Ask HN: What's Your Spirituality?

3 keepamovin 5 6/3/2025, 9:41:52 AM
We often consider engineers or tech to be somewhat secular, and maybe some even wear atheism as a badge of intelligence, as in "only weak minds need the consolation of faith" or some such. But I know there's other spiritual, religious people out there, and this question is meant to let you share what you think.

Because I think it's one of the profoundly interesting questions. Intellectually or not.

Another way to engage if that doesn't resonate it: what's a book (or books) you read that profoundly changed your worldview/view of life and when did you read it?

Comments (5)

swah · 4h ago
Roman catholic, no particular books tbh. I believe there are better people and some of those are inspiring to me.
fjfaase · 1d ago
In 2000, I still considered myself a born-again christian, although being a bit skeptical due to conflicts between science and faith. Now, I often feel ashamed of being a believer for a large portion of my life, because I have come to the conclusion that there is no reality beyond physics. For more about my journey, including books that played an important role, see: http://iwriteiam.nl/RTE.html
gooodvibes · 1d ago
Regular meditation and psychedelic use. (Are these spiritual? Not sure if spiritual is a helpful world.)

The meditation practices I follow are taken directly from Buddhism and a lot of core Buddhist principles and ethics make a lot of sense to me but I don't call myself Buddhist or accept every single thing in the Buddhist tradition.

rogermungo · 1d ago
The Kybalion
incomingpain · 1d ago
Born catholic, sexually assaulted by my priest while young, and became atheist. Was mostly just nothing until the sam harris crew came along then i went very militant atheist. Stoicism and meditation came along. In about then i was intrigued with the idea of morality and could it be done without anything external.

The big question, you really get to choose if you want to be a good or bad person. Of course you choose to be a good person, but then how do you do that?

When trying to figure that out, the realization is that lots of people fail at being a good person. It's not about the 'would you like to give $2 to childrens charity' but rather a training that is needed for your brain. When you look for what this training is, you become buddhist.

Through meditation, you can train to be aware of your thoughts, which arent yours, and thus by extension your actions which arent yours until after training. Once you become aware of the proverbial bad and good angels on your shoulders. You start responding and not reacting to life.

There comes a point where you dive into the Jhanas. Then you buy an at home EEG to become an expert at meditation. Right concentration by Leigh Brasington explains all.

Then you go through some stuff and end up a christian suddenly. Realizing that christianity is a buddhist sect; or really that all religions are trying to explain an unexplainable thing that cant be captured by human language.