“Everyone who looks at the Egyptian pyramids sees and thinks something different. What I see there is an artistic and mathematical rebellion of humankind's ambition to do something extraordinary in this huge universe! There, humanity signals that it will be an important player on the endless stage called the universe!”
“My ears hurt as if being tugged upon by pliers—yet I welcome the pain, as it heralds the completion of my journey to reunite with my Welsh ancestors. I hear them clearly now:
We be *Tylwyth Teg*, the Fair Folk. We be your kinsfolk. *Mae ein gwaed yn eich gwaed*. Our blood is your blood. We be the Dea-kinsmen. Magick is our way.”
“Once we got closer to the origins of these Eastern practices, we found that the monks and swamis were just as dogmatic and paternalistic, just as literal and conservative in their approach to spirituality as the Christian priests and ministers we were trying to get away from.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“For example, the call for equal rights has perverted into “let’s all be the same.” Male and female biological differences are discounted, because “male” and “female” are considered “outdated social constructs,” and while that is partially true, the social construct stance becomes clear reductionism when it totally discounts clear differences in male and female biology (i.e., androgyny is not the same as equality).”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“This stance makes no distinction between (1) the pluralistic standpoint of making sure people have equal rights and (2) the act of co-dependently making sure not to hurt anyone’s feelings, however irrational they may be. We need to stop that nonsense. Getting your feelings hurt, quite frankly, is the price of living a in a free society.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“The pre-rational view of spirituality is irrational because it is based on pre-rational worldviews, such as the magical, the belief that individual thoughts and actions directly influence the outside world (“If I dance, it will rain”); and the mythical, which is belief in unverified dogma, a worldview that usually includes a belief in an external power that can be asked to change outcomes (“If I pray to Jesus, he will intervene in my life”).”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Western spiritual seekers began picking and choosing from Eastern philosophies based on their preferences. Wanting to get away from myth and dogma, they mixed and matched, shook and stirred, mashed and meshed, blended and juiced . . . and in the process, well, they lost their way. They created a number of philosophical inconsistencies.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“In essence, oversimplification tends to take a partial truth and make it all powerful.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“... we are all guilty of oversimplification at one point or another. It’s an enticing idea. It fulfills our need for instant gratification. We find one thing and scream, “Eureka!” We found IT—the one thing that explains it all. The only trouble is that it never works. We are more likely to squeeze gold from our coffee grinder than we are to meet with success when adopting an idea that has been simplified beyond recognition.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Walk into any church, and you will see people swimming in a sea of emotions (everything from shame and guilt to love and ecstasy). That may be the reason some people think that the more emotional they are, the more spiritual they are. But, as we will explore later in the book, undiluted spirituality has little to do with emotions, and what little it does have has more to do with emotional growth than feelings of elation.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality