Gary

When people do things like dye their hair or whatever – I guess they are putting themselves in a position where people are going to judge them. I have been judged and mocked many times for my hair style and clothing choices but I just take it with a grain of salt – here in England, dyed hair and piercings are more common but generally speaking, dressing as a goth/punk/rocker/what have you isn’t cool or fashionable – I don’t even wear any of the more “extreme” clothes or fashions associated with any of those styles, I just wear plain regular-fitting clothing and for some reason that makes me instantly identifiable as part of those subcultures and the negative stereotypes associated with them. I’m kind of stuck with the tattoos I have, and people are entitled to their opinion about tattoos, but I love tattoos (I will probably have more), I love piercings and I love blue hair (well I’ve since shaved all my hair off so it’s back to my natural colour). I am able to do those things at this point in my life because I am self-employed and I have no dress codes to follow. I’m generally relaxed about appearances but as I’m in the process of planning to live and work abroad as an English teacher again, I know I will need to cover up my tattoos and take the piercings out.

I agree that religious belief can be comforting and empowering – I understand that from my response earlier I went into a great detail about some of the negative aspects about religion but there is still a lot from religious and spiritual teaching that I admire and respect – love, mutual respect, valuing life, uplifting others etc. Like I said before, I have been friends with people from all faiths or no faiths at all and they are some of the nicest, down to earth, selfless, open-minded, non-judgemental souls I have encountered. When the conversation was about religion or their particular beliefs, I just listened with fascination – they didn’t try to tell me what I should be believing in.

From reading about or listening to other beliefs and tenets, I often think to myself – is there any practical use I can take from these tenets that I could apply to my agnostic mindset? Could I grow from this? Anything that won’t point me in a particular direction as such, just something I could enrich my life with, and hopefully enrich the lives of those I care about. For example – some religions place an importance on gratitude, that is definitely something I want to incorporate into my life. I have no real use for things like ritual and I am not much for meditation – I know those things aren’t exclusively religious but my preferred method for meditation is to go for a long walk, where I am able to really think about what my goals are. Repeating my goals and the envisioned final outcome is what keeps me focused – I don’t believe in the law of attraction and I know the result isn’t going to manifest out the ether but having an image to work with gives me the momentum I need to accomplish my goal. Maybe I won’t be successful, maybe the final result will be different than I expected, I can’t control that but the important thing is I strive for that goal.

It was my absolute pleasure Gary, I do hope you will stick around and post more! I am okay with you using our dialogue for your blog post – please do show me once you have publised it.

Thanks 😀

Joe

@emanatepresence

For me, emotional mastery equates to not being the master of my emotions, if that makes any sense. Emotional mastery for me seems like some near-impossible feat (in my view, at least – maybe other people are adept at mastering their emotions but I don’t think I am at all!) I no longer try to fight certain emotional responses, try to deny them or trying desperately to return to the state of equilibrium from before that particular emotional response to such-and-such. I just allow myself to be and feel whatever it is I’m feeling at that particular time. I allow them to just be.

Journalling is my preferred method of processing these things – writing is my preferred method of meditation. I just write whatever is on my mind, a stream of consciousness if you will and certain words trigger certain associations, memories and emotions which triggers more words.

But I think I can kind of agree with your view that humanity isn’t developed emotionally – the people I see around me in my day-to-day life, I see grown adults who are angry and easily upset at the tiniest things, or prone to denial. An idea I discussed with Anita in a previous post – the quest for the holy grail, the quest for Shangri La, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That which supposedly brings everlasting fulfilment, happiness or some form of salvation. Always seeking things, always waiting for the big break in life, always wanting to be anywhere but in the now, always wanting something else…We think we’ve found it or acquired it but there’s no lasting fulfilment, there is always something more that we want…The pot of gold is elusive, the pot of gold is an illusion…

I do hope you post more here, I find your topic prompts really fascinating!

Joe

Dom

It’s okay to outgrow friends – you deserve to be surrounded by people who understand and appreciate you for who you are. Life is too short to spend time with people you really don’t enjoy spending time with. You shouldn’t have to feel guilty about this. Friendships should be a two-way street about support and bringing people up, not keeping them down.

I’ve had some really crummy friends over the years, and this year I came to the end of a one-sided, very toxic friendship. I soon realised that we just didn’t gel together any more. It’s okay to be friends with somebody who holds different aspirations in life but the toxic friendship I mentioned didn’t seem to understand this – he wanted to stay stuck in the past, he was too critical of the fact I wanted to make more of an effort to become healthy and he would bad-mouth me to my other friend about this. I’ve learned not to spend too much time with people who are too critical of other people and those who gossip and talk about people behind their back – they will only drag you down into their drama and into their level.

As for making new friends – what are your interests and hobbies? Could you make friends from volunteering for some community or charity project? You could also check out meetup – I believe it’s a site where a group of people with the same interests arrange meet-ups and other fun stuff like that (I haven’t checked it out yet).

Keine

Ah, the inner critic. Nasty little bugger, always striking at the worst time.

Just gotta do it! For me, a vicious circle to get into is spending too much time looking at the work of other artists who inspire me and then I feel bad – “this person creates wonderful art, my work is nowhere near as good as this”

It’s like Anita has said – focusing on ‘Me Art’. I think the best work I have produced is when I have decided to switch off from the internet/computer games etc and just dedicated time to creating. I know I should just create art for me and myself only but I’ve only found the courage to share my work online over the past year – I had uploaded odds and ends before but I never really shared any of the things I really felt strongly about – I was scared to share it before – would I receive harsh criticism on my work? Would people hate it? Would they compare my work to other artists, drawing out parallels between my work and the work of others and tell me I’m unoriginal and just copying from other artists?

I guess try not to compare your work to that of anybody else, don’t be afraid to experiment and just dedicate time to making art inspired by you. Don’t be concerned about what other people might think of the final piece once you have finished, just focus on the creation. And I highly recommend drawing/painting with your non dominant hand! I’m by no means an art expert, just sharing what I have learned so far!

Joe

@Path of Peace

I agree with Anita, make gradual changes and prioritize what you want to improve in your life. Making aĺl of these changes at once will seem overwhelming. All the times I’ve tried to embark on radical new lifestyle changes – stopping smoking, taking up running at 6am at the same time I decide to stop eating junk food – I always failed everytime I tried to juggle these things. Habits take a while to make or break, be kind and patient to yourself and introduce them gradually.

Best of luck!

Joe

@Anita

Some interesting points you raise there. I guess I believe spirituality to be based on personal experience. I used to think spirituality was synonymous with things like new-age, astrology, astral projection and mediumship – indeed I used to believe in those things whole-heartedly but I find the more I get older the more sceptical I am of such things. I like to think I’m “open-minded” but such things don’t really concern me much any more. I want to concentrate on the land of the living now.

As for the whole god thing – I often think about this quite a lot but I still class myself as agnostic. I wasn’t raised or brought up to have religious beliefs as such, but I guess about 50% of the time I do believe there is something else out there (god/supreme consciousness/the universal mind/whatever) and I believe that there is still a lot that human beings don’t have the answers to. I’m not entirely against the idea of god but at the same time I’m no longer the kind of person who could blindly accept and agree to believe in something else and live my life according to somebody else’s rules and expectations. Sometimes I do believe there’s something else, sometimes I don’t – I’m on the fence. I used to ponder and wonder when I was a teenager and it used to drive me mad – “Is there a God? What is the point to all of this?” but I guess over the past two years I’ve relinquished this need to know, this need to be in the loop. I guess not needing to know and not having answers became liberating for me in a weird kind of way. It’s the same with the afterlife – I finally admitted to myself a few years ago that I don’t really know what happens and I felt relieved. Hakuna matana and all that.

So what of this “personal spiritual experience” I mentioned in the first paragraph? The feeling of deep peace I get when I get to look at a beautiful sunset, or an overcast sky (I’m weird like that, don’t ask why). The feeling of wonder and wander I get when I visit a new place. The weekend I spent in Granada, Spain with just myself for company (I’ve always loved the idea of travelling alone). Looking at amazing artwork. Listening to music that really touches me and feeds my imagination. Playing with and talking to my pet cat. When the internal white noise is turned off. All of those mundane things are as close to a spiritual experience as I can imagine.

But I do believe it’s possible to be “spiritual” without being religious, or without believing in any kind of higher power. Not knowing the answers is liberating and enlightening for me (I’m still human and prone to making silly mistakes).

@Barry

I totally agree with you on this one – spirituality is an individual experience. Like I said in my description of what I entail as being “a spiritual experience” – putting labels onto it, trying to put it into words, trying to put it into a box…Experiences are different for everybody – what a person believes to be a spiritual experience will probably be different to what somebody else believes their spiritual experience to be – we all experience different things and it’s difficult if not impossible to put into words. When leaders label themselves as experts or giving off the impression that they know everything and speaking with absolute conviction that their truth is the only truth, they are putting themselves on a pedestal.

Maybe I have never experienced what a true, proper spiritual experience should be – the examples I gave are just examples of times where I can truly feel calm and peace without internal dialogue and thought processes, that’s to me the best I can think of when describing a spiritual experience. Maybe other people would describe spiritual experiences as having some kind of trippy altered state of consciousness and perception. I don’t know.

How would you describe a spiritual experience? Has what you have described ever happened or occurred to you?

Joe

Hey ZenAlex!

I’m not sure if I really consider myself as being part of a spiritual community as such – I guess here on TinyBuddha, this is the closest thing to a spiritual community that I am part of and what I love about it is that there are many different voices and perspectives with different ideas.

In real life, I’ve been acquainted with a few people who are interested in spirituality or would describe themselves as being spiritual. I guess when people place this label on themselves, other people will always try and point out their less-than-spiritual behaviour – I understand that nobody is perfect but this particular person I speak of did tend come across as being hypocritical, preachy and sanctimonious and I don’t really care for that kind of thing. Another person in this group of acquaintances who loved to discuss his spiritual beliefs liked to drag other people into spiritual or theological debates – criticizing the belief system of somebody else in the group, challenging somebody else just because they had no beliefs whatsoever and making stupid ignorant assumptions about me (it never gets old and boring, just because I have tattoos and piercings and I listen to punk and industrial rock that makes me a heretical devil worshipper apparently!)

I guess I don’t like people who are into spirituality for all the wrong reasons – just using it to show off and boost their own ego “Oh look at me I am SO enlightened therefore I am SO much BETTER than you bla bla bla…” -I find people like that have their heads firmly lodged up their own backside. As they say, if you’re gonna talk the talk, don’t forget to walk the walk…

My current, personal definition of spirituality is trying to stay present (still got a long way to go on that one!) and doing things that bring me inner stillness and joy (creating my own weird and wonderful fantasy world with paints and paper with my illustrations, cooking and eating good food, looking at sunsets, playing with my cat and laughing at stupid things).

I really want to meet people in real life who are interested in spirituality but at the same time not coming across as being pious and pretentious.

But this is an interesting prompt for discussion, thanks for bringing it up 😀