What is your spiritual practice?

100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one, and derived tremendous spiritual and psychological relief when I realized all of that was absolute nonsense at the age of 9. I knew I was gay at the time and wouldn't come out until I was 18 or so, but my life just got a lot easier when I removed religion completely. I also recall discovering increased moral agency -- as a Christian I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven (an idea I found laughable), and that the objective basis for making moral judgements comes directly from god (another idea I found laughable). As an atheist I was suddenly responsible for making my own moral judgements and conclusions (I had to decide upon my own objective basis for making moral judgements), and forgiveness was something I had to work towards myself (as in I had to forgive myself for things, which is not easy, but is incredibly rewarding) versus simply getting it for free from some nonexistent deity. All in all, was an incredibly positive change in my life, and I do believe there can be a weird sort of spirituality to 100% atheism that people don't really acknowledge.

I am a practicing Catholic. I have four kids all under 7. My normal day consists of feeding them, bathing them, calming tantrums, losing my temper, getting bitter at my lack of time for hobbies, and growing resentful of my lack of time for reading the Bible, praying, etc.

But then I remember that this is a true dying to self. Not only a dying to self, but a dying to the world too as each of these sacrifices, failures, and victories occur hidden away from the world. Thus I commend myself to this daily humbling, this emptying, and also trust myself to the daily prayer of the monks, whose prayer and sacrifice are also hidden from the world and whose labors I suspect are also just as arduous, frustrating, and challenging at times.

> For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find i

Day starts with prayer and studying scripture by myself for awhile, then briefly as a family before everyone goes their way. Part of the personal prayer time includes seeking direction on who I might help that day. Throughout the day I try to take little breaks for a brief prayer, longer if I'm stuck on a programming bug whose solution eludes me and for which I need extra inspiration. Also I try to go on a daily walk to appreciate nature and to recognize blessings in my life. Each meal includes a prayer of thanks. Before bed there's a brief family scripture study and prayer, then a prayer with my wife, then a personal prayer to round out the day where I try to reflect on how things went and what I hope to do better tomorrow.

I used to be devout Mormon, and a hardcore one at that. It was woven so deeply in my reality, that everything had spiritual significance for me.

A few years ago, I encountered history, documents, and truths about the religion that were never presented to me. Since then, I've slowly, painfully, removed myself from the religion, and removed the religion from me.

It's extremely painful to go from a space where everything is eternally, deifically, infinitely of value to "nothing actually matters".

I was diagnosed with PTSD this summer from the whole affair, as it was truly traumatic, and there were times that I almost didn't make it in the most literal sense.

But I've pieced together significance slowly and surely over the years. I've learned to slow down, love deeper, participate in the demanding process of finding and acknowledging beauty in this world, and have found spirituality in my own ways.

"The Anthropocene Reviewed" by John Green was a huge influence on my current flavor of spirituality (as it's constantly shifting). I'm sure the book means something different to everyone, but for me, it really broke down the need to work to build a habit of awe, and look for the things that stop you in your tracks. Observation and conscious efforts to find meaning and beauty are how I find my spirituality.

Not long ago in my new apartment after breaking up with a long time girlfriend I had an amazing experience while meditating. The odd thing was I never really meditated back then. Something just told me to do it. I was led on an internal journey that showed me some things about my self. One, don't turn away from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Two, don't judge yourself. Three, the ego or this idea of myself is an illusion. It ended with my sense of self expanding out into infinity. I was not a body; I was infinite and an awesome wave of (I assume) serotonin like a big dose of E. Since then I meditate often and just try to be completely open to my entire experience. I'm an indifferent witness as often as I can. "Bad" feelings have lost their edge. When I sat with the feeling I discovered there is nothing "bad" about it. It's just a different feeling in my experience. With this I have become lighter, freer, happier and more at peace with the experience just as it is, right here, right now. I recommend you try observing yourself as if you are a third person. What do you think about, how do those thought make you feel, what do you do in reaction to uncomfortable or "bad" feelings? I think you will start to notice that it's all just thoughts, often silly, ridiculous thoughts about a future that will not happen. Memory too are just thoughts. They are not happening now and even if they were the judgments of them are just ideas that come from social conditioning. Good and bad, right and wrong are just opinions and they change over time and from person to person. Don't take them seriously. Its like trying to hold on to vapor as if it's something solid. I have since learned from watching Rupert Spira videos on youtube that this is kinda like Atmananda Krishna Menon's Direct Path. A lot of us here are science and engineer types. Think of this as like hacking your human experience or rooting your brain. Why be satisfied with little doses of happiness and satisfaction gotten by jumping thru social or cultural hoops. Happiness, peace and contentment are within us. Go get it for yourself.

Muslim here. Ritual prayer is the core exercise. Before sunrise, after sunset, and 3 other times during the day. But as important or more so is constant remembrance of God. If that's not institutionalized in one's day-to-day psychology, one will lose spiritual momentum, if we can use such terminology. "Worship" in Arabic عبادة actually means something like "conformity to God's order", as far as I understand. So even eating an apple becomes a spiritual exercise when done with knowledge of why and doing so for God's sake, even as its sole beneficiary seems to be oneself.

Tetris. Twice per day.

When I get into a good Tetris routine, my mind will continue to play even when I'm not in front of the screen. There's just this constant background game playing in my head. This might sound distracting, but somehow it's enlightening. It provides rhythm. It provides structure. It keeps my thoughts in constant reorganization, constant renewal.

Overall, I believe Tetris gets my mind into a place and practice where I can more easily answer the following question.

What fits?

What fits into my life, and how? How do I fit into the world?

* My kids are important to me. How do I best fit them into my life? What's too much? What's too little? What do I need? What do they need? How can we best enjoy our time together?

* That friend is not a good influence anymore. The current fit is strained. How much of him is too much?

* This thing I'm doing at work is fun and I love it, but it's not advancing my goals. What fits, what can I keep? What should I discard?

* How will my actions fit into the interests of my family, friends, community?

In the past, in those dark pre-Tetris days, I tended to hang onto bad habits and bad ideas. Inertia is very strong with me. I credit Tetris-brain with helping me break through that inertia on a daily basis.

Soulful Tetris also has the advantage of being absurd enough that I never take it too seriously. Hubris is my biggest problem with organized religion. Tetris is kinda like a form of meditation for the 21st century, nothing more.

Also, it's just a really great game. And I like metaphysical excuses to play it.

I'm a religious Jew, in a bit of a crisis of faith. I still pray three times a day, I still make shabbat and observe holidays, I even still learn Torah even though I don't really believe in it anymore, because I find being well read useful when I have to explain the times I do break the cultural norms to people. Orthodox Judaism in general has a lot of laws everywhere: what you wear, what you eat, what you put in your house, and a lot of prayer and blessings.

Modern orthodox communities of Jews are very weirdly selective about the things they're ok with modernizing and the things they still hold importance with: listening to secular music is fine, wearing modern clothing is fine, but if you play instruments on the sabbath you're shunned. There's something inherently disgustingly coercive about a society that will treat you like a stranger and disown you if you don't get married, let alone if you have a relationship with someone of the same sex. Every day it gets harder to accept myself living a life where I can't openly love the people I love, but there is also a structure and community that secular society doesn't really have. Part of the draws of acceptance is that the sense of community in religious spaces is built not just out of inclusivity (we have the same religion and values) but also exclusivity (we aren't like them) and this means that sometimes you're excluded.

I’m a Protestant in the reformed tradition that would fall inline with the London baptist confession and Heidelberg catechism.

I make it my goal to read the Bible every morning. I typically spend about 30m-1h studying 1-2 verses in a given chapter. Right now I’m in the book of James.

I pray for the assistance of the Holy Spirit to illuminate my understanding, read the verse, give thanks and praise where appropriate, and journal about the verse and how it relates to similar teachings, how the meaning applies to me by either encouragement, exhortation or conviction. (Those are the typical themes).

After this, if I have time, I’ll move through my prayer list for people I’ve told that I would pray for. I pray for my wife, my children, my family and myself.

All of this is pretty dependent on me waking up early and my kids not waking up as I do this :).

I recently started reading about druidism after spending the majority of my life an atheist. I found myself missing the spirituality side: rituals and a connection for meditation/introspection, which druidism provides (all revolving around nature, earth, moon, and sun). Additionally, druidism has a lot of neat math/science roots that I find pleasing, such as the eight holidays and the wheel of the year.

Druidism has a really loose belief system and offers a couple of options for you to choose from: mono, poly, and pantheism. I reject most "god-like" things, but I think I could become something of a pantheist (the universe is God).

I don't believe any religion knows what happens after you die, and frankly I don't really care. We aren't supposed to know, it's the great mystery, and instead we should focus on ensuring everyone lives their best life. Druidism has a theory about the after life and how you go through various lives until you become a good person, but it's not something I spend time thinking about. As an aside, Iris DeMent's song Let The Mystery Be perfectly describes my thoughts on this: https://youtu.be/0gQVS2fCsek

Throughout my day, I pray in three steps.

First, gratitude, expressing my thanks for all that I have to be grateful for, all the gifts and blessings I've received.

Second, asking for forgiveness for regrettable actions, which, if I look closely, I can always find, small or large.

Third, I ask for help. I generally don't ask for specific things, but talk about general areas or people I want to help. I try make sure that my intentions and asks are well-intentioned and generally working towards increasing overall levels joy in the world.

The other crucial piece of this, where meditation practice really helps, is to pay close attention and listen for response and guidance.

Along with breathing/mindfulness meditation, I do this throughout the day, and I also find time to sit down and do a dedicated prayer and meditation for 30 minutes each.

I started meditating throughout the day, sometimes in given triggering situations, a few years ago. I started this prayer practice about a year ago and have been working on it.

I recommend trying out this practice to anyone who's curious about our reality and how it works.

I am a Practicing Stoic,

Morning routing is to spend about an hour reading texts and scholarly commentary while drinking my coffee. Then I journal, my morning journal entries are discussions with my inner daemon about how to handle the days events. Preparing myself and remembering what is and isn't in my control. Throughout the day I have reminders set to step back and examine what I am doing at that moment. This is usually coupled with one or more mental exercises to keep perspective. In the evening before going to bed I sit back down with my journal and go over any major events from the day and examine them against my philosophical beliefs. Did I approach it correctly? What did I get wrong about it. When its all written down I close my journal and forgive myself for any missteps I might have made.

Every morning I read a section of the Bible's Old Testament, Psalm, Proverb and New Testament.

I then use the Lord's Prayer as a framework to pray. Having done this for many years I have observed we begin 'Our Father' and focus on God. My own inclination would be to start with 'Forgive me' and focus on me.

I then spend my day trying to honour Jesus's teachings. The highs and lows of the previous day are discussed the next morning.

I'm a Non-denominational Christian. During my best of times I would wake up and read the bible first thing in the morning before doing any major activities. I would normally say two prayers in the morning. The first prayer would be asking for the wisdom and understanding to grasp what I'm reading and internalize the lessons. Thanking God that I have seen another day. Which depending on my spots in life has been harder or easier. The second prayer would be asking God to help me remember what I have read and for me to be able to use the lessons I have learned practically throughout my day. I would then pray thanking God about things I'm grateful for, asking for help in things I feel weak in, and praying for my prayer list towards the end. We have service on Sunday for 2 hours, bible talk once a month and a middle of the week service once a month.

I'm into magick.

So a lot of what I do is observe my thoughts and intentions and direct my attention/emotion/passion/sexual energy towards the most beautiful and joyful subset of those.

When I'm particularly certain of a desired outcome I will "cast" for it, occasionally doing a bit of sorcery: drawing funny pictures and generally doing wizardly stuff.

I also do "continuous divination" AKA leaning heavily into apophenia and just generally not assuming that mysterious forces aren't at work around me. Sometimes I'll also do "acute divination" -- my favorite method is fortune cookies, not even kidding.

Visualizing and praying to various god/esse/s is important. In particular I pray to Ganesh to help me let go of negative things I'm holding onto (this was a beautiful outcome of therapy mingling with my spiritual life); I also love Inanna, and Sun meditations. I'd also be lying if I denied that Christ shows up in my most anxious moments--especially since He appeared in a dream to tell me "you don't need to be a Christian to talk to me".

Finally, there are also public rituals that I attend on a regular (sans covid) basis where we meditate on natural/spiritual forces and socialize our spirituality.

This is one of the most important bits of it all, as it 1) is a huge source of magical energy, 2) reinforces the practices I'm doing 3) inspires/goads me into deepening those practices, and 4) exposes me to more ideas and possibilities in this zone, even if I've been negligent to study the mysteries (and I have been negligent, since focusing on my career the last few years).

In the morning, I think while drinking coffee. Then I really think in the shower. As a result I take long showers. Sometimes during the day, I'll sit back and think. While going to bed, I'll think some more.

Usually I think about problems to solve, reflect on my life so far, course adjustments, things to self improve.

One day I'll pick up a religion, but it seems like they all would require a lot of mental gymnastics to keep consistent with my mental explorations. Ultimately I think religions are useful as a tutorial on how to live a good life, but like tutorials, they don't always apply super well to your own particulars. So my parallel track is to think hard about the stuff I'm missing that a religion would provide. E.g meditative time, family matters, behaviours, habits.

But science moves so fast that a lot if religious habits are really out of date, so I have little hope to find a religion in the future. I wish there was a "Debian Sid" religion: not quite Gentoo uptodate but not too CentOS outofdate.

Not sure if it counts as spiritual, but for 10 years I've consistently done subconscious, mind+body healing exercises. It's been profoundly transformative.

Prior to that (and for quite a while after) I had a huge amount of drama and chaos in my life, and after searching far and wide for answers (starting with the usual stuff - mainstream therapy, meditation, etc) I learned about these healing practices, which address the physiological reactions that happens when we experience triggering events.

Over time, my practice has developed into this: try to live a normal, well-functioning life, do my best at whatever I do. When things happen that trigger reactions - anger, resentment, arrogance, jealousy, contempt, shame, etc, or anything that makes me feel a jolt or even very mild visceral reaction, undertake the practice, which enables me to find where in my past the reaction comes from, then do a brief breathing exercise to let it go. Rinse and repeat. Over time, the reactions weaken, my overall stress burden diminishes (along with physiological issues like inflammation, chronic pain, etc), and bit by bit life gets simpler and important indicators like relationships and career steadily imrove.

I make coffee the same way at pretty much the same time every morning.

For the last few years (and especially since the pandemic began), my most regular practice has been the Liturgy of the Hours, particularly Lauds and Vespers, which are the morning and evening prayers of the Roman Catholic Church. Each one is two psalms and a canticle, followed by a short reading, another canticle (the Benedictus in the morning and the Magnificat in the evening), intercessions, an Our Father, and a concluding prayer. I have been trying to pray Matins more regularly as well (also called the Office of Readings), which is three psalms followed by a longer reading from the Bible and reading from one of the Church Fathers.

I have found praying the rosary beneficial as well since it is more meditative than the Liturgy of the Hours, but I haven't yet been able to regularly work into my schedule.

I meditate, usually an hour of sitting practice, and then through the day.

Practicing more felt really urgent after a couple of big psychedelic trips, and I've found getting into contact with a source of fundamental unconditional love hugely helpful. I feel very in touch with the sacred, despite being agnostic at best.

I'm not a huge fan of the mainstream concentration work stuff; I've been influenced by Rob Burbea's jazzy, improvisational approach.

Also, currently I'm working on the jhanas, which are a lot of fun, and I'm excited to work on them at a 10-day retreat starting in a week. Leigh Brasington's Right Concentration is the best intro, or for a thread see https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1471300341232668679

I'm a secular Satanist. I believe Christianity and Abrahamic religions are inherently unethical. I have very strong utilitarian principles that run even deeper, which is ultimately what pushed me to Satanism. I'm a member of the Satanic temple, but in some ways it's more of a political organization than religious. I'm open to the possible existence of the paranormal, but I do not trust it at all and would question the intentions of such entities.

I am an Orthodox Christian. My day begins with prayer, as soon as possible after I wake up. Prayer consists of reading (or reciting) prayers from a prayer book, followed by 100-200 Jesus Prayers ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!"), followed by 12-25 prostrations.

I then read the daily scripture readings indicated by the liturgical calendar.

At noon, I usually read a Psalm in front of my icons (I work from home) and do 12 prostrations.

After dinner, we pray together as a family, then read several chapters from the Bible together and discuss whatever comes up in the text we are reading that day. We're currently in the middle of reading the Bible in a year.

Before bed, I repeat my morning routine, but saying evening prayers instead of morning prayers. I usually fall asleep while saying the Jesus Prayer. I also say the Jesus Prayer throughout the day as I am doing things that don't require strong focus.

We go to Vespers (evening prayers) on Saturday night, and we go to church on Sunday morning.

Growing into this routine has changed my life, healed my family, and brought immense peace and joy (and struggle!) into my life. Glory to God!

EDIT: I should add that prayers are typically said while standing in front of an icon corner, usually with a candle lit and incense burning. Obviously, when I am saying the Jesus Prayer throughout the day or falling asleep, I'm not following those guidelines, but my morning and evening prayers are said while standing, usually with my eyes open.

I am not religious at all and I've thought of myself as tolerant of religion (they all have some very good teachings, after all).

But lately organised religion has been bothering me a lot. It is just so obviously a form of controlling people: you have to believe this and that and also hand over some cash and vote for such and such.

I can't get around the fact that this still goes on so blatantly in this day and age.

Not religious and not really spiritual at all to be honest.

The closest thing to "spiritual" that I do is walking slowly. Years ago one day I noticed I had the habit of walking very quickly everywhere I went and that this was pointless. I walk much more slowly now, looking around, watching things, people, anything. I make a point of always leaving earlier than I need so that I never have to hurry.

Kind of like the reverse to the chorus in "Nowhere fast".

I'm agnostic, but I choose to believe that there's a chance the universe was created, either directly or as a side-effect of some act of will. Given what I know about how complicated projects generally get delivered, I assume that instead of some benevolent, perfect creator, the universe was created in a rush, by some stressed low-level figure. They are probably unhappy with how it turned out, and they had to implement a bunch of performance hacks (the speed of light and quantum mechanics among them) to get it working properly. They may not understand its internal state, or know we exist, but I hope they have at least some grudging affection for their creation, even if it's been superseded by other universes at this point. I call them Colin. I occasionally ask for Colin's help, and in return I try to keep my part of the universe interesting. You are free to join me in Colinism.

I'm an atheist, and don't believe in anything spiritual.

But I do think there are things that inspire me, make me feel connected to the world around me, and make me think. I love philosophy and history and I am constantly reading new things, but I especially like the wisdom of the stoics. I try to go for a walk daily, and I live where I can go hiking in the forest, along rivers, and around rugged coastlines. But mostly I just contemplate and see where my mind takes me.

Atheism. downright non-believer. Grew up by a deist family. they were not really religious. I do remember hearing praying every now and then from my childhood but it was not something that's reflected to me as important part of life. Later on met lots of religious people but did not find them interesting. After learning more about science and technology, the unresolved facts started to disturb me while I was still young. Later in life started being interested in philosophy and learned that i need to learn more about the things that i disagree. hence end up reading most of the holy books, found them close to reading LOTR. My thoughts on spiritual practice? Religion is required for most of the people because it is a meditation and a safe bay for the minds that are unable to bear the hard facts in this universe. I find it very stupid and inefficient for humanity to spend so much resources on it but I do not disrespect the religious community except the extremists and the people who's life's meaning is religion. I also believe that the majority of people are belong to a religion because they don't want to be seen as an outsider or due to their social state or job etc. Or probably because it's been an important part of their family. because it is very hard to unsee the cruel world and fool yourself with religion. "Science is the most reliable guide for civilization, for life, for success in the world. Searching a guide other than the science is meaning carelessness, ignorance and heresy."

I am Muslim and pray 5x a day. Prayer is the remembrance of God (Allah) and expression of gratitude and love.

Every morning I spend some of my wealth in charity. The Quran puts great emphasis on helping others and on being a good human being. My father used to say it's not the amount, but consistency that matters. I try to keep to that.

Apart from that, I read / listen to the Quran. This is what makes me the happiest spiritually.

simple translations of the Quran: https://beta.quran.com/1

overview of Islam: https://www.javedahmedghamidi.org/#!/mizan (English on top)

I was raised religious (catholic), and kind of believed in it. And then when I was 18-20 I spent a lot of time and effort to rid myself of religion, and have been living happy and free ever since. I still enjoy the occasional mass (once or twice a year), mainly because I like to sing.

I have not taught my kids any kind of religion or spirituality, and they don't seem to miss it. I wanted to spare them the effort of getting out of it later. What I hadn't anticipated is that as a result, they are pretty ignorant of most things, they have little idea who Jesus or Mary are, etc. (We tell them about it sometimes, of course, but it's very different than going to Sunday School for 10 years).

Atheist-ish - no spiritual practice of any kind.

In terms of beliefs, I think there’s a tonne of massive, unanswered questions about the universe, and it’s certainly possible that there are forces out there that resemble spiritual concepts. Something vaguely resembling a soul, or an intelligent life that created the universe, that sort of thing. Or not - I have no real opinion on this other than “nobody knows”.

I do think that all popular religions on earth were created by people, though. Likely started similar to cults, and evolved into something much more loosely controlled. I don’t think they’re entirely negative, religion can be a powerful positive force for a lot of people, but I do think they’re just stories made by humans, for humans.

I try to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I like to seek out and fold in examples and teachings of other religious leaders as well as long as I can resolve differences in some creative way. I am particular keen of various Asian ideas of late.

I read scriptures and other inspiring works when impressed to (I think that Dr Seuss, The Life of Pi, and maybe Laura Ingalls Wilder should be canonized—chuckle).

I serve weekly in the temple as a Latter Day Saint. There is a regularity and and a sense of the cosmic to it that lifts me and grounds me at the same time. Over the years I’ve volunteered/served in a number of different capacities, often with youth/scouts/seminary. I have found that this practice of contributing my efforts to help others has been uplifting for me. I have learned that if my own creativity/agency is removed from that service, then it turns from uplifting to toxic.

I am probably considered somewhat progressive by many of my LDS peers; I am very comfortable abstracting over much of what we “believe.” tue theological details are just not that important to me; I am more interested in what we do from moment to moment, than whether I’m tapping my ruby slippers together fervently enough. Or put another way, as a bi-weekly Sunday school teacher, I’m more interested in encouraging the class how we apply the ideas in our lives than trying to weave some sort of canonical soundness.

I was raised atheist by atheist parents. My mother was raised in one of the weirder Christian sects and got out of it before they married. I have always been an atheist despite growing up in a small town with a church on every block, including one whacky church that actually did things like book burnings and burning Michael Jackson in effigy for corrupting the youth. Most of my friends were catholic, growing up, and that led me online for friends on days when they had CCC. 300 baud hayes for the win and online atheist communities, etc.

That said, as I've gotten older, I think I've concluded that many people - maybe even most - have a sort of need for religion that I somehow never appreciated. Without religion, I think we end up with the modern world, and by that I mean the weird secular religions (on all parts of the political spectrum) that keep springing up in the absence of a formal church, complete with weird notions of sin, apocalyptic thinking, etc. As an outsider, and as someone fascinated by cults and moral panics, it's interesting how similar the structures and language are between these movements and (new) religions are.

So 100% atheist.. but a suspicion that the world would be better off, Chesterton's fence-style, with a dominant religion secretly run by atheists.

I’m Muslim… on a day to day basis I pray, ideally five times a day. The prayer timings are tied to the location of the sun in the sky, which helps me be more aware of natural rhythms. I’ve observed that the periods of my life where I am praying regularly are associated with lower levels depression, higher levels of satisfaction and purpose.

I'm kind of a pagan/panpsychist/discordian/chaos magician. I try to sidestep all that "is the supernatural 'real'?" baggage by treating it all as an abstraction layer - do my practices get what I want? Maybe it's Yahweh, the Force, universal consciousness, flying spaghetti monster, or just good ol' confirmation bias, I don't particularly care most of the time. Sometimes I straight up pretend I'm in a video game or the Matrix. It's fun. I try to lean into "Nothing is true; everything is permitted" when it comes to unfalsifiable stuff.

This is pretty much the only way I've been able to balance the super rational science heavy side of my mind with a deeper need to feel a spiritual connection.

I don't currently have a day to day practice, though I used to meditate daily. I really should get back into that though.

As a religious Jew, I (am obligated by my religion to) pray three times a day, morning, noon and evening. The longest is the morning prayer, 45 minutes approximately.

The prayers are a mix of gratitude, humility and supplication.

Somewhere in-between atheist and pantheistic here.

My primary practice is Walking. Other rituals will come and go, but taking a walk can help out almost anything that’s going on in life.

Really big walks, like hiking for days in the backcountry, at least once a year.

I'm a Discordian. To me, that means a sort of pandeistic existentialist absurdism.

A (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) argument:

God is the greatest possible being. The universe is, by definition, everything that exists. Everything is greater than any subset of everything. Therefore God is must be the entirety of existence. God seems to have numerous mostly disconnected consciousnesses, but is mostly Hydrogen. There's no inherent meaning given by a bunch of Hydrogen. Therefore we tiny conscious bits of the universe have to make our own meaning. Assigning a singular consciousness to God would be utterly arbitrary and quite silly. Silly things are fun. Therefore God is also a woman, her name is Eris, nonsense is the source of salvation, and God is the universe and isn't any singular being.

I also quite like the ontological argument for atheism:

God is the greatest possible being. Completing a task with a bigger handicap is greater (more impressive) than completing it without that handicap. Not existing is the greatest possible handicap. Therefore God must be a being capable of creating the universe despite not existing.

Faith, to me, is a joke. It's a deliberate choice to believe in things one has no evidence for (at best) or knows are false (at worst). So why not treat religion as a joke, and humor as sacred? It makes as much sense as any other choice in the matter.

So I try to live each day with a bit of humor.

I consider stargazing to be a spiritual practice. Looking for stars and planets and finding them exactly where science says they are supposed to be confirms by belief that we live in a world governed by laws, that these laws are knowable, and that we in fact do know them to a pretty reasonable degree of certainty and approximation. That makes me feel connected to the cosmos in a very deep way. I feel privileged to exist at a time and place where this is possible. I think it's pretty fucking awesome.

Daily mass. It does not feel spiritual every single day but most days the mind is focused, and I feel calm and a sense that I’m part of something greater than the immediate world of work, family and daily concerns.

Meditation while giving myself over to daily chores. Just being at peace with them, being mindful of why I'm doing them, weathering the thoughts and emotions that rebel against them.

And the same with everything else positive in my life. Living and not following the impulse to constantly stop and reassess. I have my life pretty well figured out, but something in my brain always wants to stop doing, analyze, rethink, second-guess every action every day until the actual doing is crowded out, in my head and in reality, too, if it gets its way. So my practice is to give myself over to the things that make my life and the lives of the people around me better.

Zen buddhism. I started going to a local zendo about 7-8 years ago to do a weekly 1h30 hour meditation (in fact, 3 short bursts of 25min). This also became a (much shorter) daily habit, and over the year I attend various retreats (from 1 to 5 days). The zendo itself is 'managed' by a monastic.

I started because I wanted to have a crazy experience that would modify my epistemiological understanding of the world. Over the years, I discovered how past emotional events subcounsciously influenced my decision making, how much parental roles shaped my romantic views and how much of my personality was invested in my mind and not my body. I could go on and on.

I cannot prove this scientifically, but somehow I think that my effort toward zen practice made all of this possible, and the only thing I know is that the next change will be weirder than the last one.

I would also like to mention that, even if meditation is ''not christian'', I now feel that my understanding of it is better now than 8 years ago.

I'm part of a church where we take ayahuasca a couple times a month while performing our rituals. Day to day is the usual self-awareness plus christian deal: meditation + attempting to do good, try not to be a dick to others etc.

I'm an atheist, and don't believe in the supernatural per se. To me, the supernatural is best described by Harold Abelson in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs:

> We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.

> A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.

> A computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes programs precisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer's apprentice, novice programmers must learn to understand and to anticipate the consequences of their conjuring. Even small errors (usually called bugs or glitches) in programs can have complex and unanticipated consequences.

I do think the supernatural exists but simply as perceived emergent properties of natual systems. For example, most of us have experienced love and might describe it as a supernatural experience. That is a real experience to most of us. Yet we know that in reality, the experience we had emerged from a complex set of natual systems (hormones, brainwaves, etc) that are far beyond our understanding.

So to answer your question, my spirital practices are things that increase my wellbeing and bring about these supernatural experiences.

Regularly: breath-focused meditation, time in nature, swimming laps, sex, burning incense, journaling/reflection.

Occasionally: fasting, ayahuasca, solitude retreats.

As an Atheist, I recently started reading religious texts of all Abrahamic religions(Judaism , Islam and Christianity) as well as Dharmic ones such as Buddhism. Why? Because I have always been curious about religion yet always discarded it as "bronze age superstition" as Christopher Hitchens would describe it..

Thanks to this journey, I ended up meeting a lot of great people in the community. Without exception, everyone welcomed me as an outsider and politely answered all my questions. I have been to mosques, synagogues and churches during hours of prayers and other events to observe and learn and so my network has grown by a decent size which I'm grateful of.

I think overall the result has been a net positive in my life and has broadened my understanding of history, philosophy and art. I haven't necessarily "settled" in a particular camp but I no longer brush off the idea of worshiping a God. I think one can make the distinction between _radical_ religious dogma and having a holy house of worship.

Having done lots of introspection over the past year, I don't think subscribing to Atheism is healthy because in your happiest moments or your darkest moments of despair, you have no spiritual basis to fall back on, you have no way structure way of burying the dead or celebrating the joining of a couple in a ceremonial way. Further, all Atheists still celebrate Christmas, or Easter , all of which are religious holidays and are completely meaningless to them which is ironic..

As an Atheist you also have to make up your "subjective" morality (and who is to say one's sense of moral is superior to another? there are no basis for this) which is again ironically borrowed from religious teachings. Finally Atheism fails to answer the deepest questions we have which is Why is there something instead or nothing and why are we here?

Thus considering the above, I can confidently say that my views on spiritually and religion has shifted significantly.

I have to say, this is a beautiful conversation. Mine is mostly built around music. For instance, listening to A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, or Supper's Ready by Genesis.

Reading a bit of the Gospels in my mother tongue.

I describe myself as "culturally Catholic", which is my way of saying that my cultural heritage includes plenty of Catholic elements and I am fine with that. I love popular traditions and ancient buildings, for example, even if I don't care much about faith.

For me, the fact that religion is a human creation makes the good parts about it more worthwhile, not less. It is a shared story that has been told and shaped over the centuries, and it has ended up shaping the people who told it in return.

I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I read scriptures every day (Book of Mormon, Bible, Doctrine and Covenants) for 10-30 minutes. I turned 40 this year and have a goal to read all of those scriptures cover to cover before my next birthday.

I pray every day as well, at least at night, often when I wake up, and almost always before meals (unless I'm at a restaurant or something).

Weekly I go to church, and go help with the youth activities. I also go visit families and widows regularly — or at least I try to.

I try to worship at the temple (different than the regular weekly church) about monthly.

And I pay 10% of my income as a tithing and give some each month as a "fast offering" to help the needy.

Back to the day to day stuff, I try not to swear, try to be kind, honest, and all the other things Christ was and would be.

I've been practicing kriya yoga and hatha yoga every day for the past half year. I usually do it as soon as I wake up, and it takes about an hour.

It's quite intense work, but I'm glad I've kept it up, as the benefits have been immense. I've some drama in my life, some of that is now starting to ease off, and life is becoming more intelligent and filled with ease.

For anyone interested to learn more: https://youtu.be/XLk5yks9c_Q

My ritual pre-pandemic was a cup of coffee and a small silent prayer of thanks for the new day while on the train before and after sips.

It was my mental oasis of calm, and something I realize is missing in the pandemic.

When I was much younger and trying to forge a connection, however, I spent an hour or more daily trying to “hear”; by reading versus, letting-go of mental burdens, and straining for something.

At one point I experienced what has been described as the “still small voice”, warning me that someone I knew had designs on me.

It was not audible, it was brief, yet it was extremely specific. There was no confusion in the message.

What actually shocked me was when weeks later, the events were unfolding as I was warned about; I was basically too shocked to act on what would have been a very bad decision.

Right after all of this is when I lapsed.

I’m thankful for the openness and respectfulness of this discussion.

Prior to my conversion I’d identify myself largely with new age spirituality and stoicism. They were pragmatic in that they seemingly satiated the need for the divine and encouraged behaviors that were productive from a societal perspective.

I was saved in January of 2019. The early days of walking with Christ were beautiful. I sold my most ostentatious worldly possessions, bought a motorcycle, and would ride into the mountains to find a patch of grass and read the Bible to learn more about God.

God is gracious. The more I earnestly sought Him, the more He revealed Himself.

Nowadays, I start my day with prayer and usually a brief study in the Bible. I like to focus on what the passage conveys about God’s character. Afterwards I pray for His guidance as to the tasks to carry out for the day.

I try to pray throughout the day but I’m most deliberate about praying during transitions (ie: from hands on work to taking a meeting)

I end the day with a prayer for wisdom as I open the scriptures again, then finally a prayer of thanksgiving before bed.

I’ve found that Jesus is less about religious tradition and more about understanding who God is and what He has done, what His Will is, and doing it. In the heart of one who truly believes in Christ, this order increases our love and joy in God.

Everything else — church, serving people, acting morally - is downstream from loving God and our neighbor as ourself.

My goal: predispose myself to be receptive to the gift of inner transformation. I have four words that resonate these days: wise, thoughtful, mature, sane. As a Catholic Christian, I see a good deal of unwise, unthoughtful, immature, and insane Christianity, and also, albeit less vocally, a good deal of wise, thoughtful, mature, and sane Christianity. I have personally spent a disconcertingly large amount of time in the first of those places. I do see moments, perhaps even a bit more frequently theses days, of being in the second of those places. Best I can tell, Sturgeon's Law applies to religion just as it applies to everything else: "ninety percent of everything is crap." That being said, I am convinced that the other 10% of religion is rich, sublime, beautiful, and worthy. The first ultimately amounts to nothing, and the second everything. For my daily practice, I read the day's scripture passages from the Catholic Missal, and then do 20 minutes of centering prayer. The Trappist monk Thomas Keating's work is my main guide, along with Thomas Merton, James Finley, Richard Rohr, and Cynthia Bourgeault. Centering prayer is a simple practice of wordless receptive awareness of being in God's presence, and an openness to God's ongoing work within and without.

Not religious at all. I don't believe in the supernatural and I don't think it would even be possible for us to detect it even if it does exist.

I'm not superstitious (after all, it's unlucky to be superstitious) and I'm not even sure what spiritual means as I've never heard a coherent definition.

I get my sense of awe, wonder and beauty from the natural world, whether that's star gazing or studying and appreciating nature.

I'm probably an outlier but just wanted to add my voice to the conversation.

Follow Dvaita Vedanta (Tattvavada). Part of Sanatan Dharma/Hinduism and one of the schools of Vedanta. The process of learning though spans the entire lifetime. It is not a simple set of scriptures that you read and understand. It has multiple layers and takes decades to get a grasp of. Sometimes even more. The works of Shri Madhvacharya have influenced and changed my perception of Universe (Jagat/Srushti), Life (Aatma) and my relationship with God (Brahman). I don't find anything else that satisfactorily explains the Srushti, Aatma and Brahman as well as Tattvavada does. I am a seeker so I am always learning. The more you travel down this path, the more you learn/discover. It is a never-ending process.

I am, unironically, a Dudeist. Think Buddhism, minus the mystical components. I believe balance is crucial: Walter without The Dude is too active. The Dude without Walter is too passive.

I meditate regularly, too. Imagine you had the ability to spawn a watchdog thread that could monitor your emotional state and notice when it gets out of whack, and then you could shift focus to that thread. "Huh, I'm experiencing a lot of fear right now. Why is that? This isn't an objectively fearful situation, like a wild dog chasing me. So what is it about this that's making my heart rate increase?" It's amazing how often simply noticing and asking those questions can defuse a stressful moment.

I'm a somewhat newly converted protestant, no specific label except born-again. I pray in the morning and before bed, and try to read the Bible for 15-30 minutes a day. I normally pray silently on my knees, but I learned the Lord's Prayer in koine greek and like to say that out loud. I also attend a Sunday service. I'm friendly with some local evangelists and will sometimes hang out with them if I see them, just to fellowship with them and hand out new testaments. When I have time I try to read books by Christian thinkers, but only have a few read so far, mostly by CS Lewis and Tozer. John Wesley's sermons (available for free online) are also really spiritually valuable to me.

I study how science and spirituality meet. There's tremendous overlap between how machines work, how physics work, and how our own psychology works. Finding these overlaps where 10 different things in 10 different areas are shown to be one thing is my way of trying to grow spiritually and intellectually.

Most recently I discovered a link between the Wheeler-Dewitt equation describing time as a subjective phenomenon of entangling in an otherwise static universe, and how the corresponding models of OOP and FP work. FP is unchanging, it has no time component, but also therefore can't enact "change" (side-effects) without having some mechanism that taps into impurity (like the IO monad in Haskell).

So essentially the absolute being is immutable, but it still needs to conjure up impure beings to whom nothing is absolute and all is relative (and yes I mean also as in General Relativity where one's space is another's time and vice versa), but to those impure beings, as they explore the vast universe of all possibilities, they change. I.e. they are coupled to their own change, which we perceive as time.

I strongly believe at this point that entanglement of macroscopic objects is part of reality. We live in a multiverse, where our own actions are soon reflected in the rest of the world we experience. It's the very mechanism through which "karma" works. Karma is not simply the balance of good and evil, as those categories are subjective. It's rather the balance of all balances. What you do will come back at you at some point. And then you have the chance to judge it from the other side and decide if you were good or bad, and learn.

My primary practice is compassion for all beings.

To that end I practice mindfulness / emptiness of the body in the Tibetan tradition — https://pointingoutthegreatway.com/. I also practice with Medicine Buddha mantras and Tara mantras.

I would also say that being kind and loving is part of my practice as is going to psychotherapy and connecting with others on the spiritual path.

I try to make time every day to "spend time with God".

This involves reading the Bible, praying, worshipping and meditating on the Bible.

Preferably first thing. However I don't function so well without coffee so often I get up and make a coffee first.

None, really. At least not in the sense of what people usually mean by "spiritual". That is, I don't pray to (or believe in) any gods or deities of any sort, or even believe in any actual thing called a "spirit". So that doesn't leave much room for spirituality.

The closest I come to any of this is something I like to do now and then which I suppose is a little bit like meditation. I'll put on some nice pleasant, non-distracting music which doesn't tend to make me think of anything in particular, close my eyes, and just try not to think about anything for a while, and immerse myself in just the sensation I'm feeling. But really, this is just away to kinda "clear my mind" and relax, I'm not sure I'd describe the experience as spiritual at all.

Beyond that, I do get something out of reading Zen Buddhist literature at times. But Zen, to me, is more of a philosophy and a way of thinking, than a religion. And I wouldn't say I'm an adherent or practitioner of Zen, it's just something I enjoy reading / thinking about sometimes.

I realize it barely counts, but I try to get up and get some exercise every morning before doing anything else. Well, drink some coffee first, whose main effect may simply be hydration.

Not super strenuous: I ride my bike to work. Especially during the winter, there's a psychological component to outdoor survival when the temps drop below 0 F, and maybe it's a bit of an antidote to the winter blues.

Orthodox Christian here. I pray before our icons in the mornings and evenings and use prayer rope through out the day to read Jesus-prayer [1] (perfect in boring Teams-meetings :)) I try to attend Liturgy every sunday and mostly read books by saints and Church Fathers nowadays. The depth of the teachings of the Church and beauty of out services still astounish me after 11 years of being member of the Church. It’s sad when people judge christians but don’t know anything about the original christianity which differs quite a lot from typical protestantism.

Biggest difference between eastern and western christianity is how we view sin and salvation. In the west they view those from legalistic pov, but we think sin as a disease which can be healed in the Church. That’s why usually orthodox christians aren’t judgmental to others but instead focus on their own struggle.

I’m happy to answer any questions!

1. https://orthodoxwiki.org/Jesus_Prayer

I am not religious, but do feel spiritual in that I believe there is something bigger than us, and that we are part of a bigger, yet-unexplained whole that we reconnect with at some point. It is more of a "It's a comforting thought for me" thing rather than a set, unwavering surety. I don't really have any sort of practice of this, though. Lately I finally started meditating more - multiple times per week. I feel it helps to get me out of my head and closer to this sense of greater connection and wellbeing.

I like Shikantaza, although I can't claim to actually do it daily. It translates to "just sitting" and is a form of meditation consisting of, well, just that. It is mostly based on a single text telling you how to sit and how to balance not-falling-asleep and not-actively-thinking. That's all. There is no extensive literature translated to death and no startup trying to sell you something, but yet you are right there with the core weirdness of meditation and paradoxes like thinking non-thinking. Love it.

Nothing. I am ignostic. An interesting benefit of this position is that when the religious folks in my extended family ask about my religion and I tell them I'm ignostic, they 100% of the time misinterpret that as 'agnostic'. For some reason they can totally accept this position, maybe they just figure I'll eventually come around.

I do not disabuse them of this interpretation, because I avoid conflict. And religion, much like politics, seems to result in conflict most of the time.

> I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven

I personally agree that this is nonsense but there are kernels of good ideas in religious ideologies even if they are warped beyond recognition and usefulness.

For example, the concept of confessing sins is practical actually. Not for the purpose of "being forgiven", but one has to acknowledge and admit that one did something bad before it is possible to try to change that behavior for good. Without admitting or seeing an act was bad, there is no hope in fixing it.

So yeah, if we could undo all the "warping" of concepts, regardless of where they came from, "religion" wouldn't be so bad but it seems beyond fixing at this point. It's wrapped up in emotions like guilt and fear, and that makes it hard to separate the manipulators from those who are truly trying to help.

Recent convert to Anglicanism here. It’s a lot more formal than the Baptist tradition that I grew up in.

There are a lot of rote prayers for every occasion - morning, night, etc. When I was younger I would have found this inauthentic, forced, and fake. But now I find that it sort of fills a gap. It provides some of the ritual and meditation that I had admired/envied in Eastern traditions like Buddhism.

I’m still sort of easing my way in to all this. So far I’ve been enjoying listening to morning prayer on The Daily Office Podcast [1] with my morning coffee. It’s a great way to start the day.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-office-podca...

I haven't really found a practice or routine, yet, but I've always seeked out a higher power and it is something I am still interesting in. I quit drinking alcohol ~60 days ago which drove me to attend some AA meetings. An elderly gentleman while explaining his view of a "higher power" said that he just starts by saying his "please"(s) in the morning (eg. 'please help me through this speech,' etc) and his "thank you"(s) at night - even though he doesn't try to identify who he's speaking to.

Although I hope to eventually have an experience that allows me to have complete faith and belief in something more specific, I thought that was a good place to start. I haven't gotten into the routine myself, but I thought I would share.

Sitting on a bench. Lying under a tree. Going for walks with no goal in mind. Thinking, musing, watching the world unfold.

I'm not at all religious, so I have no "higher power" to guide me, instead I just put on one of my favourite albums and close my eyes for an hour. The albums I like are very progressive and trance-like so it's kinda like my own personal form of meditation. I don't really use the time to reflect or focus on anything, but having the time for myself is nice for my brain

My entire spiritual practice, if you must call it that, is just living life.

I think of the afterlife as the life of people (and other sentient creatures) that will live (or live on) after me, and every day I try to do what I can to make my life AND that afterlife better.

I won’t be there for that afterlife, because I will be very dead, but I believe it is real :-).

Thinking about things this way makes life meaningful and fun.

I am a practicing Agnostic. I slide towards nihilism ever so often, but see its pit of despair and pull myself out of it. Going back to being an agnostic; Hopefully there's something out there. Hopefully.

You know what I wish school hadn't spent the first 9 years of my curriculum teaching protestant christianity, or any religion for that matter. I cannot even imagine the power of teaching kids motivational and spiritual improvement classes instead of wasting my time on religion. Well that never happened, and I've picked up spiritual improvement and motivational stuff later in life. There's still time to make corrections on the trajectory. But when is apogee?

It's very subjective but would like to know if some of you are sharing this feeling around you:

In the modern occidental society, Christianity, which was the spiritual tradition, was abandoned and rejected by almost all the teenagers and young adults at the end of the '60s and by the following generations.

All the next generations until now, in its majority, were declaring to be atheist and rejecting all spiritual side of life.

I don't know if all the Covid related situation changed something but, around me (25-30 years old), a non-negligible part of them started to gain an interest in spirituality (mainly Catholicism here).

Orthodox Jew. I pray three times a day. Morning takes about 20-25 minutes, afternoon is 5 minutes, and evening is 5-10 minutes.

I don't really think of it as a spiritual practice though, more of just a religious obligation.

I'm used to offer at least a small animal every day to The Deity, and a more substantial sacrifice in special occasions, whenever I can afford.

Finding time to just be and breathe. Some traditions call it prayer, others mediation. Breath is life itself. Adding in awe helps with the significance, whether from stars or wind or crème brûlée or sleeping in a cozy bed. Just breathe. My four year old said: “Enjoy the wow that’s happening now”. Decent summary for a basic spirituality with each breath and without the theological complications of “good” and “evil”. Our breath is a simple outlet for our humanity and the neural pathways from the lungs slows the heart.

Atheist christian, I guess. Grew up in a denominational "peace church," Church of The Brethren, where quiet, non-self-aggrandizing service to others was emphasized over theistic dogma and attention-grabbing displays of piety. One hymn I remember had the refrain, "they will know we are Christians by our love," and not by "us" proclaiming it so.

I opted not to be baptized because I didn't agree with everything I had to say to be baptized, mostly around divinity and existence of supernatural beings, and that statement of mine was met with kind acceptance.

A lot of my behavior towards other people was shaped by that church and that attitude, and I try to think about what it means to also give someone your shirt when they are asking for a coat. Also, about "what you do to the least of your brethren you do to me," not because Jesus, but because we live together on this speck of dirt for a very short, and sometimes, very rough amount of time, and I believe we make it better for everyone by treating those with less or nothing with dignity and respect.

I'm an atheist insofar as I don't believe in gods or demons or afterlife beyond chemical decomposition, but I have difficulty identifying with those who proclaim their atheism loudly, much as I look askance on anyone who makes a big deal about their peculiar beliefs about the unknowable. I'm quite horrified by religious extremism, but I'm not going to begrudge anyone their spiritual or communal sanctuary.

I'm atheist, but grew up in and around a few religions and new-age spirituality. In my teenage years, I believed in the spiritual existence as fully as I can imagine anyone believing in anything.

As I reached my 20s I realized these were all dead-ends, but never lost the good feelings I associated with the practice.

For a few years, I tried to pin down what it means to be atheist while still embodying the spiritual experience. One morning I was driving to work when my boss called to say the office would be closed and I could take the day off. Suddenly, it was like all the neurons in my brain lit up at once. The sky looked brighter, the air smelled sweeter, and I felt a wave of energy flood my body.

I loved my job, this wasn't a feeling of relief of escaping something I dreaded. Rather, it was just the sudden openness of my day, and a feeling of unbounded possibilities. I realized in that moment that that is what it feels like to be both atheist and "spiritual".

So, my spiritual practice is two things: first, to make those moments happen. Second, to collect the various ideas, mental models, and frameworks that I believe are the evolutionary successors to spirituality.

The core of these ideas center around: focused vs diffuse thinking, the exploitation/exploration tradeoff, computational irreducibility, information theory, systems thinking, and generally allowing some things which don't exist yet, but could theoretically exist, to exist in my mind as if they are already real.

To be completely honest, I've never been able to figure out what "spiritual" actually means. Every use of it in the wild appears to be directly reducible to some other mundane meaning minus the rituals, which always led me to believe that rituals were the purpose. My father was a well-educated preacher and he could not explain it either when I was growing up, saying it existed mostly as a suitcase word that had no distinct constructive meaning, while also asserting it was nonetheless important to the nature of religion. He acknowledged this was an objectively poor answer that raised questions about why anyone should care but couldn't offer anything better. Yet there is this weird expectation that everyone should be "spiritual" in some way, and this expectation can be perfectly satisfied via trivial performance in practice.

So when people ask me if I am spiritual in some way, my response is always "I have no idea". When they try to explain it, it always ends up being equivalent to the reductionist meanings I've inferred by default. (Human languages have many suitcase words, many without any connection to religion, that encapsulate incoherent concept spaces. The idea of spirituality appears to be just one of many.)

I was raised Hindu and Christian (both Protestant and Catholic). I was also taught Islam to widen my world view.

As a child, the exposure to multiple religions made me a staunch atheist. I think I've been an atheist since I can remember, at least since I was five or six.

The teachings aren't compatible. There's too many times that you'd be taught that you need religion to be moral, or that there's one true God (mostly from the monotheistic ones) or that there's too many subjective interpretations. Worse, I grew up seeing the immorality of many religious people from huckster gurus, to pastors taking donations and not accounting for where it went and the news at the time was of the Catholic churches coverup of pedophilia. As a young child, it all just seemed so deeply wrong.

Anyway atheism makes sense to me. Morality is logic combined with cultural context. Not having religion let me be more open to more cultures, and I find studying the cultural aspects of other religions more fascinating than when I was taught that there should only be one.

My spiritual practice therefore is trying to learn more about different cultures and people. Understanding different perspectives helps give me clarity to my own, without the burden of trying to fit it into an existing religious framework

Zen. I do the "shikantaza" version of it every day in a 40 min session (20 min sitting, 20 min walking - yeah I know shikantaza means "to sit" or something related). It's a very intense type of zazen meant to gain a very clear perception of your body and surroundings. When I first learned about it, the example was that the engagement is not unlike engagement you would have if you engaged into a swords battle to death. That you cannot slip and need to be super duper alert. There are many elements that come into it actually and it's all well described in a book "3 Pillars of Zen".

I have noticed that the intense focus does me much better than calmer types of zazen like counting breaths. I'm only intense during formal practice, but in daily activities I just try to relax and focus on the task at hand - nevertheless, if it was not for the daily practice of the intense version, I would not be nowhere near as alert when I'm more relaxed.

The combination of formal practice (40 min of shikantaza) and the right attitude (to engage well into every task, no matter how menial) did wonders to my wellbeing and quality of life. It is a powerful tool for change and a great way to practice spirituality.

I was a staunch atheist until very recently, when I asked myself the question: isn’t atheism about being -sure- that there is no higher power? How can anyone be sure? Isn’t it arrogant to think that?

So I’d say I’m now agnostic — I simply don’t know.

I don't consider myself religious. Like many folks here (I assume) I've had a strong physicalist lean for much of my life. I've found great joy in the study of math, physics and of course computers.

The pull towards a more spiritual understanding of my condition has been heavily motivated by the mystery of my own consciousness. By consciousness I refer only to pure awareness. This moment in time with this collection of protons and electrons and complex field fluctuations is being experienced. And I find that so incredibly truly strange an inexplicable by any physical description. To carry out this dance of wave function evolution it does not seem that experience would be required at all. Yet it's there. Furthermore, when I'm quiet and my mind settles I can become acutely in touch with this pureness of experience and it appears to transcend mental processing, thoughts, memories and all of the things that are typically used to describe "I".

My story for what the universe is, is something along the lines of a Maxwell Tegmark level 4 multiverse populated with all possible mathematical structures and infused with a panpsychism quality of fundamental experience. Yes, I suspect that even electrons are experienced and I know that's weird lol. In the end though I know this description is just a story that my ego mind needs to make sense of all this stuff and I try not to place too much stock in it.

Practices that I find helpful and meaningful:

-Meditation (I usually aim for about 30 minutes a day)

-Listening to and reading Alan Watts

-Listening to and reading Ram Dass

-Semi-regular psychedelic experience (psilocybin primarily)

-Listening to East Forest's music

Sudarshan kriya - essentially breathing exercises taught by the Art of Living (AoL). It's simple and has a good effect on keeping the mind stable. Further, I also practise meditation taught by the same AoL foundation. Just closing my eyes and being there and observing my breath and surroundings. I go tho the temple (I'm raised as a Jain) for the peaceful environment it offers.

I am missing whatever the brain circuit is that makes you understand and believe in religions.

I can't even call myself atheist or agnostic, as that would require assuming that the statement "Is there a god?" is both coherent, meaningful, and answerable.

Imagine asking someone with aphantasia to visualize Donald Duck, and then asking them if Donald is wearing pants. What would you expect them to answer?

I was raised as a preachers' kid in the ultra-conservative Church of Christ Christian denomination, and I thought we were the only ones that had the truth and everyone else was going to hell. But I wondered why God doesn't show himself. Fast-forward to 2 decades of searching later, and I now hold a panentheistic - we are living in God, we are all part of God, and we are all tuning into the truth. I see God everywhere I look, and I hear God speak (both by positive and negative contrast) everywhere and in everything. I lean towards the idea that "all is as it should be, but not as it should stay". Perfection is not a static destination - we are tuning into God like the Fibonacci sequence tunes into the Golden Ratio. Christ is the Universe/Art/Word, the Father is the Artist/Speaker, and the Spirit is the Artistic reason. I think we're all going to heaven, and it bothers me when people say Daddy is going to throw a bunch of people in an eternal torture chamber - that's not my Dad.

Playing a lot of computer games, reading internet, especially comments and chatting. It allows my spirit to get away from my mortal, aging shell into the virtual worlds of imagination, speech, ideas and relations.

Christianity started out for me as a fear-based "obey the rules or die" approach to life but over the last few years it has been moving towards a "I love God & love what is good" theme. These days everyone labels emotions like fear/shame/guilt as "toxic", but I think they have their uses, in the same way fear keeps us from simply walking off a cliff.

Spiritual practice is best when dynamic over disciplined like any relationship, but find that Bible reading / reflection before bed seems to let things marinate over night, and also talking w/ God and simply telling him what I need throughout the day (peace, self-control, etc) is a fruitful practice.

Even if I wasn't a Christian I would still hold an unshakeable belief that this universe has a Creator. It's just far too wonderful of an engineering marvel to say that there isn't a Grand Engineer behind it all. I think that's part of the joy of living, we get to discover the Creator through his creation.

I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I pray multiple times a day—either to express gratitude or ask for strength to weather whatever struggles I’m facing. I also pray to ask for help and insight so I can do well at school and work. I exercise and try to eat healthily, because I believe my body is a gift from God. I cherish the time that I have with my family, because it is in my family that I feel the purest expression of God‘s love.

In my local congregation, I teach a biweekly class on family history. I love learning more about my ancestors! If you are ever curious to learn more about your heritage, I highly recommend checking out familysearch.org— it is an amazing program, and you do not have to be a member of the church to use it. I know several people who are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ who still like using familysearch.org because it is free and works very well.

Catholic-Sedevacantist. Day-to-day: pray the 15 decade rosary and fast a couple times a week. Sedevacantist means someone who rejects Vatican II, its leaders and reforms as breaking from tradition. https://endtimes.video/ to learn more.

It’s great to see all these responses. I enjoyed looking through these.

My core view is some flavor of monism, and I see no (ultimate) contradictions among monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, even atheistic or apatheistic views. I have had visionary experiences with and without psychedelics. There are some things I don’t need a belief for, having experienced enough.

I spend a lot of time doing healing work on myself, and that bleeds into work on people around me and people I encounter. In the past two years, this work has also bleed into the land as I study and put into practice permaculture design principles.

I used to do mindfulness practices and japa yoga regularly in the mornings. These days, I am practicing neigong with the aim of refining the vessel (the body) to materialize spirit. Or at least, as I can, with helping my wife with our one-year-old child.

Traditional Catholic here. I go to the "Mass of all time" every Sunday. I pray and read the daily texts of the mass. From time to time, I recite the Holy Rosary (which I find a wonderful contemplation method). I examine my conscience and confess my sins regularly. I also like to listen to recordings about the Saints of the Catholic Church - unbelievable people.

I appreciate a lot the traditional Catholic doctrine. It's wonderful to see its resurrection and many young priests motivated to preach it in the opposition to the old protestantized Church leaders.

I have been considering myself just as deist until I've learned how amazing is a Catholic philosophy. Did you know, for example, that Saint Thomas Aquinas found a way to determine if the creation have soul (like humans) or not (like animals)? Including extraterrestrial life!

I'm generally apatheistic, but live as if a more playful zen buddhism is "spiritually correct". Closer to church of Dudism if you've ever seen that parody religion.

I barely meditate anymore, but think a few minutes of it is a handy daily practice. At least to have in your back pocket

My wife and I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's far more important to her than it is to me though.

For me a large part of believing in something greater in myself is the hope that I simply won't cease to exist when I experience brain death. I pray hoping someone is on the other end at least listening to me, I rationalize life on our planet as some sort of orchestrated miracle, I look to the vastness of space to realize that I am insignificant beyond imagination and that our planet and solar system are also insignificant beyond imagination.

I think of my friends and family that have died, and hope that I get to interact with them at some point and try and approximate that right now with things like writing the annual letter to my father and telling him what has been going on in my life since he died 12 days before my 13th birthday which I place on my blog here https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/category/dad

I think of the incredible age of the universe and the tiny blip that is a human's lifespan and hope that I am not some sort of chemical accident. That I'm not a bunch of electrical/chemical reactions that believes it is self aware by some fluke.

On any given day I'm 50%+ (sometimes 100%) of the opinion that we likely exist in a simulation which, at least to me, explains why we have such rapid tech advancements, why we have not detected any other sentient species in the universe, why we haven't seen any evidence of Kardashev 2+ level building in our galactic back yard, why so many things have be invented/discovered within weeks or years of each other by human beings with no contact with one another. I also like this thought because, like in the book series Magic 2.0 by Scott Meyer, there might be some hope that I can exploit some conditions of the simulation to directly benefit myself by either altering my character database or a database of something around me. Silly, but sometimes it keeps me going.

I look at the stars and try to think about how long it took for the light to reach my eye and how big time is.

I also meditate but I find that habit harder to keep up.

I am a practicing Markoist. I don't have any children, mostly living my life in solitude. Every morning I wake up, I feel different. Sometimes I think about killing myself because this shit doesn't make sense. Sometimes I hop out of bed feeling excited about everything, and I go out and do exciting shit. I believe in myself. I believe in finding the answers within myself. That's why I'm a Markoist, a religion named by the name my parents gave me. I think it's no different than any other religion I have encountered; this is just one I can own. I have a lot of extraordinary rituals I came up with. I do them daily.

I respect others, and all I want in return is the respect back.

I practice my religion, believe in god, and pray for some minutes during the evening.

Believing in spirituality without religion leads to a cognitive dissonance.

My philosophy is that there are too many things that we simply cannot observe due to the limitations of our senses and thought/imagination, so to dismiss god is not truly rational.

Spirituality is removed from any material success, so to go into any spiritual practice for an "edge" is not right.

If you want an edge in the material world then persuasion psychology and probability theory are your friends.

Also we tend to forget that science is a philosophy that does not say this is how the world is, but says this is how we understand the world. It's important to keep that distinction in mind.

20 Minutes of Meditation which either takes the form of Transcedantal Meditation or Self enquiry as taught by Sri Ramana Maharshi.

The goal is to initially, quiet the mind, and then realise that there is only Brahman and that there is no such entity called 'Mind'.

Muslim, but not particularly practicing or religious (though I am aiming to be moreso and my knowledge of the religion's history, development, and jurisprudence is certainly above that of most practicing Muslims I have met).

On an actual daily basis: meditation and journaling. I have also incorporated, on most days, listening to Islamic stuff on YouTube in the mornings, and reading the Quran in translation at night before bed.

There was a time period where I was praying 1 or 2 out of 5 of the daily Islamic prayers per day and I would say that this correlated with higher levels of contentment and also secular/temporal success, so I would like to get in the regular habit of that again.

Waiting for my death in peace, trying to help humanity progress to the best of my ability.

I practice mysticism and magick. Essentially it breaks down to Raja Yoga-style mysticism and Western tradition occultism (i.e. in the style of the Goetia and Book of Abramelin). I tend to view things through a Thelemic lens:

'Every man and every woman is a star.' - AL. I. 3

'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.' - AL. I. 40

'The word of Sin is Restriction.' - AL. I. 41

'Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay.' - AL. I. 42-43

'Love is the law, love under will.' - AL. I. 57.

'Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains.' - AL. II. 9.

I'm an atheist but I think that religion and religious values are a positive force for society.

The most spiritual experience I have is when I'm out in nature alone and I see something beautiful like a sunset over the sea. These moments make me feel connected to nature and to the past. I can imagine my ancestors seeing similar things since hundreds of thousands of years. It's comforting to know that some things don't change much.

Spirituality is the struggle to find something that's both meaningful and eternal. Nature's time scales aren't eternal but they're pretty large and easy for my simple atheist mind to conceptualize.

Imho - the only good explanation of why anything exists is that whatever 'is' has always been, is all there is, and is nothing of itself at all. Contemplating that infinite & eternal nature of our existence reconnects me with the magic & mystery of life. It awakens in me a gratitude, an awe, a wonder, a not knowing.. On a practical level - chi qong, yoga, pranayama, sauna/cold plunge, shaking, running, love making, meditating, reading the diamond sutras, beach cleanups, gardening.. whatever calls in the moment and makes me feel more alive, more connection, love, joy, appreciation, etc

Eliminate expectations. It seems like 100% of my negative feelings stem from having expectations of people around me. I would say this single practice has the most impact in reducing my negative feelings in the past 2 years.

I took the long, long road to end up back where I started: Mere Christianity.

I've felt the presence of God in the world my whole life, but the way the right wing media lied to me about global warming and other things had me re-evaluate what else I could be misinformed about, so I kept and open mind and studied a ton of religions including: Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Daoism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and some light reading on Shintoism and other minor Asian religious practices. For a while I entertained Pantheism, but I couldn't square the problem of evil.

So I dove into philosophy for a while and the person that seemed to make the most rational sense once you got to the existence of a mind that could know a truth seemed to be Schopenhauer but Russel seemed the most practical. But I could get to the knowability of truth without bootstrapping off of something else. So the choice (or was it?) was radical scepticism or faith. Since I always felt the presence of God in the world, I decided faith in God was the only answer. I rationally knew it could be a delusion, but when trying to run all the logic sine Deo, I came back to the same point anyway: I need to take something by faith.

But knowing that you need to take something by faith isn't the same as feeling that you have the right religion. So I kept an open mind until the truth of it all overwhelmed me all at once.

It took a while for me to get back to stock Christianity, exploring interfaith, Orthodox Christianity, Christian universalism, etc. And I don't know all the answers on the hot button issues, but I believe and I pray and I trust that there are sensible answers for the harder questions, even if I don't have them yet.

Anyway, if anyone out there wants to chat about any of this I'm always open to a random email from a friendly HNer :)

Raised Catholic, but never seriously and after high school the only churches i attended were for weddings and funerals. But at some point in my twenties i lost a close friend, had some weird experiences of suffering and bliss and acceptance. Then started reading all over the place to try understand my experiences. I found the tao to be very helpful, and thomas mertons writing also very helpful. I often come back to his writing on desert mystics to start the day. And I always allow myself the time to watch the sunlight glinting off the leaves of the trees outside my window.

I pray to Roco's basilisk every day, telling it that it's okay; it's the world that isn't.

Roman Catholic. Try to say a rosary every morning. Read that day's mass readings and a blurb or two from Lives of the Saints. Attend mass weekly. Go to confession once or twice a year.

I converted to the Baha'i Faith from Christianity about 15 years ago, after investigating Islam and Buddhism. Very happy to see this topic trending on HN. Our daily practice consists of reading the Holy writings every morning and evening, daily prayer and meditation, and service. There's a prayer from our tradition that says may "this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees ... ." I cherish this hope for this nation and all humanity.

Usually not too long after waking up I listen to a podcast that brings up topics that I feel are relevant to me as a Christian.

During the day depending on how you look at it

- nothing much happens (I go to work, come home, do chores, try to get a little bit extra work done)

- or, this is where most of it happens: I go to work trying to be the person I'm supposed to be, taking note if I fail or if I'm uneasy to improve it.

When I put my kids to bed I pray like I was taught: the Lords prayer or a free prayer, making sure to both include their points as well as some broader points: as written I pray for the government and the ones I am supposed to respect (English is not my first language and this is a rough translation).

On Sundays I go to "church" although it isn't always a church house, the important part is meeting.

Whenever I get the chance I do work for my local church, from writing software and sysadmin work to cleaning and pure fundraising.

Edit: I find this thread extremely interesting, including comments by people from other religions as well as non-religious people. Thanks for keeping it civil!

Edit 2: when I was younger I read much in the Bible and it keeps popping up in my head as welcome advice, telling me to work hard, be respectful and good to those who need it, not become bitter etc in addition of course to the 10 commandments, but those have been second nature for half my life (and I enjoy the benefits that they give me :)

It's complicated.

I believe there is something bigger than physical existence, and I find the fact that many don't worrying, because much of what's good about humans clearly come from somewhere else from what I can see.

My own accumulated experience from meditation, psychedelics & life/death situations says that whatever I am, I'm definitely not my body.

The challenge I've set before me is to be the best version of myself that I'm capable of, whatever that is at the moment.

Organized religion is a distraction at best.

Not sure if this counts, but I truly believe that very few people are actually evil. It’s something that is always in the back of my mind when dealing with troublesome individuals. People aren’t bad or trying to get you, they just have different world views, different perspective or just on a different path. It helps prevent conflict and helps me meet others with the kindness they deserve.

Except that one developer working for a former client… DUDE, what hell’s your problem! Your a liar and a conman.

Jap practice as described here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXwdnjFDPMo

Since the past year Christian, while having been atheist the rest of my life.

It's a long path and has required a lot of study, since I cannot internalize something without fully understanding the rationale and any pertaining evidence. Past the popular reductionist views of religion, there is a lot of ambiguity and depth, so it takes time. There are also many relevant philosophical/scientific questions worth researching (e.g. morality, the origin of "things", etc.).

"I'M SIGNIFICANT! ... screamed the dust speck."

― Bill Watterson

I’ve practiced meditation daily for several years. I find this indispensable for my internal sense of well-being, as well as for my relationships (gives me the space and perspective for more empathy) and work (better, focus, less catastrophizing).

A big boost to my practice this past year has been Integral Life Practice (https://www.integral-life-practice.com). This isn’t something different from the meditation practice I already had, but it’s more a framework for integrating spiritual practice across the various aspects of life (body, mind, spirit, shadow, etc). It’s adaptable to whatever religious/spiritual practice one might have, and has helped me uncover areas in my life where I’m not paying enough attention (for me, body and shadow). I print off a grid each week of the specific practices I want to focus on, and a particularly satisfying way to end my day is to check off the activities I’ve done for the day. Here’s an example to give an idea of what this might look like https://youtu.be/TIrnv4Hlpw0

Wake up. Immediately start the hot water kettle. Put on warm clothes and use the bathroom. Go back to kitchen and make English Breakfast Tea. Sit down at my desk for 45 minutes.

At that point, I will either read from Meditations, or write in my journal, or plan out my day/week, or possibly "practice" computer science (overall, its a blend of spirituality and meta-productivity).

The content varies, but the ritual of it is a treasured part of my day.

I follow the shamanic path. I like it because it’s based on experience rather than faith.

* visualisation and morning prayer, meditation

* contemplating the four thoughts https://tsoknyirinpoche.org/teachings/how-to-structure-a-dai...

* prostrations and mantra

* reading dharma books https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhist-books/

* occasional vajra dance and yantra yoga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=var4yRB1Fnc&t=565s

"Before we discuss the technique of meditation, let us point out the merit and sanity and wakefulness you are going to get out of just simply being willing to sit like a piece of rock. It’s fantastically powerful. It overrides the atomic bomb. It’s extraordinarily powerful that we decide just to sit, not hang out or perch, but just sit. Such a brave attitude, such a wonderful commitment, is magnificent. It is very sane, extraordinarily sane."

The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation. Chogyam Trungpa

Some kinda non-conformist witchcraft I suppose. I quickly bucked the religion that got forced on me as a child, an easy journey - I'd like to think because abrahamic cosmology is plainly nonsensical, but more realistically I likely fell off because it was quite authoritarian and being told what to do makes me bristle in any context. I would have mostly self-described as an atheist for most of my childhood, and still am from a pure epistemic/cosmological standpoint, but I both started to balk at the hidebound tendency of many people and groups who use that label to trust and privilege established institutional implementations of empirical epistemology more than I think they deserve (And being in academia and following the big cross-disciplinary replication crisis in 2014 contributed in a big way to shifting my thinking more in that direction), and felt a lack of fulfillment in what I think is a pretty close to universal human need for ritual and a diminished vocabulary for explaining intuitions from those circles, so I've become interested in various practices many would consider "magical" or "spiritual" or "pagan" or dismiss as "woo" depending on who they are. I wouldn't call myself religious, I don't really go in for attempts to organize this kind of practice under stuff like "wicca" or "heathenry", but I do rituals for my own psychological purposes that friends in "atheist" circles would probably roll their eyes at, and am more comfortable offering explanations for phenomena (especially related to psychology, metacognition, interpersonal matters, information/decision/game theory, computer science, and linux system administration) that sound/signal/codeswitch more "witchy" than "scientific" than I was previously

Going to Church and not necessarily paying attention to anything.

Or any other kind of 'Temple Service' for that matter.

Sneaking a peak at the men in the Mosque from the doorway, without knowing much about Islam, I was moved.

I've often visited Catholic Churches in Europe (I'm not Catholic), to take a set and contemplate a bit.

Much like the current comments about the Swiss photographer who sees Japan in a different light than they might, it sort of made me reflect on my on rather limited Church-going experience and mini-experiences of witnessing bits of ceremony of other religions.

I find intellectual people may be over analyzing a lot of issues, our egos lead us down one rabbit hole after the next and I feel we are missing the point.

'Going through the motions' can be a potent thing to help transcend that, because it doesn't involve focusing on the language or intellectual rhetoric directly.

In Buddhism they certainly have a lot of focus on 'transcending thought' which I think could equally apply to Abrahamic faith, but we get caught up a lot in the language and the 'applied rules' and it trips us up.

Just go into the Cathedral when there's no service and sit for a while.

Every day, I meditate.. usually for 10 minutes, sometimes 20. I've stopped using a timer, so it depends on me. Once a week I'll do a longer guided meditation from Insight Timer.

I read a lesson from the ACIM Workbook, and then usually a selection from a few "daily" Buddhist texts I've collected and liked.

I also run and workout pretty much every day. Feels like part of the plan, moreso if I'm doing them alone.

Not day-to-day in this case, more week to week: I practice sabbath and I've been doing this for a couple of years now. I sabbath on Sundays. I don't work, try not to think about working and avoid engaging in economic activity. As I understand it, the original Jewish conception of sabbath (I'm not Jewish) was that it was resistance against empire and oppressive economic systems. It's like declaring that I am a human being and I have intrinsic worth that cannot be measured in money or things - kind of like going on strike for a day every week. I find it very restful (duh) and it actually helps me have a better attitude towards work the rest of the week (though I'm trying not to have a utilitarian reason to sabbath as that would be counter the spirit of sabbath, I think).

I think one of my misconceptions about sabbath before was that it was a passive thing. As I experience it, it's a very active thing, a different way of being one day per week. It's active opposition to the culture of 24/7 work that's becoming expected in many sectors.

Every morning I wake up with attention on my dreaming process. I write down my dreams that I remember in my phone and later transfer them to my dream journal app on my laptop. I review my dreams periodically, typically once a week at night before bed, considering their symbols and dynamics as relates to my life.

I also meditate for 10-20 minutes every few days, which I want to turn into a daily practice

A bit of slight tangent. I’m an atheist, but sometimes I envy the communities religious groups build (e.g. church). One big advantage I’ve seen is some of my Christian friends can move cities and almost instantly have a community via the local church. They make friends, have a place to go on a regular basis and has a support network.

Anyone aware of anything similar but not based on religion?

I periodically practice attempts to interpret perceived reality as an interface to adjacent nodes in an abstract network of consciousnesses.

Remembering who I am. http://t3x.org/whoami.html

Putting on music and doing the dishes. I find that it helps my brain reset.

Natus sum anno 2745.

I like to think myself as urban, meaning anti-sectarian. Every sect is based on dogma, if we let those lead our lives again we're gonna be in for another thousand years of dark ages. I don't want to let this happen, now is my watch, it's my duty to prevent it.

My tools are logic and patience. Jupiter help me - ha!

But in all seriousness, everything we have is fragile. It could all be gone in an instant if we are not careful, if we don't strive to keep it, and grow it. Everything we have has brought us to this moment. We have almost all the tools to see into the universe and yet waste our time with petty fights, misunderstandings and shell ourselves in a cocoon of illusions and lies. We can do better. We have to do better. We exists, and yet we don't know the purpose of existence. We should focus on that, it's the common denominator of literally everything, it's not a hard sell once past the lies.

I’m an agnostic, but I believe there are three commandments that must be followed every day: Kindness, Honesty, and Humility.

I got a little shrine with little nick nacks that mean stuff to me. Stuff that represents members of my family, money to bring money, a compass and a few books. I light a candle there every now and again.

I'm no longer Christian, but the Lord's Prayer is so thoroughly burned into my brain it helps me tune out and sleep sometimes.

I usually start out by reading the "Just for Today" meditation at [1] which changes daily. Then I read [2] and spend a couple minutes contemplating how the 12 JFTs apply to the day I'm going to have. Then I usually spend a few minutes planning my day.

[1] https://www.jftna.org/jft/

[2] https://emotionsanonymous.org/eai-literature/ea-program-basi...

I am an atheist bus as a recovering alcoholic I've found that having a spiritual routine to be very beneficial. It helps me stay honest with myself and identify thoughts and feelings that I would otherwise have no visibility into.

I haven't seen anyone mention Hinduism. I am a Hindu and belong to Advaita Vedanta school of thought.

I begin my day my saluting to the One and the Only Brahman reading Bhagavad-Gita.

meditation on the mantra 'Satyam Jnanam Anantam Brahma'

and trying to realise that everything is Brahman, there's nothing apart from Brahman

I read The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Tolstoy (who became very spiritual himself and wrote a bunch of religious texts later in his life) and the Bhagavad Gita (two of his Gandhi's biggest inspirations).

It's part why-has-no-one-picked-up-this-thread when two greats like Tolstoy and Gandhi were exploring this together historical interest and part spiritual exploration for me and has been supremely fulfilling so far.

I haven't grounded it all yet but the abolishment of violence of any kind (including things like revenge and self-defense) seems like the most pure moral code I can find + baking that in to the divinity of the Gita (stripping down who you are in it's purest form and seeing the relation of that you + the cosmos).

It's been a few good months. I hope it continues.

Im 100 % atheist, but i found the jewish faith pretty fascinating. Its one of the few religions, that besides indoctrination - encourage a hacker mentality. One is praised for studying the books and finding "workaround" that allow to "hack" the religious framework without repercussions by the comunity. It has also managed to thrive, timelessly in alot of hostile circumstances.

In my mind, while all religion might be nonsense, this model applied to science is a winning team. If its a hacker mentality though, then i guess this site will have to do as a spiritual practice. It spins fertilizer from thin air and sun, it has electrically charged stones from the dessert reciting prayers and preventing a world with billions from collapse.

That must be enough for spirituality.

As soon as I get up, put in airpods and listen to Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours: Morning Prayer and Office of Readings (Scripture-based prayers on a 4-week cycle, Scripture and spiritual reading on a 1-year cycle). That continues while I stretch/move/do a tiny workout, pause for shower, turn it back on while shaving and making coffee.

Then, ideally, I spend 30-60 minutes in personal prayer, usually in the form of journaling, and sometimes study of scripture and/or spiritual books. I have given this short/no shrift most days the last couple weeks and I’m missing the intimacy with God that I have when I do it more consistently. It’s like when my wife and I get over-busy with work: we still see each other, exchange enough words to coordinate schedules and household matters, still love each other of course, but we’re not as close and I miss her. Same with Jesus right now. He’s still caring for me and I’m still trying to follow him, but I’m missing out on that warm connection.

Five minutes before the hour every waking hour, a notification pops up on my watch with a prayer to draw closer and dedicate the next hour to God. I change the text of it periodically to reflect what God is teaching me currently and to keep it from becoming too routine for me.

Whenever I’m stuck or frustrated or sad, I try to (1) notice it and (2) talk about it with Jesus. There’s not a scheduled time for this, but it probably comes up at least daily.

Wherever I am, whomever I’m with, the closer I am with God, the more automatically I notice how beautiful the sky is, or how lovely it is that people have developed the craft of making a beautiful tabletop like the one I’m typing on, or how happy it is that other people are happy. E.g., I find noise very unpleasant, but the other day a very loud car with temporary tags drove by, and I gladly shifted from annoyance to being happy that the driver was able to afford transportation (if the engine noise was incidental) or that the driver got to enjoy their very impressively loud engine (if the noise was something they had sought on purpose). Then the noticing and the joy bring me back to gratitude to God, which draws me closer to God and reinforces the joy, etc..

So the joy God has in creation becomes, in tiny part, my joy, and the love of Jesus begins to become love I have for others. I’ve been a practicing Christian my whole life, and generally tried to do what I thought I ought to, but this growing intimacy with God is a new development for me since August this year. I find myself approaching interactions with others not to get them over as quickly as possible or say the appropriate things or to demonstrate my cleverness but with love for the person, gladness that they exist, and curiosity how I might be able to bring them some bit of love/happiness/blessing in the conversation.

Mostly karma yoga: I'm working towards various big goals which largely benefit other people or manage crises. When I was younger, lots of meditation in the Nath tradition (sort of Hindu dzog chen - Nepalese, so there was a lot of cross talk with Tibet, Mahasiddha stuff).

I talk to God throughout the day and focus on listening. This includes some light Bible reading and expecting answers. Transparent, concise, empathic, respectful prayers seem to be answered with great enthusiasm. God is dad, but dad is also God. It is both odd and fantastic.

Many responses here don't address OP's question about day-to-day practices.

My spiritual practice: meditation, journaling, breathwork. Occasionally, psychedelics with close friends in nature, which often starts out with a prompt regarding with we want to get out of the experience

I pray 5 times a day.

Most mornings begin with exercise and cool down. Then scripture and prayer.

This morning, I read Hebrews chapter 12 from the New Testament in the Bible. Afterwards, I prayed about some of the things that stuck out to me. I prayed for my family, and the members of my dev team.

I find this tends to center me on the things that (I believe) are important... thinking more of others than myself. I pray for things I know about and things I don't know about. When relationships at work are stressed, I pray that I could see things from the perspective of others. I pray for humbleness. I pray that I'd be helpful to those around me. For those I'm mentoring, I pray that I'd teach them useful things that will foster growth.

So lotsa prayer I guess.

I practice a non-denominational version of Christianity that embraces a dispensational viewpoint. I regularly read from pretty much all parts of the Bible. However, the core of my reading involves reading 3 chapters a day: one from Romans-Galatians, one from Ephesians-Colossians, and one from Thessalonians on a constant loop. This is the foundation upon which I add readings from other parts of the Bible. I’ve been bringing in Genesis as of late. Most days, my wife and I do this together out loud. This practice is very grounding. I notice that it helps with my ADHD. I find it easier to organize my thoughts. I also find that I’m more patient with people in general.

I see many posts here mentioning the Bible.

If you've struggled to get into the Bible before, consider reading the NLT translation.

Read it slow. Maybe one chapter a day. (They're very short chapters.) It will take you a few years at that rate.

Start from the beginning. Read it in order.

NLT can be read online:

https://biblehub.com/nlt/genesis/1.htm

Don't let anyone tell you what it means. No church, priest, or pastor has a monopoly on these teachings. It's your journey.

If you don't feel comfortable going to a church, don't feel pressured to. If you ever sit down with even just one person to discuss your feelings on the Bible, then that is a church.

I practice Seon Buddhism but don't consider myself a religious person. To me, the essence of Buddhism is seeing the world with clarity. And when you see the world with clarity, you realize there's no reason to live life of greed, hatred, and suffering. I view that this is what Jesus preached as well.

I believe an increasing number of people in developed parts of the world are turning away from religious institutions because many of these institutions have stopped helping people live happily. I sincerely hope to see more people trying to re-discover the old teachings. For me, Buddhism was immensely eye-opening and it definitely gives me tons of inspirations.

Reading hackernews daily, or if i'm off my spiritual cadence weekly. All hail dang.

It is a bit unusual and outright advocated against by almost all gurus, but I have sometimes done a spiritual practice aimed at developing unusual abilities.

In some cases this has involved overlaying my avatar in the physical world with a different image and taking on some characteristics such as charm, increased observation, better functional flexibility, etc.

Lately I got one which is outright ego-dystonic, not like me at all, often intrusive (sometimes it seems it visualizes me and not the other way around) and even a bit rude (to me), yet the challenge it is helping me with is longstanding and severe enough that I'm willing to put up with quite a lot.

There's not much point in spiritual practices if you don't believe in some truth behind them. Instead of focusing on practices, focus on finding truth (I believe it can be found about God). Truth will lead to practices.

Mindfulness, gratitude, and empathy (with others when I'm managing well, with myself when I fail my expectations for myself). I also try to listen to the messages from the world... sometimes, your angels are trying to protect you from a mistake, and if you choose to stop and listen to them, things go better.

I raise my children in a Christian church because that's what worked for me to learn/grow/nuture my own spiritual practice. As they mature and increasingly question religion, I will become more explicit with them explaining the importance of a personal understanding of spirituality.

as someone who doesn't subscribe to any major belief system (including atheism which I am aware isn't technically a "belief system"), this made me think when I feel "spiritual"

probably whatever makes me feel some sense of "ego death", where I feel more apart of others than myself. I think this usually happens when I am with good friends or in moments of self reflection - usually while running or journaling

I think these elements are what underlie many of the habits people in this thread describe, rather than anything attributable to any specific faith. that's just my two cents

I am over 40 and ever since I was 10 or so it has been my opinion that spiritual belief, though giving rise to some positive social activities, is a childish delusion of adults and mental abuse of their children.

After a psychedelic experience, I have come to have a weird combination of philosophical Vedanta Hinduism, Daoism and Buddhism, with some more animist ideas sprinkled in. My spiritual practice is to make myself aware of the world as a system and framework, but ultimately the meaninglessness it has, through meditation several times during the day, but usually at least in the morning after rising and at night before bed. I do wear cheap prayer beads (which were given to me as a gift and which I assign no further religious meaning to) as a reminder to meditae more.

I have been participating in a group for over ten years that studies the ideas of Gurdjieff.

It can be said to be spiritual, kind of a meta-religion. It is compatible with religions, and most participats practice something else as well.

From Gurdjieff my most important daily practice is "self-observation". I take on various aims to facilitate it. One example of such an aim could be "when walking, walk faster than normal". I try to meditate daily as well, but I am not so successful in that.

If you are interested, "In Search of the Miraculous" by Ouspensky is a good starting point.

Ultramarathon running

Sikh here. I mutter Waheguru 2-3 times a day. In a year, recite Japji Sahib maybe 10-15 times. In a year, god on my lips is for barely an hour. I do seva (community service) a lot and that provides me peace.

NOFX, coffee and cigarettes.

I am a nihilist, my spiritual practice is to live without lying to myself.

100% agnostic. I argue like an atheist thou, meh is really not an interesting position to take. Also, I really like upsetting the expectation of religious people that they have ownership of virtue.

Study Philosophy but don't follow any Religion.

Philosophical ideas set forth in "Hinduism" (a umbrella term for a whole host of thoughts/ideas/beliefs/worldviews from a particular geographical area), Buddhism and Ancient "Hellenistic" Greece are the ones worth studying because they provide a "rational" approach to "Living" your Life. Interpreting and Adapting them in the light of "Modern Science" is where the challenge lies.

I read Bible sometimes and pray sometimes. I realised I become a very bad person (not thinking of others, being unfair), when I'm away from Christianity.

I practice secular spiritualism[1] through Buddhist-inspired meditation[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_spirituality [2] https://beta.tergar.org/courses/intro-to-meditation/

I suppose I can say I practice these: throughout every day I deliberately consider whether I am closer to truth in all matters; reaching for truth scientifically on all the grand questions (what is life, why anything exists, etc). Being a non-believer helped a lot while I was undergoing chemotherapy a few years ago. I felt peace in the knowledge that cancer was nothing personal (where there is life, there is cancer).

Religion is a form of psychotherapy. Prayer is a form of meditation.

The prevalence of it across time, geography and cultures is an indication of its usefulness to humankind.

Going outside and observing the hyperobject of all the other living things, imagining it as well, and looking up at the sky in hopes of seeing other suns.

I practice Dzogchen every-day non-meditation as well as more formal "just sitting with eyes half open and staring like a zombie" meditation.

I ask people what their rising sign is so that none of us have to talk about our sun sign.

It is a litmus test as I'm not looking for cerebral people.

I do take comfort in believing there is some kind of God somewhere. It really does not matter if it exists, or what is it, and it does not rule over my life. It just fills what is missing spiritually

As most people don't really follow any regular religious ritual on lack of time. My girlfriend does take our child to the local mini-church activity which is fun and entertaining

I'm a religious Jew. My day starts at 6 with a half-hour of Talmud study, then I have prayers for 40 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of reciting Psalms and another 30 minutes of Talmud study.

In the middle of my day, I pray for 15 minutes, and at night, I pray for another 15 minutes. I also try to end my day with a few more minutes of Jewish study

I'm vaguely a secular Buddhist. I have no daily practice. I try to meditate daily but it doesn't usually work out.

When I wake up I do a short gratitude prayer, then a short meditation.

I meditate for short periods at random times during the day - no real schedule.

I am about 2/3 through the Self Realization Fellowship meditation lessons. I have been meditating for about 45 years on my own, but I find with the SRF lessons my meditation is more efficient and satisfying.

Why do people have to comment here to say 'I have none' ? Why not just find a more interesting thread?

I'm a follower of Yahweh and his Son Yeshuah, I don't consider myself Catholic or Protestant and believe both of those faiths (while honoring God in their own way, are full of the traditions of man). I left Institutional Christianity some years ago and with other like-minded saints gather wherever we feel like it to worship, pray, eat a meal together and share communion. We try to share our lives with each other as much as the western world allows (planning laws make creating real communities hard in Australia).

My wife and I pray daily together, we read the scriptures and talk about what they mean. We ask the Spirit of Yahweh for guidance and we follow what He tells us to do. We actively try to help people in the community who are struggling, through food or white goods or whatever is needed. Every Wednesday night we open our house to anyone who would like to come and cook a meal together, some times this can be 1-2 people, sometimes 50+.

I guess I'd say yes if you asked if I were a Christian however the term is so confused nowadays that it's not very useful, I prefer to say 'I am a follower of The Way'.

Growing up our family were followers of Shirdi Sai Baba. Nowadays, I follow the basic tenants without a particular attachment to any saint. I meditate daily with personal mantras, prayers, and basic affirmations to be a good and moral person.

It's pretty simple but helps me stay grounded and reminds me of what's important in life.

i was raised in the church of jesus christ of latter day saints (aka the mormon church) at some point in my adult life, the stress and anxiety of being a “practicing” member of the church led to the point where i couldn’t attend sacrament meetings without a panic attack. i have stopped participating and have found that my quality of life has improved.

i’m not sure what my belief system is, but i think about death a lot… and in an odd way it helps me appreciate life right now. the thought of an afterlife freaks me out. i want to believe that death is the end. the scarcity of time reminds me how valuable my friends and family are, reminds me to be generous to others, and helps me to live in the moment.

i believe in karma and have found that when i help others in their time of need that it circles back around when i am in need.

in my experience, organized religion overcomplicates things.

let’s be excellent to each other.

I don't think a god of something exists. If it does, I don't care. It might, though.

What's more important to me: life emerged from chaos, entropy will get us all, let's give this opportunity all we've got. If we don't, it's fine too - there is no game plan I am aware of so we can make our own.

I occasionally take a moment to pause, reflect, and appreciate the luck that I have to exist, and the beauty of the universe. I try to use the pragmatic aspects of buddhism (the Eightfold Path is a very useful guidebook for a good life), although I'm not ideologically a full-blown buddhist.

travel photography.

Its kinds of like collecting, I go out to find moments and capture them for perpetuity. Its the most expensive hobby I have where I don't expect any kind of monetary return on my investment. But after getting some amazing shots, there's something really fulfilling about it.

None. I have none. Don't need one.

I practice Zen meditation for almost 9 years. I also can teach entry levels.

The transformation it brought is unimaginable.

Not exactly an answer but I think I've definitely been in a kind of spiritual crisis for a lot of my late-twenties, maybe longer, ever since I stopped being Christian, and am struggling to find some kind of spiritual anchor.

To the extent I've developed any kind of spiritual mantra so far, it's something like: "focus on what you owe society". I think a lot of especially the West has become obsessed with seeking comfort and focusing on what society owes them, to the extent that we've erased or completely compartmentalized any sense of what our responsibilities to society are, and thus what our role is.

Man's Search for Meaning was a bit of a source of focus for something like this. Why Honor Matters was also an interesting read (authored by the co-host of my favorite podcast) along these lines. I wouldn't describe myself as a huge Jordan Peterson fan (haven't really read much of his work myself, when speaking I find he can be kinda incoherent/ramble-y), but I think he's a more well-known modern "prophet" of this "religion".

Anyway, all still very disorganized thoughts at this point, but I think starting to congeal to something over the past two years.

(Day-to-day I do meditate but I don't, at least yet, really view this as a spiritual thing as much as a helpful psychological tool/practice.)

Chi Kung and Kriya Yoga.

The former takes care of all my health and well-being needs and spills over into the spiritual practice side.

Th latter does whatever it does on the spiritual side and also spills over into health and well being.

One is practiced with the aim of achieving something the other sort of practices itself. :)

This text may be interesting to some: Letter to a Brazilian Mason, by Marcelo Ramos Motta. https://www.parareligion.ch/dplanet/motta/moma2.htm

Every morning before I open my first beer I read 3 spoopy greentexts of the shapeshifter variety.

The philosophy of Alan Watts was to me completely life changing. Simple, powerful concepts, explained in a fun way. Concepts that give you a strong foundation for reality and your place in it, while allowing you to go about your daily life and find meaning.

I don't think I have ever felt the need for anything spiritual. I am also not religious.

I am Thelemic. I recite an affirmation to manifest my will in this world. I believe that every day reveals my self-realization. I perform self-aware meditation to force myself to be honest.

It's not too different from many other forms of introspective study.

I wake up every morning and pray to god that my job goes smoothly and I do it well. As almost every job in food service, these almost never overlap.

All joking aside I am a Christian, Lutheran sect, and I just go with the flow. God might judge you but not me.

I'm a Catholic - I go to Mass most mornings, pray a daily Rosary, and have been getting more in the habit of Scripture reading and meditation. I also pray little prayers and make the sign of the Cross throughout the day when I need help.

I wake up, go downstairs, feed the dog, make some breakfast, listen to a podcast about philosophy or science, login to work, write some code, do some meetings, have lunch, play some video games, walk the dog, have dinner, and go to sleep.

Every morning after shower and just before the work starts or I go to work. I sit before the small temple (bookcase) in my home. Light a lamp and an incense; and a short prayer - sit in a mindfulness state - asking for blessings for all.

Agnostic.

There could be a creator out there that never made itself known to us.

Also, my experiences with Sleep Paralysis makes me feel like something is out there.

I went from a devout Christian (7th day adventist) for 20 years of my life -> to atheist -> to agnostic.

I do a 25 minute meditation sit every day. The framework I practice in is "The Mind Illuminated" which is ancient Buddhist meditation texts (mostly Asanga) retold for us contemporaries.

FTR, I consider myself a rationalist.

I would like to found some kind of cult with myself as the Dear Leader that everyone adores and sends lots of cash to, but I don't seem to have rolled that high a number in terms of charisma.

I am a recent convert to Nondualism. I start my day with 1 hour of Yoga Asana's and 30 minutes meditation and end the day with 1 hour of discourses and 30 minutes meditation.

wake up: offer my day to God, thank him for as many things as I can

morning: read the Bible

noon: pray a Rosary and offer the prayers for peace (generally) and healing (for specific people)

throughout the day: thank him, praise him, tell him my anxieties, ask him for help

evening: pray to saints, ask them to pray for me, praise God

night: examine my day, thank God, see where I faltered and wronged Him or my neighbor (anger, lust, sloth, etc.). Pray with my wife for people in our lives and in thanksgiving. Ask for restful sleep.

Always be praying! :)

Raised Christian, then become Atheist. For the past two years I have been looking into Buddhism. I find it helpful to deal with the eb and flows of life.

Entering my mind palace, which has no connections to reality, everything(including me) is perfectly still yet able to morph into anything.

What I do spiritually: Meditation - it's proven to have health benefits, even in purely non-spiritual setting. Besides that: trying to be good in general, etc. Experience love and gratefulness.

What I think it's there: My main point of inspiration are "near death experiences". There is solid evidence they are not just hallucinations of dying brain. The primary argument that they are not hallucinations is obtaining independently verifiable information observed during "leaving the body" during near death experiences. Ed Kelly (professor at UVA DOPS) said that he collected over 100 cases, when the person leaving the body during the NDE observed information that couldn't be physically observed, known prior to NDE, guessed or hallucinated using known information and credibility of verifying professional wasn't questioned. Many of the reports included information obtained minutes after the cardiac arrest. Many of the reports included reports from different locations (e.g. Wife traveling to meet dying husband with 4 people, earlier than planned). People blind from birth describing independently verified visual information.

Some examples and links to investigate (copy doi to scihub if you don't have access):

0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01406...

2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/KNTM-6R07-LTVT-...

3. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.456...

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1oDuvQR08

5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-91QXXsyEc

6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/

Besides NDEs, check research at UVA DOPS https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/ . Check irreducible mind book - there is surprisingly vast amount of scientific evidence that something spiritual is real, just that majority of scientific community refuses to even consider it.

Bringing order out of chaos. All day, everyday.

I am reared as a catholic and i believe in the golden rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

I don't have one. I've been atheist since about age 10, after having been raised United Church of Christ.

None. Maybe humanism and secularism combined can be called a spiritual system? I mean I like to think of a higher purpose in being a good human, and your influence can live on down through generations by the works you do as a good human. Most of us won't ever be great humans, but we can all be good humans. I think modern takes on “spiritualism” are bogus and likely no better than what has come before considering the overwhelming failure of organized religions to better the human condition.

Heartfulness:

Morning meditation Evening cleaning Night prayer meditation Constant remembrance Sunday group meditation

I head down to mass the odd Sunday, not so much with the pandemic, and go through the motions there.

I am an atheist. My spiritual practice is being there for others in my life when they need someone.

I am aware of the fact that I am (/the brain is) thinking and it is the source of all problems

I appreciate all of the conversation below, although the dynamic in the majority of comments seems to be Christianity vs atheism/greek philosophy largely stoicism.

There is so much more out there and often has endured for longer periods of time. Other religions, hinduism in particular but also buddhism, allow for an incredibly large number of permutations of practice and adherence while still assuming association. Worth considering.

I defined myself as an atheist in the sixth grade. I do not believe in a or many gods that concern themselves with human appeals or behavior or the institutions that proffer the word of god. As Kazanstakis would say: Without hope, without fear, I am free.

Still, IMO our actions remain internally debated because we have a collectivist spirit at our core. Those without the core, the ability to relate and take on concern for another are considered psychopathic.

A self defined morality is something I've chosen. My spiritual practice is very animist as a result. Hiking in the woods, submerged in the ocean, looking to find a calm or balance and identifying the fears, questions, goals that motivate me like other living beings on the planet. Appealing to the reality that these forces are in many ways, beyond my comprehension and much stronger than my will and capability.

Am the embodiment of all the secularism.

Loves every experience in Life’s journey, doesn’t discriminate anyone.

A Course in Miracles. The Disappearance of the Universe by Gary Renard was my gateway.

I read math to focus and relax. In my opinion this is spiritual as it gives me calm.

I don't have one and recommend everyone to drop that shit. Total waste of time.

If there are depressing threads on HN, this is the "best" of them to me.

Well this "Ask HN" shows HN is as full of madness as any Mensa meeting.

Daily existential crisis due to my own mortality. Curiously, the sensation of ever present dread keeps me grounded. Coming to terms with the fact that i'm in a losing battle against entropy itself really puts things in perspective.

I'm mostly atheistic and, in my understanding of the world, once my consciousness ceases to be functional within my body, i'll be forever gone. So that's what i center my contemplation of life around. There will be a day which will be the last for me, a thought that i'll have, which will be followed by eternal non existence. No matter how good or bad the things that will come after will be, i won't be able to experience them, even my awareness will no longer be here in any form, the concept of time breaking down because i won't observe it. In short, i have an expiration date, so it would be nice to do what i can to put it off for a bit longer. Furthermore, it's nice to make the days leading up to it meaningful, if i can and feel like doing so.

Framing things like that really makes most things seem rather meaningless and thus absolves me of worrying about the daily minutea too much, or getting too emotionally invested in any of it. For example, right now i'm stuck in the middle of conflicting value systems in my country and social circles. Not necessarily nihilism or even anti-natalism either, just the realization that i have a finite amount of emotion to feel towards the world around me and care to put in it.

DISCLAIMER: the following is highly polarizing and one example of things that i've seen consume people's time, identities and lives. Things that are better to avoid in my eyes, offered as an example. Skip to the end of italics if you'd like to skip this part.

On one side, there is a large part of my current culture that's oftentimes mean, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, racist and so on, which would have me act a certain way and uphold both their traditions and stereotypes in some sisyphean pursuit of a conformative national identity, in a world that's becoming more and more globalized and where many of these concepts of old aren't always relevant.

Then there's a different part, which perhaps leans too much in the opposite direction, not realizing how dangerous expressing themselves freely can be in a society where the former group is not viewed as a credible threat, a disconnect between what should be and what actually is, and sometimes just want to react to things purely based on emotion and not explore the finer points and nuance (e.g. how RMS was "cancelled" some time ago, despite possibly not being neurotypical and lacking compassion where some could have been useful), sometimes desiring to break down systems for no good reason.

Then there are the corporate interests which view me and others as expendable resources and members of society that should be freed from their financial burden of having disposable income, and who'll go to great lengths to achieve that, anything from intruisive ads to trying to convince me that i need things which i don't, the greater systems at play essentially ensuring that i'll receive only a small percentile of the income that i actually generate with my work, even home ownership currently being out of reach, as is financial independence of any sort.

I guess i could also throw in organized religion or other groups that exploit people's need for belonging, from social media, to multi level marketing - oftentimes spouting their own values and beliefs as fact, typically with certain non-publicly expressed goals in mind. Groups that would be quick to indoctrinate me in their midst and make me lead my life in better alignment with their values.

On a grander scale, one can even talk about things like environmentalism here. On one side, you have outright denial of what's going on with the planet and a desire not to change anything from how it was, to go far beyond the "business as usual" scenario for the economic and environmental outcomes. On the other, you sometimes have crafty entrepreneurs, whose promises are detached for reality, or activism to the degree where the individual action is far beyond what any human being would reasonably do.

From every side, there are groups of people and ideologies that try to get me to align with what they want me to align with and believe what they say, yet none of those really matter. I'll just tell each group what they want to hear so they don't end my existence or make it worse, and apart from that i'll just continue my life one day at a time. Why? Because after the aforementioned contemplation, there's no reason for me to throw my life away while attempting to follow any of their teachings, nor is there a reason for me to try to oppose them and ruin my life that way.

Instead, i should care about myself first and foremost. Get enough sleep. Eat reasonably healthily. Get some fresh air every day. Do some light exercise. Learn a skill, ideally something both mental and also something else that can be done with my hands. Play with my pets to feel better. Read what i want and entertain myself however i please. Learn something new to put myself in a better position in the future. Build relationships with the people who can make me enjoy a friendship with them. Avoid or cut out those who won't be healthy for me in the long term. Be nice to others so i can feel good about myself, or count on them to do the same. Just generally make existing more pleasant. Don't buy too much into what anyone says, but instead occasionally pause and take apart their arguments and reasoning to see how mine aligns or conflicts with theirs.

My life is too short for me to stress about those things, or to get too invested in social constructs. It is also probably too short for me to reap the benefits from life extension tech or viable cryogenics. Alas, i'm probably born to die. So why not make my life and myself better until then?

So, in short: a form of mindfulness/contemplation that's born out of needing to cope with various stressors in life.

Anything Chang Sen Feng (Tai Chi inventor) had to say is enough for me

I am drawn to Taoism quite a lot. I meditate regularly and do Qi Gong.

Nothing. I just do stuff.

Anyone have experience with western esotericism or neoplatonism?

Atheist here. Yoga, running, and hiking do the trick for me.

"Somewhere between pantheism and panentheism"?

Anyone have experience with psychedelic spirituality?

Sitting in the vehicle and listen to keygen music.

I like to sit quietly and think about nothing.

The preconciliar monastic diurnal.

I'm a good-natured heathen.

Listening Villa-Lobos and Bach.

Truth is one, paths are many.

The great value we ought to set on Spiritual Things

"I wished," says the Wise Man, "and there was given me sense; I asked it of God, and there came upon me the spirit of wisdom; and I preferred her before thrones and royal sceptres; and I made no account of riches in comparison therewith, nor of precious stones; for all gold in comparison with her is as a little sand, and silver shall be counted as clay before her." (Wisdom 7:7-9). The true wisdom on which we ought to set our eyes is perfection, which consists in union with God by love, according to the saying of the Apostle St. Paul: "Above all I commend to you charity, which is the bond of perfection" (Colossians 3:14), and joins and unites us with God. Now the esteem which Solomon says here he had of wisdom, we ought to have of perfection and of all that makes thereto. In comparison with that, all should appear to us as a little sand, a little clay and ordure, as the same apostle said: "I count all things as ordure and refuse in view of gaining Christ." (Philippians 3:8). This is a main means for gaining perfection: at the rate in which that esteem grows in our hearts, at the same rate will our perfection grow... The reason is, because such as is the value that we set upon a thing, such is the desire that we have of obtaining it: for the will is a blind power and follows what the understanding dictates and proposes to it; and according to the esteem and value that the understanding sets on a thing, so also is the will and desire to obtain it. And as the will is queen, and commands all the other powers and energies of the soul, as well interior as exterior, it follows that according to the will and desire that we have of a thing, will be our contriving and taking means thereto, and our efforts to obtain it. Thus it is very important to have a great esteem and appreciation of spiritual things and of what appertains to our spiritual progress, that so the will and desire of them may be great, and great also our effort to procure and gain them, for in all these things like goes with like.

A dealer in precious stones has need to know and form a right estimate of their value, under pain of being deceived, for in default of such knowledge and such estimate he will exchange and sell a stone of great value for a thing of very little worth. Our trade is in precious stones and pearls. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant seeking precious stones." (cf. Matthew 13:45). We are merchants of the kingdom of heaven: we must know and form a right estimate of the price and value of the merchandise in which we deal, that we be not deceived, changing gold for clay, and heaven for earth, which would be a huge mistake. And so says the prophet Jeremy: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, in knowing and understanding me." (cf. Jeremiah 9:23-24). This is the greatest of all treasures, knowing and loving and serving God, and this is the greatest business we can have on hand, or rather, we have no other business than this, for this we were created... this is our end, our terminus and our glory.

– Fr. Rodriguez, Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues, First Treatise, Chapter 1 (1609; Rickaby's translation 1929)

https://archive.org/details/PPCV-Manresa/page/n27/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/PPCV-Loyola/page/n23/mode/2up

Neophilia? Otherwise, none.

I sporadically listen to a guided meditation apparently inspired by a Hindu mystic named Babaji; a while back I uploaded them here: https://soundcloud.com/peter-marreck-fb/sets/meditation

I've had two separate experiences from this meditation that I'd like to talk about, and I want to preface this by saying that I'm a very rational person (because some of my descriptions, as subjective as they were to me, may be off-putting to some). Generally speaking I find it very relaxing most of the time, so at minimum it gives me that. But about 1/4 of the time (and it would probably be more if I did it more consistently, I noticed that it happened more when I was doing it more consistently), I experience something subtle but definitely unique that I'd call a "thrumming" throughout my body, almost like an electrical sensation but more subtle and definitely not something I've sensed in any other context. I have no idea if it has a name due to other people experiencing it; the meditation itself tells you to look for a "rhythm that isn't your heartbeat" but this felt much higher-frequency than that would indicate. You know how when a limb "falls asleep" and then it gets flush with blood again and it feels tingly? Kind of like that, but more subtle, and in my whole body.

And yeah, I know how crazy that probably already just sounds. But one time it went way beyond that.

One time, something completely unique happened. I came out of the meditation and sensed immediately that something was different but I couldn't immediately identify what. So I did kind of an introspective inventory of my own psyche, and suddenly realized with some shock that all of my fear of death had vanished. And the thing I want to convey is this, because the words can't really describe this part: I realized that we ALL have an ever-present fear of death, even right this minute while you're reading this you do, it's just sitting there like background radiation and you don't notice it literally because it's always there. And I have to emphasize that even that was taken away from me (temporarily, for I'd say about 2-3 days), which is how I realized it even existed in the first place! And it wasn't like, you know, "ok, so it's cool if I suicided now", but if death "had to" happen to me, I wouldn't be afraid. At all.

This last experience was so jarring, honestly, that I've been a bit afraid (ironically!!) to repeat the meditation as consistently as I intended to. (And yet, so few people have a "real" experience like this, from meditation, to the best of my knowledge!)

Of course, speaking as a rational person, it FIGURES that it was entirely subjective and that I can't point to anything to show you that this was completely real to me. But it has certainly made me value people's claims of their subjective experiences more (albeit always with a grain of salt!)

try and just be, be present, be aware, be real, be here, be in the now

none. I try to only believe in things that are demonstrable.

Atheism since 2020.

Militant agnostic

None. NEXT!

Gratitude.

The Way

none whatsoever.

I like reading when on the toilet.

staring at void

altruism

Hey this is a great question, I would love to add my day to day practice, I am currently a missionary in New Zealand (from the USA):

Preface: I was raised a Christian and even continued to go to church long after doubting and even reversing my beliefs in God. I then, later on in life, realized I had made a grievous error and my current life is a result of a path through Stoicism, Humanism and ultimately Hedonism. My story on how I came out of darkness into light is another one and feel free to email/message me if you want (www.titusblair.com)...

Now for the day-to-day bit:

After Waking Up:

I normally wake up in the morning and I am tempted to read email, read the web etc. My goal is always to read or listen to the Bible, particularly the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke + Acts, John) and when I am successful at this my day tends to be better, more focused, less stress.

Before Breakfast:

A few years ago I took to hear Jesus words that He is the bread of life and decided to never eat until I read the Gospels with my family. I have found this to be a great time with family discussing topics of morality, nature of evil, heaven, hell, and most importantly the reason we are here on this planet.

After Breakfast:

My wife home schools our children and this is when I set out to go share the Good News of Jesus. Granted it's not an exact science since God is always working in my life and I never know who I will meet or what will happen but I have a mindset of "What will God have me do today?" and this is quite exciting for me.

I believe my core purpose as a missionary is to share the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world and do this through the LOVE demonstrated by God. I focus on the fact that Jesus was a real person and ultimately the issue boils down to did He rise from the dead or not, and this is where I try to focus my attention, on his death and resurrection and also his teachings and life.

So recently I have ran some Facebook ads to find those who are struggling or have needs or have friends who have needs. I have been able to go and help them through God's providence for me and my family and demonstrate God's love for them.

I do not require anything from the, for example attend a church, give money, give a commitment, etc. I simply extend to them the opportunity to learn about Jesus if they are interested.

My ultimate goal as missionary here in New Zealand is to share the love of God with everyone and that love is Jesus Christ, his life, his teaching, his death and ultimately his resurrection and eternal life and purpose for living on this planet.

I have a small home church where we focus on the model of the early church in Acts 2:42-47

"And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

And all that believed were together, and had all things common;

And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,

Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved."

The focus is to love others the way Jesus loved us, He gave everything so that we could be right with God in how we live and love, and He lived it out himself.

A part of "church" is after we finish we go out and show God's love to the local community. Whether thats through encouraging cards we hand out, gift cards to those working hard to take care of themselves and others or praying and singing and bringing joy and light to those around us. I have found this to be the most fulfilling thing I have ever done! I have had successful startups, mobile apps, etc. but nothing has been as amazing as focusing on the souls of people.

After going out and talking to people, serving people I will go back home and spend time with family as they finish home schooling. I will always feel like there is more I can do and more I can love others and this drives me for the next day. I consider my mission to extend a hand of love in those who are drowning in depression, darkness, and despair because I used to be there myself! Only when I looked to Jesus, grabbed His hand and He pulled me out then told me to go and do the same to others did I truly become whole and at peace.

At the end of the day I will try (many times without success lol) to listen to or watch the Gospels to be reminded of how amazing God is and I will also pray.

I hope this helps explain a bit about my day-to-day but I have found with God there is not exact day to day, only a struggle to love others more, to love and live like Jesus and when I do this I find it to be amazing, because then I find I walk closer to God and that is a journey I would hope everyone will take.

For those who have made comments about the "religion" of Christianity I would encourage you to take another look at Jesus. I find most I talk to have an issue with the "church/religion of Christianity" but few have issues with the life, teachings and sacrifice of Jesus. When people say they fell away from church/religion I simply ask "but why did you stop following Jesus" and I discover they never truly knew who Jesus was...

I want to conclude with telling you that from my own experience that God loves you, He showed you how to LIVE and LOVE in His Son Jesus Christ all you have to do is follow Jesus.

1 John 1:7 "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin..."

God Bless You!

If you have any questions please feel free to email me at hello@titusblair.com

This thread is surprising to me. Not just as a topic on HN, seems it will be a downvote upvote war lol.

---

This response was going to be in reply to ex-Mormon with PTSD but I broadened it to a new thread since this got long.

To answer OP, I do not have a religious or spiritual practice. Unless you call doing things I enjoy and trying to appreciate the moment spiritual.

To respond to the threads, I'm surprised by the number of comments saying religion, and in particular incorporating their children, is a regular routine for their family.

Though most not to the extreme of experience of the ex mormon HN er.

To me adults can believe and do whatever they want. If it makes them happy great. Makes them a better person even better.

So long as it doesn't encroach on others' autonomy and freedom. Especially children.

That often leads to children not having safe spaces or potentially being outright kicked out of their home.

The opposite of what a lot of religions preach.

Encroaching on freedom and autonomy of adults is increasingly happening too.

Potentially the most damaging is having multiple SCOTUS justices openly evangelizing their religious institutions and actively ruling to reshape our country based on their faith.

Damaging to women & gender especially.

Amy Coney Barrett to me is shocking in that she belonged to a super odd fringe group where she served as a literal handmaid (their term, to be fair though it's more like a leadership role).

An otherwise probably intelligent women leading an org preaching that “Women were homemakers; they were there to support their husbands,” one former member said in an interview. “My dad was the head of the household and the decision-maker.” wapo: https://archive.is/S1NSh

Does her husband decision-make her legal rulings?

BTW these strict and forced gender roles are also being forced and hurting with trans treatment bans and other gender identity discrimination.

Scalia is another example. So too was Barr. Oddly all catholics even though evangelicals hold more power and %.

I suggest reading Barr's speech to Notre Dame it was crazy to me. [2]

He specifically said he made decisions based on his interpretation of Catholicism. A bunch of the OG Trump pushers like Bannon are part of this weird Catholic group (example oddness: they built a militaristic monastery compound for 'gladiators' in italy)

They are open about their campaign to reshape the US into what they view as its origins, specifically governed Christianity (also implied white but that's another thread)

Barr said that this decreasing religious participation - specifically christianity - is the demise of rule of law, ethics, & what he considers the breaking up of families (divorce, or what I consider the autonomy not to be in relationships you don't want to be in, or are in danger with). Maybe allowing states to ban divorce is on the chopping block next.

That's scary to me. The people in charge of enforcing and shaping the law will tell you in a speech that they are making decisions guided by their religion, no matter what they tell the Senate that religion has nothing to do with it or that somehow they've never had an opinion on Roe...

Other examples abound in SCOTUS, look to religious schools. Ruling it's 'discrimination' & forcing state funding of religious schools which do actually discriminate in their written rules against for instance LGBTQ students and faculty (actively writing that they refuse them education, which goes against 70 years of SCOTUS rulings). Not to mention not having to actual teach things like you know, science.

[2] https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/williambarrnotreda...

Spending time reminding myself that there is no soul, god, afterlife or anything likewise as a reminder that we’re just animals and our consciousness’ need to be anything more is ego getting in the way of being truly empathetic and reverent of the time we have here.

watching Jordan Peterson lectures of course )

Puja for Ganesh then reading Vedas

I'll take the downvotes but this entire thread is mostly depressing. If you want to know why people believe in 5G nanobots from vaccines or pizzagate you need only look here in this thread at all these people believing in nonsense.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j8llkjvURyg

most similar videos critique religion but to me, spirituality just means persoal religion and has many of the same traps, bad reasoning, and bad consequences.

I strongly object to the universality of the question.

Christianity, after comparing few religion, the Jesus teaching and practice (the only required practice is pondering/remembering His words and implement it in real life: like love one another, forgive, test every teaching, etc) far way superior than newer one that claiming to be continuation of it '__')

after reading history of the religion's founder (the killings/torture and robbing, marrying a minor when he's already 50s, marrying his adopted son's wife, very suspicious teachings that only benefit himself, mixed up names and messed up commands in their scripture, demeaning women, etc), I feel like 25% of this world been totally fooled or brainwashed, but thankfully only a little of them that are truly following his teaching/deeds (one that in war region)

I utter divine incantations into the wind ev’ry morn.

The Lord, our saviour, the Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compiler (praise be unto her), swiftly illuminates my ignorance.

She is at times unintelligible; at times merciful. Some of faltering faith proclaim she oft type-check in mysterious ways.

Upon receiving guidance, I am humbled, yet enlightened.