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Spirituality

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Spirituality, in a narrow sense, concerns itself with matters of the spirit. The spiritual, involving (as it may) perceived eternal verities regarding humankind's ultimate nature, often contrasts with the temporal, with the material, or with the worldly. A sense of connection forms a central defining characteristic of spirituality — connection to something greater than oneself, which includes an emotional experience of religious awe and reverence. Equally importantly, spirituality relates to matters of sanity and of psychological health. Like some forms of religion, spirituality often focuses on personal experience.

Spirituality may involve perceiving life as higher, more complex or more integrated with one's world view; as contrasted with the merely sensual.

Scoping the idea of spirituality

Some Indian traditions define spirituality (Sanskrit: adhyatma) as that which pertains to the self or soul (Sanskrit: atman).

Certain forms of spirituality can appear more like philosophy: note in particular the scope of metaphysics.

Due to the broad scope and personal nature of spirituality, however, one can perhaps gain an overview of the field by focusing on key concepts that arise when people describe what spirituality means to them. Research by Martsolf and Mickley (1998) highlighted the following areas as worthy of consideration:

The British magazine What is Enlightenment?, in its tenth anniversary issue, published an article which drew a distinction between what it called "feel good" or "translational" spirituality, and "transformational" spirituality, the former covering essentially the practices whereby a person feels better or changes approach, without in fact enhancing personal underlying spiritual centering (or ego-related viewpoint).

An article on inner-quest.org notes three types of "authentic spiritual figure":

  1. The free beings who conduct themselves in the traditional manner of a sage, saint or adept, that is to say, exemplars of genuine freedom from attachments and aversions.
  2. The wild men/women or holy fools (avadhutas, majdhubs, masts, saloi, yurodivye, idiota, yu jen, mahasiddhas, et al.), who have "spontaneously or deliberately gone beyond all societal conventions, sometimes simply because God-realization came for them in such an unusually powerful way that it blew out the circuits of normal psychological and social functioning", and who usually display no regard for their own comforts and even many basic bodily needs. Such figures may scream at, punch, push, piss on, completely ignore and in various ways "abuse" those whom they encounter - yet often with an unexpectedly quite positive, beautifully transformational affect on the recipients.
  3. The "good friend" (kalyana mitra) or spiritual teacher/mentor/counselor who even if not 100% established in spiritual freedom, fully awake and always lucid within the dream, yet nevertheless a very helpful, enlightening figure who empowers those s/he encounters. This person does not try to "role-play Guru" by presuming to full wakefulness, nor does this person take full responsibility for the welfare and direction of disciples.

Osho, a controversial Indian teacher, comments of spiritual teachers that "[o]ut of one hundred masters, there is only one Master, ninety-nine are only teachers. The teacher is necessarily learned, the Master ... it is not a necessity... The Master is a rebel. he lives out of his own being, he is spontaneous, not traditional..." [1]

The inner-quest.org article also observes that many traditions make explicit distinctions between (at least) three equally valid and equally true perspectives of reality:

  1. The conventional level of right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice
  2. The "Divine Comedy" level wherein everything appears perfect "just as it is", and happens for the good of all souls in their evolution and journey home
  3. The Absolute Truth, that no-thing really happens, but all appears as a dream in the one, nondual Awareness; only God IS (no world, no souls)

The author observes that "one can and must honor all three levels, or one's spirituality is quite imbalanced". He also cites Annamalai Swami in 1980 as defining spiritual enlightenment: "It's like zero-gravity. Nothing is pulling you anymore."

The spiritual and the religious

File:Yogidoingyoga.jpg
Some forms of Hinduism and of Buddhism present spiritual goals and personal experience (self-realization through yoga and meditation) as the ultimate way to attain liberation from the cycle of rebirth (Moksha)

An important distinction exists between spirituality in religion and spirituality as opposed to religion.

In recent years, spirituality in religion often carries connotations of a believer having a faith more personal, less dogmatic, more open to new ideas and myriad influences, and more pluralistic than the doctrinal faiths of established religions. It also can connote the nature of believers' personal relationship or "connection" with their god(s) or belief system(s), as opposed to the general relationship with a Deity as shared by all members of a given faith.

Those who speak of spirituality as opposed to religion generally meta-religiously believe in the existence of many "spiritual paths" and deny any objective truth about the best path to follow. Rather, adherents of this definition of the term emphasize the importance of finding one's own path to whatever-god-there-is, rather than following what others say works. In summary: the path which makes the most coherent sense becomes the correct one (for oneself). Many adherents of orthodox religions who regard spirituality as an aspect of their religious experience tend to contrast spirituality with secular "worldliness" rather than with the ritual expression of their religion.

People of a more New-Age disposition tend to regard spirituality not as religion per se, but as the active and vital connection to a force, spirit, or sense of the deep self. As cultural historian and yogi William Irwin Thompson (1938 - ) put it, "Religion is not identical with spirituality; rather religion is the form spirituality takes in civilization." (1981, 103)

For a religious parallel to the approach whereby some see spirituality in everything, compare pantheism.

Directed spirituality

"Being spiritual" may have a goal-directed side, with aims such as:

  • simultaneously improving one's wisdom and willpower
  • achieving a closer connection to Deity/the universe
  • removing illusions or false ideas at the sensory, feeling and thinking aspects of a person.

Plato's allegory of the cave in book VII of The Republic gives one of the best-known descriptions of the spiritual development process, and may provide an aid in understanding what "spiritual development" exactly entails.

Others regard spirituality as a two-stroke process: the "upward stroke" of inner growth, changing oneself as one changes one's relationship with the external universe; and the "downward stroke" of manifesting improvements in the physical reality around oneself as a result of the inward change. Another connotation suggests that change will come onto itself with the realization that all is oneself; whereupon the divine inward manifests the diverse outward for experience and progress.

Spirituality and personal well-being

Spirituality, according to most adherents of the idea, forms an essential part of an individual's holistic health and well-being.

Spirituality and science

Analysis of spiritual qualities in science faces problems such as the imprecision of spiritual concepts, the subjectivity of spiritual experience, and the amount of work required to translate and map observable components of a spiritual system into empirical evidence. Science takes as its basis empirical, repeatable observations of the natural world, and thus generally regards any appeal to the unseen, unmeasurable spirit as either beyond the purview of science, or (to many skeptics) as a pseudoscience. Nevertheless, some people have attempted to make certain connections between spirituality and science. New Age pop-philosophers such as Fritjof Capra have articulated what they see as the spiritual consequences of quantum physics.

Rudolf Steiner and others in the anthroposophic tradition have attempted to apply scientific methodology to the study of spiritual phenomena in order to shape a spiritual science. This enterprise does not attempt to redefine natural science, but to explore inner experience — especially our thinking — with the same rigor that we apply to outer (sensory) experience.

Such investigations, however, rarely meet the scientific criteria of intersubjectivity and repeatability.

Ken Wilber represents a recent attempt to unite science and spirituality. He has proposed an integral theory of consciousness.

History of spirituality

Until recent centuries, the history of spirituality remained bound up within the history of religion.[citation needed] Spiritual innovators who operated within the context of a religious tradition became either marginalised/suppressed as heretics or separated out as schismatics. In these circumstances, anthropologists generally treat so-called "spiritual" practices such as shamanism in the sphere of the religious, and class even non-traditional activities such as those of Robespierre's Cult of the Supreme Being in the province of religion.

Schmidt (2005)[citation needed] sees Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803- 1882) as a pioneer of the idea of spirituality as a distinct field. Important early 20th century writers who studied the phenomenon include William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)) and Rudolph Otto (especially The Idea of the Holy (1917).

The distinction between the spiritual and the religious became more common in the popular mind during the late 20th century with the rise of secularism and the advent of the New Age movement.

Spiritual traditions and communities

See also

References

  • A Course in Miracles. 2nd ed., Mill Valley: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1992, ISBN 0-9606388-9-X.
  • Azeemi,K.S.Muraqaba: The Art and Science of Sufi Meditation. Houston: Plato, 2005.(ISBN 0-9758875-4-8)
  • Bolman, L. G., and Deal, T. E. Leading With Soul. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.
  • Borysenko, J. A Woman's Journey to God. New York: Riverhead Books, 1999.
  • Cannon, K. G. Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community. New York: Continuum, 1996.
  • Deloria, V., Jr. God is Red. 2d Ed. Golden, Co: North American Press, 1992.
  • Dillard, C. B.; Abdur-Rashid, D.; and Tyson, C. A. "My Soul is a Witness." International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 13, no. 5 (September 2000): 447-462.
  • Dirkx, J. M. "Nurturing Soul in Adult Learning." in Transformative Learning in Action. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education No. 74, edited by P. Cranton, pp. 79-88. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.
  • Eck, Diana L. A New Religious America. San Francisco: Harper, 2001.
  • Elkins D.N. et al (1998)Toward a humanistic-phenomenological spirituality: definition, description and measurement. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 28(4), 5-18
  • English, L., and Gillen, M., eds. Addressing the Spiritual Dimensions of Adult Learning. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, No. 85. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.
  • Haisch, Bernard The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, and What's Behind It All, (Preface), Red Wheel/Weiser, 2006, ISBN 1-57863-374-5
  • Hein, David. "Christianity and Traditional Lakota / Dakota Spirituality: A Jamesian Interpretation." The McNeese Review 35 (1997): 128-38.
  • Hein, David, ed. Readings in Anglican Spirituality. Cincinnati: Forward Movement, 1991. ISBN 0-88028-125-1
  • Hein, David, and Edward Hugh Henderson. Captured by the Crucified: The Practical Theology of Austin Farrer. New York and London: Continuum / T & T Clark, 2004. About the spiritual theology of Austin Farrer; includes chapter on "Farrer's Spirituality" by Diogenes Allen.
  • Hein, David. "Spiritual Counsel in the Anglican Tradition," in Anglican Theological Review (1997, 1995, 1994).
  • Holtje, D. (1995). From Light to Sound: The Spiritual Progression. Temecula, CA: MasterPath, Inc. ISBN 1-885949-00-6
  • Martsolf D.S. and Mickley J.R. (1998) "The concept of spirituality in nursing theories: differing world-views and extent of focus" Journal of Advanced Nursing 27, 294-303
  • Perry, Whitall N. A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom: An Encyclopedia of Humankind’s Spiritual Truth. Louisville: Fons Vitae books, 2000, ISBN 1-887752-33-1
  • Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, Acorn Press, 1990, ISBN 0-89386-022-0
  • Schmidt, Leigh Eric. Restless Souls : The Making of American Spirituality. San Francisco: Harper, 2005. ISBN 0-06-054566-6
  • Shahjahan, R. A., "Spirituality in the academy: Reclaiming from the margins and evoking a transformative way of knowing the world" International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 18, no. 6 (December 2005): 685-711.
  • Steiner, Rudolf, How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation. New York: Anthroposophic Press, (1904) 1994. ISBN 0-88010-372-8
  • Steiner, Rudolf, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, (1904) 1994
  • Thompson, William Irwin, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality, and the Origins of Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981).
  • Wapnick, Kenneth, The Message of A Course in Miracles. Roscoe, NY: Foundation for A Course in Miracles, 1997, ISBN 0-933291-25-6.
  • Zagano, Phyllis Twentieth-Century Apostles: Contemporary Spirituality in Action (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999)
  • Zagano, Phyllis "Woman to Woman: An Anthology of Women's Spiritualities (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical PRess) 1993.
  • Zajonc, Arthur, The New Physics and Cosmology Dialogues with the Dalai Lama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-515994-2.

External links

Overviews

Specific spiritual traditions

Contemporary spiritual figures

Other

  1. ^ Osho, Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, p. 101
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