Your spiritual network

How many of you are in local groups of a spiritual nature? Do you need in-person connections to help maintain your beliefs?

Originally posted by @bigdoggproblem
How many of you are in local groups of a spiritual nature? Do you need in-person connections to help maintain your beliefs?

' I wouldn't join any group that would have me as a member ' - Charlie Chaplan. I do have in-person connections to my closest friends, who are my friends because they are living their authentic lives. Defining a spiritual network is counterproductive in many ways. It also makes you any easy target.

Originally posted by @bigdoggproblem
How many of you are in local groups of a spiritual nature? Do you need in-person connections to help maintain your beliefs?

How many of you are in local groups of a spiritual nature?

I am involved in some "Christian" work through one or two local Church groups, and have helped Muslim groups with what they want to achieve in the past [not currently, no particular reason for that].

My contribution is, I suppose, of an outcome-oriented nature and not a spiritual nature [in the conventional meaning of the word "spiritual"].

Do you need in-person connections to help maintain your beliefs?

Er... no, not really. It's an interesting question though. I don't see myself as actively trying to 'maintain' my beliefs. Indeed, if I look at myself over the last 25 years by beliefs ~ both spiritual and political ~ have changed gradually.

Originally posted by @bigdoggproblem
How many of you are in local groups of a spiritual nature? Do you need in-person connections to help maintain your beliefs?

None and No.

Have several religious family members and friends with which I discuss doctrine.

(1) I go to Church most Sundays and occasionally catch Vespers [evening prayers] on Saturdays.

I am in a group of adults who meet most Sundays at the Church to discuss Orthodox teachings. When we are not meeting it is because we are washing dishes, preparing food, preparing for a festival, clean-up, etc., or there is some special extra service.

I also hang out with a lot of those people. For instance, I threw a New Year's Party which probably around 25 people went to and a bit under half of them were from my Church. I also freely mix my Church friends with my normal, areligious drinking buddies.

I guess you could say that my spiritual network is pretty integrated into my regular network.

(2) Do I need it to maintain my beliefs... Ummm, in the sense that would I slowly become an atheist without my spiritual network, No, that wouldn't happen. I spent several years as a Christian who rarely attended services and I never totally fell away from it or anything.

But, I would probably be more lazy, less knowledgeable and more of a hypocrite if I didn't have this network.

As an extra note... I do contemplate whether we could do MOAR than we are doing, e.g., getting some of the guys from my group to do some 'low intensity missionary work,' if you will. We've talked about it briefly and had a Father ask us to consider coming up with something. Perhaps that is ont he agenda for 2018.

Originally posted by @rajk999
None and No.

Have several religious family members and friends with which I discuss doctrine.

Have you had a bad experience in a church when you were younger?

Originally posted by @bigdoggproblem
How many of you are in local groups of a spiritual nature? Do you need in-person connections to help maintain your beliefs?

My views on organised religious groups are well documented here, but to confirm, no I don’t and no I don’t. Like Rajk999 I have a private group of family and friends whom I mix with and discuss spiritual matters on occiasion.

Originally posted by @dj2becker
Have you had a bad experience in a church when you were younger?

It's unlikely to have been as bad as your experience up to the age of 24.

Originally posted by @fmf
It's unlikely to have been as bad as your experience up to the age of 24.

You never know...

Originally posted by @dj2becker
You never know...

But while you described the psychological abuse and systematic deprivation you were supposedly subjected to for over two decades, demonstrated the damage it had done to you here, intellectually and interpersonally, and even used it to try to excuse your behaviour a couple of times, and then denied that you had done this, even when confronted with your own words verbatim, and, what is more, even tried - bizarrely - to deny that you had described any psychological abuse and systematic deprivation at all, how does that make you qualified to analyze anyone else's experience in any credible way?

Originally posted by @fmf
But while you described the psychological abuse and systematic deprivation you were supposedly subjected to for over two decades, demonstrated the damage it had done to you here, intellectually and interpersonally, and even used it to try to excuse your behaviour a couple of times, and then denied that you had done this, even when confronted with your own words ...[text shortened]... t all, how does that make you qualified to analyze anyone else's experience in any credible way?

That’s got to be the longest run-on sentence in the world. Forget eternal flames; hell would be trying to diagram that sentence

Originally posted by @romans1009
That’s got to be the longest run-on sentence in the world. Forget eternal flames; hell would be trying to diagram that sentence

Maybe dj2becker will dodge it for that reason, who knows?

Originally posted by @fmf
But while you described the psychological abuse and systematic deprivation you were supposedly subjected to for over two decades, demonstrated the damage it had done to you here, intellectually and interpersonally, and even used it to try to excuse your behaviour a couple of times, and then denied that you had done this, even when confronted with your own words ...[text shortened]... t all, how does that make you qualified to analyze anyone else's experience in any credible way?

Maybe, just maybe my bad experience will give me some insight into what he is currently going through, if he went through a similar experience. Just maybe.

Originally posted by @dj2becker
Maybe, just maybe my bad experience will give me some insight into what he is currently going through, if he went through a similar experience. Just maybe.

But the terrible story you told caused you no damage, or so you claimed (at one point at least) and you steadfastly denied there had been any psychological abuse and deprivation (even after describing it), so I don't see how or why your analysis of anyone else's supposedly "bad experience" would have any validity. Indeed, the 'in denial' way you position yourself with regard to what your cult and your parents did to you for all those years perhaps makes you less qualified to be probing another poster about a "bad experience" than anyone here.

Originally posted by @fmf
But the terrible story you told caused you no damage, or so you claimed (at one point at least) and you steadfastly denied there had been any psychological abuse and deprivation (even after describing it), so I don't see how or why your analysis of anyone else's supposedly "bad experience" would have any validity. Indeed, the 'in denial' way you position yourse ...[text shortened]... makes you less qualified to be probing another poster about a "bad experience" than anyone here.

I have actually made some progress and have seen a psychologist and a neurologist since we last spoke about my past. But anyways knock yourself out and take the piss, troll away.