It is not because the elite find it useful to control the naive and stupid, there are other better ways of doing that.
Its because ordinary people still find religion useful.
How and why they find it useful will differ from individual to individual and it might just be because it offers a sense of belonging or a sense of certainty or simply as a guide to living life.
But in a nutshell, because enough people still find it useful.
The problem is not one of modern skepticism being lazy (although I agree that is true).
The problem is that believers in woo refuse to be in any way rigorous about their chosen conjecture and merely whine that non believers need to have more belief.
Take for example Malkuth and his assertion of something 'definitely being shadow work". Ok, maybe true and I have no reason to doubt his sincerity but I find I am unable to carry out a discourse with him because I cannot understand his verbose word salad explanations.
Or what about Tobyone with his assertion that “by giving up control I have more power”. How do you engage with that level of humpty dumptyness?
So where does that leave us?
Auras, can be photographed (sort of). Ok, somethings there, don’t exactly know what it is but there’s something to it.
Do subs work? Having the subconscious bombarded with messages to change the neural connections in the brain is clearly feasible and can be shown to exist. And a number of users have self reported improvements and had other people respond to sub users differently.
Manifestations from subs? Now this is more tricky, did the universe manifest a hot 10 j-chick girlfriend for you or did she just happen to be there anyway and the subs have removed your approach anxiety and you have gained experience from having done 100 approaches and she’s a wiggy? Where are the lottery winners and isn’t it all just rather nasty for the true believers to label failure as not having enough gratitude or whatever they claim when in reality this is nothing more than victim blaming.
What is a chakra, where is the crown and how do you know it is closed? Can it be measured in any way, means, shape or form or is it merely a way of explaining something that the explainer wants and wishes were true ( and gains succour from doing so) but can only explain by way of metaphor.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof as someone else has already said.
I have had exposure to both the Eastern and Western traditions of modality but I will leave you with one thought.
Many years ago a friend confided in me that he was interested in magick (I will use that spelling as none of you want to be associated with the Paul Daniels branch, obviously). He said a group of them had gathered at a beach in Wales and had spent all night doing a ceremony. He went on to say at daybreak two policemen walked past the group and did not acknowledge them or look at them in any way and he thought it strange that the cops would ignore a group on a deserted beach standing around a fire at 5am and he went on to say that the police would definitely say something to the group and the fact that they didn’t was due to the “ceremony”.
Now it could be that the ceremony did indeed influence the cops.
Or possibly that the two policemen where going off night duty and were looking forward to a nice cuppa and a warm bed and were totally disinclined to be bothered by the local group of harmless nutters.
(Btw, when he told me this we were both trainee cops).
While I sympathize with your desire to want clarification for certain terms and phrase, and your want for something that you would find convincing regarding someone’s perspective, I dislike the negative connotations in your word selections, as well as the process by which you are approaching this.
You could ask @Malkuth what he means by certain words. You could ask @Palpatine for further clarification. You could ask @Tobyone to give examples of what he might be implying. I think @Hermit would be open to you inquiring about what he means.
Although I don’t know what your intent was for such a style in your responses, or what your tone of voice might have been, I wonder if you’re leaning towards an acrid, disgusted, or contemptuous leaning in your communication.
What ever your intention or tone might be, I hope you can develop one that is more inquisitive, patient, tolerant, and empathic.
I believe religion is what you make of it, we all for the most part 90% of the world maybe even more than that want to know where we came from, how our universe got here, what is beyond the universes like are we a pocket in space that opens up to things we couldn’t even fathom or even begin to want to comprehend.
I believe in God and Jesus but I have a way different take on it then most Christians. I probably have a way different take on it then most people and 99% will probably think i am on something but idc lol.
I think we all have God in us and that we create our lives the way we see fit as free will is in our control. Also there are angels, demons, ghosts, and other paranormal/supernatural creatures here but the reason we don’t see them is because there are other planes of existence and well luckily we aren’t on theirs bc that would be crazy to say the least.
I was talking to this girls about religion and God, and plenty of other things for 6 hours the other night at a gas station lol.
I think we all should learn to have an open mind and respect others opinions.
I think way more and have plenty more ideas but i am going to stop there.
Firstly, Tobyone claiming that giving up control gives him more power is clearly not using the same language as any normal person would understand it and is clearly bonkers.
Secondly, religion does still exist because people find it useful. Therefore realbillperrys point about indoctrination from birth IS pointless as it clearly doesn’t address new converts joining or apostasy.
Thirdly, are you seriously trying to claim extraordinary claims don’t require extraordinary proof. Go on, what is your reasoning for this?
Fourthly, Malkuth did come up with verbose word salad. Alright they are not his own words but it is still meaningless. Is Malkuth sincere? I have no reason to doubt that, in fact his number of posts here tends to indicate he is very sincere. Now lets come on to what I actually said and not what you think I said or you want me to say. I said "
I was trying to understand him.
I cannot.
I do not regard this to be a failure on his part.
The onus is on me to understand him because I want to know where he is coming from. An analogy would be I am the “star” of my show and he is an NPC.
There is no meeting of minds, the failure is mine.
Life goes on.
Do you believe in chakras?
How do you know?
Do you understand why “I have a feeling” doesn’t cut the mustard.
Do you believe in “magick”?
What happens if you’re wrong?
How many people will be encouraged to spend time on something that doesn’t work when they could be spending time on something that actually does work?
How would you feel about that? Leading innocent people, some of whom have major problems down the garden path.
Hermit comes across as a genuinely nice person. I am more than happy to let Hermit do Hermit. I am even content for you to do you. Are you willing to let me do me?
Well, it was bound to happen at some point. Set off enough fireworks in a thread and somewhere bells go off and I show up.
This is a very interesting discussion for the Emperor’s Lounge. I mean that, it’s very interesting to me since I’m somewhere in the transition towards believing more in the esoteric so both sides of this have good points to me. I know a lot of people that would read this since they’d be too scared to offend people to ask all these questions.
But it’s too heavy a discussion to throw into a random thread. So, please take it to the Emperor’s Lounge, guys. See if you can drag Saint there too.
Also, you do sometimes come across as a bit too judgmental when it comes to these topics, @remarkable. Not the first thread I’ve noticed it on. I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose, but it’s happening nonetheless.
Maybe less statements and more questions instead?
And all that… in the Emperor’s Lounge, per favore.
On the Q-Status front, I would kind of like to know where we are on the process of making the “pre-built” product line (from the subliminalclub.com store) named?
I have kept my stack on hold as I somehow feel Q+ and U+ are around the corner hence I would restart with them. I also remember you saying that they would be increasingly more powerful than the current builds.
I wait eagerly for their arrival. But it seems you are reluctant to say anything about their launch as of now.
“Letting go of control is the ultimate power.” (it helps to quote the person you’re talking about accurately). Looking at the context of that statement, which is everything, he talks about being able to control his inner state, but not external circumstances or the reactions of other people.
Seen in this way, the very reasonable implied statement seems to be just another way of stating the Serenity Prayer. A lot of these statements particularly in the post you were referencing is simply a way of re-framing situations that would otherwise cause internal distress.
I like the way Robert Anton Wilson approached this… consider his experiment of searching for pennies on the street and finding them, then offering 3 or 4 different explanations for why that might be. Ultimately the reason for the outcome of an experiment does not matter in order to obtain results. We don’t need to “prove” the existence of microscopic yeast in order to bake a loaf of bread. We just follow instructions. Sometimes it is possible to be agnostic. Speaking personally, I have had plenty of evidence that something I call magick exists, a dependable something which means if I act in a certain way I get results, but your mileage may vary.
The previous response aside, I do understand the frustration being voiced. The topics discussed on this forum in trying to understand the results we get from subliminals, in assisting one another, and in describing our own experiences, are by their very nature often fraught with subjectivity. Or in situations such as talking about chakras, magick, religion, G-d etc, we are often dealing with things for which effective language to describe our often subtle experiences simply don’t exist in our language or frame of reference. That doesn’t invalidate the observations, it just means asking one another more clarifying questions to understand another person’s point of view or their language.
If you’re using subliminals, or the subtle reference frames you mentioned, and trying to “prove” they work, you’re going to run into problems. Correlation VS causality, vague statements, people voicing beliefs that may or may not be accurate. It might make it easier to just accept that life can be subjective and messy, and simply adapt to this reality as best you can.
