5.6.3 The Spiritual Organisation

I have heard so many different descriptions of spirituality, and I have so many different opinions on it myself, that I find it impossible to define.

I’ll be attempting to describe what spirituality means to me, personally, later – but that is not a definition as such, because I believe that it is a very subjective, personal experience.

The majority of people would probably claim that spirituality is a good thing to have an appreciation of – and that lack of it means that we are somewhat deprived.  Perhaps the opposite of spirituality is cynicism, nihilism, rampant materialism, banality, even boredom or, indeed predictability.

I don’t really know…….

What I do know, and what most people agree on, is that we perceive spirituality as something that moves us from the humdrum and/or mundane life that we sometimes find ourselves in.  In that sense, it is unlikely that we can be proactively spiritual all the time.  If we were, it would probably be too much for us – emotionally.

I don’t know that much about atheism but I wouldn’t be drawn to it because I don’t think that it leaves much room for mystery [1].  For example, I don’t know why we are moved by a song sung in a particular way but not the same song sung in another way.  Or why we are moved by a gripping film, or falling in love with someone, even falling in love with an idea, the wonder of childbirth, or the sense of excitement that we feel when we are creating something.  I could go on and on.

Our great technological advances and recent knowledge gained about our brain through neuroscience might explain the how of all the above but, even if we dig deep, the why is still a mystery.

I think that there is a danger that we might assume that the higher up Maslow’s triangle we are, the more spiritual we will be.

What I mean is that we might think that if people don’t have food or shelter (or their other basic needs met) they won’t have much time for spirituality.  Yet, I meet people who are homeless and whose basic needs are not met who come across to me as very spiritual.

Or we might think that people who suffer trauma in their childhood, whose spirit is knocked out of them, and who dissociate to cope with same (who might, for example, be hopeless, chronically addicted or criminals) struggle to have a sense of the spiritual.

Yet, like the people who lack basic needs, I meet people who are addicted and who regularly end up in prison who, I sense, are intensely spiritual.

On the other hand I have met people who appear to have done very well in life, who are successful and appear happy, who do not seem to have many worries and troubles, who, one would surmise, are way up Maslow’s triangle and for whom spirituality appears [2] to be of little or no importance.  In fact, in their life they appear to have parked spirituality and/or accommodated it – it seems in my very judgmental opinion anyway – expressing it in a kind of bland, lacklustre way.

All the above paragraphs are concerned with spirituality in the individual. This Sub-Chapter will discuss spirituality as it pertains to an organisation – that is, a collection of individuals with similar goals, aspirations, values and practices.

[1]. Perhaps some atheist might correct me here – I’d be open to correction.

[2]. I’m not sure whether it does or not – it just appears not to!

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.

In the previous post I invited you to ponder on what spirituality means to us so we can get a felt sense of it rather than try and define it. I’ll continue with that theme in this post.

What about our spirituality and our sexuality? Because I believe that both have a transcendent quality, and sex appears to have meaning for us beyond the procreation of our species, I said that I’d give the connection between the two a post of its own.

Another reason to spend a little time exploring the connection is that while we accept nowadays that our sexuality is linked to our spirituality, somewhere along our timeline of evolution (in recent centuries in the Western World anyway) great efforts were made by people of influence to get us to believe that the two were separate.

It might be of interest to explore the impact of this separation in respect of what spirituality means to us. Because the separation, I believe, had the effect of considerably narrowing our understanding of spirituality and rendering one significant aspect of it – our sexuality – off limits.

I also believe that control (which is linked to suppression) of both by powerful forces in society is linked to the wider power and control of vast numbers of humans since civilisation began.

And finally it might be good to raise our awareness of how this control is woven very subtly into our culture, language, norms etc.

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When I was young if someone suggested that sex, even between two responsible adults who love each other, could be a spiritual experience I’m not sure if it would have induced a positive reaction from those who were of most influence in Irish society at that time – in particular the all-powerful Catholic Church. The Church instructed us as to what spirituality was – and to best of my recollection it had no link to sex. 

Intellectuals (including Catholic ones) throughout history have, of course, posited the strong link – and I am sure that at some theological level the official Church would have linked sexual-union-within-Catholic-marriage in some way to spirituality – but I am referring here to how the vast majority of ordinary people (including myself) would have imagined its attitude to be. [1].

The fact that pleasuring oneself sexually and/or having sex outside of Catholic marriage were not only impure acts, but were mortal sins punishable by eternal damnation not only put a damper on sexual exploration, but drove a fairly substantial wedge between sex and spirituality – which was manifest in being holy, humble, simple, quiet, clean, pure, meek, like the inside of a monastery – perhaps seeing the wonder of God’s creation in nature or enjoying hard-to-understand poetry – and above all observing a wide variety of religious obligations. (Note the terms, pure and impure, which I also mentioned when I referred to how we associate the word spirits with purity because spirits are distilled).

Another fairly big wedge was that the people who were the gatekeepers, or exemplars of spirituality, (brothers, nuns and priests) didn’t really choose their job. Unlike the rest of us school-leavers, who might get a job in the bank, or selling carpets, they were called by God, they had a vocation, and one aspect of their vocation was they didn’t have sex for the rest of their lives.

Even within the confines of Catholic marriage the purpose of sex was to make more Catholics, [2] and using artificial birth control methods to enjoy sex without worrying about getting pregnant would also have been a sin. (I’m not sure whether or not it was mortal).

The fact that there might be joy involved (which is a word that is also linked to spirit and spirituality) seemed almost an embarrassment. And, after the much-hoped-for baby was born as a result of a man and woman having sex within marriage, blessed by the Church, the woman had to be churched (now – as far as I am aware – discontinued) to rid her of the uncleanliness that arose from childbirth.

One day something struck me about all this.

In our world, the Church decided what spirituality was, and also decided for us under what circumstances we were allowed to have sex. The link between the two was control.

What better way to control us ordinary people than to set the status of a kind of pure spirituality above the spirituality of sex that mature adults engage in that serve the dual purpose of having a bit of fun and, of course, making more humans.

And this lived on in our language – where books/films that contained explicit sexual images were called dirty. (Or were when I was young anyway). And dirty (like impure) is hardly a word that we associate with spirituality!

The founder of the Catholic Church (and all of the Christian Churches), Jesus Christ, was conceived, not by his mother Mary having sex, but by a spirit coming upon her. (Luke 1:34-35). The conception of Jesus was not a sexual event but a spiritual one. The joy that Mary felt was not the playful abandon of having sex with her husband, Joseph, but the pure joy of spiritual union – and the joy of being chosen to be the mother of Jesus who was the son of God.

When I was a boy I was fed dogma that I had to accept and felt that I had no choice but to believe things that I thought were unlikely if not impossible. When I got a bit older and began to think things out for myself I considered much of what I had to do and believe to be the opposite of what I understood spirituality to be.

Yet I know people that I greatly respect who feel that there is a significant spiritual dimension to all that they do and believe, who experienced much the same as I!

Let me remind you here that I am still discussing how we understand spirituality, i.e. what it means to us. And I’m going on about it a bit to highlight the difficulty that we have when we want to define spirituality – and how it is so subjective – which I mentioned in a previous post.

[1]. As an aside, when I was describing trauma, I used the image of a flywheel to illustrate how trauma lives long in the body, after the original incident has long disappeared from cognitive memory. I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to say that it’s similar with the Catholic Church in Ireland. Even though a lot of welcome changes have taken place the old controlling-attitudes flywheel still pumps energy into our current norms.

[2]. As far as I remember, the Church only allowed marriage between a Catholic and another religion if the children were brought up as Catholics. I’m not sure whether this was different in centuries past, or in different countries, or, indeed, whether it is still the case, or not.

As I said in a previous post, most of us, if we think about spirituality at all, deem it to be a kind of higher tier of our make-up. I also said that it might be easier to try and figure out what it means to us, or how we understand it, rather than define it as such.

I think, though, in general, (and as I mentioned already) we feel that it has a transcendent quality and it cannot be grasped fully.  We know that it can transport us to a different level of awareness, or happiness, and we assume that it is unique to humans.

Given the indefinability and vagueness about describing exactly what spirituality is, and how personal or subjective a thing it is, I propose that the least we can say is that, even if we don’t know what spirituality is, we know what it does.

If spirituality is the cause, the effect is movement or making things happen or, at least, the catalyst, i.e. assisting the process of making things happen.  (This is, after all, what the Holy Spirit did).

And yet, paradoxically, the effect of spirituality is also to slow down so we can appreciate beauty, silence, darkness, and see benefits in solitude and reflection.

Now, I know that terms like vague and vagueness have a bad press.

Anything that is vague is unclear, and we generally don’t like lack of clarity.  Any description, plan, process etc. that is vague can be manipulated to suit whatever goal the person being vague wants to achieve.  Just listen to a politician answering an awkward question!

Religious leaders throughout the world, in almost every established religion, for thousands of years, have manipulated spirituality to channel people into thinking a particular way so that they can build vast empires rich in material wealth and power, and even going to war to protect them, but lacking what many would consider to be true spirituality.

In the previous post I described how the religion in which I was brought up separated spirituality and sexuality. In our understanding, going to Mass every Sunday was an expression of our spirituality.  So was saying the rosary.  Giving pennies to children starving in Africa (who, to us, were described as black babies) was a good thing to do, and it had some sort of spiritual dimension. As did making sacrifices, offering things up, not eating sweets during Lent etc.

I believe that the fact that spirituality had an unclear or vague quality, and was more understood than defined, allowed the institutional Catholic Church to be sometimes at variance with the message of the Gospel – and still claim to be the entity that determined what spirituality should be.

But, looking from another perspective, there can be great strength in something being vague, indefinable, (and even a little nebulous [1]) in that we, with good intention and integrity, can be creative about how to use it.

In being creative, I believe that if we write a song, or sing a song, paint a work of art, produce something from our imagination, play, or even pray – all of which can be intensely spiritual experiences – we’d be at risk of doing something bland and predictable if we could pin down what spirituality is. 

Whatever it is (the muse – as it is called by some people) moves us, as U2 might say, in mysterious ways, not in definable ways.  In fact, songs written to formula devoid of the spark of originality, or painting by numbers run the risk of being considered by most people to be a little unimaginative.

Now, orienting our work so that we build unconditional relationships with very distressed people (meeting them where they are at) will often have an element of spirituality. That is, we can be moved by the process – and it can be full of mystery too.

But if we try and define what it should be, against some predictable yardstick that we have in our menu of behaviours, it would lose its mysteriousness and indeed unpredictability.

I am sure that it would result in less excitement and reduced sense of joy too! Imagine U2 singing ‘She moves in predictable ways’.

[1]. Nebulous comes from the word cloudy – clouds are beautiful and at the same time transient.

In the Table below is a little quiz.  There are 13 questions.  There is no right or wrong, or good or bad here, it is just to get us thinking about our understanding of spirituality, i.e. something that moves us.

Like a lot of the little quizzes or questions in the website, I am not making a judgement – and I encourage you not to judge yourself either! The purpose is simply to stimulate thoughts and emotions.

The quiz is in two parts.

Part One: Have a read of the experiences in the Table and then rate them from 1 to 5. If you want to print out this page it might be useful – else you will have to do it mentally. If you think you wouldn’t be moved at all by the experience (i.e. it has little or no spirituality) put a tick in the box under 1. Grade the intensity of your feelings accordingly 2, 3 and 4 and if you think that you would be moved a lot, (i.e. the experience is, or could be very spiritual), put a tick in the box under 5.

And no matter how unlikely the scenario is to you – try and get into the role for each question.

Part Two: The second part of the question is to write down why you chose the number you chose. This is equally important!

Remember, spirituality has a personal dimension so everyone will have different values of 1 – 5.  That is, the score of 1 – 5 will be very subjective – i.e. personal to you and you alone.

You are now invited to do the second part of the quiz – why you chose the number you chose.

(Your choice will probably be determined by what being moved, or spirituality means to you and/or what your understanding of it is, perhaps what your interests are, and maybe, even, how you currently feel).

Please do not judge yourself here – be spontaneous and if you think that one of the above experiences would move you and you tick ‘5’ beside it, just accept it and try and figure out why.

In the figuring out, try and identify the emotion that you have at the time.

Now that I have considered – however imperfectly – what spirituality means to us, or, what our understanding of it is, I will put together some thoughts on it that I have in respect of humanity in general.

Of-Course-It-Is

The world is full of poets, artists, musicians, writers, songwriters, craftspeople, film-makers, comedians, spiritual and/or religious leaders, philosophers, sportspeople, people who make great sacrifices for others, who have great insights about life that they bring to our attention, wise women and men, people who just do good without anyone asking them, and other creative and innovative people.

They provide meaning in our lives, remind us of the wonder and awe that is part of living, and offer us a sense that there is another world out there that we can tap into for strength.  That is, a mysterious indefinable world of the spirit.

They highlight and point out things that we take for granted and get us thinking about them.  They imagine a different path for us using metaphors and symbols.  We listen to their words, try and figure out what they mean to us, look at their art, experience their creativity and appreciate it greatly.  Often we are moved and/or inspired by these people to do something out of the ordinary ourselves.  Sometimes we are moved to tears.

And in our history, wise people have pointed out the wonderful opportunities that are there for us if we are generous, kind and compassionate – and that we will reap the rewards of that which we sow.

Most of us come into contact with children during our lives.  They speak the truth though it may be uncomfortable, and give us insight into the world as it is with their spontaneous uncensored comments.  They draw wonderful art and make beautiful things out of their own imagination.  (They get expensive toys and play with the boxes).  If they are our children, or related to us, or we have a connection with them, our hearts swell with pride as they succeed in something or overcome some difficult challenge, and similarly our heart is broken if they have some misfortune or they are struggling, or are hurt.

Apart from children, we have loving relationships and friendships, within and outside our family that give us joy and put fun into our lives.  Our relationships are important to us. We have pets which we have relationships with, as well as hobbies and interests that give us a sense of satisfaction and, often, if the hobby involves a challenge, spur us to achieve greater perfection over a long time.

Since the advent of social media we are alerted to injustice in different parts of the world and many of us use social media to generate support for causes that will help vulnerable or disadvantaged populations – as well as, of course, keeping us together when we are apart.

In times of tragedy, difficulty or other trauma our communities come together to help each other and provide support both emotional and practical to those who suffer loss.  Each person inspires others to assist in ensuring that suffering is eased.  And similar to this local type support, there are thousands of organisations all over the world run by voluntary effort to make the world a better place for everyone.

These organisations, coupled with the forces of good, will ensure that humanity’s journey will be fulfilling and that each generation will benefit from the wisdom of the former in an upward trajectory towards spiritual and material fulfillment.

The above proves without a shadow of a doubt that spirituality as most of us know it is really important to, and has substantial positive effect on humanity. 

Not-A-Bit

When we are offered a choice in life, we always appear to choose the path of least resistance – the path that is lazy.  We overeat and overdrink, take no exercise and then pay money to go on a diet to lose weight.  We drive a short distance on a sunny day to buy the paper.

The most popular and best-selling media outlets are filled with lurid stories of crime, war, conflict, horror, terror, soft porn, mild, subtle racism, all delivered in brief passages of text that require little or no concentration – which are published because the publishers know that a substantial majority of us read and/or tune into such stuff over and over again rather than thoughtful or reflective material which might provoke deeper thought and consideration.

In our choices, shallow thinking always seems to trump a deeper understanding of society’s many problems.  Social media is full of objectionable, angry, incoherent and offensive comments that are mostly badly thought-out knee-jerk reactions to some controversy or other and are designed to stimulate our baser emotions such as fear and anger.

We allow ourselves to be manipulated by powerful, wealthy corporations to believe that there is no alternative but to spend, spend, spend, even if it involves getting loans from banks which ultimately leaves us short of money raising our stress levels and blood pressure.  We complain about this but don’t change our behaviour.

Our insistence on driving everywhere leads not only to pollution and possible catastrophic global warming, but also terrible tragedies from high speed crashes, child obesity, and destruction of communities, small towns and villages, as we abandon them to drive up the motorway to the distant impersonal shopping mall.

And talking about impersonal, we virtually always chose impersonal contact over the personal because it speeds things up a little and we just haven’t time to wait around to speak to our fellow human.

Our A+E Departments are overcrowded – many attendees are there because of their own carelessness, drinking to excess or misuse of illegal drugs.  Our cities and towns are saturated with CCTV cameras to deter violent crime and theft of our goods and we believe that more cameras will make our streets safer. We over-fish our polluted seas and use industrial methods of farming that visit cruelty on the gentle, defenceless, helpless animals that we eat – and in turn cause more global warming.

Globally, we adhere to an insane economic paradigm that causes war, famine and hardship in other parts of the world because most of us don’t really care enough to make a little economic sacrifice for a fairer world.

In our history, going back as far as anyone can remember, if there is a choice between a non-exploitative way of improving our standard of living and an exploitative way, we will almost always choose the exploitative option.  Exploitation only enriches a tiny minority of us but the vast majority of us go along with it – manipulated by the false promises and obfuscations of the minority.

And as is evidenced from old legends and fables (most notably the killing of the goose that laid the golden egg) we are on a seemingly unstoppable roller-coaster ride, the long-term effect being the reduction in the quality of our lives.

The above proves without a shadow of a doubt that spirituality as most of us know it is of little or no importance, and has little effect on humanity. 

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In an early part of the website, I mentioned that paradox seems to be a feature of humanity. I will attempt to unpack the paradox of the two perspectives above, that is, humanity having high regard for spirituality and having no regard, (and even those of us who consider ourselves to have high regard having no regard when it suits us), in the next post.

Ambivalence

Prior to doing a little unpacking, let me propose that the descriptions in the previous post point to a major contradiction, or ambivalence in our nature. That is, the struggle we have in making a clear choice.

And how will I describe ambivalence?

In this context, it is our ability to complain about traffic when we are driving our car, or complain about shops closing down while we buy on line, or having social media accounts and wanting privacy, or desperately wanting our species to survive but risking extinction by prioritising comfort and convenience over necessity. (Here are a few other examples).

Very often, ambivalence in you is labelled as hypocrisy by me who might judge you harshly – and in particular if I don’t like you, or if I don’t want your decision to be carried out, or I don’t like your opinion etc. etc.

Some years ago in Ireland we had a very emotional debate on abortion, prior to a referendum. I knew people who are principled and sincere who supported the legalisation of abortion and would be appalled at the prospect of a country going to war, and/or would be opposed to the arms industry. Similarly I knew people who were were also principled and sincere who were opposed to the legislation of abortion and would be quite militaristic in their attitude to world politics. And, of course, I knew people who were against abortion and were also against war.

I am not judging here – I’m just using the example to demonstrate our tendency to be ambivalent.

So, while a machine is characterised by either/or, we humans are characterised by ambivalence, or and.  In fact, to complicate it further, we can be ambivalent and either/or when it suits us.

I’m ambivalent therefore I am seems to be more fitting for us than Descartes famous statement describing the essence of being human I think therefore I am.

That is, are we deep or shallow?  Are we nice or nasty?  Are we responsible or irresponsible?  Fundamentally, are we true or false?

Ambivalence as I just described it, on the one hand causes us great problems and yet must have an evolutionary or developmental role.

So, in a way, accommodating it should not be a problem for humanity!

The Unpacking- Ambivalence and Spirituality

We could probably argue forever as to whether we are Of-Course-It-Is or Not-A-Bit – i.e. which way do we lean.

Even though Of-Course-It-Is and Not-A-Bit are in contrast to each other they are both largely true statements when it comes to human behaviour.

And since time immemorial Of-Course-It-Is would probably have been associated with good for us and Not-A-Bit would have been leaning towards bad for us.

That is to say – as is probably obvious to anyone who reflects a little – we tend to downplay the Not-A-Bit if we notice it in our lives, or criticise it if we notice it in other people’s lives – ambivalence again – and we tend to hold the Of-Course-It-Is in high esteem. Or, to put it another way, for most of us, Of-Course-It-Is is what we like to portray to the world and as for Not-A-Bit? Well – we might keep that side of us hidden, or we might not even be aware of it!

This interests me because as I am writing this post and thinking about it a bit I notice that I associate Not-A-Bit with competition, comparison, conflict and suchlike tendencies, and Of-Course-It-Is with cooperation, collaboration, empathy and living harmoniously. What I mean is, when I start competing I begin to adopt the Not-A-Bit way of living – though I might pretend not to.

And I also am of the opinion that much of the Of-Course-It-Is way of living would be thought to be associated with spirituality.

This is important because if I am interested in or knowledgeable about spirituality it gives me an edge when it comes to promoting a particular point of view. 

As an exercise, and to try and figure out how the intellectual types always seem to have the upper hand in the world, let us look at the metaphorical/symbolic nature of the Gospels where Jesus‘s words and parables are suggestive rather than absolutely clear.

In an earlier Chapter on Power and Control in Society, (the post on Biblical Influences), I mentioned the Gospel message to turn the other cheek.

Now, so that the Christian Churches can hold their head high in the 21st Century we are informed that turning the other cheek (or, offering the other cheek to be precise – yes – I checked it out) doesn’t really mean that we tell a vulnerable woman who reports to us that her husband slaps her on the cheek to go home and offer him the other cheek.

Contrast that to love thy neighbour as thyself, or, judge not and you shall not be judged, or, faith without good works is of no avail. They are far clearer messages. They don’t really have to be interpreted. They mean what they say.

We are encouraged to interpret the messages of the New Testament by thinking deeply about them – which people who are highly educated do with literature.

The fact that something mightn’t mean what it says is a great opportunity for the educated to keep the uneducated in their place. That is to say; the educated, intellectual, spiritual types know what it really means and it has to be interpreted for the great ocean of uneducated humans who might take it literally.

Would it not be far better if we, who wish to be thought of as Christians, said that Jesus wasn’t always right, and also said that he should have been absolutely clear on his opinion on violence, not give some sort of obscure message that could be interpreted by evil people for their own ends. If we base our entire philosophy and methodology on something that cannot be contradicted or challenged because it’s the word of God there are bound to be people who will distort it.

But this, of course, would raise the appalling vista that Jesus could be wrong – which he can’t be – because he is God!

Once again, I believe that it is proof of 1): the power of intellectual/spiritual types that perpetuate the mystique of the Gospel being always right; – and; 2): the extent of our grooming; that we, the ordinary people, don’t see this clearly!

And, just as an aside, consider this. We Christians promote the idea that we are leaders in doing good in the world. Is it good leadership to base all our decisions on a belief system that can never be criticised?

And as another aside, isn’t it interesting that, as far as I am aware, nothing in the New Testament extols the virtues of competition. In fact the entire message of the New Testament (check out the Sermon On The Mount) is that if you lose you win, but is this message vigorously promoted by the established churches that have billions of followers worldwide?

I just ask the question ……….

Other Thoughts On Spirituality

In the Chapter on Anthropology I wondered why we evolved into a species that is nasty to each other quite a lot when it would appear to be easier for everyone around us, including ourselves, if we were nice. 

And in the Chapter on Leadership I described a phenomenon which I refer to as the domination of the fast processors which may give some pointers in respect of how we became what we are. 

The two opposites in the previous post (Of-Course-It-Is and Not-A-Bit) say more about the paradox of being human than about spirituality per se – but ……. and I cannot get away from this ….. humans are spiritual beings!

I hope that the relevance of the paradox to our understanding of, experience of, and exercise of spirituality will become clear as the rest of this Sub-Chapter is read.

Because, looking at the world in general, and particularly when it comes to power distribution, the Not-A-Bit side always seems to be in the ascendancy.

After all, almost all of the world’s problems could be solved by a little Of-Course-It-Is generosity.  But who will be generous first?  Generosity – particularly in the unforgiving hothouse of corporate competition – might appear to be weakness – so we are generous on our terms only.  Surely this fear of generosity (that is, fear of working together for the collective good because we might lose power) constantly promotes the dominance of the Not-A-Bit tendency.

The truly spiritual side is often deemed to be less important, or even manifests in what the majority of humanity label as eccentricity or crankiness.  This may lead us who deem ourselves to be spiritual to dilute our spirituality a little (or maybe a lot – or maybe suppress it altogether) so that it will be acceptable to the majority.

Most of the bigger established Christian Churches are manifestations of this.

We know that if we really promote Of-Course-It-Is it will not be acceptable to the majority of the population so we water down the message a bit so we can support exclusive fee-paying boarding schools, be involved in militaristic displays, foster a kind of hierarchy that mirrors the structures of the Pillars, be overt supporters of a grossly unjust system such as royalty or imperialism, and/or maintain an obscenely wealthy central authority such as the Vatican.

In some ways it reminds me of socialism. Like true spiritual types, true left-leaning socialists are always on the fringes.  When socialism becomes mainstream it turns out like the Soviet Union – a central top-down hierarchical establishment that is obsessed with power and control – probably for the same reasons that Churches are.

Once again, I am not really criticising or denigrating the Churches (or even the Soviet Union) here, I am merely pointing out what I observe (or in the case of the Soviet Union), observed.

Perhaps it takes energy to be spiritual!

And is spirituality, in addition to being the creative force, also the voice of warning – the teacher within? The voice that we get a glimpse of from time to time and that some people take more seriously than others.

Sometimes, in this respect, I think that spirituality is a burden.  It’s like our spiritual part can see what’s wrong with the world and can see where humanity is headed, and wants to change it, but our non-spiritual part doesn’t care enough.

Finally, in the dance between the deep or shallow, nice or nasty, responsible or irresponsible poles, I believe that it is interesting how we have this amazing ability to create and then cling on to the belief that even if what we have created is causing us distress – and contributing to our own level of anxiety – it is improving our lives!

The last post was long – and it leads me to ask the question that is the title of this post!

How much evidence is there to state, with confidence, that spirituality is important to humanity?

On the surface – probably not a lot!  If the proverbial Martian came down what would she think?  If she picked up the popular newspapers and read random bits of social media, or surveyed peoples’ entertainment choices, or, indeed, spent some time in a war torn country, the flames of war fanned by people whose beliefs are based on teachings by intensely spiritual leaders hundreds of years ago, what would she think of spirituality?

We mentioned war a number of times in the website – and this surely is the acid test for spirituality – if it is important why do we have war?

If she was transported back to the time when I was young and saw reluctant teenagers dragging themselves to Mass every Sunday and kneeling at the back of the church she would probably have thought that attending to this spirituality thing was an awful chore. 

Because of the prevalence of the Not-A-Bit evidence that I see around me every day, (and because I always like to challenge myself a bit) I am open to the argument that spirituality may be merely an interest of people who, because they are intelligent in an academic/philosophical way, think that they know best.

They put themselves in an advantageous position by playing on ordinary peoples’ insecurities and fears – using their well-thought out arguments and superior educational achievement to convince people who couldn’t give a damn anyway that just because they think that spirituality is a good thing to aspire to, everyone else should think the same.

There is a giant academic/education and religious industry built around the desirability of being spiritual and they are not going to let that go. 

Or perhaps some people have more insight than others, or are more reflective.

Such people see an opportunity for themselves and exploit this.  Because they appear to have insight they are elevated to a higher status as they claim to have some connection with the source or sources of mysteries in life.  Some of this has worked out really well for humanity – but humans being human – it was also abused.

In many cases the vulnerabilities of the insightful and reflective people were exploited by people who rose in status, property and wealth, to the extent that they were unable to resist the pressure and drifted into organised religion which then became, in turn, a tool of the powerful rather than a source of inspiration or good.

Two points are worth noting here:

1. There is a lot of suffering in the world and spiritual people throughout history have convinced everyone else that there is something out there (a better place, like heaven – where there is no suffering) and that the spiritual ones have some kind of route to it.  If we have no interest in spirituality but pretend to follow this path, adhering to the rules as laid down by those who have an interest in spirituality, we will, somehow, get to the place of no suffering when we die. This suited people in power, so they supported it, because it enabled them to keep other people powerless, obedient and docile.

2. Thinking themselves to be more intelligent and aware, the purveyors or gatekeepers of spirituality bore the pants off the majority of us who just want to get as much money as possible doing the least work and blow it on anything we want regardless of whether or not it ultimately leads to the destruction of our species.  That is, a significant proportion of us are intimidated into pretending to be interested in matters of a spiritual nature to impress the intelligentsia who pack academia and the Pillars in general.

And, if everyone was in touch with their spirituality what would the spiritual ones do to promote it?  Would the world be a happier place?

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After all that (what some would call cynicism) it is interesting that heaven (and going there after death) is now somewhat outdated – in the Western World anyway.

Nowadays the edge, or advantage, (that those who promote the primacy or benefits of spirituality have) seems to come from our wish to be, overall, good people, or (more pertinently) perceived to be good people, so that we can have a little bit of heaven while we are alive and, if it exists, all of it after we die.

After all, if we think about it, when people meet each other first, a lot of Of-Course-It-Is type behaviour dominates. It is only when people get to know each other that the Not-A-Bit shows itself………..

But most notably, the two descriptions of human behaviour in the different perspectives post point to the paradox of our relationship with our spirituality.

On the one hand it is something that we desire, or aspire to – on the other hand it appears to be of such little value to us that we ignore it.

However, if we think deeply about it – which, by the way, is what the spiritual types advise us to do – it is clear that spirituality is important.  But if we don’t think deeply about it – perhaps it isn’t!

But maybe, at the end of the day, the fact that the vast majority of us want to be perceived to be what most people understand to be good people is enough proof that spirituality is indeed important to humanity!

I am sure that you are exhausted after the previous post and the one before it. As is said nowadays, you are spiritualitied out!

But I’ve started so I’ll finish – so let us, for the sake of argument, say that spirituality is important.

Let us assume that it is like breathing – it has high impact low noticability, and that without it we’d die. Let us assume that lack of spirituality would have long term detrimental effects on our physical health – though, admittedly, a bit slower than not breathing.

After all, it has survived tens of thousands of years of evolution in the consciousness of everyone worldwide and still is significant today – so, like compassion, it is obviously of some importance in our existence.

Then, why do humans generally, as evidenced by our consistent choices, appear to deem what most of us would understand to be spirituality to be of peripheral importance, or ignore it altogether?

To answer that question let us consider orienting our lives to do far more of, and think far more along the lines of the Of-Course-It-Is than we do now. 

Would the wealth, power or control of someone else or some other people be diminished?  If it would, perhaps there is a clue there as to why spirituality appears to be generally a peripheral phenomenon in our daily lives. 

This is a bit of a long shot but I believe that there is a fair amount of evidence to show that if we are obsessive about power and control, we, deep down, fear spirituality – in particular the relationship aspect of it, and, in particular, our intimate relationship with self.

Our spirituality may be expressed through, and we may be very observant of religious strictures, but we are fearful of joy, abandonment, true intimacy and loving relationships.  By extension we then fear spirituality getting out of control. (For example, the established churches corralled spirituality within a very tight boundary that excluded our sexuality).

Imagine what it would do to the power and control brigade if we all chose our own spiritual path.  (The path less travelled – if you like – which, of course, if we all chose it would be the path most travelled)!

What would happen, for example, if controlling and powerful people in a country wanted to go to war to colonise a distant land and grab their resources and the vast majority of us thought the thoughts, or took seriously the experiences in Of-Course-It-Is. 

I propose that we would not be very enthusiastic about engaging in the destructive and exploitative behaviour that the power and control elite wanted us to.

From their perspective it would be dangerous to have us ordinary people thinking too much about spirituality!  Far better to control it through an established religion that is in cahoots with the powerful – as has been done, if not for millennia, certainly for many centuries.  (For example, appointing a chaplain from a powerful and wealthy establishment religion to bless the troops – i.e. look after their spiritual needs – before they go to their doom).

And, on a much less dramatic note, if we stopped and thought about how our actions affected others – who would lose out?  What would happen if we discovered that we were happier without consuming, consuming, consuming?

Getting back to corporate closed-ness, I believe that the corporate world always has done, and always will do everything in its power to dumb us down and dampen any tendency we have to be spiritual.

Down through millennia it has appointed (generally) compliant agents in vast religious empires to promote a banal, sanitised and highly controlled version of spirituality.  This has the effect of codifying spirituality thereby making it a lot easier to control.

But, I hear you say, aren’t we the people who enable corporate closed-ness to be so predominant that it dwarfs every other kind of thinking in the world?  Yes, indeed we are.

So by way of exploration of this puzzling behaviour on our part let us once again look at the days before corporate closed-ness, to the hunter gatherer culture, which I will do in the next post when I discuss immanence.

Even though choosing to revert to the hunter gatherer lifestyle seems unlikely for us at this stage – though I suppose one never knows – it is interesting to consider what we might have lost when we gradually moved to being farmers.

I am fairly certain that we lost our innate sense of direction, hearing, sight and even smell.  I’d say that we also lost a lot of our sense of tuning-in to each other, our sense of depending on each other, our being at-one with nature, (e.g. tracking of animals) and many other similar traits – perhaps even long term weather prediction.

We also probably lost what we nowadays call our sixth sense.  And we lost, over time, the sense of mystery in everything, and/or that there are things that we cannot understand or control that are ordering our lives.

Now, immanence is a little used word.  In the context of this post I will define it as the presence of the spiritual, God, higher being or mystery in something that we physically experience, such as a tree, a mountain, river, many of which were deemed to be sacred by ancient peoples. Many pagan, or pre-Christian type religions believe that our God is present in many things that surround us, (and that we are, to some extent, part of), and does not have a separate existence. Christians believe that God exists everywhere too, but also has an existence that is distinct [1].

On our evolutionary journey I believe that among our biggest losses were the emotional skills that we had that enabled us to deal with uncertainty in respect of survival, food availability, and ultimately life and death.

Because of that loss, when we began farming, our sense of being-in-the-spiritual-world took a right bashing.  I believe that there is a close connection between spirituality, uncertainty, sense of wonder, and immanence as I described above.

And this is important – rather than simply experiencing mysteries in many parts of our lives, and accepting them for what they were, we began to try and explain things.

Explanation is important here, because as we became technological, mystery after mystery was debunked.  As an example, take the rain dance.  Instead of considering the likelihood (or not) of rain to be a mystery, and invoking the God of rain by dancing, people began to realise that rain can be explained by understanding how pressure and temperature impacts on humidity, the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, the height of clouds, the nearness of large water masses etc.

This explanation threw a spanner in the works of those who tried to convince others that if we danced a certain dance we’d get rain.  I believe that with more and more explanation (as distinct from description – which is different) wondering just for the sake of wondering became less popular.

As we got more technological, wondering had to have a goal of explaining that which we were wondering about.

It took a long, long time – but I believe that farming (and the technology that it spawned) began to affirm that part of us that tends towards arrogance.

We began to believe more and more that we could control every other species and the entire physical world, use and abuse our only home, Planet Earth, at our whim, so that we can be comfortable and our lives can have certainty.  (It was, of course, a relatively short hop from that to controlling and enslaving other humans as well).

The urge within us to be certain of everything around us, that is, our desire to fix everything with technology, has made our life a lot more comfortable, predictable, healthier (though that is debatable) and indeed longer.

So it is only natural that in addition to land, goods, finance, food etc. we should try and control spirituality – lest it get in the way of our domination of everything that is so necessary in our pursuit of certainty and predictability.

The kind of spirituality that claimed that there was immanence (i.e. that a higher being was present) in things like trees, the sun, mountains, rivers etc. was overrun by unitary religion, where people in power within the religion decided, for the rest of us, on immanence, i.e. how God showed himself to us.

It says a lot about the human desire (or, one could say – desperation) for certainty that this happened.  The great human paradox is that now we are at a stage where our own existence as a species is, some would say, becoming uncertain because of the damage caused to our environment by our desire for certainty.

And, if we turned back the clock, we’d probably do it all over again!

Here is a funny cartoon that I saw on the Internet which reminds me of this paradox.

[1]. If you are interested, more can be read about immanance from many sources.