Do you have a soul?

Define it if you can.

You can define it based on your current understanding. Surely you’re familiar enough with its meaning.

You’ve described yourself as engaged in spirituality, have you not? What is spirituality? Do you believe in spirits?

You’ve described yourself as believing in “the Great Mystery”? What is that and how do you know it’s real? Where is the evidence?

You’ve mentioned the Hero’s Journey. Why do you believe that’s real? Because you read about it in a book? Where’s the evidence?

You like to stand in the place of truth teller and judge. It’s time for you to be judged based on the measure with which you judge others.

Addicted to cigarettes at the age of 10. Addicted to weed at the age of 12, smoked weed all day long. Alcoholic at the age of 15 & dropped out of school, able to get into bars and drank almost every night. That lifestyle lasted for 40 years. Blew through a $300,000 trust when that was a lot of money. Lost my father at the age of 15. My sister took her life when I was 17. Disfunctional mother and father. Abuse. Homless 3 times. Great depression. Heart attack. Passed out while driving my car on the expressway and rolled my car. Sitting in jail, I had thought that my life was over.

you can imagine all terrible things on many levels that can result in that kind of past lifestyle.

I had effectively destroyed my life, and even though I have to live with the after effects of sin... My life now has never been better. I feel reborn. And God continues to bless me in new ways. God’s mercies are new Everyday ❤

Addicted to opiates & now free. Addicted to kratom and now free. Never thought I would make it through probation, but I did.

No weed in 8 years. No alcohol in 7 1/2 years. Now I have disability payments & a nice apartment. Family relationships much better. Still smoke cigarettes.

I currently have many health problems & loneliness, but God helps me every day and I have Hope. I now have peace.

Praying works!

This is what Paul said about his past...

Knowing Christ is Above All
"Yes doubtless, and I count all things to be loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them to be dung, that I may win Christ" - Philippians 3:8

Too much to mention that could not have been from random chance. This was God orchestrating many unprobable events, through different people. Jesus is my God.

Talk to Jesus. Pray for guidance...
"Pray for guidance and wait Patiently" ❤️

And I pray that God touches your heart to find Him. Peace & Life Everlasting with Jesus ❤️

Well that's a heck of a story that I respect very much. Are you open to questions about it?

Matters of the human spirit are spiritual. What better term could there be? The human spirit is quite natural and consists of the nature of human consciousness and its many qualities, features, and potentials, including heavily its emotional and inspirational components which touch deeply on our humanity, that is, on the nature of our species. There is no supernatural spirit required and the idea of "show me a spirit" is ridiculous and misses the whole point that the discipline of psychology does not refer to incarnate spirits. Religion does that.

The "Great Mystery" is simply the greatest unknown mystery of all ... how things came about and any possible purpose inherent in them. Are you really asking for evidence that there is such a mystery? You know, the one that physicists, cosmologists, chemists, astrophysicists, etc. have been working on since the dawn of science.

The "hero's journey" I reference is that of Joseph Campbell, and consists of becoming ourselves, going out into the world to accomplish worthwhile pursuits, turning life into a journey of finding and creating meaning and value, a process to which there are many obstacles (thus the term "hero"). Virtually every psychologist will vouch for the validity of this idea, that of self-realization toward achieving values as vital to human fulfillment, this based on the requirements of human consciousness.

It's a joke that you accuse me of considering myself "truth teller and judge," when you deign to speak for god almighty while providing zero rationale for why you are any different than any other deluded god channelers.

Are you too deluded to realize that out of one side of your mouth you claim causation is a mystery and then from the other you make causation claims with terms like natural and supernatural?

“The human spirit is quite natural”
^ What exactly do you think you mean with this claim if you’re not making a claim about causation?

Since you demand evidence when people claim God, it’s fair game to demand evidence for your hidden god you call (capital ‘g’ capital ‘m’) Great Mystery.

I’m not making an accusation. I’m explaining reality. When you judge others the way you do on this forum, you become fair game to someone like me. I welcome any judgment. I don’t become who I am unless I know the righteous judge.

No you're a joke apologist self-deluded Koresh wannabe.

If you don't think there's a Great Mystery, so-called by the Native American religion, and adopted as a metaphor for the great unknown nature of things ... perhaps it's because god is whispering to you all the answers. But you still haven't told us how he delivers this information to you. Why is that? Is it because it can't stand the light of scrutiny? Just tell us how god communicates with you, how you know it's god and which god ... and I'll be all ears. Or does that expose your game?

Since we have established nothing as supernatural, and as soon as we discover something it becomes part of nature, the concocted category of "supernatural" can be seen as fatuous and bogus ... at least until something besides make-believe entities reside there.

We have quantum fields out there, and everywhere, which true believers will be quick to claim Jesus created, knew all about, was a master designer of. Daggone it they left that out of the Bible. And those same true believers, repping the most judgmental religion under the sun, experience arguments against their beliefs as judgment. Pure projection. "It's not us being judgmental. Yeah we killed all the human beings, children, babies, fetuses on earth in our holy judgment, but it's not us being judgmental. It's you when you say it's immoral to default to such beliefs."

You predispose and believe your god story into a self-evident reality, even an "ultimate reality." Let's see the support. Who is the god, where, how does he communicate with you? Until then, it's one of the god stories, might fit into the perennial philosophy, which is an amalgam of man's attempts, often primitive and JUDGMENTAL (you know, all those sinners), to understand origins, ethics, etc.

You fool, you are the one who erroneously uses the categories natural and supernatural out of your ignorance. Then, you deny the existence of supernatural, a category you introduced. All you’ve done is label religious beliefs you find acceptable as natural and religious beliefs you deem unacceptable as supernatural.

The truth is you’re playing around in the same mud as the rest of us religious folks. There is only one category of universal truth. You don’t get to create a separate category of universal truth and call it spirituality.

Bump. Forgive me for the derail.

What's the one category of universal truth, you exemplar of love you?

The average level of thinking coming from theists is embarrassing, of course ... there is so often just nothing there but presupposition and indoctrination. Maybe worse is the sophist who believes just on self-evident presumption that he is a spokesman for god almighty. And has NOTHING on how this works, who the god is, how they communicate, how it came to be that he is in such a position, revealing, starkly, that the whole schema of his persona as god revealer is just one who got off on seeing himself this way and then started spieling it. It's just a way of adopting a role in life, no matter the religion ... and there are legions doing it for all of the gods, which says an enormous amount about its reliability.

Sure, I'll do my best to answer your questions.

You feel reborn. Very cool and very much a part of the human condition, where emotional states fluctuate and sometimes come out of depression and pain and despair and addiction to rejuvenation and joy. You jump straight from this rejuvenation to "god did it." How do you know god did it, how do you know which god, and let's hear some of the specific things that god did? (Because we already know with 100% certainty that all those things can happen without god, but I'm willing to hear what god did that made it clear to you it was god.)

I knew a lady that took it as proof that god was doing it because her mood changed from dark and despairing to light and joyful suddenly one morning. Well, that would mean, I said, that god let millions continue to starve to death while he micromanaged your mood for you. She didn't react well to it being pointed up how her fanciful claim that it was god doing it might well have been nothing more than a NARRATIVE IN HER HEAD, and that moods change based on chemicals/hormones all the time very naturally. Claiming it is god, though in some ways is a good impulse of gratitude ... is misplaced by creating an actual entity/being to be grateful to instead of to life itself.

How about god is life??

Prayer can work with no god on the other end, and this phenomenon has been written about extensively. Because it is like a deep contemplation where we are crunching our issues, going in the tank so to speak, and from there very good stuff can happen. This also works for other "gods" and for atheists.

When something is working for you, you keep doing it, obviously. But that doesn't change the metaphysics of the universe ... any more than it does when people of other religions or no religion get good results by believing in something.

So what are the things that happened that convinced you it must be a god helping you out?

No, I really didn't establish the categories of natural and supernatural on these matters. Really, I didn't. LOL. I said in my estimation the category of supernatural (created by others) is fatuous, that is, silly and empty. In fact, the category is created by the religious and superstitious, like this: "Well, we sure can't produce or find any evidence of this god in the natural world. So god must be supernatural. And now since we can't be expected to detect the supernatural, the hide and seek game of god makes total sense. Voila! We have smuggled got into existence with the phony category of supernatural."

It's a shell game, dude, and you a big playa in it.

So you can produce evidence of this human spirit? That’s what you seem to be implying by saying the human spirit is natural.

It isn't incarnate; that's your claim. Every act of hope, art, courage, empathy, inspiration, creativity ... every emotion, every search for meaning and purpose ... are categorized as expressions of human consciousness based on its NATURE. That obviously is different for the consciousness of other species, based on their NATURE. Studies of the range of experiences within the human spirit -- what it feels like to be human and what effects it positively or adversely -- It is covered extensively in psychological and philosophical writings.

Feeling inspired (same root as "spirit") is not a supernatural thing, but was hijacked there by superstitious cultures. What then is inspirational writing, or inspiration of any kind, if there is no such thing as spirit?

One just needs to get their orientation out of the supernatural. Just think "spirits": how are my spirits today? It's that simple. It isn't a supernatural question. It's how the frig you feel about being alive -- from enervating despair to joy in being. This is the range of the human spirit.

A superstitious culture can believe that none of this matters, what matters is our incarnate supernatural spirit's magical appearance at the Pearly Gates, but then there is a burden of proof for why that is any different than all other supernatural religion claims.

Anyway, there are millions of words written on this subject when it is claimed back from the various superstitions that attempted to explain things supernaturally.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ten-s...novateacademy/

You seem to be at war with the spirit of child-like hope. This type of hope is associated with transcendent potential. It’s highly aspirational. As a result, you seem to have a very conservative (meaning low risk, low reward) view of reality.

In the Cain and Abel story, Abel represents this child-like hope. Cain makes Abel his brother, getting his hopes up, but this exposes Cain to rejection and heartbreak. So Cain kills Abel.

It makes sense that you would project the spirit of Abel onto Christianity, which is why you are always attacking the child-like “true believer”. Without Abel, Cain becomes a restless wanderer.

STFU with your evasive self-deluding sophistry. Deal it to somebody else. You've been owned ... the psychology of true believing religion exposed.