Ki is sounding better and better, i have it on my mp3-player and i listen it while i'm working. It just flows, certainly one of those less is more type of albums. (And as i recently discovered Opeth, my ears are truly blessed at the moment )

[The Dev]

Yeah, I've been thinking about religion.

Satanism and Christianity are both very frustrating. There are parts of each I understand...Some of the most intelligent folks I've ever met (smarter than me) are satanists, some of the most beautiful people I've ever met (more beautiful than me) are christian .

I believe that god is nature, and the universe, and I'm part of it.

I believe in fate and free will. If infinity is life, and like a fractal, everything is predetermined...forever, infinitely.
We have ALWAYS got the choice to go in any predetermined ways though, so our singularity is free, yet each singularity is predetermined as well.

it's a grand paradox to me...and I know 'jack shit'.

Humans arent smart enough to know the true nature, we have glimpses, and can participate through certain activities, but the quest for the answer is futile...

so...

My dream is to play bass in a band, mix records for people (alone) and open a furniture shop in which I make things out of driftwood.

Life is a strange beautiful thing.

I believe that god is nature, and the universe, and I'm part of it.

Agreed.

So, a furniture shop u say, that's lovely! I would definitely buy a driftwood table from u.

This being my first time seeing this thread, I found it funny reading the very first post by BlueRaja, then reading the most recent post by Devin. Funny how things can go so severely off-topic, as the collective human mind wanders...

"Humans arent smart enough to know the true nature, we have glimpses, and can participate through certain activities, but the quest for the answer is futile..."

Futile as it may be, I think (intelligent) humans are by nature, wanderers. Wandering in thought, wandering in space. We'll never stop searching for the answers, because for every answer to every question, we raise 50 more questions.

Back in the day, when humans knew little to nothing about the cosmos, we had plenty of questions. What are clouds? What are those lights in the sky? What is beyond this little patch of (desert/jungle/mountain/take your pick) that I live in? Due to our inherent curiosity, we found the answers to these questions... which only served to raise many more questions. I believe we'll eventually find answers to many of our questions right now (origin of the universe, god, etc.), but we'll just raise bigger and bigger questions, and the bigger questions we raise, the bigger we grow as a species.

We can never, and should never stop asking questions, or we'll stagnate and turn to shit.

[The Dev]

We can never, and should never stop asking questions, or we'll stagnate and turn to shit.

Sure, I apologize...

I guess I just mean 'pick your battles'

We can never, and should never stop asking questions, or we'll stagnate and turn to shit.

Sure, I apologize...

I guess I just mean 'pick your battles'

I say fuck the ten commandments, and bring them down to two.

1. Don't be a douchebag.
2. Pick your battles.

We are notoriously bad at both of the above.

Quick edit: My apologies for focusing on one small part of your post, it was a great post otherwise, my mind just tends to focus on one thing at a time... I suppose I'm not great at picking my battles either.

We can never, and should never stop asking questions, or we'll stagnate and turn to shit.

Sure, I apologize...

I guess I just mean 'pick your battles'

Personally, I'm not a big believer on that God and Satan bull. Honestly, if I had to believe anything, it would probably be the Alien theory. I wanna believe in God, but the Alien Theory is just so much more possible. If you want to know what I'm talking about, watch the Discovery Channel's documentary 'Ancient Aliens' on YouTube.

Many people also believe on December 21, 2012, it won't mean the end of the world, but we will reach a point of spiritual ascension. Maybe that means to find out the truth or at least be pointed in the right direction?

[The Dev]

No worries dude!

I like the two commandments. I'm down...

It's a little rough being a public face sometimes when it comes to spirituality, I try and keep it quiet as I'm not very good at putting my thoughts into words.

After years of struggling with spirituality, I feel pretty comfortable where I am.

I used to do acid and stay up for 4 days with my buddies discussing weather or not 'trees dream' or whatever.

Then I saw the kid being born and I was like 'fuck me, I'm not even close...'

In terms of going deeper into the mysteries, I think meditation is great.

I'm wired to search, but your two commandments seem to be the guidelines for that search.

Sorry to be unclear (and probably still am) .

dev

We can never, and should never stop asking questions, or we'll stagnate and turn to shit.

Sure, I apologize...

I guess I just mean 'pick your battles'

Personally, I'm not a big believer on that God and Satan bull. Honestly, if I had to believe anything, it would probably be the Alien theory. I wanna believe in God, but the Alien Theory is just so much more possible. If you want to know what I'm talking about, watch the Discovery Channel's documentary 'Ancient Aliens' on YouTube.

Many people also believe on December 21, 2012, it won't mean the end of the world, but we will reach a point of spiritual ascension. Maybe that means to find out the truth or at least be pointed in the right direction?

For clarification, is the alien theory the idea that we were placed here by aliens, and are being watched by aliens? I've been thinking over the last couple weeks that humanity may very well be a science experiment conducted by a highly advanced alien species. Maybe they're so far ahead in their evolution that their early history (say the first 10, 000, if not 100, 000 years) is lost to them, and they've decided to start life from scratch and see how it evolved to get some clues regarding how they began.

For all we know, lots of the old testament regarding visions of god (moses and the like) were true, and they were aliens preventing us from (at the time) killing each other. Maybe they tried to induce a spirituality in us to see how long it would take us as a species to embrace reason, and disregard irrationality.

I try and keep it quiet as I'm not very good at putting my thoughts into words.

^ from Dev.

I totally see where you're coming from with this man. (quick apologies for these long winded posts, its very rare that I'm able to produce these ideas in an atmosphere that doesn't regard them as retarded)

So many thoughts are so abstract, and hard to put into words that can clearly define what you think. That's why I love alot of your music because where words fail, music can reign supreme. The parts in the song "SYL" where you just scream out "I fucking hate you" over that monster riff might seem simplistic and stupid to many people, even to yourself at times, but when thoughts are so complex and abstract, sometimes you just give up trying to explain them properly, and just boil them down to their essence. I've had that simple line stuck in my head for about a week now because of the simple (if profane) eloquence of it.

I don't know if any of this made sense, but even if it didn't, fuck it. I tried.

So you and I talk at Lidl.
Then I die, at Lidl.
What ever happened to your words about honor?

And now every time I walk past Lidl listening to Ki people are gonna stare at the crazy guy laughing to himself

I like those 2 commandments too, and although its true that we are terrible at them, if we were inherently good at following them then we wouldn't need them in the first place. Just another little paradox to throw into the mix.

Interesting theories on spirituality dev. I agree that we as humans have a very insignificant understanding of our universe in reality, but what I cannot adhere to is this idea of 'blind faith'. It's not something that has ever worked for me, it seems quite futile in itself. We live in a world where we can go down to the atomic level of everything around us and feel we have an understanding of how things fit together, but there are still things that are a complete mystery. I think nature is far more fascinating, mysterious and more desiring of the 'god' label should one wish to use such a thing.

That was mostly rambling, it definitely is hard to put into words.

And now every time I walk past Lidl listening to Ki people are gonna stare at the crazy guy laughing to himself

Haha . Yeah, I laughed, too, when I made that up.

Not sure if it's ok to turn this conversation into religion, but what the heck..

I'm a Christian, have always been. In fact, I was pretty much raised to be one.
When I was like 15 I used to think about philosophy and religion all the time and thought it was neat, but now that I got stuff like surviving the day that's keeping me busy, I don't bother meself with the universe.

So.. I hang out with people that Christians often don't approve of. I'm cool with the fact that I don't share the same ideals with them (tolerance for the win!). But sometimes when the spooky topic named "religion" emerges, they say I'm only Christian because I was raised to be one. That's a tough one. Surely, I have convinced myself that Christianity is logical if you get it right, but meeting other people makes me wonder.. Would I really follow Jesus if I hadn't been born in a religious family..? Well, as I see it, you don't choose your side. The side chooses you.

"Blind Faith" is a funny idea as it relates to religion too. If it is believed that 'god' has every good quality, AND that he created us in his image, then wouldn't he expect us to use what he gave us. That is to say, he gave us these complex brains that are capable of some extraordinary things, yet people still bow down to 'faith', and refuse to use the thinking part of our mind.

If a god did exist in the christian/islam/etc. sense, I think he would respect people more for not adhering to blind faith, and for using their brains to think critically. he (i refuse to capitalize the h) didn't create the world on a whim, he supposedly had reasons for everything, so why shouldn't we?

this is all assuming there is a god, of course, which there likely wouldn't be under the current framework of religion.

Naffis-kun, its say its more than tolerance, its a necessity. I think everyone needs a drive in their life, a reason to continue with life, and just like people's interests and personalities differ, so much their beliefs and drives. And sure, being raised into a Christian family had an impact, but then again had you been introduced later in life there's nothing to say you wouldn't have felt the same. You had to be introduced to it one way or another to further pursue an interest in it!

I think this is technically on topic, I usually don't like reading into another artist's intent too much but I've taken Ki to be much more than a collection of songs. It's an experience for me, and one that has got me questioning a lot of things about my current life, including my spiritual beliefs.

Edit: You said it better than I ever could have Thebruce88

[The Dev]

jesus, allah, buddah! I love you all!

-hj simpson.

jesus, allah, buddah! I love you all!

-hj simpson.

"I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman."