounds like you have that. You’re on your path.🌞

[@wilhouts6173]

Very interesting. “My students who are stem cell students tend to have a ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ experience “. Not an exact quote.! …the microcosm shows the Pattern. Just as in our Biome. See: mitochondria level/cell.

[@zehrajafri9252]

Accepting spirituality is being religious in the true sense.

[@wilhouts6173]

Yes, by nature we can not see the whole picture. This, the phrase “The Big Picture”. Takes a little humility.

[@Thewonderingminds]

🍓26:56/// Imagine Mozart against Paganini ground military groups, and why not also with nuclear might !!!

[@jerrylong6238]

Spiritual is a word used by people coming out of religion, It is almost, but not fully Atheist.

[@lisagonder4097]

How will test tube babies take to religion in 20 years, I'm serious... Poor humans where will they get spiritual support.

[@juditrotter5176]

Are the yoga pants women likely to be QAnnon?

[@sunnya3629]

Some good messages! except the discussion is not centered on Capital S and Capital Gs. They will never know the G because they cant grasp SHIVA-AUM!!

[@wilhouts6173]

Can you say more about that.? Thanks.

[@MikenNinginThai]

The word or term is from the religious perception so it all ties into religion/beliefs/God or God's mind you all religions have created wars and hardships as well as in "god(s)" name. There is no such things of any kind of god(s), only culture and beliefs WITHOUT all the religious bs that goes along with it

[@davidgagnon3781]

SBNR = Intellectual Lightweight.

[@sinisterminister4201]

I believe in death after life.

[@wilhouts6173]

That’s interesting. Could say more/expand.

[@sinisterminister4201]

@@wilhouts6173 it sounds more reasonable to me.

[@nanashi7779]

@@sinisterminister4201 And life after death

[@sinisterminister4201]

@@nanashi7779 What happens after you die? Lot's of things happen after you die - they just don't involve you.” - Louis C.K.

[@nanashi7779]

@@sinisterminister4201 Prove it

[@davidgagnon3781]

A lot of Feel-Good-New-Age-Woo.

[@sinisterminister4201]

ABRAXAS

[@wilhouts6173]

Beyond Abraxas.!

[@TheGuiltsOfUs]

RELIGION IS OVER

[@wilhouts6173]

“Religion is over”.❗️Well, they have certainly shot themselves in the proverbial foot. Perhaps that is to be expected/what happens in Groups. As Jung observed men act differently in groups, see: War. Seems inner growth is best accomplished on an individual basis. Tap into our personal creativity.

[@jerrylong6238]

THANK GOD.

[@christianorthodoxy4769]

Absolutely Not. Keep dreaming... 💫🤡 🔥🤭 🔥🥴