Lost and Found and All Around
In general:
What is the central purpose of religion and spirituality? What’s it for?
In particular:
A) If you consider yourself religious or spiritual, why is your religious or spiritual perspective important to you?
B) If you don’t consider yourself religious or spiritual, what do you think makes this of central importance to some people? If your answer is critical of religion and spirituality, do you see it as ever playing a positive role? And… What’s central to your own perspective on life?
C) If you feel religiously or spiritually lost, what is it that you feel you are therefore missing?
D) Did I leave out anybody??
What is the central purpose of religion and spirituality? What’s it for?
In particular:
A) If you consider yourself religious or spiritual, why is your religious or spiritual perspective important to you?
B) If you don’t consider yourself religious or spiritual, what do you think makes this of central importance to some people? If your answer is critical of religion and spirituality, do you see it as ever playing a positive role? And… What’s central to your own perspective on life?
C) If you feel religiously or spiritually lost, what is it that you feel you are therefore missing?
D) Did I leave out anybody??
Posted by Paul at 8:52 PM Permalink
44 Comments:
On the positive side, it offers a center, a support that I used to envy and may well again. I've often envied those who believe, particularly when I've gone through bad patches. But wishing I had that strong center isn't a way to faith.
It's just wishing, no different than wishing someone hadn't died.
Thank you for stopping by Dancing in the Light. I consider myself a spiritual being, I believe the Bible teaches we all are. One of the tenets of my faith I hold most dear is that there is a God and He loves me---that alone gives me hope, purpose, and a sense of community.
Enjoyed the post,
Peace
Neva
Thanks for stopping by at my blog and sharing your experience.
-Martin
It's not clear from Martin's comment, but at least two of you see meaning as deriving from belief.
Hayden suggests that the answers provided by belief, though comforting, can be easy answers - perhaps involving some wishful thinking.
Neva specifies the meaning provided by her belief in God in terms of hope, purpose, and a sense of community...
Surviving catastrophy is easier when you believe that the catastrophy has purpose. (I am being tested, or the reason is inscrutible but there). If you are subject to that common, emotional peculiarity of feeling that the current moment is more important than the past, and if the emotional content of the future never seems that it can be greater than the happiness of today, it is harder to surf around the holes of depression when you suffer loss.
At those moments, loss is what the world is, untempered by the joys (temporarily) fogotten or minimized. At those moments the heart cries out for a reason to accept a universe containing so much pain.
Religions provide reasons.
And for many people, religion/sprirituality does solve this problem by providing, as you mention, "reasons".
A couple things: there's also the matter of what might be termed spiritual development that helps with pain (literal as well as metaphorical) through bringing changes in our perspective.
I notice how you mention our relationship to nature and to loved ones as examples of life at its best and where you suggest religion/spirituality aren't needed. At the same time, those are examples of good things that have what I'd want to point to as spiritual qualities. "Joy" might be a better word for describing them than "pleasure."
METHANTIUM: You're welcome...
For me, the good benefit of religion would be that God loves me ... that I have someone to love and be loved by. This doesn't make life easier, though ... at least not for me ... because when things go wrong in life, I have to try to reconcile a good and loving God with my own suffering.
In a way, I think it's easier to be an atheist. What you see is what you get, and since there's no intrinsic meaning to anything, you can be an existentialist, and make it up for yourself.
Keshi.
As far as atheists are concerned, certainly they'd say that it's religious people who have been making things up, not them... As to how easy it is to be an atheist, I think it must depend...
In my teens through early twenties my primary religious orientation, so to speak, was agnosticism with stronger and stronger atheistic leanings - and I was depressed about it!
Theodicies... but isn't that their job? That is, to try and explain "that bad things happen for a reason"... to reconcile the existence of an all good, all powerful God with the existence of evil?
KESHI: I'm wondering what way of life it is that you're describing as spiritual.
And I must say that no..I do not believe I am a religious person..I used to be though...and as much as I thank my religious involvements for all the lessons I have gained...I don't really think I would like to be religious once again...
Being spiritual is different...I don't consider myself spiritual either...( gosh...I don't consider myself anything..uh' oh'..)..I would like to be though...And I do believe in a God who loves me...I wish I could love Him the same way...
B) It's important because a belief drives people to go on and not give up in life..that's how I look at it...I think the more spiritual a person is..the more this person would be able to face each day productively...because of the inner strength gained
I want to be more spiritual...to have my questions settled first...to let go..really let go of dogmatic stuff I know deep inside I don't hold as true...and then to just rest in the affirmation that I am not alone...
C) I am missing....( thinking..thinking..)I don't know what I'm missing..( is this bad?)...I feel that God loves me...and just wants to talk to me...Maybe I'm missing out on the experience because I keep on saying tomorrow I will have time to be quiet...
1. We are triads. We have a body, a mind and a spirit. Due to the intellecual discoveries of the 19th century and the horrors of the 20th, we now fail to see the spiritual realm; thus we deny an essential part of self.
2. The spirit is not the mind. Too many people see "spirituality" as something to acquire through reading and knowledge. Instead, it is a mystery because it is the part of us that is the most closely connected to God.
3. People use spirituality because they are angry at religion, and in many cases, justifiably so. The hate they feel for God and some of his followers, depending on the denomination can range from righteous indignation at abuse to hatred of their own upbringing. It is not an objective process.
4. Can people be spiritual and not believe in a higher power? My thought is this: they actually do believe in something but it is unnamable to them. The hard core atheists I've known will not even listen to the word "spirit". But this is again my own experience.
5. God is a mystery. He reaches us through incarnations, through sacred texts, through miracles, through dreams, through subtle voices and through other people. He also recognizes that his creation is diverse; this is why I believe there is not one religion that leads to God. And to some, that is seen as a denial of my own stake in my belief system. But I have prayed with many of different faiths, and I believe we talk to the same God, and he reaches us all in ways that we alone can be touched.
Sorry so long. The end.
For you, it's belief in God. And becoming more spiritual would involve paying more attention to God, so to speak.
GANGADHAR: By citing love, hard as it can be to get to the gist of what we mean by that word, you're pointing to something that I think most people would agree is of great if not primary importance.
ER: Here’s what I’m hearing as the main points in the belief system you’ve outlined:
Belief in God.
Belief in something you call spirit that is neither corporeal nor mental.
Belief that God and spirit are mysteries.
Belief that God communicates to us through certain special means – miracles, dreams, sacred texts etc.
The belief that people who say they don’t believe in a higher power really do but are unable to articulate it.
What makes these beliefs important to you? How would your experience of life be different without them?
Got your message so here I am posting on this new blog!
I probably know 1/100 of what you guys here know but here are my comments on your comments :)
"Religion makes life easy for people." "Without meaning life becomes a drudgery." Life is the easiest. It is happening. We never decided to be born we don't decided to live we don't choose our deaths... they are simply happening. Life IS with or without meaning. It is not dull, it is not exciting. it is pleasure-free and pain-free. It simply IS!
"Religion provides meaning when life sucks..." Sounds like drug addiction :) Senses are deceiving. People should not cling to these experiences... seeing listening tasting feeling... These are confined to the nervous system which only experiences a narrow interval of the Whole. Joy is not dependent on all these. It is not the product of another cause and effect.
"A Universe containing so much pain." This universe is only in your thoughts it's not real it's pure illusion.
"One of the tenets of my faith I hold most dear is that there is a God and He loves me..." "For me, the good benefit of religion would be that God loves me..." God is not someone. You, me, these words, the bits and bytes, the air, the planets, the nothingness, and everything is God, as One. Why do we see ourselves apart from the One? It is silly!
Seek God not just in bad times but in good. Seek God not just in good times but in bad. :)
When we were kids we were not troubled and wondering whether we were loved or not. Once you believe/think Joy is in the taking/in receiving you become miserable! We want to be loved... Loved by God. How can you see God and Love as two different things? You can't say being loved by God, it is nonsense!
"And I do believe in a God who loves me... I wish I could love Him the same way..." You are Loving :) whether you want it or not you are loving God with every breath you take!
"God is a mystery. He reaches us through incarnations, through sacred texts, through miracles, through dreams, through subtle voices and through other people." Why look outside when you can find it inside? Don't you see yourself as a miracle?
Thank you Paul :)
Love!
As for spirituality, to me it means connecting with who and or what's out there. To live life in a spiritual way is to keep it real, stay connected and be a part of it.
Kind of fun comparing/contrasting here. Language about this stuff isn’t easy though, especially in print like this, because if someone isn’t quite getting you, you can’t right away go, “No! I didn't mean…”
Anyway, here are my impressions…
SHANNON - I know what you mean about liking to consider the ideas of others. To me, there’s something spiritual about the ability to step back and respectfully consider other people’s perspectives in this area – to be able to detach that much. It’s something that the rise of religious fundamentalism has widely discouraged. Many people who consider themselves highly religious appear utterly unconscious of how ego-involved they are with their idea of possessing the Truth, which could be funny and ironic if the results weren’t often tragic.
I do wonder what you mean by “faith.”
HAZZBUZZ and SUNFLOWER: Looking at your two comments gives me the feeling that you may have a lot of overlap in your perspectives, but the ways in which you express yourselves are so different – I’m not sure whether it’s a matter of substance or style.
Each of you addresses spirituality in terms of your relationship to the big picture and sees this Big Picture more as life or reality itself than as God or an Entity that exists apart from the whole.
To me, the way Hazzbuzz's comment reads, it sounds like it may refer mainly to feelings/experiences. Sunflower’s reads more like a set of beliefs.
BTW, EVERYONE… Notice that most of you are giving a quick summary of your religious/spiritual perspective. The post's question is:
What role does having this perspective play in your life – what makes it important, what central purpose or function does it have? (Not that I mind! Just pointing it out.)
I am lost. I am feeling I am lost to religion. And spirituality. (shhh - and maybe even my own life - shhh)
I am lost. I am missing my center. I feel a whole. A gap. A void. I feel a loss. It keeps me lost. And still missing my center.
Let religion and spirituality find me. Claim me. Define me. Fill me. And then I will no longer be lost. No longer feeling a void. No longer without my center.
Let me find religion and spirituality. Let me find my compass. My map. My guide. My bread. Let me find my center.
Let me find religion and spirituality and let me find me.
It wasn't intended to play poetic with your question. Although it does seem to play that way. And it wasn't intended to circle around the question. Although it does seem to circle that way as well.
It's just I really am lost. And when you're busy looking for direction, it's very hard to tell someone where you are.
You've encouraged some interesting comments here. I am neither spiritual (in the Christian sense) nor religious in the organized sense. I lean more toward the "we make it up as we go along" school of thought; we experience events and react to them or act because of them.
Do I see religion and/or spirituality as playing a positive role? Not in my life, but it's obvious they do in others'. I think "perspective" is the operative word in your question about the central purpose of religion. One's thoughts on both religion and spirituality stem from outside sources, unless one believes one is born with a certain propensity for belief in something beyond himself. The ideas and beliefs of others are internalized and personalized, sometimes shaping, sometimes creating personal experience.
What's central to my own perspective on life? Life iteself, immense, complicated, inexplicable, unimaginably beautiful, chaotic, terrifyingly simple life.
Fair enough.
I am fascinated by the 'big stories' and their role in our lives. myths, legends, the stories that resonate. religion is filled with such stories. I am endlessly curious about people and how they think.
No other role functionally these days. I was a 'quester' for many years and considered myself agnostic. Studying every religion I could find was probably part of that. I realized a few years ago that the last shreds of questing had fallen away, and with them any pretense to agnosticism. I am an atheist.
So the role religion plays is limited to the fact that I choose to come here and read, learn and share. I snap up books by Elaine Pagels and books on gods like Inanna. There is no role in my life in terms of what I want/believe, and it doesn't weigh in when I'm deciding "how to be good."
Agnosticism seemed difficult to me. Atheism is stripped of all the difficulties and feels simple and comfortable.
I consider myself to be a very spiritual person. I can’t say that my spiritual perspective is all that important to me. It simply is what it is. It only becomes important when I find myself trying to share what I’ve discovered with other people. Unfortunately, the English language is a very poor tool for truly communicating about God. Sometimes my perspective comes in handy when I need to try to share what I know.
To know God.
My perspective is important to me because it is the one I've been stuck with! Is there another? It is a sticky slippery slope once we try to climb it...
You see, humankind is so limited and difficult, we're really the ones that have issues. All these rotten problems with opinions, ideas, agendas... Really I think, if we can set our own issues aside (a tall order), it is only then we realise that there is Nothing But God.
Humankind gets so stuck in forms, like which words we use to talk about Him. Or Her, oops, I mean It... Our very language is too limited even to speak about It, and yet, I think, in the depths of our hearts we all know that we pray to the same reality. We just have unique ways of referring to "It".
Jesus, G-d, Brahman, Ein Sof, Allah, Unity, Love, ...
What if, we were to ask God these questions? I mean, outside of our books, outside of what the Bible says, for example. What if we asked God every day, "Hey! What is the point of this religion stuff anyway God?"
How would 'He' answer?
Personally, the only answer I've ever gotten was, "To know God"
Of course, that is only because I am stuck with this unique perspective, just as every single other created being is. Every being. A Unique Perspective.
N2: “Belonging to some greater good…” I can see that as a theme here, with some conceiving of that greater good as God and others seeing it as life or being itself – the only One.
PAULINE: I like the writing I’ve seen on your blog.
Here I notice that you identify religion and spirituality with belief and seem to suggest that religious experience depends on holding religious beliefs. In contrast, the words that you use to describe what’s central to your personal perspective – i.e., life itself – connote experience that is unmediated by or at least less mediated by belief.
HAYDEN: It’s interesting to me that the term “atheist” can describe very different outlooks. For example, Buddhists are sometimes described as atheists since they don’t believe in God. Yet this brand of atheism is much different from, say, a western atheist who is preoccupied with rebutting theism. Basically atheism tells one thing that a person doesn’t believe but leaves out a lot of other information!
DENNIS: It sounds like you’re comparing doctrine (religion) with experience (spirituality) and saying the second is the real goal. In both cases you’re talking about believing in or experiencing God. Speaking of tough words, I'd like to know what you mean by "God." Buddhists don’t believe in God, certainly not in the terms of western religion. But they sure seem spiritual…
THANKS, ALL, great comments…
HI KEVIN, gotta go to bed and your comment just came in! Will get back to you...
On the one hand, you see "Nothing But God." On the other, you see God as having different "forms," and people as having different ways of referring to Nothing But God that include "Jesus, G-d, Brahman, Ein Sof, Allah, Unity, and Love." (Are these also examples of the different forms?)
One thing I notice: "Jesus, G-d, Brahman, Ein Sof, Allah, Unity, and Love" include some very different sorts of realities. For example, I can see how Jesus could be understood as one particular form that God takes, while Unity sounds like it would belong to a different category or super-category - perhaps the Form of forms?
Love can be thought of as something people experience. Then there is the idea of "divine love..."
Really appreciate your giving these particulars here and not trying to be confusing or clever. But it's just this sort of verbal/logical mucking around with my own feelings and thoughts that eventually clarified some things for me. Hope it's OK with you for me to be doing the same sort of thing with yours!
While we all suffer the physical separation from Source during our lifetime, spirituality is the vehicle or link, which allows us to remain connected during our physical separateness. When I experience spirituality, I feel connected or plugged in to Source. It is in that moment that I am reminded and rediscover that Source and love are indeed the same thing. When I am in that place, it is impossible for me to know the difference.
(During that period I did other things too - had pizza delivered, got oil changes, held a job etc...)
Seriously, of all words in the religious/spiritual vocabulary, that's one of the hardest to commnicate with unless you're operating from inside a religious community with a shared outlook or belief system. On the one hand, it has so much power that you're inclined to want to use it; on the other, people may immediately make assumptions about what you mean by the word that may or not be what you intend.
"Source" seems to connote a closer relationship to its emanations than the traditional image of Creator and creation.
Returnng to the Source as a drop to the sea - is mortality an issue here? Why or why not?
DOSHAR: Thanks, and it was good to find you still blogging. Your blog has to be one of the longer running I've seen and it's consistently interesting/varied.
Addressing your question of whether mortality is an issue here, again we’re limited by the insufficiency of words. Mortality of what – the body or the spirit? Our bodies are mortal and are shed at the appropriate time. Our spirit/Self/psyche is immortal and eventually returns to Source. I think part of the reason why people have such difficulty with the spirit/body dualism is that they see themselves as human beings having a spiritual experience. For me, I believe we are spiritual beings having a human experience. For me, that slight shift in perspective makes all the difference in the world.
Belief that we are essentially immortal spirits keeps mortality in perspective for you. Do you distinguish the immortal spirit from the personality and if so how?
EVERYONE: I ask a lot of questions, mainly to promote further thought. Just because I ask you a question, please don't feel you have to reply - only if you happen to want to!
I believe that the persona (or personality) is really a tool of the ego or an ego defense mechanism that exists to meet the needs of the ego. As we ascend into consciousness, we get to a point where we cease to be in service to our ego and bring the ego into service of the Self (capital “S”). As we continue our ascension, the uniqueness of the persona diminishes. I think that if we could get all of the way there, we’d find that we’d have no persona at all – just Self, which at that level is indistinguishable from Source. Essentially, in order to completely find God(Source), we must completely lose ourselves.
Your questions are wonderful and this is a great site!
You bring to mind that verse in the New Testament that runs along the lines of "He who would find his life must lose it."
I think our ideas of religion and spirituality have come from outside sources, yes, both from information and experience. I don’t mean to suggest that religious experience depends on holding religious beliefs but one’s beliefs color one’s experience, don’t they? People may have what they call a religious experience without holding a specific prior belief in the event. As an example, one may not believe in resurrection and yet have an experience of it; i.e Saul of Tarsus’ blinding conversion. My personal perspective is an amalgamation of thought, experience, and conjecture and is certainly mediated by taught beliefs, but those beliefs are subject to change in the event of acceptable (to me) evidence to the contrary.
You pointed out that many of the comments did not answer the specific question you posed: "What is the central purpose of religion and spirituality? What’s it for? What role does having this perspective play in your life – what makes it important, what central purpose or function does it have? What would life be like without it?"
If by religion you mean a communal system that operates on a prescribed set of beliefs surrounding a core belief in a sacred or divine being, and that adheres to prescribed moral codes, values, rituals, and traditions, then its purpose is to offer its adherents information about that deity and assurance that following the prescribed way of life will reap some reward i.e., a fulfilling life followed by heaven, and/or life after death, or a better life in the hereafter, etc. And if by spirituality, you mean a feeling of connection to something greater than oneself, then its purpose again seems to be reassurance – that we are not alone, that we are watched over and cared for by a superior being. If, on the other hand, you mean spirituality as opposed to organized religious belief, then I suppose its purpose is to allow one to profess his or her own philosophy of life which may or may not include a connection to a deity but does include a connection to one’s deeper self.
It seems to me that what we seek with our religion is a sense of direction and meaning in our lives. For some of us, that means following a tradition. We are born into a religion, so to speak, and grow up in the traditions of our families. Some of us break away from those beginnings and seek a different way of expressing our need for connection. We find a different religious form or we dismiss the form and seek an individual spiritual connection. Still others turn to nature or science or even madness to make sense of life. For example, molecular biologist Dean Hamer writes in his book "The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes," that human spirituality is an adaptive trait and he’s located one of the genes responsible, a gene that just happens to also code for production of the neurotransmitters that regulate our moods. Our feelings of spirituality may be just an occasional shot of intoxicating brain chemicals governed by our DNA. He defines spirituality is an intensely personal feeling or state of mind and religion as the way that state gets codified into law and becomes institutional.
Regarding your last point: "Our feelings of spirituality may be just an occasional shot of intoxicating brain chemicals governed by our DNA."
"Just an..." "Only..." "Nothing but..." Phrases along these lines suggest reductionism. It's the idea that because a phenomenon can be described in terms of the operation of more basic phenomena, it's "nothing but" the more basic phenomena.
For example, you could say that a person is nothing but a collection of atoms. But when lower order phenomena give rise to higher order phenomena, the higher order phenomena have characteristics that qualitatively distinguish them from the lower.
An afterlife provided for by a deity as offering comfort and reward - me too, i.e, I also see this as a major purpose that religion serves in the lives of many people.
You see spirituality as either serving the same basic purpose that religion does or providing connection to our deeper selves. In Buddhism, there's neither a deity nor, I'm pretty sure (but I'm not a Buddhist), would they view the focus of their spiritual lives as limited to the individual's deeper self.
If religion and spirituality don't address this issue, I'm not sure what does.
Some days, frankly, I think we're a flash in the pan. Other days, I remind myself how very young we are as a species - born yesterday. Either way, I know I can't predict how it will go and know that the most that any individual can do is their own job.
Imo, the conversation about religion and spirituality has been bogged down by differences of belief. As long as religion is principally conceived of and discussed as competing systems of belief that can't be compellingly demonstrated to those outside the in-group, we ignore what unites us as members of the species.
That's what I've tried to address in my book - the things that unite us at our best and the things in ourselves that we need to overcome to make the planet more viable for upcoming generations.
good to hear from you
me
non-religious
with a little pantheism in the background :)
As for spirituality, it seems to me a transitional word, putting back an ingredient that should never have been separated out in the first place.
Spirit is a way of looking at things, rather than anything separate from matter, or materialism or flesh, or any other things that spirit may be contrasted with. Like colour and shape, spirit is an attribute of what we perceive outside, as the world of surfaces and substances and things is perceived with the eyes, and other senses. Spirit can be perceived but not with those senses. And of course spirit is a word we use to describe something we perceive within ourselves.
It would be strange to speak of visuality or audiality as having a central purpose, or of being of central importance to some people. We accept that the visual world is that which we perceive with our eyes. Why can’t we accept that the spiritual is what we perceive with our spiritual sense, as an attribute of the whole but not a separate realm?
To me, everyone is spirit, everyone is on a “spiritual path”. With eyes of soul, I see soul.
The question then is how can the eyes of soul be developed? I suppose that this has always been a function of religion, and I note that you, Paul, visited a Trappist monastery to learn meditation. Clearly to reach the point where you did that, you were already on a certain trail.
For some reason that I do not understand, I want to ditch the paraphernalia of spirituality altogether, so that we are not divided into the spiritual-path pilgrims and the others. I don’t think there are any others.
But this viewpoint which has somehow stuck in my brain owes nothing to religion or philosophy or spirituality as ordinarily conceived. These things carry baggage, and I think the change that is coming is to help us free ourselves from such baggage.
The only spirituality that I consider worthwhile is one which does not require beliefs or even imagination, or even language. It includes those with congenital brain damage who can do nothing for themselves and possibly cannot entertain a thought, as we ordinarily understand the meaning of “thought”. But they have life and from my observation, they have simplicity, and sometimes bliss.
So if I am to answer your question: “What’s the central purpose of religion and spirituality? What’s it for?” I would simply change the words a little and ask the same questions about life.
In fact, the context in which I was privileged to observe certain brain-damaged and otherwise handicapped young people was run as a Catholic community in which the very central focus was on acts of Catholic worship, of the most simple and devout kind - singing and prayers - in which I observed all, whether staff, volunteers or inmates, uniting in joy. In that context, religion was a direct conduit connecting people with a Source. It was so essential and so strong that I cannot see it ever being superseded. It was a natural force, and could conceivably have manifested just the same without being Catholic.
Similarly, I don’t view “spiritual” or “religious” as a special category of people, but see development in this area, for everyone, as involving an increasing awareness of who we are – changes in our identity that move in a direction away from ego, toward love, and even into areas of experience that we may not have anticipated.
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