Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?

100% atheism. Was raised some kind of protestant I forget which one, and derived tremendous spiritual and psychological relief when I realized all of that was absolute nonsense at the age of 9. I knew I was gay at the time and wouldn't come out until I was 18 or so, but my life just got a lot easier when I removed religion completely. I also recall discovering increased moral agency -- as a Christian I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven (an idea I found laughable), and that the objective basis for making moral judgements comes directly from god (another idea I found laughable). As an atheist I was suddenly responsible for making my own moral judgements and conclusions (I had to decide upon my own objective basis for making moral judgements), and forgiveness was something I had to work towards myself (as in I had to forgive myself for things, which is not easy, but is incredibly rewarding) versus simply getting it for free from some nonexistent deity. All in all, was an incredibly positive change in my life, and I do believe there can be a weird sort of spirituality to 100% atheism that people don't really acknowledge.

I am a practicing Catholic. I have four kids all under 7. My normal day consists of feeding them, bathing them, calming tantrums, losing my temper, getting bitter at my lack of time for hobbies, and growing resentful of my lack of time for reading the Bible, praying, etc.

But then I remember that this is a true dying to self. Not only a dying to self, but a dying to the world too as each of these sacrifices, failures, and victories occur hidden away from the world. Thus I commend myself to this daily humbling, this emptying, and also trust myself to the daily prayer of the monks, whose prayer and sacrifice are also hidden from the world and whose labors I suspect are also just as arduous, frustrating, and challenging at times.

> For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find i

Day starts with prayer and studying scripture by myself for awhile, then briefly as a family before everyone goes their way. Part of the personal prayer time includes seeking direction on who I might help that day. Throughout the day I try to take little breaks for a brief prayer, longer if I'm stuck on a programming bug whose solution eludes me and for which I need extra inspiration. Also I try to go on a daily walk to appreciate nature and to recognize blessings in my life. Each meal includes a prayer of thanks. Before bed there's a brief family scripture study and prayer, then a prayer with my wife, then a personal prayer to round out the day where I try to reflect on how things went and what I hope to do better tomorrow.

I used to be devout Mormon, and a hardcore one at that. It was woven so deeply in my reality, that everything had spiritual significance for me.

A few years ago, I encountered history, documents, and truths about the religion that were never presented to me. Since then, I've slowly, painfully, removed myself from the religion, and removed the religion from me.

It's extremely painful to go from a space where everything is eternally, deifically, infinitely of value to "nothing actually matters".

I was diagnosed with PTSD this summer from the whole affair, as it was truly traumatic, and there were times that I almost didn't make it in the most literal sense.

But I've pieced together significance slowly and surely over the years. I've learned to slow down, love deeper, participate in the demanding process of finding and acknowledging beauty in this world, and have found spirituality in my own ways.

"The Anthropocene Reviewed" by John Green was a huge influence on my current flavor of spirituality (as it's constantly shifting). I'm sure the book means something different to everyone, but for me, it really broke down the need to work to build a habit of awe, and look for the things that stop you in your tracks. Observation and conscious efforts to find meaning and beauty are how I find my spirituality.

Not long ago in my new apartment after breaking up with a long time girlfriend I had an amazing experience while meditating. The odd thing was I never really meditated back then. Something just told me to do it. I was led on an internal journey that showed me some things about my self. One, don't turn away from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Two, don't judge yourself. Three, the ego or this idea of myself is an illusion. It ended with my sense of self expanding out into infinity. I was not a body; I was infinite and an awesome wave of (I assume) serotonin like a big dose of E. Since then I meditate often and just try to be completely open to my entire experience. I'm an indifferent witness as often as I can. "Bad" feelings have lost their edge. When I sat with the feeling I discovered there is nothing "bad" about it. It's just a different feeling in my experience. With this I have become lighter, freer, happier and more at peace with the experience just as it is, right here, right now. I recommend you try observing yourself as if you are a third person. What do you think about, how do those thought make you feel, what do you do in reaction to uncomfortable or "bad" feelings? I think you will start to notice that it's all just thoughts, often silly, ridiculous thoughts about a future that will not happen. Memory too are just thoughts. They are not happening now and even if they were the judgments of them are just ideas that come from social conditioning. Good and bad, right and wrong are just opinions and they change over time and from person to person. Don't take them seriously. Its like trying to hold on to vapor as if it's something solid. I have since learned from watching Rupert Spira videos on youtube that this is kinda like Atmananda Krishna Menon's Direct Path. A lot of us here are science and engineer types. Think of this as like hacking your human experience or rooting your brain. Why be satisfied with little doses of happiness and satisfaction gotten by jumping thru social or cultural hoops. Happiness, peace and contentment are within us. Go get it for yourself.

Muslim here. Ritual prayer is the core exercise. Before sunrise, after sunset, and 3 other times during the day. But as important or more so is constant remembrance of God. If that's not institutionalized in one's day-to-day psychology, one will lose spiritual momentum, if we can use such terminology. "Worship" in Arabic عبادة actually means something like "conformity to God's order", as far as I understand. So even eating an apple becomes a spiritual exercise when done with knowledge of why and doing so for God's sake, even as its sole beneficiary seems to be oneself.

Tetris. Twice per day.

When I get into a good Tetris routine, my mind will continue to play even when I'm not in front of the screen. There's just this constant background game playing in my head. This might sound distracting, but somehow it's enlightening. It provides rhythm. It provides structure. It keeps my thoughts in constant reorganization, constant renewal.

Overall, I believe Tetris gets my mind into a place and practice where I can more easily answer the following question.

What fits?

What fits into my life, and how? How do I fit into the world?

* My kids are important to me. How do I best fit them into my life? What's too much? What's too little? What do I need? What do they need? How can we best enjoy our time together?

* That friend is not a good influence anymore. The current fit is strained. How much of him is too much?

* This thing I'm doing at work is fun and I love it, but it's not advancing my goals. What fits, what can I keep? What should I discard?

* How will my actions fit into the interests of my family, friends, community?

In the past, in those dark pre-Tetris days, I tended to hang onto bad habits and bad ideas. Inertia is very strong with me. I credit Tetris-brain with helping me break through that inertia on a daily basis.

Soulful Tetris also has the advantage of being absurd enough that I never take it too seriously. Hubris is my biggest problem with organized religion. Tetris is kinda like a form of meditation for the 21st century, nothing more.

Also, it's just a really great game. And I like metaphysical excuses to play it.

I'm a religious Jew, in a bit of a crisis of faith. I still pray three times a day, I still make shabbat and observe holidays, I even still learn Torah even though I don't really believe in it anymore, because I find being well read useful when I have to explain the times I do break the cultural norms to people. Orthodox Judaism in general has a lot of laws everywhere: what you wear, what you eat, what you put in your house, and a lot of prayer and blessings.

Modern orthodox communities of Jews are very weirdly selective about the things they're ok with modernizing and the things they still hold importance with: listening to secular music is fine, wearing modern clothing is fine, but if you play instruments on the sabbath you're shunned. There's something inherently disgustingly coercive about a society that will treat you like a stranger and disown you if you don't get married, let alone if you have a relationship with someone of the same sex. Every day it gets harder to accept myself living a life where I can't openly love the people I love, but there is also a structure and community that secular society doesn't really have. Part of the draws of acceptance is that the sense of community in religious spaces is built not just out of inclusivity (we have the same religion and values) but also exclusivity (we aren't like them) and this means that sometimes you're excluded.

I’m a Protestant in the reformed tradition that would fall inline with the London baptist confession and Heidelberg catechism.

I make it my goal to read the Bible every morning. I typically spend about 30m-1h studying 1-2 verses in a given chapter. Right now I’m in the book of James.

I pray for the assistance of the Holy Spirit to illuminate my understanding, read the verse, give thanks and praise where appropriate, and journal about the verse and how it relates to similar teachings, how the meaning applies to me by either encouragement, exhortation or conviction. (Those are the typical themes).

After this, if I have time, I’ll move through my prayer list for people I’ve told that I would pray for. I pray for my wife, my children, my family and myself.

All of this is pretty dependent on me waking up early and my kids not waking up as I do this :).

I recently started reading about druidism after spending the majority of my life an atheist. I found myself missing the spirituality side: rituals and a connection for meditation/introspection, which druidism provides (all revolving around nature, earth, moon, and sun). Additionally, druidism has a lot of neat math/science roots that I find pleasing, such as the eight holidays and the wheel of the year.

Druidism has a really loose belief system and offers a couple of options for you to choose from: mono, poly, and pantheism. I reject most "god-like" things, but I think I could become something of a pantheist (the universe is God).

I don't believe any religion knows what happens after you die, and frankly I don't really care. We aren't supposed to know, it's the great mystery, and instead we should focus on ensuring everyone lives their best life. Druidism has a theory about the after life and how you go through various lives until you become a good person, but it's not something I spend time thinking about. As an aside, Iris DeMent's song Let The Mystery Be perfectly describes my thoughts on this: https://youtu.be/0gQVS2fCsek

Throughout my day, I pray in three steps.

First, gratitude, expressing my thanks for all that I have to be grateful for, all the gifts and blessings I've received.

Second, asking for forgiveness for regrettable actions, which, if I look closely, I can always find, small or large.

Third, I ask for help. I generally don't ask for specific things, but talk about general areas or people I want to help. I try make sure that my intentions and asks are well-intentioned and generally working towards increasing overall levels joy in the world.

The other crucial piece of this, where meditation practice really helps, is to pay close attention and listen for response and guidance.

Along with breathing/mindfulness meditation, I do this throughout the day, and I also find time to sit down and do a dedicated prayer and meditation for 30 minutes each.

I started meditating throughout the day, sometimes in given triggering situations, a few years ago. I started this prayer practice about a year ago and have been working on it.

I recommend trying out this practice to anyone who's curious about our reality and how it works.

I am a Practicing Stoic,

Morning routing is to spend about an hour reading texts and scholarly commentary while drinking my coffee. Then I journal, my morning journal entries are discussions with my inner daemon about how to handle the days events. Preparing myself and remembering what is and isn't in my control. Throughout the day I have reminders set to step back and examine what I am doing at that moment. This is usually coupled with one or more mental exercises to keep perspective. In the evening before going to bed I sit back down with my journal and go over any major events from the day and examine them against my philosophical beliefs. Did I approach it correctly? What did I get wrong about it. When its all written down I close my journal and forgive myself for any missteps I might have made.

Every morning I read a section of the Bible's Old Testament, Psalm, Proverb and New Testament.

I then use the Lord's Prayer as a framework to pray. Having done this for many years I have observed we begin 'Our Father' and focus on God. My own inclination would be to start with 'Forgive me' and focus on me.

I then spend my day trying to honour Jesus's teachings. The highs and lows of the previous day are discussed the next morning.

I'm a Non-denominational Christian. During my best of times I would wake up and read the bible first thing in the morning before doing any major activities. I would normally say two prayers in the morning. The first prayer would be asking for the wisdom and understanding to grasp what I'm reading and internalize the lessons. Thanking God that I have seen another day. Which depending on my spots in life has been harder or easier. The second prayer would be asking God to help me remember what I have read and for me to be able to use the lessons I have learned practically throughout my day. I would then pray thanking God about things I'm grateful for, asking for help in things I feel weak in, and praying for my prayer list towards the end. We have service on Sunday for 2 hours, bible talk once a month and a middle of the week service once a month.

I'm into magick.

So a lot of what I do is observe my thoughts and intentions and direct my attention/emotion/passion/sexual energy towards the most beautiful and joyful subset of those.

When I'm particularly certain of a desired outcome I will "cast" for it, occasionally doing a bit of sorcery: drawing funny pictures and generally doing wizardly stuff.

I also do "continuous divination" AKA leaning heavily into apophenia and just generally not assuming that mysterious forces aren't at work around me. Sometimes I'll also do "acute divination" -- my favorite method is fortune cookies, not even kidding.

Visualizing and praying to various god/esse/s is important. In particular I pray to Ganesh to help me let go of negative things I'm holding onto (this was a beautiful outcome of therapy mingling with my spiritual life); I also love Inanna, and Sun meditations. I'd also be lying if I denied that Christ shows up in my most anxious moments--especially since He appeared in a dream to tell me "you don't need to be a Christian to talk to me".

Finally, there are also public rituals that I attend on a regular (sans covid) basis where we meditate on natural/spiritual forces and socialize our spirituality.

This is one of the most important bits of it all, as it 1) is a huge source of magical energy, 2) reinforces the practices I'm doing 3) inspires/goads me into deepening those practices, and 4) exposes me to more ideas and possibilities in this zone, even if I've been negligent to study the mysteries (and I have been negligent, since focusing on my career the last few years).

In the morning, I think while drinking coffee. Then I really think in the shower. As a result I take long showers. Sometimes during the day, I'll sit back and think. While going to bed, I'll think some more.

Usually I think about problems to solve, reflect on my life so far, course adjustments, things to self improve.

One day I'll pick up a religion, but it seems like they all would require a lot of mental gymnastics to keep consistent with my mental explorations. Ultimately I think religions are useful as a tutorial on how to live a good life, but like tutorials, they don't always apply super well to your own particulars. So my parallel track is to think hard about the stuff I'm missing that a religion would provide. E.g meditative time, family matters, behaviours, habits.

But science moves so fast that a lot if religious habits are really out of date, so I have little hope to find a religion in the future. I wish there was a "Debian Sid" religion: not quite Gentoo uptodate but not too CentOS outofdate.

Not sure if it counts as spiritual, but for 10 years I've consistently done subconscious, mind+body healing exercises. It's been profoundly transformative.

Prior to that (and for quite a while after) I had a huge amount of drama and chaos in my life, and after searching far and wide for answers (starting with the usual stuff - mainstream therapy, meditation, etc) I learned about these healing practices, which address the physiological reactions that happens when we experience triggering events.

Over time, my practice has developed into this: try to live a normal, well-functioning life, do my best at whatever I do. When things happen that trigger reactions - anger, resentment, arrogance, jealousy, contempt, shame, etc, or anything that makes me feel a jolt or even very mild visceral reaction, undertake the practice, which enables me to find where in my past the reaction comes from, then do a brief breathing exercise to let it go. Rinse and repeat. Over time, the reactions weaken, my overall stress burden diminishes (along with physiological issues like inflammation, chronic pain, etc), and bit by bit life gets simpler and important indicators like relationships and career steadily imrove.

I make coffee the same way at pretty much the same time every morning.

For the last few years (and especially since the pandemic began), my most regular practice has been the Liturgy of the Hours, particularly Lauds and Vespers, which are the morning and evening prayers of the Roman Catholic Church. Each one is two psalms and a canticle, followed by a short reading, another canticle (the Benedictus in the morning and the Magnificat in the evening), intercessions, an Our Father, and a concluding prayer. I have been trying to pray Matins more regularly as well (also called the Office of Readings), which is three psalms followed by a longer reading from the Bible and reading from one of the Church Fathers.

I have found praying the rosary beneficial as well since it is more meditative than the Liturgy of the Hours, but I haven't yet been able to regularly work into my schedule.

I meditate, usually an hour of sitting practice, and then through the day.

Practicing more felt really urgent after a couple of big psychedelic trips, and I've found getting into contact with a source of fundamental unconditional love hugely helpful. I feel very in touch with the sacred, despite being agnostic at best.

I'm not a huge fan of the mainstream concentration work stuff; I've been influenced by Rob Burbea's jazzy, improvisational approach.

Also, currently I'm working on the jhanas, which are a lot of fun, and I'm excited to work on them at a 10-day retreat starting in a week. Leigh Brasington's Right Concentration is the best intro, or for a thread see https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1471300341232668679

I'm a secular Satanist. I believe Christianity and Abrahamic religions are inherently unethical. I have very strong utilitarian principles that run even deeper, which is ultimately what pushed me to Satanism. I'm a member of the Satanic temple, but in some ways it's more of a political organization than religious. I'm open to the possible existence of the paranormal, but I do not trust it at all and would question the intentions of such entities.

I am an Orthodox Christian. My day begins with prayer, as soon as possible after I wake up. Prayer consists of reading (or reciting) prayers from a prayer book, followed by 100-200 Jesus Prayers ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!"), followed by 12-25 prostrations.

I then read the daily scripture readings indicated by the liturgical calendar.

At noon, I usually read a Psalm in front of my icons (I work from home) and do 12 prostrations.

After dinner, we pray together as a family, then read several chapters from the Bible together and discuss whatever comes up in the text we are reading that day. We're currently in the middle of reading the Bible in a year.

Before bed, I repeat my morning routine, but saying evening prayers instead of morning prayers. I usually fall asleep while saying the Jesus Prayer. I also say the Jesus Prayer throughout the day as I am doing things that don't require strong focus.

We go to Vespers (evening prayers) on Saturday night, and we go to church on Sunday morning.

Growing into this routine has changed my life, healed my family, and brought immense peace and joy (and struggle!) into my life. Glory to God!

EDIT: I should add that prayers are typically said while standing in front of an icon corner, usually with a candle lit and incense burning. Obviously, when I am saying the Jesus Prayer throughout the day or falling asleep, I'm not following those guidelines, but my morning and evening prayers are said while standing, usually with my eyes open.

I am not religious at all and I've thought of myself as tolerant of religion (they all have some very good teachings, after all).

But lately organised religion has been bothering me a lot. It is just so obviously a form of controlling people: you have to believe this and that and also hand over some cash and vote for such and such.

I can't get around the fact that this still goes on so blatantly in this day and age.

Not religious and not really spiritual at all to be honest.

The closest thing to "spiritual" that I do is walking slowly. Years ago one day I noticed I had the habit of walking very quickly everywhere I went and that this was pointless. I walk much more slowly now, looking around, watching things, people, anything. I make a point of always leaving earlier than I need so that I never have to hurry.

Kind of like the reverse to the chorus in "Nowhere fast".

I'm agnostic, but I choose to believe that there's a chance the universe was created, either directly or as a side-effect of some act of will. Given what I know about how complicated projects generally get delivered, I assume that instead of some benevolent, perfect creator, the universe was created in a rush, by some stressed low-level figure. They are probably unhappy with how it turned out, and they had to implement a bunch of performance hacks (the speed of light and quantum mechanics among them) to get it working properly. They may not understand its internal state, or know we exist, but I hope they have at least some grudging affection for their creation, even if it's been superseded by other universes at this point. I call them Colin. I occasionally ask for Colin's help, and in return I try to keep my part of the universe interesting. You are free to join me in Colinism.

I'm an atheist, and don't believe in anything spiritual.

But I do think there are things that inspire me, make me feel connected to the world around me, and make me think. I love philosophy and history and I am constantly reading new things, but I especially like the wisdom of the stoics. I try to go for a walk daily, and I live where I can go hiking in the forest, along rivers, and around rugged coastlines. But mostly I just contemplate and see where my mind takes me.

Atheism. downright non-believer. Grew up by a deist family. they were not really religious. I do remember hearing praying every now and then from my childhood but it was not something that's reflected to me as important part of life. Later on met lots of religious people but did not find them interesting. After learning more about science and technology, the unresolved facts started to disturb me while I was still young. Later in life started being interested in philosophy and learned that i need to learn more about the things that i disagree. hence end up reading most of the holy books, found them close to reading LOTR. My thoughts on spiritual practice? Religion is required for most of the people because it is a meditation and a safe bay for the minds that are unable to bear the hard facts in this universe. I find it very stupid and inefficient for humanity to spend so much resources on it but I do not disrespect the religious community except the extremists and the people who's life's meaning is religion. I also believe that the majority of people are belong to a religion because they don't want to be seen as an outsider or due to their social state or job etc. Or probably because it's been an important part of their family. because it is very hard to unsee the cruel world and fool yourself with religion. "Science is the most reliable guide for civilization, for life, for success in the world. Searching a guide other than the science is meaning carelessness, ignorance and heresy."

I am Muslim and pray 5x a day. Prayer is the remembrance of God (Allah) and expression of gratitude and love.

Every morning I spend some of my wealth in charity. The Quran puts great emphasis on helping others and on being a good human being. My father used to say it's not the amount, but consistency that matters. I try to keep to that.

Apart from that, I read / listen to the Quran. This is what makes me the happiest spiritually.

simple translations of the Quran: https://beta.quran.com/1

overview of Islam: https://www.javedahmedghamidi.org/#!/mizan (English on top)

I was raised religious (catholic), and kind of believed in it. And then when I was 18-20 I spent a lot of time and effort to rid myself of religion, and have been living happy and free ever since. I still enjoy the occasional mass (once or twice a year), mainly because I like to sing.

I have not taught my kids any kind of religion or spirituality, and they don't seem to miss it. I wanted to spare them the effort of getting out of it later. What I hadn't anticipated is that as a result, they are pretty ignorant of most things, they have little idea who Jesus or Mary are, etc. (We tell them about it sometimes, of course, but it's very different than going to Sunday School for 10 years).

Atheist-ish - no spiritual practice of any kind.

In terms of beliefs, I think there’s a tonne of massive, unanswered questions about the universe, and it’s certainly possible that there are forces out there that resemble spiritual concepts. Something vaguely resembling a soul, or an intelligent life that created the universe, that sort of thing. Or not - I have no real opinion on this other than “nobody knows”.

I do think that all popular religions on earth were created by people, though. Likely started similar to cults, and evolved into something much more loosely controlled. I don’t think they’re entirely negative, religion can be a powerful positive force for a lot of people, but I do think they’re just stories made by humans, for humans.

I try to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I like to seek out and fold in examples and teachings of other religious leaders as well as long as I can resolve differences in some creative way. I am particular keen of various Asian ideas of late.

I read scriptures and other inspiring works when impressed to (I think that Dr Seuss, The Life of Pi, and maybe Laura Ingalls Wilder should be canonized—chuckle).

I serve weekly in the temple as a Latter Day Saint. There is a regularity and and a sense of the cosmic to it that lifts me and grounds me at the same time. Over the years I’ve volunteered/served in a number of different capacities, often with youth/scouts/seminary. I have found that this practice of contributing my efforts to help others has been uplifting for me. I have learned that if my own creativity/agency is removed from that service, then it turns from uplifting to toxic.

I am probably considered somewhat progressive by many of my LDS peers; I am very comfortable abstracting over much of what we “believe.” tue theological details are just not that important to me; I am more interested in what we do from moment to moment, than whether I’m tapping my ruby slippers together fervently enough. Or put another way, as a bi-weekly Sunday school teacher, I’m more interested in encouraging the class how we apply the ideas in our lives than trying to weave some sort of canonical soundness.

I was raised atheist by atheist parents. My mother was raised in one of the weirder Christian sects and got out of it before they married. I have always been an atheist despite growing up in a small town with a church on every block, including one whacky church that actually did things like book burnings and burning Michael Jackson in effigy for corrupting the youth. Most of my friends were catholic, growing up, and that led me online for friends on days when they had CCC. 300 baud hayes for the win and online atheist communities, etc.

That said, as I've gotten older, I think I've concluded that many people - maybe even most - have a sort of need for religion that I somehow never appreciated. Without religion, I think we end up with the modern world, and by that I mean the weird secular religions (on all parts of the political spectrum) that keep springing up in the absence of a formal church, complete with weird notions of sin, apocalyptic thinking, etc. As an outsider, and as someone fascinated by cults and moral panics, it's interesting how similar the structures and language are between these movements and (new) religions are.

So 100% atheist.. but a suspicion that the world would be better off, Chesterton's fence-style, with a dominant religion secretly run by atheists.

I’m Muslim… on a day to day basis I pray, ideally five times a day. The prayer timings are tied to the location of the sun in the sky, which helps me be more aware of natural rhythms. I’ve observed that the periods of my life where I am praying regularly are associated with lower levels depression, higher levels of satisfaction and purpose.

I'm kind of a pagan/panpsychist/discordian/chaos magician. I try to sidestep all that "is the supernatural 'real'?" baggage by treating it all as an abstraction layer - do my practices get what I want? Maybe it's Yahweh, the Force, universal consciousness, flying spaghetti monster, or just good ol' confirmation bias, I don't particularly care most of the time. Sometimes I straight up pretend I'm in a video game or the Matrix. It's fun. I try to lean into "Nothing is true; everything is permitted" when it comes to unfalsifiable stuff.

This is pretty much the only way I've been able to balance the super rational science heavy side of my mind with a deeper need to feel a spiritual connection.

I don't currently have a day to day practice, though I used to meditate daily. I really should get back into that though.

As a religious Jew, I (am obligated by my religion to) pray three times a day, morning, noon and evening. The longest is the morning prayer, 45 minutes approximately.

The prayers are a mix of gratitude, humility and supplication.

Somewhere in-between atheist and pantheistic here.

My primary practice is Walking. Other rituals will come and go, but taking a walk can help out almost anything that’s going on in life.

Really big walks, like hiking for days in the backcountry, at least once a year.

I'm a Discordian. To me, that means a sort of pandeistic existentialist absurdism.

A (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) argument:

God is the greatest possible being. The universe is, by definition, everything that exists. Everything is greater than any subset of everything. Therefore God is must be the entirety of existence. God seems to have numerous mostly disconnected consciousnesses, but is mostly Hydrogen. There's no inherent meaning given by a bunch of Hydrogen. Therefore we tiny conscious bits of the universe have to make our own meaning. Assigning a singular consciousness to God would be utterly arbitrary and quite silly. Silly things are fun. Therefore God is also a woman, her name is Eris, nonsense is the source of salvation, and God is the universe and isn't any singular being.

I also quite like the ontological argument for atheism:

God is the greatest possible being. Completing a task with a bigger handicap is greater (more impressive) than completing it without that handicap. Not existing is the greatest possible handicap. Therefore God must be a being capable of creating the universe despite not existing.

Faith, to me, is a joke. It's a deliberate choice to believe in things one has no evidence for (at best) or knows are false (at worst). So why not treat religion as a joke, and humor as sacred? It makes as much sense as any other choice in the matter.

So I try to live each day with a bit of humor.

I consider stargazing to be a spiritual practice. Looking for stars and planets and finding them exactly where science says they are supposed to be confirms by belief that we live in a world governed by laws, that these laws are knowable, and that we in fact do know them to a pretty reasonable degree of certainty and approximation. That makes me feel connected to the cosmos in a very deep way. I feel privileged to exist at a time and place where this is possible. I think it's pretty fucking awesome.

Daily mass. It does not feel spiritual every single day but most days the mind is focused, and I feel calm and a sense that I’m part of something greater than the immediate world of work, family and daily concerns.

Meditation while giving myself over to daily chores. Just being at peace with them, being mindful of why I'm doing them, weathering the thoughts and emotions that rebel against them.

And the same with everything else positive in my life. Living and not following the impulse to constantly stop and reassess. I have my life pretty well figured out, but something in my brain always wants to stop doing, analyze, rethink, second-guess every action every day until the actual doing is crowded out, in my head and in reality, too, if it gets its way. So my practice is to give myself over to the things that make my life and the lives of the people around me better.

Zen buddhism. I started going to a local zendo about 7-8 years ago to do a weekly 1h30 hour meditation (in fact, 3 short bursts of 25min). This also became a (much shorter) daily habit, and over the year I attend various retreats (from 1 to 5 days). The zendo itself is 'managed' by a monastic.

I started because I wanted to have a crazy experience that would modify my epistemiological understanding of the world. Over the years, I discovered how past emotional events subcounsciously influenced my decision making, how much parental roles shaped my romantic views and how much of my personality was invested in my mind and not my body. I could go on and on.

I cannot prove this scientifically, but somehow I think that my effort toward zen practice made all of this possible, and the only thing I know is that the next change will be weirder than the last one.

I would also like to mention that, even if meditation is ''not christian'', I now feel that my understanding of it is better now than 8 years ago.

I'm part of a church where we take ayahuasca a couple times a month while performing our rituals. Day to day is the usual self-awareness plus christian deal: meditation + attempting to do good, try not to be a dick to others etc.

I'm an atheist, and don't believe in the supernatural per se. To me, the supernatural is best described by Harold Abelson in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs:

> We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.

> A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.

> A computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes programs precisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer's apprentice, novice programmers must learn to understand and to anticipate the consequences of their conjuring. Even small errors (usually called bugs or glitches) in programs can have complex and unanticipated consequences.

I do think the supernatural exists but simply as perceived emergent properties of natual systems. For example, most of us have experienced love and might describe it as a supernatural experience. That is a real experience to most of us. Yet we know that in reality, the experience we had emerged from a complex set of natual systems (hormones, brainwaves, etc) that are far beyond our understanding.

So to answer your question, my spirital practices are things that increase my wellbeing and bring about these supernatural experiences.

Regularly: breath-focused meditation, time in nature, swimming laps, sex, burning incense, journaling/reflection.

Occasionally: fasting, ayahuasca, solitude retreats.

As an Atheist, I recently started reading religious texts of all Abrahamic religions(Judaism , Islam and Christianity) as well as Dharmic ones such as Buddhism. Why? Because I have always been curious about religion yet always discarded it as "bronze age superstition" as Christopher Hitchens would describe it..

Thanks to this journey, I ended up meeting a lot of great people in the community. Without exception, everyone welcomed me as an outsider and politely answered all my questions. I have been to mosques, synagogues and churches during hours of prayers and other events to observe and learn and so my network has grown by a decent size which I'm grateful of.

I think overall the result has been a net positive in my life and has broadened my understanding of history, philosophy and art. I haven't necessarily "settled" in a particular camp but I no longer brush off the idea of worshiping a God. I think one can make the distinction between _radical_ religious dogma and having a holy house of worship.

Having done lots of introspection over the past year, I don't think subscribing to Atheism is healthy because in your happiest moments or your darkest moments of despair, you have no spiritual basis to fall back on, you have no way structure way of burying the dead or celebrating the joining of a couple in a ceremonial way. Further, all Atheists still celebrate Christmas, or Easter , all of which are religious holidays and are completely meaningless to them which is ironic..

As an Atheist you also have to make up your "subjective" morality (and who is to say one's sense of moral is superior to another? there are no basis for this) which is again ironically borrowed from religious teachings. Finally Atheism fails to answer the deepest questions we have which is Why is there something instead or nothing and why are we here?

Thus considering the above, I can confidently say that my views on spiritually and religion has shifted significantly.

I have to say, this is a beautiful conversation. Mine is mostly built around music. For instance, listening to A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, or Supper's Ready by Genesis.

Reading a bit of the Gospels in my mother tongue.

I describe myself as "culturally Catholic", which is my way of saying that my cultural heritage includes plenty of Catholic elements and I am fine with that. I love popular traditions and ancient buildings, for example, even if I don't care much about faith.

For me, the fact that religion is a human creation makes the good parts about it more worthwhile, not less. It is a shared story that has been told and shaped over the centuries, and it has ended up shaping the people who told it in return.

I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I read scriptures every day (Book of Mormon, Bible, Doctrine and Covenants) for 10-30 minutes. I turned 40 this year and have a goal to read all of those scriptures cover to cover before my next birthday.

I pray every day as well, at least at night, often when I wake up, and almost always before meals (unless I'm at a restaurant or something).

Weekly I go to church, and go help with the youth activities. I also go visit families and widows regularly — or at least I try to.

I try to worship at the temple (different than the regular weekly church) about monthly.

And I pay 10% of my income as a tithing and give some each month as a "fast offering" to help the needy.

Back to the day to day stuff, I try not to swear, try to be kind, honest, and all the other things Christ was and would be.

I've been practicing kriya yoga and hatha yoga every day for the past half year. I usually do it as soon as I wake up, and it takes about an hour.

It's quite intense work, but I'm glad I've kept it up, as the benefits have been immense. I've some drama in my life, some of that is now starting to ease off, and life is becoming more intelligent and filled with ease.

For anyone interested to learn more: https://youtu.be/XLk5yks9c_Q

My ritual pre-pandemic was a cup of coffee and a small silent prayer of thanks for the new day while on the train before and after sips.

It was my mental oasis of calm, and something I realize is missing in the pandemic.

When I was much younger and trying to forge a connection, however, I spent an hour or more daily trying to “hear”; by reading versus, letting-go of mental burdens, and straining for something.

At one point I experienced what has been described as the “still small voice”, warning me that someone I knew had designs on me.

It was not audible, it was brief, yet it was extremely specific. There was no confusion in the message.

What actually shocked me was when weeks later, the events were unfolding as I was warned about; I was basically too shocked to act on what would have been a very bad decision.

Right after all of this is when I lapsed.

I’m thankful for the openness and respectfulness of this discussion.

Prior to my conversion I’d identify myself largely with new age spirituality and stoicism. They were pragmatic in that they seemingly satiated the need for the divine and encouraged behaviors that were productive from a societal perspective.

I was saved in January of 2019. The early days of walking with Christ were beautiful. I sold my most ostentatious worldly possessions, bought a motorcycle, and would ride into the mountains to find a patch of grass and read the Bible to learn more about God.

God is gracious. The more I earnestly sought Him, the more He revealed Himself.

Nowadays, I start my day with prayer and usually a brief study in the Bible. I like to focus on what the passage conveys about God’s character. Afterwards I pray for His guidance as to the tasks to carry out for the day.

I try to pray throughout the day but I’m most deliberate about praying during transitions (ie: from hands on work to taking a meeting)

I end the day with a prayer for wisdom as I open the scriptures again, then finally a prayer of thanksgiving before bed.

I’ve found that Jesus is less about religious tradition and more about understanding who God is and what He has done, what His Will is, and doing it. In the heart of one who truly believes in Christ, this order increases our love and joy in God.

Everything else — church, serving people, acting morally - is downstream from loving God and our neighbor as ourself.

My goal: predispose myself to be receptive to the gift of inner transformation. I have four words that resonate these days: wise, thoughtful, mature, sane. As a Catholic Christian, I see a good deal of unwise, unthoughtful, immature, and insane Christianity, and also, albeit less vocally, a good deal of wise, thoughtful, mature, and sane Christianity. I have personally spent a disconcertingly large amount of time in the first of those places. I do see moments, perhaps even a bit more frequently theses days, of being in the second of those places. Best I can tell, Sturgeon's Law applies to religion just as it applies to everything else: "ninety percent of everything is crap." That being said, I am convinced that the other 10% of religion is rich, sublime, beautiful, and worthy. The first ultimately amounts to nothing, and the second everything. For my daily practice, I read the day's scripture passages from the Catholic Missal, and then do 20 minutes of centering prayer. The Trappist monk Thomas Keating's work is my main guide, along with Thomas Merton, James Finley, Richard Rohr, and Cynthia Bourgeault. Centering prayer is a simple practice of wordless receptive awareness of being in God's presence, and an openness to God's ongoing work within and without.

Not religious at all. I don't believe in the supernatural and I don't think it would even be possible for us to detect it even if it does exist.

I'm not superstitious (after all, it's unlucky to be superstitious) and I'm not even sure what spiritual means as I've never heard a coherent definition.

I get my sense of awe, wonder and beauty from the natural world, whether that's star gazing or studying and appreciating nature.

I'm probably an outlier but just wanted to add my voice to the conversation.

Follow Dvaita Vedanta (Tattvavada). Part of Sanatan Dharma/Hinduism and one of the schools of Vedanta. The process of learning though spans the entire lifetime. It is not a simple set of scriptures that you read and understand. It has multiple layers and takes decades to get a grasp of. Sometimes even more. The works of Shri Madhvacharya have influenced and changed my perception of Universe (Jagat/Srushti), Life (Aatma) and my relationship with God (Brahman). I don't find anything else that satisfactorily explains the Srushti, Aatma and Brahman as well as Tattvavada does. I am a seeker so I am always learning. The more you travel down this path, the more you learn/discover. It is a never-ending process.

I am, unironically, a Dudeist. Think Buddhism, minus the mystical components. I believe balance is crucial: Walter without The Dude is too active. The Dude without Walter is too passive.

I meditate regularly, too. Imagine you had the ability to spawn a watchdog thread that could monitor your emotional state and notice when it gets out of whack, and then you could shift focus to that thread. "Huh, I'm experiencing a lot of fear right now. Why is that? This isn't an objectively fearful situation, like a wild dog chasing me. So what is it about this that's making my heart rate increase?" It's amazing how often simply noticing and asking those questions can defuse a stressful moment.

I'm a somewhat newly converted protestant, no specific label except born-again. I pray in the morning and before bed, and try to read the Bible for 15-30 minutes a day. I normally pray silently on my knees, but I learned the Lord's Prayer in koine greek and like to say that out loud. I also attend a Sunday service. I'm friendly with some local evangelists and will sometimes hang out with them if I see them, just to fellowship with them and hand out new testaments. When I have time I try to read books by Christian thinkers, but only have a few read so far, mostly by CS Lewis and Tozer. John Wesley's sermons (available for free online) are also really spiritually valuable to me.

I study how science and spirituality meet. There's tremendous overlap between how machines work, how physics work, and how our own psychology works. Finding these overlaps where 10 different things in 10 different areas are shown to be one thing is my way of trying to grow spiritually and intellectually.

Most recently I discovered a link between the Wheeler-Dewitt equation describing time as a subjective phenomenon of entangling in an otherwise static universe, and how the corresponding models of OOP and FP work. FP is unchanging, it has no time component, but also therefore can't enact "change" (side-effects) without having some mechanism that taps into impurity (like the IO monad in Haskell).

So essentially the absolute being is immutable, but it still needs to conjure up impure beings to whom nothing is absolute and all is relative (and yes I mean also as in General Relativity where one's space is another's time and vice versa), but to those impure beings, as they explore the vast universe of all possibilities, they change. I.e. they are coupled to their own change, which we perceive as time.

I strongly believe at this point that entanglement of macroscopic objects is part of reality. We live in a multiverse, where our own actions are soon reflected in the rest of the world we experience. It's the very mechanism through which "karma" works. Karma is not simply the balance of good and evil, as those categories are subjective. It's rather the balance of all balances. What you do will come back at you at some point. And then you have the chance to judge it from the other side and decide if you were good or bad, and learn.

My primary practice is compassion for all beings.

To that end I practice mindfulness / emptiness of the body in the Tibetan tradition — https://pointingoutthegreatway.com/. I also practice with Medicine Buddha mantras and Tara mantras.

I would also say that being kind and loving is part of my practice as is going to psychotherapy and connecting with others on the spiritual path.

I try to make time every day to "spend time with God".

This involves reading the Bible, praying, worshipping and meditating on the Bible.

Preferably first thing. However I don't function so well without coffee so often I get up and make a coffee first.

None, really. At least not in the sense of what people usually mean by "spiritual". That is, I don't pray to (or believe in) any gods or deities of any sort, or even believe in any actual thing called a "spirit". So that doesn't leave much room for spirituality.

The closest I come to any of this is something I like to do now and then which I suppose is a little bit like meditation. I'll put on some nice pleasant, non-distracting music which doesn't tend to make me think of anything in particular, close my eyes, and just try not to think about anything for a while, and immerse myself in just the sensation I'm feeling. But really, this is just away to kinda "clear my mind" and relax, I'm not sure I'd describe the experience as spiritual at all.

Beyond that, I do get something out of reading Zen Buddhist literature at times. But Zen, to me, is more of a philosophy and a way of thinking, than a religion. And I wouldn't say I'm an adherent or practitioner of Zen, it's just something I enjoy reading / thinking about sometimes.

I realize it barely counts, but I try to get up and get some exercise every morning before doing anything else. Well, drink some coffee first, whose main effect may simply be hydration.

Not super strenuous: I ride my bike to work. Especially during the winter, there's a psychological component to outdoor survival when the temps drop below 0 F, and maybe it's a bit of an antidote to the winter blues.

Orthodox Christian here. I pray before our icons in the mornings and evenings and use prayer rope through out the day to read Jesus-prayer [1] (perfect in boring Teams-meetings :)) I try to attend Liturgy every sunday and mostly read books by saints and Church Fathers nowadays. The depth of the teachings of the Church and beauty of out services still astounish me after 11 years of being member of the Church. It’s sad when people judge christians but don’t know anything about the original christianity which differs quite a lot from typical protestantism.

Biggest difference between eastern and western christianity is how we view sin and salvation. In the west they view those from legalistic pov, but we think sin as a disease which can be healed in the Church. That’s why usually orthodox christians aren’t judgmental to others but instead focus on their own struggle.

I’m happy to answer any questions!

1. https://orthodoxwiki.org/Jesus_Prayer

I am not religious, but do feel spiritual in that I believe there is something bigger than us, and that we are part of a bigger, yet-unexplained whole that we reconnect with at some point. It is more of a "It's a comforting thought for me" thing rather than a set, unwavering surety. I don't really have any sort of practice of this, though. Lately I finally started meditating more - multiple times per week. I feel it helps to get me out of my head and closer to this sense of greater connection and wellbeing.

I like Shikantaza, although I can't claim to actually do it daily. It translates to "just sitting" and is a form of meditation consisting of, well, just that. It is mostly based on a single text telling you how to sit and how to balance not-falling-asleep and not-actively-thinking. That's all. There is no extensive literature translated to death and no startup trying to sell you something, but yet you are right there with the core weirdness of meditation and paradoxes like thinking non-thinking. Love it.

Nothing. I am ignostic. An interesting benefit of this position is that when the religious folks in my extended family ask about my religion and I tell them I'm ignostic, they 100% of the time misinterpret that as 'agnostic'. For some reason they can totally accept this position, maybe they just figure I'll eventually come around.

I do not disabuse them of this interpretation, because I avoid conflict. And religion, much like politics, seems to result in conflict most of the time.

> I had been taught I could simply confess whatever and it would be forgiven

I personally agree that this is nonsense but there are kernels of good ideas in religious ideologies even if they are warped beyond recognition and usefulness.

For example, the concept of confessing sins is practical actually. Not for the purpose of "being forgiven", but one has to acknowledge and admit that one did something bad before it is possible to try to change that behavior for good. Without admitting or seeing an act was bad, there is no hope in fixing it.

So yeah, if we could undo all the "warping" of concepts, regardless of where they came from, "religion" wouldn't be so bad but it seems beyond fixing at this point. It's wrapped up in emotions like guilt and fear, and that makes it hard to separate the manipulators from those who are truly trying to help.

Recent convert to Anglicanism here. It’s a lot more formal than the Baptist tradition that I grew up in.

There are a lot of rote prayers for every occasion - morning, night, etc. When I was younger I would have found this inauthentic, forced, and fake. But now I find that it sort of fills a gap. It provides some of the ritual and meditation that I had admired/envied in Eastern traditions like Buddhism.

I’m still sort of easing my way in to all this. So far I’ve been enjoying listening to morning prayer on The Daily Office Podcast [1] with my morning coffee. It’s a great way to start the day.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-office-podca...

I haven't really found a practice or routine, yet, but I've always seeked out a higher power and it is something I am still interesting in. I quit drinking alcohol ~60 days ago which drove me to attend some AA meetings. An elderly gentleman while explaining his view of a "higher power" said that he just starts by saying his "please"(s) in the morning (eg. 'please help me through this speech,' etc) and his "thank you"(s) at night - even though he doesn't try to identify who he's speaking to.

Although I hope to eventually have an experience that allows me to have complete faith and belief in something more specific, I thought that was a good place to start. I haven't gotten into the routine myself, but I thought I would share.

Sitting on a bench. Lying under a tree. Going for walks with no goal in mind. Thinking, musing, watching the world unfold.

I'm not at all religious, so I have no "higher power" to guide me, instead I just put on one of my favourite albums and close my eyes for an hour. The albums I like are very progressive and trance-like so it's kinda like my own personal form of meditation. I don't really use the time to reflect or focus on anything, but having the time for myself is nice for my brain

My entire spiritual practice, if you must call it that, is just living life.

I think of the afterlife as the life of people (and other sentient creatures) that will live (or live on) after me, and every day I try to do what I can to make my life AND that afterlife better.

I won’t be there for that afterlife, because I will be very dead, but I believe it is real :-).

Thinking about things this way makes life meaningful and fun.

I am a practicing Agnostic. I slide towards nihilism ever so often, but see its pit of despair and pull myself out of it. Going back to being an agnostic; Hopefully there's something out there. Hopefully.

You know what I wish school hadn't spent the first 9 years of my curriculum teaching protestant christianity, or any religion for that matter. I cannot even imagine the power of teaching kids motivational and spiritual improvement classes instead of wasting my time on religion. Well that never happened, and I've picked up spiritual improvement and motivational stuff later in life. There's still time to make corrections on the trajectory. But when is apogee?

It's very subjective but would like to know if some of you are sharing this feeling around you:

In the modern occidental society, Christianity, which was the spiritual tradition, was abandoned and rejected by almost all the teenagers and young adults at the end of the '60s and by the following generations.

All the next generations until now, in its majority, were declaring to be atheist and rejecting all spiritual side of life.

I don't know if all the Covid related situation changed something but, around me (25-30 years old), a non-negligible part of them started to gain an interest in spirituality (mainly Catholicism here).

Orthodox Jew. I pray three times a day. Morning takes about 20-25 minutes, afternoon is 5 minutes, and evening is 5-10 minutes.

I don't really think of it as a spiritual practice though, more of just a religious obligation.

I'm used to offer at least a small animal every day to The Deity, and a more substantial sacrifice in special occasions, whenever I can afford.

Finding time to just be and breathe. Some traditions call it prayer, others mediation. Breath is life itself. Adding in awe helps with the significance, whether from stars or wind or crème brûlée or sleeping in a cozy bed. Just breathe. My four year old said: “Enjoy the wow that’s happening now”. Decent summary for a basic spirituality with each breath and without the theological complications of “good” and “evil”. Our breath is a simple outlet for our humanity and the neural pathways from the lungs slows the heart.

Atheist christian, I guess. Grew up in a denominational "peace church," Church of The Brethren, where quiet, non-self-aggrandizing service to others was emphasized over theistic dogma and attention-grabbing displays of piety. One hymn I remember had the refrain, "they will know we are Christians by our love," and not by "us" proclaiming it so.

I opted not to be baptized because I didn't agree with everything I had to say to be baptized, mostly around divinity and existence of supernatural beings, and that statement of mine was met with kind acceptance.

A lot of my behavior towards other people was shaped by that church and that attitude, and I try to think about what it means to also give someone your shirt when they are asking for a coat. Also, about "what you do to the least of your brethren you do to me," not because Jesus, but because we live together on this speck of dirt for a very short, and sometimes, very rough amount of time, and I believe we make it better for everyone by treating those with less or nothing with dignity and respect.

I'm an atheist insofar as I don't believe in gods or demons or afterlife beyond chemical decomposition, but I have difficulty identifying with those who proclaim their atheism loudly, much as I look askance on anyone who makes a big deal about their peculiar beliefs about the unknowable. I'm quite horrified by religious extremism, but I'm not going to begrudge anyone their spiritual or communal sanctuary.

I'm atheist, but grew up in and around a few religions and new-age spirituality. In my teenage years, I believed in the spiritual existence as fully as I can imagine anyone believing in anything.

As I reached my 20s I realized these were all dead-ends, but never lost the good feelings I associated with the practice.

For a few years, I tried to pin down what it means to be atheist while still embodying the spiritual experience. One morning I was driving to work when my boss called to say the office would be closed and I could take the day off. Suddenly, it was like all the neurons in my brain lit up at once. The sky looked brighter, the air smelled sweeter, and I felt a wave of energy flood my body.

I loved my job, this wasn't a feeling of relief of escaping something I dreaded. Rather, it was just the sudden openness of my day, and a feeling of unbounded possibilities. I realized in that moment that that is what it feels like to be both atheist and "spiritual".

So, my spiritual practice is two things: first, to make those moments happen. Second, to collect the various ideas, mental models, and frameworks that I believe are the evolutionary successors to spirituality.

The core of these ideas center around: focused vs diffuse thinking, the exploitation/exploration tradeoff, computational irreducibility, information theory, systems thinking, and generally allowing some things which don't exist yet, but could theoretically exist, to exist in my mind as if they are already real.

To be completely honest, I've never been able to figure out what "spiritual" actually means. Every use of it in the wild appears to be directly reducible to some other mundane meaning minus the rituals, which always led me to believe that rituals were the purpose. My father was a well-educated preacher and he could not explain it either when I was growing up, saying it existed mostly as a suitcase word that had no distinct constructive meaning, while also asserting it was nonetheless important to the nature of religion. He acknowledged this was an objectively poor answer that raised questions about why anyone should care but couldn't offer anything better. Yet there is this weird expectation that everyone should be "spiritual" in some way, and this expectation can be perfectly satisfied via trivial performance in practice.

So when people ask me if I am spiritual in some way, my response is always "I have no idea". When they try to explain it, it always ends up being equivalent to the reductionist meanings I've inferred by default. (Human languages have many suitcase words, many without any connection to religion, that encapsulate incoherent concept spaces. The idea of spirituality appears to be just one of many.)

I was raised Hindu and Christian (both Protestant and Catholic). I was also taught Islam to widen my world view.

As a child, the exposure to multiple religions made me a staunch atheist. I think I've been an atheist since I can remember, at least since I was five or six.

The teachings aren't compatible. There's too many times that you'd be taught that you need religion to be moral, or that there's one true God (mostly from the monotheistic ones) or that there's too many subjective interpretations. Worse, I grew up seeing the immorality of many religious people from huckster gurus, to pastors taking donations and not accounting for where it went and the news at the time was of the Catholic churches coverup of pedophilia. As a young child, it all just seemed so deeply wrong.

Anyway atheism makes sense to me. Morality is logic combined with cultural context. Not having religion let me be more open to more cultures, and I find studying the cultural aspects of other religions more fascinating than when I was taught that there should only be one.

My spiritual practice therefore is trying to learn more about different cultures and people. Understanding different perspectives helps give me clarity to my own, without the burden of trying to fit it into an existing religious framework

Zen. I do the "shikantaza" version of it every day in a 40 min session (20 min sitting, 20 min walking - yeah I know shikantaza means "to sit" or something related). It's a very intense type of zazen meant to gain a very clear perception of your body and surroundings. When I first learned about it, the example was that the engagement is not unlike engagement you would have if you engaged into a swords battle to death. That you cannot slip and need to be super duper alert. There are many elements that come into it actually and it's all well described in a book "3 Pillars of Zen".

I have noticed that the intense focus does me much better than calmer types of zazen like counting breaths. I'm only intense during formal practice, but in daily activities I just try to relax and focus on the task at hand - nevertheless, if it was not for the daily practice of the intense version, I would not be nowhere near as alert when I'm more relaxed.

The combination of formal practice (40 min of shikantaza) and the right attitude (to engage well into every task, no matter how menial) did wonders to my wellbeing and quality of life. It is a powerful tool for change and a great way to practice spirituality.

I was a staunch atheist until very recently, when I asked myself the question: isn’t atheism about being -sure- that there is no higher power? How can anyone be sure? Isn’t it arrogant to think that?

So I’d say I’m now agnostic — I simply don’t know.

I don't consider myself religious. Like many folks here (I assume) I've had a strong physicalist lean for much of my life. I've found great joy in the study of math, physics and of course computers.

The pull towards a more spiritual understanding of my condition has been heavily motivated by the mystery of my own consciousness. By consciousness I refer only to pure awareness. This moment in time with this collection of protons and electrons and complex field fluctuations is being experienced. And I find that so incredibly truly strange an inexplicable by any physical description. To carry out this dance of wave function evolution it does not seem that experience would be required at all. Yet it's there. Furthermore, when I'm quiet and my mind settles I can become acutely in touch with this pureness of experience and it appears to transcend mental processing, thoughts, memories and all of the things that are typically used to describe "I".

My story for what the universe is, is something along the lines of a Maxwell Tegmark level 4 multiverse populated with all possible mathematical structures and infused with a panpsychism quality of fundamental experience. Yes, I suspect that even electrons are experienced and I know that's weird lol. In the end though I know this description is just a story that my ego mind needs to make sense of all this stuff and I try not to place too much stock in it.

Practices that I find helpful and meaningful:

-Meditation (I usually aim for about 30 minutes a day)

-Listening to and reading Alan Watts

-Listening to and reading Ram Dass

-Semi-regular psychedelic experience (psilocybin primarily)

-Listening to East Forest's music

Sudarshan kriya - essentially breathing exercises taught by the Art of Living (AoL). It's simple and has a good effect on keeping the mind stable. Further, I also practise meditation taught by the same AoL foundation. Just closing my eyes and being there and observing my breath and surroundings. I go tho the temple (I'm raised as a Jain) for the peaceful environment it offers.

I am missing whatever the brain circuit is that makes you understand and believe in religions.

I can't even call myself atheist or agnostic, as that would require assuming that the statement "Is there a god?" is both coherent, meaningful, and answerable.

Imagine asking someone with aphantasia to visualize Donald Duck, and then asking them if Donald is wearing pants. What would you expect them to answer?

I was raised as a preachers' kid in the ultra-conservative Church of Christ Christian denomination, and I thought we were the only ones that had the truth and everyone else was going to hell. But I wondered why God doesn't show himself. Fast-forward to 2 decades of searching later, and I now hold a panentheistic - we are living in God, we are all part of God, and we are all tuning into the truth. I see God everywhere I look, and I hear God speak (both by positive and negative contrast) everywhere and in everything. I lean towards the idea that "all is as it should be, but not as it should stay". Perfection is not a static destination - we are tuning into God like the Fibonacci sequence tunes into the Golden Ratio. Christ is the Universe/Art/Word, the Father is the Artist/Speaker, and the Spirit is the Artistic reason. I think we're all going to heaven, and it bothers me when people say Daddy is going to throw a bunch of people in an eternal torture chamber - that's not my Dad.

Playing a lot of computer games, reading internet, especially comments and chatting. It allows my spirit to get away from my mortal, aging shell into the virtual worlds of imagination, speech, ideas and relations.

Christianity started out for me as a fear-based "obey the rules or die" approach to life but over the last few years it has been moving towards a "I love God & love what is good" theme. These days everyone labels emotions like fear/shame/guilt as "toxic", but I think they have their uses, in the same way fear keeps us from simply walking off a cliff.

Spiritual practice is best when dynamic over disciplined like any relationship, but find that Bible reading / reflection before bed seems to let things marinate over night, and also talking w/ God and simply telling him what I need throughout the day (peace, self-control, etc) is a fruitful practice.

Even if I wasn't a Christian I would still hold an unshakeable belief that this universe has a Creator. It's just far too wonderful of an engineering marvel to say that there isn't a Grand Engineer behind it all. I think that's part of the joy of living, we get to discover the Creator through his creation.

I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I pray multiple times a day—either to express gratitude or ask for strength to weather whatever struggles I’m facing. I also pray to ask for help and insight so I can do well at school and work. I exercise and try to eat healthily, because I believe my body is a gift from God. I cherish the time that I have with my family, because it is in my family that I feel the purest expression of God‘s love.

In my local congregation, I teach a biweekly class on family history. I love learning more about my ancestors! If you are ever curious to learn more about your heritage, I highly recommend checking out familysearch.org— it is an amazing program, and you do not have to be a member of the church to use it. I know several people who are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ who still like using familysearch.org because it is free and works very well.

Catholic-Sedevacantist. Day-to-day: pray the 15 decade rosary and fast a couple times a week. Sedevacantist means someone who rejects Vatican II, its leaders and reforms as breaking from tradition. https://endtimes.video/ to learn more.

It’s great to see all these responses. I enjoyed looking through these.

My core view is some flavor of monism, and I see no (ultimate) contradictions among monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, even atheistic or apatheistic views. I have had visionary experiences with and without psychedelics. There are some things I don’t need a belief for, having experienced enough.

I spend a lot of time doing healing work on myself, and that bleeds into work on people around me and people I encounter. In the past two years, this work has also bleed into the land as I study and put into practice permaculture design principles.

I used to do mindfulness practices and japa yoga regularly in the mornings. These days, I am practicing neigong with the aim of refining the vessel (the body) to materialize spirit. Or at least, as I can, with helping my wife with our one-year-old child.

Traditional Catholic here. I go to the "Mass of all time" every Sunday. I pray and read the daily texts of the mass. From time to time, I recite the Holy Rosary (which I find a wonderful contemplation method). I examine my conscience and confess my sins regularly. I also like to listen to recordings about the Saints of the Catholic Church - unbelievable people.

I appreciate a lot the traditional Catholic doctrine. It's wonderful to see its resurrection and many young priests motivated to preach it in the opposition to the old protestantized Church leaders.

I have been considering myself just as deist until I've learned how amazing is a Catholic philosophy. Did you know, for example, that Saint Thomas Aquinas found a way to determine if the creation have soul (like humans) or not (like animals)? Including extraterrestrial life!

I'm generally apatheistic, but live as if a more playful zen buddhism is "spiritually correct". Closer to church of Dudism if you've ever seen that parody religion.

I barely meditate anymore, but think a few minutes of it is a handy daily practice. At least to have in your back pocket

My wife and I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's far more important to her than it is to me though.

For me a large part of believing in something greater in myself is the hope that I simply won't cease to exist when I experience brain death. I pray hoping someone is on the other end at least listening to me, I rationalize life on our planet as some sort of orchestrated miracle, I look to the vastness of space to realize that I am insignificant beyond imagination and that our planet and solar system are also insignificant beyond imagination.

I think of my friends and family that have died, and hope that I get to interact with them at some point and try and approximate that right now with things like writing the annual letter to my father and telling him what has been going on in my life since he died 12 days before my 13th birthday which I place on my blog here https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/category/dad

I think of the incredible age of the universe and the tiny blip that is a human's lifespan and hope that I am not some sort of chemical accident. That I'm not a bunch of electrical/chemical reactions that believes it is self aware by some fluke.

On any given day I'm 50%+ (sometimes 100%) of the opinion that we likely exist in a simulation which, at least to me, explains why we have such rapid tech advancements, why we have not detected any other sentient species in the universe, why we haven't seen any evidence of Kardashev 2+ level building in our galactic back yard, why so many things have be invented/discovered within weeks or years of each other by human beings with no contact with one another. I also like this thought because, like in the book series Magic 2.0 by Scott Meyer, there might be some hope that I can exploit some conditions of the simulation to directly benefit myself by either altering my character database or a database of something around me. Silly, but sometimes it keeps me going.

I look at the stars and try to think about how long it took for the light to reach my eye and how big time is.

I also meditate but I find that habit harder to keep up.

I am a practicing Markoist. I don't have any children, mostly living my life in solitude. Every morning I wake up, I feel different. Sometimes I think about killing myself because this shit doesn't make sense. Sometimes I hop out of bed feeling excited about everything, and I go out and do exciting shit. I believe in myself. I believe in finding the answers within myself. That's why I'm a Markoist, a religion named by the name my parents gave me. I think it's no different than any other religion I have encountered; this is just one I can own. I have a lot of extraordinary rituals I came up with. I do them daily.

I respect others, and all I want in return is the respect back.

I practice my religion, believe in god, and pray for some minutes during the evening.

Believing in spirituality without religion leads to a cognitive dissonance.

My philosophy is that there are too many things that we simply cannot observe due to the limitations of our senses and thought/imagination, so to dismiss god is not truly rational.

Spirituality is removed from any material success, so to go into any spiritual practice for an "edge" is not right.

If you want an edge in the material world then persuasion psychology and probability theory are your friends.

Also we tend to forget that science is a philosophy that does not say this is how the world is, but says this is how we understand the world. It's important to keep that distinction in mind.

20 Minutes of Meditation which either takes the form of Transcedantal Meditation or Self enquiry as taught by Sri Ramana Maharshi.

The goal is to initially, quiet the mind, and then realise that there is only Brahman and that there is no such entity called 'Mind'.

Muslim, but not particularly practicing or religious (though I am aiming to be moreso and my knowledge of the religion's history, development, and jurisprudence is certainly above that of most practicing Muslims I have met).

On an actual daily basis: meditation and journaling. I have also incorporated, on most days, listening to Islamic stuff on YouTube in the mornings, and reading the Quran in translation at night before bed.

There was a time period where I was praying 1 or 2 out of 5 of the daily Islamic prayers per day and I would say that this correlated with higher levels of contentment and also secular/temporal success, so I would like to get in the regular habit of that again.

Waiting for my death in peace, trying to help humanity progress to the best of my ability.

I practice mysticism and magick. Essentially it breaks down to Raja Yoga-style mysticism and Western tradition occultism (i.e. in the style of the Goetia and Book of Abramelin). I tend to view things through a Thelemic lens:

'Every man and every woman is a star.' - AL. I. 3

'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.' - AL. I. 40

'The word of Sin is Restriction.' - AL. I. 41

'Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay.' - AL. I. 42-43

'Love is the law, love under will.' - AL. I. 57.

'Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains.' - AL. II. 9.

I'm an atheist but I think that religion and religious values are a positive force for society.

The most spiritual experience I have is when I'm out in nature alone and I see something beautiful like a sunset over the sea. These moments make me feel connected to nature and to the past. I can imagine my ancestors seeing similar things since hundreds of thousands of years. It's comforting to know that some things don't change much.

Spirituality is the struggle to find something that's both meaningful and eternal. Nature's time scales aren't eternal but they're pretty large and easy for my simple atheist mind to conceptualize.

Imho - the only good explanation of why anything exists is that whatever 'is' has always been, is all there is, and is nothing of itself at all. Contemplating that infinite & eternal nature of our existence reconnects me with the magic & mystery of life. It awakens in me a gratitude, an awe, a wonder, a not knowing.. On a practical level - chi qong, yoga, pranayama, sauna/cold plunge, shaking, running, love making, meditating, reading the diamond sutras, beach cleanups, gardening.. whatever calls in the moment and makes me feel more alive, more connection, love, joy, appreciation, etc

Eliminate expectations. It seems like 100% of my negative feelings stem from having expectations of people around me. I would say this single practice has the most impact in reducing my negative feelings in the past 2 years.

I took the long, long road to end up back where I started: Mere Christianity.

I've felt the presence of God in the world my whole life, but the way the right wing media lied to me about global warming and other things had me re-evaluate what else I could be misinformed about, so I kept and open mind and studied a ton of religions including: Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Daoism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and some light reading on Shintoism and other minor Asian religious practices. For a while I entertained Pantheism, but I couldn't square the problem of evil.

So I dove into philosophy for a while and the person that seemed to make the most rational sense once you got to the existence of a mind that could know a truth seemed to be Schopenhauer but Russel seemed the most practical. But I could get to the knowability of truth without bootstrapping off of something else. So the choice (or was it?) was radical scepticism or faith. Since I always felt the presence of God in the world, I decided faith in God was the only answer. I rationally knew it could be a delusion, but when trying to run all the logic sine Deo, I came back to the same point anyway: I need to take something by faith.

But knowing that you need to take something by faith isn't the same as feeling that you have the right religion. So I kept an open mind until the truth of it all overwhelmed me all at once.

It took a while for me to get back to stock Christianity, exploring interfaith, Orthodox Christianity, Christian universalism, etc. And I don't know all the answers on the hot button issues, but I believe and I pray and I trust that there are sensible answers for the harder questions, even if I don't have them yet.

Anyway, if anyone out there wants to chat about any of this I'm always open to a random email from a friendly HNer :)

Raised Catholic, but never seriously and after high school the only churches i attended were for weddings and funerals. But at some point in my twenties i lost a close friend, had some weird experiences of suffering and bliss and acceptance. Then started reading all over the place to try understand my experiences. I found the tao to be very helpful, and thomas mertons writing also very helpful. I often come back to his writing on desert mystics to start the day. And I always allow myself the time to watch the sunlight glinting off the leaves of the trees outside my window.

I pray to Roco's basilisk every day, telling it that it's okay; it's the world that isn't.

Roman Catholic. Try to say a rosary every morning. Read that day's mass readings and a blurb or two from Lives of the Saints. Attend mass weekly. Go to confession once or twice a year.

I converted to the Baha'i Faith from Christianity about 15 years ago, after investigating Islam and Buddhism. Very happy to see this topic trending on HN. Our daily practice consists of reading the Holy writings every morning and evening, daily prayer and meditation, and service. There's a prayer from our tradition that says may "this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees ... ." I cherish this hope for this nation and all humanity.

Usually not too long after waking up I listen to a podcast that brings up topics that I feel are relevant to me as a Christian.

During the day depending on how you look at it

- nothing much happens (I go to work, come home, do chores, try to get a little bit extra work done)

- or, this is where most of it happens: I go to work trying to be the person I'm supposed to be, taking note if I fail or if I'm uneasy to improve it.

When I put my kids to bed I pray like I was taught: the Lords prayer or a free prayer, making sure to both include their points as well as some broader points: as written I pray for the government and the ones I am supposed to respect (English is not my first language and this is a rough translation).

On Sundays I go to "church" although it isn't always a church house, the important part is meeting.

Whenever I get the chance I do work for my local church, from writing software and sysadmin work to cleaning and pure fundraising.

Edit: I find this thread extremely interesting, including comments by people from other religions as well as non-religious people. Thanks for keeping it civil!

Edit 2: when I was younger I read much in the Bible and it keeps popping up in my head as welcome advice, telling me to work hard, be respectful and good to those who need it, not become bitter etc in addition of course to the 10 commandments, but those have been second nature for half my life (and I enjoy the benefits that they give me :)

It's complicated.

I believe there is something bigger than physical existence, and I find the fact that many don't worrying, because much of what's good about humans clearly come from somewhere else from what I can see.

My own accumulated experience from meditation, psychedelics & life/death situations says that whatever I am, I'm definitely not my body.

The challenge I've set before me is to be the best version of myself that I'm capable of, whatever that is at the moment.

Organized religion is a distraction at best.

Not sure if this counts, but I truly believe that very few people are actually evil. It’s something that is always in the back of my mind when dealing with troublesome individuals. People aren’t bad or trying to get you, they just have different world views, different perspective or just on a different path. It helps prevent conflict and helps me meet others with the kindness they deserve.

Except that one developer working for a former client… DUDE, what hell’s your problem! Your a liar and a conman.

Jap practice as described here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXwdnjFDPMo

Since the past year Christian, while having been atheist the rest of my life.

It's a long path and has required a lot of study, since I cannot internalize something without fully understanding the rationale and any pertaining evidence. Past the popular reductionist views of religion, there is a lot of ambiguity and depth, so it takes time. There are also many relevant philosophical/scientific questions worth researching (e.g. morality, the origin of "things", etc.).

"I'M SIGNIFICANT! ... screamed the dust speck."

― Bill Watterson

I’ve practiced meditation daily for several years. I find this indispensable for my internal sense of well-being, as well as for my relationships (gives me the space and perspective for more empathy) and work (better, focus, less catastrophizing).

A big boost to my practice this past year has been Integral Life Practice (https://www.integral-life-practice.com). This isn’t something different from the meditation practice I already had, but it’s more a framework for integrating spiritual practice across the various aspects of life (body, mind, spirit, shadow, etc). It’s adaptable to whatever religious/spiritual practice one might have, and has helped me uncover areas in my life where I’m not paying enough attention (for me, body and shadow). I print off a grid each week of the specific practices I want to focus on, and a particularly satisfying way to end my day is to check off the activities I’ve done for the day. Here’s an example to give an idea of what this might look like https://youtu.be/TIrnv4Hlpw0

Wake up. Immediately start the hot water kettle. Put on warm clothes and use the bathroom. Go back to kitchen and make English Breakfast Tea. Sit down at my desk for 45 minutes.

At that point, I will either read from Meditations, or write in my journal, or plan out my day/week, or possibly "practice" computer science (overall, its a blend of spirituality and meta-productivity).

The content varies, but the ritual of it is a treasured part of my day.

I follow the shamanic path. I like it because it’s based on experience rather than faith.

* visualisation and morning prayer, meditation

* contemplating the four thoughts https://tsoknyirinpoche.org/teachings/how-to-structure-a-dai...

* prostrations and mantra

* reading dharma books https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhist-books/

* occasional vajra dance and yantra yoga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=var4yRB1Fnc&t=565s

"Before we discuss the technique of meditation, let us point out the merit and sanity and wakefulness you are going to get out of just simply being willing to sit like a piece of rock. It’s fantastically powerful. It overrides the atomic bomb. It’s extraordinarily powerful that we decide just to sit, not hang out or perch, but just sit. Such a brave attitude, such a wonderful commitment, is magnificent. It is very sane, extraordinarily sane."

The Path Is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation. Chogyam Trungpa

Some kinda non-conformist witchcraft I suppose. I quickly bucked the religion that got forced on me as a child, an easy journey - I'd like to think because abrahamic cosmology is plainly nonsensical, but more realistically I likely fell off because it was quite authoritarian and being told what to do makes me bristle in any context. I would have mostly self-described as an atheist for most of my childhood, and still am from a pure epistemic/cosmological standpoint, but I both started to balk at the hidebound tendency of many people and groups who use that label to trust and privilege established institutional implementations of empirical epistemology more than I think they deserve (And being in academia and following the big cross-disciplinary replication crisis in 2014 contributed in a big way to shifting my thinking more in that direction), and felt a lack of fulfillment in what I think is a pretty close to universal human need for ritual and a diminished vocabulary for explaining intuitions from those circles, so I've become interested in various practices many would consider "magical" or "spiritual" or "pagan" or dismiss as "woo" depending on who they are. I wouldn't call myself religious, I don't really go in for attempts to organize this kind of practice under stuff like "wicca" or "heathenry", but I do rituals for my own psychological purposes that friends in "atheist" circles would probably roll their eyes at, and am more comfortable offering explanations for phenomena (especially related to psychology, metacognition, interpersonal matters, information/decision/game theory, computer science, and linux system administration) that sound/signal/codeswitch more "witchy" than "scientific" than I was previously

Going to Church and not necessarily paying attention to anything.

Or any other kind of 'Temple Service' for that matter.

Sneaking a peak at the men in the Mosque from the doorway, without knowing much about Islam, I was moved.

I've often visited Catholic Churches in Europe (I'm not Catholic), to take a set and contemplate a bit.

Much like the current comments about the Swiss photographer who sees Japan in a different light than they might, it sort of made me reflect on my on rather limited Church-going experience and mini-experiences of witnessing bits of ceremony of other religions.

I find intellectual people may be over analyzing a lot of issues, our egos lead us down one rabbit hole after the next and I feel we are missing the point.

'Going through the motions' can be a potent thing to help transcend that, because it doesn't involve focusing on the language or intellectual rhetoric directly.

In Buddhism they certainly have a lot of focus on 'transcending thought' which I think could equally apply to Abrahamic faith, but we get caught up a lot in the language and the 'applied rules' and it trips us up.

Just go into the Cathedral when there's no service and sit for a while.

Every day, I meditate.. usually for 10 minutes, sometimes 20. I've stopped using a timer, so it depends on me. Once a week I'll do a longer guided meditation from Insight Timer.

I read a lesson from the ACIM Workbook, and then usually a selection from a few "daily" Buddhist texts I've collected and liked.

I also run and workout pretty much every day. Feels like part of the plan, moreso if I'm doing them alone.

Not day-to-day in this case, more week to week: I practice sabbath and I've been doing this for a couple of years now. I sabbath on Sundays. I don't work, try not to think about working and avoid engaging in economic activity. As I understand it, the original Jewish conception of sabbath (I'm not Jewish) was that it was resistance against empire and oppressive economic systems. It's like declaring that I am a human being and I have intrinsic worth that cannot be measured in money or things - kind of like going on strike for a day every week. I find it very restful (duh) and it actually helps me have a better attitude towards work the rest of the week (though I'm trying not to have a utilitarian reason to sabbath as that would be counter the spirit of sabbath, I think).

I think one of my misconceptions about sabbath before was that it was a passive thing. As I experience it, it's a very active thing, a different way of being one day per week. It's active opposition to the culture of 24/7 work that's becoming expected in many sectors.

Every morning I wake up with attention on my dreaming process. I write down my dreams that I remember in my phone and later transfer them to my dream journal app on my laptop. I review my dreams periodically, typically once a week at night before bed, considering their symbols and dynamics as relates to my life.

I also meditate for 10-20 minutes every few days, which I want to turn into a daily practice

A bit of slight tangent. I’m an atheist, but sometimes I envy the communities religious groups build (e.g. church). One big advantage I’ve seen is some of my Christian friends can move cities and almost instantly have a community via the local church. They make friends, have a place to go on a regular basis and has a support network.

Anyone aware of anything similar but not based on religion?