Spirituality and Happiness

[Seawolf]

Originally Posted by Touched

What is love to you? I am always interested in that question.

I think of it as more of a verb than a noun. It's also an action of connecting to and loving myself through spiritual practice that I'm grateful for.

[Touched]

Originally Posted by Seawolf

I think of it as more of a verb than a noun. It's also an action of connecting to and loving myself through spiritual practice that I'm grateful for.

Thank you for your reply.

[CSEe]

Originally Posted by Seawolf

An interesting study showed that religious people were the happiest in Europe..

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/...s_of_believing

This doesn't surprise me, some of the happiest people I've known were Christians. Following my religion makes my life brighter and more positive too. Does your spiritual path give you peace and happiness? Do you meet with friends at religious services, or do you practice your spiritual beliefs alone?

As I awaken to Buddhism concept ........I of current opinion that all living or non-living are in a natural process known by human culture as birth , death , wear , tear , rotting , rusty , decay etc ........into a condition free of existence , the original condition of nothingness ......so as one awaken to this concept , as he journey in his life , his attachment on emotion will naturally reduced .....so this mean that , as he progress all his fear , desire , love , ego , pride , hopes , greed etc will gradually and naturally reduced .......and this is not resulted by desire but is a natural condition .

So his burden of carrying the emotion will be lesser and he will experience a condition of freedom , of "less burden" , seeing all same and equal , realizing own existence , realizing the cause of his existence , realizing his emotion ......and awaken to this condition , one will be in a condition that could be closely described as " happy or joy or bliss ".......but such experience is not resulted by an emotion or any practices but is a reflection of the condition ......I hope to debate with others for my own learning process

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Seawolf

An interesting study showed that religious people were the happiest in Europe..

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_happiness_of_believing

This doesn't surprise me, some of the happiest people I've known were Christians. Following my religion makes my life brighter and more positive too. Does your spiritual path give you peace and happiness? Do you meet with friends at religious services, or do you practice your spiritual beliefs alone?

I read some research on that, most of which was conducted by Christian organisations, and hence biased to the affirmative.

More objective papers explained that if a person identifies as Christian, then of course they will do so for the sake of happiness and claim that they are happy. Such papers also explored specif areas of religious groups and found that people who have community support networks and a sense of belonging to group of like minded people are generally happier than ostrasised, isolated individuals.

It was actually very well stressed that a person's smile and claim to happiness is highly qualitative, and that there are several aspects of religion that affect religious people.

Having read a lot of literature, and not entirely excluding biased religious documents, I arrived at the following conclusion:

1) Very strict religious people feel a lot of guilt, resulting in a low level of happiness.

2) Moderate religious people are most happy, as the have a highly supportive community and only suffer mild guilt for thei trangressions.

3) People who said they have a 'private religion' (believe in their 'personal God') were basically happy, but had a smaller circle of social support (usually their immediate family). So, they fell in the middle.

Personally, being a 'no God' kinda guy, but attuned to that which is 'alive in me'... I'm kinda happy and sad all at the same time.

[Baile]

Originally Posted by Gem

2) Moderate religious people are most happy, as the have a highly supportive community and only suffer mild guilt for thei trangressions.

Only suffer mild guilt you say? If I ever join a religion, I think I'll be a moderate religious person, thank you very much! And if I'm going to do that, could I ask: What's a Transgression, and what's everybody feeling so guilty about?

[Baile]

Originally Posted by Touched

Is happiness the goal? For me, the goal has been expansion of consciousness, with happiness just a by-product of that.

Joy, appreciation, reverence. Those are the descriptive words I would choose over happiness. Once I connected with the miracle that is life and existence, my expansion-of-consciousness journey took a back seat to the simple wonderment of being alive and a part of this benevolent universe.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Baile

Only suffer mild guilt you say? If I ever join a religion, I think I'll be a moderate religious person, thank you very much! And if I'm going to do that, could I ask: What's a Transgression, and what's everybody feeling so guilty about?

I really just put in a small phrase what papers explained in a lot of depth, and I only reviewed the literature for a bit I wrote on social systems' influence people's world views. Religion being significant along with other systems like education, law and media.

Transgression in the context of Christianity would be breaking one of the ten commandments or acting in a way that contradicts the teachings of Jesus. In a legal context 'transgression' is different.

Historically, and currently, the churches held/hold a powerful government lobby, so laws derived from English Common law (Western Countries and their colonies) are very much derived from Christian doctrine, and to this day in a court of law (in Australia at least), one palms the Bible and swears to tell the truth 'so help me God' (though it's no longer compulsory to do so...).

I'm sure that every person reading this is personally familiar with guilt as a feeling, regardless of their religion or lack thereof.

Moderate believers who belonged to an organised religious congregation were though to be the happiest group, but only partially due to their faith. Most of their happiness was attributed to being part of, and belonging with, the Church community, and the support they received from that group. I was just explaining that there are various facets of the religious system that invoked happiness.

In terms of faith though, very strong believers who were ardent and pious, reported a higher degree of 'negative' emotion.

One research I read interviewed samples from three groups: Catholic, Protestant and people with a 'personal God'. By and large, the protestant moderates reported most happiness emotion, the 'personal God' group were in the middle, and unfortunately, the Catholic sample reported more 'negative' emotions than the other two groups... according to the researchers.

[Touched]

Originally Posted by Baile

Joy, appreciation, reverence. Those are the descriptive words I would choose over happiness. Once I connected with the miracle that is life and existence, my expansion-of-consciousness journey took a back seat to the simple wonderment of being alive and a part of this benevolent universe.

That's what I meant by calling myself a 'has been'.

[Baile]

Originally Posted by Gem

Moderate believers who belonged to an organised religious congregation were though to be the happiest group, but only partially due to their faith. Most of their happiness was attributed to being part of, and belonging with, the Church community, and the support they received from that group. I was just explaining that there are various facets of the religious system that invoked happiness.

Thanks for the various explanations. FYI, I wasn't critiquing your comments, I was chuckling about them. Guilt and judgement are such weird notions to me; I don't get the inner angst some people create for themselves.

You say what I say: psalms and sermons and Sunday picnics have much to do with the happiness and positivity of religious individuals. What sort of community activities do people on the spiritual path undertake together? Watching Youtube documentaries about interplanetary lizard beings invading our Earth.

[Baile]

Originally Posted by Touched

That's what I meant by calling myself a 'has been'.

Has-been. Ha, very good!