You are not a human being
in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a
human experience. Teilhard de
Chardin
In my second post I referred
to four areas of life that we try to balance in order to live the good life:
- Physical – nourishment, exercise, rest
- Emotional – Giving and receiving love
- Social – Relationships that allow for trust, sharing and fun
- Rational – time to pursue knowledge, reflect, express and create
A friend provoked me to come
back to my thoughts on this and that I had said that perhaps Aristotle has
missed something. It has taken me a while to do so because I am not convinced
that I was right before, but it has left me pondering ideas about spirituality
and where this fits within these four areas.
For me, the term
spirituality seems to have lost its meaning – there are those that shy away
from the religious overtones and those who are reluctant to embrace
wiffly-waffly hippy gobbledygook.
Having spent time last week
considering what it means to have identity I have concluded that we have two
fundamental needs; to belong and to have value. All other philosophical
questions stem from these two needs. Whether we consider ourselves to be
philosophical or not, we are driven to find responses to these two needs. The
ancient Greek philosophers put the highest value on reason. Plato thought we
should be governed by Philosophical Kings and in the current political climate
this doesn’t sound like a bad idea – having leaders who think before they speak
and act! However this is also quite an elitist point of view. Not everyone can
be a philosopher (perhaps that is their point) but high value was given to
contemplation by both and that is something everyone can do.
It seems to me that when we
look around that is exactly what people are looking for; the rise in interest
in activities like mindfulness, meditation, yoga and the like are all signs
that people recognise a need to go beyond themselves and the daily routine of
life. People shy away from the term ‘religious’ and with good reason –
religious people are either portrayed as dried up, fusty, old fashioned people
or extremists who will go to any lengths to get their message across. The truth
is much more complicated than that. The
origins of the spiritual activities listed above are interwoven in religion.
This week I have been
considering how to put into words ideas about spirituality and religion without
using those terms as they seem so fraught with stereotypes and assumptions. If
we have the need to belong and to find value I believe that finding sources for
those needs are spiritual activities because at the core of these needs is the
truth that we are connected. There are obvious ways in which we are connected
to individuals; through blood, love, friendship. Our connectedness is broader
still which is why it makes a difference when a stranger smiles at you, when
you share something amusing just with your eyes on the train. Our connectedness
extends beyond ourselves to the natural world which is why the smell of the sea
or the wind in your hair, the sight of a beautiful sunset or the flame coloured
autumn leaves evokes emotions, stirs something internally, lifts our spirit. It
doesn’t have to, and I guess all too often it doesn’t. We walk around so
preoccupied with our thoughts we miss these connections with others and the
world around us.
For me there is a final
piece to the connection puzzle and that is being connected to the ‘Connector’.
There are definitely ways that I can look for ways in which to belong and find
value that ultimately will leave me disconnected and alone, so I need a context
for my connection and for me that is the one who put it all in place in the
beginning. For in him we live and
move and have our being. (Acts 17:28)
So is O2 right, is ‘A more
connected world a better world’?
Are belonging and value our
deepest desires?
What does spirituality mean
to you?
Hi Suzi, I really enjoy your blog, and this is a particularly challenging subject. Your last question I like best, so I will work backwards.
ReplyDeleteSpirituality has always meant to me something beyond myself but human, something not material, something like the force of life that animates the body, the personality of the individual - but also something not human, the eternal, the peaceful, the calm, the serene, the antidote. The spiritual is also not neutral, it is beautiful. It feels most of all like hope. It also feels like achievement.
So I don't feel the spiritual in desolate places like the Yorkshire moors or mountain ranges, or watching nature programmes about survival of the fittest or natural wonders like floods or volcanoes, or seeing the clouds through the window of an aeroplane, or sitting around a campfire by a lake looking up at the stars. But I do feel the spiritual in gothic catherdrals, in candles, staying out after closing time, in the countryside, looking out from the water's edge, in good conversation and good company, in the kindness of a stranger, in love.
The reason why Aristotle might appear to have left out the spiritual, I think, is because he lived before the Christian version of sprirituality came along. I think Aristotle would have felt spirituality within his physical, social, emotional and rational pursuit of the good life. The pre and post Christian good life is the pursuit of the good things in themselves and one's best self, rather than the perfection of God.
Christian sprituality places the perfection of God above all. And the essence of Christianity is that God is perfect love. Christianity would say that love is our greatest concern (And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13). What amazes me is that we have only one word for love, whereas the Greeks had different words for different types of love. There are so many ways to love and show love. And there are so many ways not to. I think Christianity is right; love is our deepest desire, not just having and giving and receiving, but knowing, and understanding, and being.
I do thank God for Christian love, but being perfection, it is not the only love to aspire to. Just as beggars can't be choosers, and the hungry don't turn down a crust, while we are here we do the best we can and hope for more. And God, being perfect, is always there.
Suzi, I just want to add, now that I have finished reading a little book lent to me by a good friend, that I was wrong to think that we are beggars and cannot be choosers when it comes to love. We can choose to love if we see that it is a choice within our power to make.
ReplyDeleteWe have the power of imagination and creation. We have the power to look and to see, to recognise and to perceive. We have the power to choose and to believe, to say the words and to make them true, to be happy and to let go of our drama, to not worry and to be in a mental state of love. To let go is just to know how lucky we are to have life, to have existence, to be here, and to not be alone.
The little book I have read today is called The Four Agreements and it warns against self-rejection and self-denial, opinions and mental tail-chasing. It is a reminder of what is already within our knowledge, that there is love (and we are love) and there is everything else.