Category Archives: Blogging - Page 2

Looking nearer to home – The Anglican Church.

Posted by on July 9, 2009 1 comment

On my spiritual journey, I’ve been through a few places.  I’ve investigated Paganism, Atheism, Taoism and Buddhism.  Of course, when I started on this journey, I started as an Anglican.

Now, I’ve looked in depth to a lot of places, but not given Anglicanism the same viewing.  When I saw the Anglican Church apologise to Darwin, I felt that said a great deal that they could do that.  On closer inspection, it seems Darwin was Anglican himself and that Anglican community was (on the whole) quite quick to accept evolution.

So I plan to take a closer look at my home team (if you’ll pardon the football/soccer analogy) and see what I can find there.

The Anglican church is on the whole a very liberal one, not fire and brimstone, so I feel much safer doing this exploration there than with a bible thumping literalist organisation.  But as I’m sure my regular readers know, I have no time for scriptural literalness and consider it to be getting lost.  I have a couple of great little metaphors for that which I’ll save for my next post.

I’m also going to try a change in tack.  When I philosophise about something I’ll write an article rather than trying to spread things over multiple shortish posts.

So I have a book on the origin of the Gospels, and it also examines their writing style.  It’s already given me ideas for further reading and material of my own to develop, watch this space!

The Life of The Buddha

Posted by on March 23, 2009 No comments

Well, I had an interesting experience in Secondlife last night, at a sim called “The Buddha Center” they showed a BBC video on the life of the Buddha.  As aide from the odd technical hiccup it was an enjoyable experience and when I found the video on YouTube, I thought I’d share it with everybody!

It’s 50 minutes in length, so be sure you have a cup of Tea when you click play, and the DVD purchase notice will vanish after the first 30 seconds or so.  :-)

Carrying the meme: How do you sleep at night?

Posted by on February 25, 2009 2 comments

Here’s a fun experiment, my friend Peter over at The Buddha Diaries has started a meme on the above subject and is asking his blogger friends to carry it on.  I’m going to very interested to see how far this spreads.

The rules are really quite simple:

1. Answer the questions
2. Link back to the original meme
3. Tag others to participate

So without further ado, let’s get stuck in!

1) How do you sleep at night? Is your sleep affected by the national angst? Do you drop off easily, as you always did? Or does it take a while to get to sleep?

Generally, I sleep soundly, when I eventually get to sleep.  I’m a bit of a martyr to lying awake tossing and turning, depending on what I’ve been doing before I turn in.  I tend to wake quite early as well, then lie there listening for the alarm.

2) What strategies, if needed, do you use to get to sleep? Pills? Sheep? Late night television shows? And/or…?

I’ve used a few over the years, one was a relaxation technique in which you begin at the feet and imagine each part of your body (feet, shins, knees, thighs, etc) to be warm and heavy.  Another is to mentally release my grip on whatever is keeping me awake, then imagine it floating away.  Sometimes, it’s just a quick bathroom trip.

3) Do you wake up in the middle of the night, plagued by obsessive thoughts?

No, once I’m asleep, I rarely wake.  But, lying awake plagued by obsessive thoughts, guilty as charged I’m afraid!

4) What strategies do you have to get back to sleep?

In all honesty, I’d just use the ones from question 2.

5) Are your dreams affected? Are they more anxious than before? Do they wake you up in a sweat? Or are they peaceful, innocent, undisturbed by the general malaise?

Here’s an interesting one.  I rarely remember my dreams, those that I do recall are either terrfiying or just plain surreal.  I’ve often wondered why I only rarely recall them, and at one point in my life, I genuinely believed I didn’t dream at all.

So, in the spirit of the original post, I’d like to impose on the following people: