Nagaram

Reading Sam Harris's "Waking Up" gives the same vibes as when I read "the Satanic Bible" by Anton Levay.

It has interesting ideas and actionable advice to improve my spiritual life through meditation and contemplation, but it also refuses to present that in an isolated way because both books are positioned against something.

The Satanic bible isn't just self help its self help WHILE ALSO hating Christians.

Waking Up isn't just a book on consciousness and meditation its that WHILE ALSO being mean about the traditions that spawned the ideas.

Its the exact hateful tone that pushed me far outside of the Nu-Atheist movement a life time ago and its still gross.

#atheism #meditation #religion #conciousness

Apr 24 at 12:38pmWeb
Show threadNagaramApr 24

This would genuinely be a better book if Sam didn't feel the need to remind the reader every few pages that the notion of god is ridiculous or that reincarnation is a fantasy.

It makes it feel unfocused and unprofessional. Less like a guide to spirituality for non believers and more like a rant against all sorts of religious beliefs with the occasional "Oh but you can do that too. So long as you don't believe its god"

I do sympathize a bit in that I agree with what line hes wanting to toe between rational evidence discussion and experiential manual. He wants to write a book on the science of consciousness and also a guide on how and why we should meditate to experience a "higher self" without using any of the airy, woo-y language of traditional meditative schools. He's just too much of a dickhead to respect the ideas enough to properly secularize them.

Show threadNagaramApr 24

If you want to be an atheist and have good experiential meditative practices, I don't recommend Harris. I do recommend

"Opening Awareness" by Charlie Awbrey. Its a very cut down guide to meditation and why with almost no Woo if that's a concern for you.

I also recommend https://aroterlineage.org/

Its a website for Aro gTer Buddhism so it is a lot of Woo, but their meditation news letter is actually really good. You sign up for it and every week you get a new task to focus on while meditating until you eventually won't need it anymore.

These are both recommendations from a good friend of mine and do a much better job of what Harris is trying to do since its not poisoned by his hatred of religion.

The Aro gTér lineage of Vajrayana Buddhism

Aro gTér Lineage
Show threadHouse Panther Apr 24
@Nagaram That's kind of an interesting take and I get the hate directed towards Christians because of all of the damage they have done throughout the years. But rather than hate, I'd like to be able to find a way to bring them over to #atheism
Show threadNagaramApr 25

@housepanther

Same and I really think this starts with treating spiritualistic people with respect. These are folks with real profound experiences they've attributed to their spiritual understanding of the world and there is almost no amount of pure reason we can throw at that to convince them to be atheists.

Worse still calling their practices barbaric and their beliefs idiotic and they'll just continue to see us unenlightened forces of evil or something.

Show threadHouse Panther Apr 25
@Nagaram Correct. Part of human nature is holding on to core beliefs tightly. This is largely an instinctual carryover from millennia ago. I know I struggle with it from time to time. But in the end, I hate being patently wrong and I love learning. I think if we can encourage the devout to learn, we might be able to help them think critically about their own beliefs. Ridicule will only make them defensive.