{"id":46097,"date":"2022-01-25T12:17:23","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T12:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=46097"},"modified":"2022-01-25T12:25:13","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T12:25:13","slug":"looking-for-spiritual-rewards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/01\/25\/looking-for-spiritual-rewards\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking for spiritual rewards."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a straight-up spiritual person, I regularly tend to judge my thoughts and behaviors and hold them against an invisible standard.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is good behavior and bad behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nice thoughts and not-so-nice thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the general idea is that I should be as good and as nice as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just that this will make me an even BETTER spiritual person in the long run: life will also reward me for those attempts at sympathetic perfection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a secret system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because in reality, it\u2019s just a na\u00efve unconscious concept, created by the mind, that meaning-making mental machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be a good person and life will give you good things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Live a worthy life and it will open up extra levels of amazingness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You need to deserve it first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Karma\u2019 has a million different definitions and explanations, which, according to me, means that it is not a real thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like there is no such thing as True Spiritual Behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not objectively better to be nice than to be a shithead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And life is not a divine race towards perfect kindness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unless you want it to be, and you simply like the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because you most certainly can have your personal preferences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can totally appreciate it more to be gentle and loving and empathetic, but that is not a requirement for anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can make even the subtlest things into new not so subtle things, and the whole idea that living a spiritual life comes with very specific demands and requirements is obviously completely fabricated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You do you, and that’s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can live whatever life you want to live, and the only reason for me to disagree with that would be coming from my worldview, that dense collection of second-hand opinions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not believing in a specific \u2018spiritual\u2019 system is very liberating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It means everything is up for grabs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally, for instance, I love being in a more loving place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like cultivating the patience to be kinder, more forgiving, and more joyful than I used to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I deeply appreciate that my addiction to booze and anger and victimhood and cigarettes became more or less obsolete and unimportant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of those things just appeal to me very much, and that\u2019s why I keep exploring ways to have and do and live them more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But none of that will make me a more spiritual person, and life doesn\u2019t register or record my behavior so it can hand out presents to me for being such a good boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am in this for myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doing stuff for other people is what I learned to enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s still for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This clumsy, faulty, messy spiritual phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know what I think?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life itself is the reward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @kaylamaurais, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a straight-up spiritual person, I regularly tend to judge my thoughts and behaviors and hold them against an invisible standard. There is good behavior and bad behavior. Nice thoughts and not-so-nice thoughts. And the general idea is that I should be as good and as nice as possible. It\u2019s not just that this will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46099,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"redux-templates_canvas","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[97,117,100,105,116,113,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46101,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46097\/revisions\/46101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}