In the previous post I said that I struggle to define spirituality.
Perhaps if we consider words that are related to spirituality we may get a clue to what it is, or what it means to us in our day-to-day life.
To be inspired, for example, is to be moved (and moved implies emotionality) to do something that we might not have thought was within our capability.
To aspire is to aim to do something that is often different or new. And I’m pretty sure that the word for a structure on top of a church, a spire, which directs our prayers up to heaven, has some connection to the word spiritual.
A team can have a good team spirit which enables it to be greater than the sum of its parts – as we mentioned elsewhere.
I was told in the army that esprit de corps was very important to win a battle or a war.
If we see a child who is energetic, resilient etc. we often say that she has spirit.
And – I can’t resist it – spirits are also drinks that give us a right good kick! (Well, they do me anyway). To give a further clue, it is interesting that spirits are manufactured by distilling (or, in the case of their close relatives paraffin, benzene etc. refining) from cruder products. This means that we think of spirits as having purity. (I’ll come back to the significance of the connection between spirituality and purity in the next post).
Valerie Sinanson – psychotherapist who is very knowledgeable in the area of trauma and dissociation – links trauma and spirit elegantly in respect of what happens in child sexual abuse. As she puts it, (and I hope that I paraphrase Valerie properly) children’s spirits are broken so that they turn to spirits and then their very inclusion of spirits to build up their spirit causes them to lose out in life.
There is a spirit world where many people believe those who have died (and those who are yet to be born) reside.
Remember the book I mentioned elsewhere entitled Spirit Level [1]? It suggests that inequality leads to all sorts of undesirable things in society, and (obviously) equality has the opposite effect – i.e. enables a lot of positive things!
The title, I assumed, referred to the tool that I’d use to ensure that I’m hanging a picture right. However, I thought that it was (perhaps inadvertently) revealing, in that it implied that inequality lowers the level of spirit in society and if we want to keep the morale of society high (because morale is closely associated with spirit) we will have to make an effort to be more equal.
Finally, (and just to tee us up for the next post) long before I knew what conceived was – and the rest of the facts of life as they were called back in the day – I was informed that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. In those days, he (we presumed that he was male) was known as the Holy Ghost, but Ghost changed to Spirit over the last few decades – probably to reflect more faithfully what is said in the Gospel. In the Christian faith, the Holy Spirit makes things happen, and isn’t just a kind of add-on to the Father and the Son in the Trinity.
After all the above, perhaps another way get to a handle on spirituality is to ask what kind of behaviours show the world that I’m spiritual?
I myself associate spirituality with creation, growth, joy and relationship – in all their different manifestations. And I also associate it with independent thought, responsibility and energy.
That doesn’t mean that I am defining it – I’ll leave that to people more learned than I – but if I am to find meaning in spirituality those words will go some way towards fitting the bill for me.
And, as will be expanded on in some of the following posts, spirituality also encompasses the universal root foundations described in previous Chapters.
[1]. I referenced this most interesting book when describing the Focus Group earlier in the blog.