What I Mean by “Spiritual” and “Psychological”
I use the words “spiritual” and “psychological” as follows:
“Spiritual” refers to the most powerfully experienced, powerfully motivating and therefore the most productive and creative aspects of our inner lives when we become highly aware of them. These include love, faith and the experience of our direct relationship with the One in whom we live and move have our being, whether we think of the One as life or being itself or as God.
“Psychological” refers to the self or personality as a whole. While this includes our spiritual nature, it also includes our egoism and the ways in which our spirituality and egoism express themselves – and often struggle with each other – through the unique set of abilities and forms of intelligence that we have as individuals.
“Spiritual” refers to the most powerfully experienced, powerfully motivating and therefore the most productive and creative aspects of our inner lives when we become highly aware of them. These include love, faith and the experience of our direct relationship with the One in whom we live and move have our being, whether we think of the One as life or being itself or as God.
“Psychological” refers to the self or personality as a whole. While this includes our spiritual nature, it also includes our egoism and the ways in which our spirituality and egoism express themselves – and often struggle with each other – through the unique set of abilities and forms of intelligence that we have as individuals.
Posted by Paul at 11:21 PM Permalink
13 Comments:
But it would be nice if you can, preferably in a post all on its own, rather than a comment, address the topic "What I mean by egoism".
Surely then there will be something to argue about, if you're up for that!
Best wishes as always.
That said, language itself functions by distinguishing one concept from the next. You wouldn't have been able to express your thoughts here and I wouldn't be able to respond - and disagree! - if there really were no such thing as differences or distinctions.
No doubt all of that is influenced by our experiences with others and by our prior thoughts.
When you call egoism “selfishness”, and contrast it with spirituality, as if the two embody the principles of evil and good, everyone will understand what you mean. But your attitude and experience are not universal.
I challenge the notion, which incidentally appears to be fundamental to your book, that spirituality and ego are at war with one another within the psychological make-up of every individual. Certainly it’s a way of interpreting the world that’s pervasive in the culture that you and I share, but it’s a way amongst others.
Pauline starts by even suggesting that the psychological is part of the spiritual, rather than the other way round, though the rest of her comment doesn’t amplify this thought. It’s a liberating idea though. I remember the moment when I read John O’Donohue’s view, expressed in his book Anam Cara, that the body is situate within the soul and not the other way round. Scales seemed to fall from my eyes, as with the original namesake of Paul and Pauline.
I don’t experience a struggle between selfishness and spirituality. One may over-ride the other, it’s true. When someone threatens my life, I might have to kill him and in that moment I may not be able to or indeed I may prefer not to look into his eyes and see the divine spark that we have in common. (I think I could and would, but my hunch has not been tested.) In another situation a spiritual impulse may cause me to let go my own interest or even my life to protect another’s. And when they interview me afterwards, I will be like the others and say modestly that I merely did my duty, or what any man would do, and believe it too.
There’s a passage in a Martin Amis novel that impressed me recently, in which the narrator tells someone that in a military battle, or some kind of infernal rebellion, the protagonist doesn’t feel the hate that he is trained to feel and generally supposed to feel. What impels him is love: not just for the comrades on his own side but the ones he has to kill as well, for he sees they are just like him. But in that struggle against the Other—his necessity to act in this world—he becomes one: free of the internal struggle.
I’m not saying you are wrong, Paul, just trying to illustrate with some clunky examples that other views are possible.
PAULINE: And with either spelling, people seem to develop concepts in this area that have similarities but also significant differences.
Egotism, on the other hand, is an excessive or exaggerated sense of self-importance and often is associated with selfishness. It's a common spelling mistake, according to one dictionary I consulted, and is considered by some to be a misapprehension that it means the same thing as egoism. You've pointed out before that words are a difficult means of communication. I agree - making one's thoughts completely clear to another is sometimes a Herculean task. Still, I enjoy reading here and bouncing your ideas off my own thought-board. Keeps me on my toes ;)
In developing a concept of ego, which is broader than a definition, you have to choose the form of the word with the overall connotations best suited to your concept.
For me, and it sounds like for you too, the fact that we're here with our brains to have these experiences is amazing.
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