Exactly. If we want to know the real numbers it will lie in those who are level 7 or above because that requires consistency

@Geoffrey51
I'm not yet there (level 7)

@TimeOutForMe You will be soon!

A lot of people seem to have no gumption or staying power so it is pointless to count the guys that are not real participants

@TimeOutForMe You still count as real.

@itsmedammit Yep, I'm real too, I just punched myself and it hurt ergo I must be real.....LOL.

I have been on this site for over 2 loooong years. In the beginning I witnessed many people joining but not really being active. A lot of people just don't have the time for more than a sometimes visit.

@Donotbelieve It happens, you've burst mine once or twice as well.

@Donotbelieve unknowingly...haha

@DavidDuhon Yeah many far right leaning political people and groups have played conservative Christians like a fiddle. It has been a huge help putting wrong people in power over the last 30 years or so.

Spiritual but not religious is the new religion of zealots. Its growing too.

@BryanLV
The non religious is on the rise, at 26% I believe. The religious can't prove their god is real, so they turn to metaphysics and spiritualism, but they still can't use that to prove their god is real.

@xenoview
Spiritualism and yoga roots is religion. Don't know who they're fooling. They might as well come out of the closet.

@TimeOutForMe Yoga, meditation etc. are disciplines for well-being. They developed, in their ‘Western’ perceived sense, in culture not religion.

Religion is a western idea born of the Enlightenment. Until then people did what they did because they did it due to the culture they we’re embedded in.

@Geoffrey51
Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India. Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophical traditions.
Yoga stems from the Vedas - the Indian holy texts that were composed from around 1900BC.Besides yoga, three major religions came from those texts - Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. Around 200-400AD, a sage called Patanjali composed the Yoga Sutras.
Dhyana in Hinduism means contemplation and meditation. ... It is, in Hinduism, a part of a self-directed awareness and unifying Yoga process by which the yogi realizes Self (Atman, soul), one's relationship with other living beings, and Ultimate Reality.

@TimeOutForMe But only religion because the West says so. Of course they are from the texts but that is because they are ways of life. 3000 years ago, if you were to say they were religious the people would have no idea what you were talking about.

@Geoffrey51
stems from holy rituals whether you'd like to believe or not. Yoga (yoke pronounced yoki), dance and twist like the 8 legged god is what I was taught in the temples.

@Geoffrey51
Hindu texts are older than 6000 year's or longer...
We had yoki gurus in the temples. It spread to the west.

@TimeOutForMe. Holy rituals are not religion. They are holy rituals, part of the cultures universal/cosmological narrative.

@Geoffrey51
It stems from religion. At one time in India you would have to say the mantras in the temple, meditate and perform yoga.

@Geoffrey51

[newsweek.com]

Yoga is a religious practice.

@TimeOutForMe I think we are at cross-purposes. I agree in all but the terminology. Religion is a post-Enlightenment term, even in the medieval Christian tradition.

Vedic philosophy, as you say, dates back Millenia and origins lost in time. Who knows where its prescriptive practices came from because the elaborate execution must be precise, with perfect recitation of ritual text essential for efficacy.

Something more than evolution of tribal practice I suggest but can't imagine what.

@Geoffrey51
If Nalanda university wasn't set alight by the moghuls in 1193 (took 3 month's to burn). The library which had 9 million books, some with very ancient texts to impart knowledge with rest of the world.
It's like burning Harvard and Cambridge and Oxford together and everything destroyed that cannot be replaced.

@TimeOutForMe Thats a tragedy. I thought the Moghuls were C16th though?

Well work harder, it should not be difficult to annoy just a couple of people.

@Fernapple Damn, you're right. Thanks for the motivation.

I work in I.T. at a private school for teenage boys - and because of the habits of young folks on the internet they catch a lot of infections and the emails accounts get huge amounts of troll posts. I didn't believe all the Russian/Chinese bot stuff for a while, and now I think its very clear. We see a lot of short little posts from the same domains which will say contradicting things looking like the strategy to stir up dissent among us. A short post on an anti-abortion site that supports it, then one to a pro-abortion side this insults supporters. We see it with religious talk, and even minor issues like sports teams, Mac vs. PC and everything.

Its a new kind of warfare I think, and brilliant, since 9/11 Americans have become more and more divided. We hate each other . . . and, "divide and conquer". Russia has lots of great people and systems, but their KGP - now FSB has always been brilliant and brutal. Looking up the history of their methods, its incredible. Things I'd never heard of like genetically engineered viruses/bacteria which can cause strokes, heart attacks and other assassination methods which nations probably don't connect with a lot of the killings, we think they are natural.

Putin is a vicious and smart leader, he is around 44 and worked his way up through the KGB to be lead it when he was still in his late 20's or something. Apparently lots of co-workers, even other agents and allies happened to die as he worked his way up. And its hard to confirm everything, but it looks like when he was still an agent that he may have specialized in covert tactics and killings! An asshole, but much much smarter than our asshole!

Among other nasty stuff we are probably seeing the effects of millions of auto-replicating bots that hit networks from so many angles/tactics that one or two get through almost any firewall, virus software and etc. Just mostly little email/Facebook/other forum messages that individually don't stand out a ton, but add up and split us up more. Its a brilliant, evil tactic. I didn't get into this profession to be like a cop and spend so much time dealing with the stuff, but thats just part of our new tech reality. Since everything from air traffic control, to electric cars, our financial system and etc are becoming completely internet dependant, and I think we haven't seen a REALLY bad cross platform attack yet. Something Java based or something that hits and spreads from everything from phones, to Macs/PC's/Linux debates, to even hardware like car computers and stuff. We'll see what happens, I am a geek who loves tech - and don't want to see suffering, but I think humanity sort of needs to remember how to survive without relying so completely on high/resource-dependant technology. The more complicated anything is, the harder it is to diagnose and fix.