Is trading a spiritual journey?

[themickey]

Bear with me while me while musing out loud.....

What is spirituality?
Well if we hark back on all the famous 'spiritual' people, they have one thing in common which is teaching.

Now the opposite of teaching is a 'fool', and a fool could be recognised as someone who you can't teach, never learns a lesson, won't listen.

So is trading spiritual?
Imo, definitely if spirituality is about learning. From day one to your last day, you never stop learning in this game.
You learn about numerous things and lessons.

BUT...let me digress for a second.
Humans, and perhaps all creatures to a degree, but especially humans (I think) we begin learning from day one until very late in life, some of us, the fool not, but if we are learning from day one, what's the purpose if we die and lose all that learning?
What is the purpose of living, learning and then dying for nought?

Don't hand me the jesus crap about bringing salvation, my ears are blocked on that bs! LOL Other than the bible is a book with good teachings.

 

[Ivano]

Well Mickey,

@Peter8519 mentioned Matthew from the bible, the famous verse about the rich, the camel and the needle. According to a famous esoteric new rosicrucian movement and some exegetic(please do not ask me the sources) the poverty of that verse is comparable to the poverty in spirit, not just a material one.

Let's stick with this hypothesis because in all the non christian cultures matches this concept, just to show a facet of what is spirituality: not being poor of spirit, but rich in spirit and consequently more poor in our ego-centrism, in our identification with emotions.

Well as far as I find invariance in trading, almost all the successful consistent guys "teach" do not fight the market(an egoistic attitude...) but listen to what the market wants to tell you putting your ego apart.

In life if you are strongly opinionated people can follow you and you may be an entrepreneur with a vision, maybe also an hedge fund founder but as a pure trader not, as far as I see is better a chap that does not have strong feelings about an oscillator, about a reversal that must come, but who takes some part of the move, do not blame if exited too soon, but improve his game. Someone that is not attached to the feeling of losing, but honor his exit and entry idea and is humble to review his actions.

Spirituality is know your self if greek culture at least marginally influenced us a bit, and as @Overnight magnificently pointed out with his not debatable level of pragmatism a trader is gonna know his sides as a person, and maybe this is the inner journey Ulysses made already few years ago.

Otherwise we could speak about Gann, Fibonacci and were these theories come from, just scratching the surface as example, but the crux of the matter I want to point out is looking ourselves, taking a break, do not overtrade, not chasing the price and so on, all "spiritual" characteristics. As a magnificent deviance from the average in the Bollinger, opposite attract each others and more the trading is by definition what is more far from spirituality, more price action can teach us the immutability of the human geometry, as a statistical central limit theorem.

 

[danielc1]

I read once: Mastering the S&P futures gives the same results as sitting 15 years in Tibet as a monk. Either way will give enlightenment...

 

[Leob]

In the sense of increasing awareness of your intuitive thoughts, of their limitations, trading can develop spiritually (maybe actually cognitively..).
The ability to disconnect between the quality of the action and the quality of the result is a development (cognitive, spiritual, personal.. the concept you choose may be related to your belief if the soul exists..)
Peace in an uncertain environment is development.

 

[themickey]

Well Mickey,

@Peter8519 mentioned Matthew from the bible, the famous verse about the rich, the camel and the needle.

Live in the real world.
Plenty of bs is written and taught in trading.
And plenty of bs written and taught in bible or in any religion.
Because something is said, doesn't make it true.
Cultism is endemic in trading as much as it is in spirituality.
Cultist believe anything and can't be convinced otherwise.

 

[tomkat22]

Live in the real world.
Plenty of bs is written and taught in trading.
And plenty of bs written and taught in bible or in any religion.
Because something is said, doesn't make it true.
Cultism is endemic in trading as much as it is in spirituality.
Cultist believe anything and can't be convinced otherwise.

Did you hear about the atheist at his own funeral? He was all dressed up and no where to go.

 

[themickey]

Did you hear about the atheist at his own funeral? He was all dressed up and no where to go.

Ya, there's athiests and agnostics.
Did you hear about the sinner preacher who was teaching sinners about being Godly?

 

[hilmy83]

The immediate reaction would be to do sarcastic jokes to this affirmation, but scratching the surface reality may_be_maybe different.

I don't think so. I think it's a devil's game.

 

[Sprout]

The immediate reaction would be to do sarcastic jokes to this affirmation, but scratching the surface reality may_be_maybe different.

There are many who consider themselves "spiritual" that are untethered from mundane matters like paying the bills." Others more materialistically inclined, discount anything other than physical reality as having validity.

There is a middle way of grounding Spirit in the physical, that requires cultivating discernment in all aspects of the human experience.

 

[Sprout]

I don't think so. I think it's a devil's game.

devil is backwards "lived"

The etymology of the word is interesting, and mostly a mistranslation from the greek new testament and hebrew old testament.

Much like the word "fuck" it is a conglomeration of meaning.