Can religion or spirituality help your mentality?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

I've just realised I'm supposed to be writing a weekly discussion on this subject for a mailing list, and that I don't have as much to say about it as I did when I volunteered in March.

I'm looking for some inspiration from you lot:

If you'd call yourself religious, or spiritual, or if you follow practices such as tai-chi, meditation, yoga - have you found them helpful in maintaining or promoting happiness? How have they helped?

Or, have you ever approached any of these as a way of dealing with problems you're currently experiencing? Has looking at things from a spiritual perspective helped with mental problems?

Day to day, does your religion help with the stresses of life, and any mental problems you experience?

If the answer is 'no', and you feel like sharing, that would be useful too - if you're prepared to tell us a bit about it.

Thanks.

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:20 (twenty-one years ago)

if i remember correctly william james believed it did.

― ryan (ryan), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:22 (twenty-one years ago)

If religion or spirituality didn't help one's mentality, it wouldn't exist.

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:35 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it can be helpful .. although I don't practice it myself. But it allows a person to reflect and shut out all other thoughts. It's when 'waiting for a sign' takes over self-motivation that it becomes counter-productive.

― dave225 (Dave225), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:37 (twenty-one years ago)

When my older sister "found Jesus" I was scared at first. But then it made her a more relaxed, easy-going person and now we get along much better than we used to. She doesn't try to proselytize, thank dog. It really seemed to make her less anxious about the world.

― Maria D. (Maria D.), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:40 (twenty-one years ago)

it depends on what kind of "spirituality" you're talking about.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Clearly religion and spirituality can help your wellbeing, but it can also damage it. The idea that religion exists because it feels nice is a bit glib - the medievel flagellants certaily didn't have their happiness increased by torturing themselves, and some religious groups apparently experience greater levels of certain mental health problems - though, of course, on the whole people 'of faith' have lower levels of mental illness and live longer than those without a faith.

I believe in God, and a few other things, but I'm not part of a faith community, and I don't think it's particularly made me any happier - that's not why I believe it. I was in a psychiatric hospital with depression, and when I am unwell I find faith no help whatsoever - I can't meditate, I can't pray. But on the whole I think faith helps - for whatever reason; greater community resources, optimistic outlook etc. or blessedness. Who knows.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:43 (twenty-one years ago)

my understanding is that religion - any religion - is good for you. this does not make religion "true", and you could probably get the same effect from Communism.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:43 (twenty-one years ago)

There are new secular perspectives that attempt to offer the same psychological and practical benefits as religion.

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:44 (twenty-one years ago)

the medievel flagellants certaily didn't have their happiness increased by torturing themselves

Sure they did, at least on some level. You don't think that atoning for sins, or whatever reason they were torturing themselves, didn't result in some kind of satisfaction?

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I think any kind of certain belief system would work just fine - I wasn't proposing it as a proof of God by any means - a dedicated Marxist probably would experience some of the benefits that religion gives.

Violent attonement for sins doesn't mean you think you are saved, and certainly some people develop a sense (in most religions) that they are damned in some way, and that can't be good for you. But maybe some of them did experience a sense of fulfillment from harming themselves (and there are some arguments abour asceticism that claim blood loss, pain, oxygen starvation can produce senses of elation similar to other mystical experience). However, these people didn't say 'what way can we practice our faith that will make us most happy', it was mostly based on odd scriptural readings that led them to the conclusion this was the right thing to do. I believe they would have done it regardless of how it made them feel.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Still, "doing the right thing to do" would produce satisfaction on some level. But this is just picking at details at this point.

― n/a (Nick A.), Thursday, 9 September 2004 15:56 (twenty-one years ago)

i would say that my convictions, faith, sense of the spiritual, etc. have maybe made me
feel at peace occasionally. though i experience it more as a deep yearning to be more
in touch with something that seems so much greater, more beautiful, more real than
anything i can even fathom. feeling this way about it can lead me to despair.
i would say that a general attatchment to a mystic christianity (silly term, not a silly way
of looking at things, look it up if you must [i.e. christian mysticism]) brings me great
comfort as a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe, though as i have a difficult
time praying contemplatively i cannot practice it fully. there are moments when things,
events, whatever seem to click into place and it's tough to bring me down from that
feeling of, for lack of a better word, righteousness.
but then there's the apocalypse, which i sort of half literally believe in in the biblical sense
and that is a great cause of distress for me quite frequently. but then i worry about
everything.
given how often i am prone to extreme feelings of anxiety i would say that my faith gives
me little respite from the loneliness and pain of the world, other than to make me feel a
part of something beautiful and right.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, 9 September 2004 18:01 (twenty-one years ago)

i guess one could say i 'found' religion in amsterdam. heheh. though yes honestly - at least 'spirituality' or the acceptance of something bigger/different (whereas i was decidedly atheist before and didn't believe in anything but the most mundane). and it suddenly in some ways, gradually in otherways changes my outlook on many things.

i think it's helped me in my mental problems. though it made them worse at first. heheh again (OK I DID DRUGS). but say for instance you're depressed. you might think suicide will end the pain. it will just stop. but if you think maybe you have a 'soul' it will go on. and now you'd have bigger spiritual problems losing your body and all. so it all might feel worse at first. but then you think, well, this is a mundane challenge and i have to get through it, i can't give up. and there might be some purpose to this (which can be comforting).

oh i'm getting too tired to say what i mean without sounding dumb...

― lolita corpus (lolitacorpus), Friday, 10 September 2004 07:25 (twenty-one years ago)

If you'd call yourself religious, or spiritual, or if you follow practices such as tai-chi, meditation, yoga - have you found them helpful in maintaining or promoting happiness? How have they helped?

Meditation clears yer head. You learn how to stop worrying about the past and panicking about the future, and just concern yourself with now.

Also, it settles your thought patterns and allows you to see things more clearly and rationally. It really is brain exercise.

The only reason I stopped is because the bloke downstairs keeps singing.

― Sexual Air Supply (Autumn Almanac), Friday, 10 September 2004 07:29 (twenty-one years ago)

I wish that spirituality *could* help my mentality. I see people like my mother, for whom it really *has* saved her life on every level possible. But I just don't really feel like it has that kind of power for me. It's more like a cushion or last resort when all else fails for me, not something that I can have predominant in my life.

― Super-Masonic Black Hole (kate), Friday, 10 September 2004 07:57 (twenty-one years ago)

I imagine most people are like me - we curse when things go wrong and count our blessings when things go right.
That said, my father was a minister and my brother is at divinity school, so questions of religion and faith are prominent in my life.
Dogma and trust? Faith is trust. I have that. I am not religious, per se, but I have more faith than many religious people that I know. Then again, I am startled by the wordless faith of some very religious people whom I have met.
I trust that things will work out as they should....even if that means the decline and demise of our species. That's faith. To me, worshipping with others is also a sign of faith - community is our most important gift, and without exercising it we are doomed. But blindly looking for the sanctity and salvation of my particular soul? That, to me, is religion.

― aimurchie, Friday, 10 September 2004 08:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Hobart: you should Ask Sister Janice :-)

(I will write a serious reply tonight if I'm not too sleepy. I don't have the time right now)

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 10 September 2004 10:58 (twenty-one years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.