this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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I have for about a decade now, as a hobby, just followed various biblical scholars, archaeologists, ancient language experts, historians, a few esotericists, etc who give interesting lectures or youtube video presentations, publish books based off of their peer reviewed research, or other youtube channels of basically laymen with similar interests who make a point of interviewing such experts and getting their assistance for finding texts that are not well known outside of academic circles.
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I'll tell you right now, I'm not gonna be able to help you find any spiritual truth.
Using the terminology I think you are using, I am gnostic atheist, I don't believe in spirits or souls as any kind of real thing, don't believe in any Gods at all, and am quite convinced that such things I've read about in ancient stories are logically and physically impossible.
I think these texts and traditions are all fascinating bits of history, interesting stories that have shaped human history, but I don't literally believe any of it, or that there is some hidden, actually factually correct or true religion.
I was once religious, dove into it more and more to try to discern some kind of spiritual truth, but came away seeing more and more contradictions, came more to see these works as literature that evolved out of previous stories and traditions, over different ages and in different places.
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I tend to land closer to your last line, but its not a placebo... its an addictive drug.
Constantly seeking hidden meanings within meanings and patterns within patterns can give you a kind of high, as if you are always just on the threshold of some kind of utterly revolutionary discovery that will change your life or the world, that places you above others in some regard.
Try to connect too many ambiguous dots and you might at some point realize there are not actually any consistent rules governing how you are connecting them, and then it all falls apart.
Thats when the drug doesn't bring you a high anymore, it only brings rage and despair as the grand, uberidea you had been so studiously working toward for so long... no longer seems even the least bit consistent, coherent, or possible.
Its ok to just be, without expecting the impossible of yourself.
What is fascinating is i resonate so hard with this but from the opposite perspective.
“Try to connect too many ambiguous dots and you might at some point realize there are not actually any consistent rules governing how you are connecting them, and then it all falls apart.“
Especially this, is so core to my understanding of the world. But by using the word understanding i already invoke the paradox. Understanding is perceiving a truth.
But it doesn't fall apart for me. When i was 14 and deep (in depression) i came up with. “The point of life is that there is no point” and while super basic, that thought has always been comforting to me. And if thinking about such makes me experience comfort during a time i otherwise felt miserable, well you can tell where this is going. But maybe that is just the high of the placebo you mentioned.
An important key here is, like you i do not literally belief any religious, mythological or any human written text for that matter.
The concepts of a personified god, that you can talk to, that makes executive decisions or is all knowing in the same sense people have knowledge… they fascinated me as a child and Jesus was an important example for my personal growth. But i never believed any of it as historic or real. I actually assumed Jesus was a mythical fiction before religion told me “i was wrong, magic is real” symbolically followed with “no, not that kind of magic you dumb child”
When i say i am agnostic spiritual i mean two things.
I am agnostic because i cannot know the answers on my Most foundational philosopical questions (summarized by the one big question)
“Is physical matter all there is in the universe?”
I cannot known if there are higher consciousness then what we experience in the universe or outside of it.
If there are, then the chance that humans somehow accurately managed to describe such is 0%.
But what i can believe is that some people found a mutual understanding of perceived complex cosmic system that crucially does not need to be real real, but real enough for human being to experience, and used mythological storytelling as a tool to spread the understanding to find that knowledge.
What i find is that some of that knowledge can translate to useful and very relevant ideas.
So when i hear Jesus describe this bigger gnostic patenon. What i read is, we wrote it this here to weed out the gullable. The literal translation of the deity as “the blind one” that created the material world.
What i read is, potentially but in no way certainly the author is using the deity as a euphemism to refer to the human concept of materialism.
A wisdom to mental health is to accept yourself for what your life is. Mistranslate that a bit and you get be thankful for what you have. saying a literal thanking verse to a personified creator of the world is then just a useful misinterpretation from dogmatic religion tm.
I consider myself spiritual because i personally experience a benefit to some of the knowledge. Many types of prayer are just meditation guides. Prayer has always been nonsense to me, but meditation borders on life changing.
I dont need to know any truth to truthfully experience. And that is ~~the~~ my truth.