The Wise Old Man

Spiritual but not Religious: Part 5
We have speculated that at the core of our humanity, our spirit is a union of our own truest essence, and the nature of the Divine. If so, so what?

Many of my friends despise traditional religion. They can’t stand the hypocrisy, the blind ritual, the outdated concepts, or the automaton-like commitment to principles and values that long ago stopped serving any purpose.

Now I’m guessing that religious people did not set out to gain this kind of reputation. No, I bet they fell into it quite accidentally. I’m thinking that the tired, worn out thoughts, behaviors, and forms that have earned them this scorn came about accidentally as they unconsciously embraced a faulty mental construct, perhaps the…

“God-is-out-there -and-we-need-to-get-to-him” construct.

In this worldview, the Divine exists in some far-away plane of super-ness. God is super-holy, super-powerful, super-wise, super-far-away, and living in some super-place (heaven). There is a big, kingly throne there, and from that position, God oversees the earth. Above all, in this view, God is out there, far away from wherever we are (Theologians call this idea God’s “transcendence”).

When we see things this way, the spiritual journey is about getting to God. It’s about getting to a good afterlife, to enlightenment, to mystical experience, or a to blessed life. Different traditions have different prescribed paths to get there, but the similarity is that each one is a journey from here (where we are) to there (where God is). When we get there, we find life’s goodness, prayers get answered, blessings accrue to us, and mysteries are revealed.

One path to God-out-there is the sin-conquering path. We get rid of all bad stuff inside us, and that will get us to God. Another is the serve-people path. We care for the poor, the disenfranchised, the less fortunate, and that will get us to God. There are as many paths to God-out-there as there are traditions.

But if we experience God, not primarily out there, but in here, at our very centers, in our very beings (theologians call this Gods’ “immanence”), then ours is not a journey of spiritual and moral accomplishment to elevate us closer to God, but one of awareness of what already exists at our very centers. This may be one of the places religious people went wrong.

I grew up in the Christian tradition, and was taught as a child that the Jesus was “in my heart.” Later, the language became a bit more sophisticated and I learned that I was indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. Yet somehow, this truth did not translate into a spirituality of going within to experience God.

If the Spirit of God, the nature of God, and the image of God all exist within us, at our very center, the spiritual journey becomes a quest to be alerted to what already exists within us, at our truest center, to the our essential oneness with God to find life, peace, insight, and enlightenment.

Next posting: more on the inward journey.

Spiritual but not Religious: Part 4

As we said in the last post, everybody who talks about the human spirit is theorizing. Nobody can really say for sure what it is. The hard sciences lend us no special advantage here, it’s an un-observable reality. Logic or intellect give us no leverage or benefit. Once we set ourselves to apply our powers of observation to the observer, we become the observer. Bummer.

So, since we’re all just speculating, it’s interesting to note what happens when people come to believe one thing or another. I like what happens to people who make up certain things, but not to those who make up others. Existentialists in the 1800’s denied the transcendent human spirit altogether. Building on that view, they became nihilists (albeit courageous ones) or hedonists. Neither ended well.

I like what both Jesus and the Eastern religions make up about the human spirit. Though they have different views of the nature of God, they both propose that divine nature is at the unknown center of our humanity; that the human spirit is a oneness with the very nature of God. Jesus talked about us being “one with God.” St. Paul said he was “in Christ,” and then that Christ was “in him. ” Yoga teaches us the same.

My observation is that people who come to believe that at their deepest parts, they are “one with God” live well. If their god is good, loving, patient, kind, they begin to reflect these same traits. How we live is directly related to what we believe about our truest nature. If we believe we are lowly sinners reluctantly saved by a a holy, powerful, and slightly angry God, we live one way. If we believe that our very centers are divine in nature, “one with God,” we live another.

Next post: the spiritual journey, a journey of awareness

QUOTES:
Jesus (Jn. 17): “I pray… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you… I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me”

St. Paul (Col.1): “Christ is in you, the hope of glory.”

Paramhansa Yogananda (”The Eight Aspects of God”) “…remember, you will never find God until you are very strong in yourself… it is important to realize that divine power…, is a part of your divine nature.”

Spiritual but not Religious: Part 3

If the nature of the human spirit cannot be observed, studied, parsed out and defined then can we talk about being spiritual in any meaningful way?

Consider for a moment, three levels of human awareness or consciousness.

Body consciousness is pretty self-explanatory. It awakens us to the material world. It is the awareness of hunger and sexual desire, it is our attraction to warmth, our discomfort with cold. Soft light draws us, harsh light is uncomfortable.

Mind and heart consciousness are likewise easy to understand. We think thoughts and feel feelings. We have natural inclinations toward compassion or impatience. We are naturally neat or sloppy. We are talkative or shy; bubbly and outgoing, or introspective and reserved. We are aware of some levels of mind/heart consciousness, while others are well under the surface.

Spirit-consciousness, on the other hand, is harder to pin down, more hidden. As I suggested in the last posting, our spirits observe, watch, but by nature are unknown and unknowable. Consequently, throughout history people have been left to make up what they believe this deep part of us is.

As a human race, we believe many different things about what our spirits are.

· Some decide that that the human spirit does not exist at all. The observing capacity within us is nothing more than random chemicals firing off perceptions of self.

· Some religious traditions use the word “spirit,” but their training focuses on the second circle, strengthening the will the realm of “mind-consciousness.” “Work harder, behave better, do better …”

Next post: how we live is heavily influenced by what we make up about the human spirit

Spiritual but not Religious: Part 2

There is something inside me that looks at, analyzes, and thinks about my body. That means there is a deeper and more real part of me than my body, we typically call that our minds. However, there is also some part of us that can observe our minds at work. We can monitor ourselves thinking thoughts. We can tell when we’re clear or muddle-headed. This means there is some part of us that is deeper than our minds as well. This also holds for our emotions. Some inner part of us is able to observe us being angry or compassionate. We can study our personalities, our extroversion, intuition, or compassion.

Our deepest essence is not these elemental parts of us. No, something deeper actually observes these lesser parts. This observing part is the deepest part of us.

So we might ask, what part of us does the observing?

To define terms, let us call this observing part of us the human spirit.

The first characteristic we see of the human spirit, then, is it’s watchfulness.

It observes, it sees, it witnesses.

But can we know more ?

Here, there is a problem. When we decide to study the spirit, take a look at it, observe it, poof! We become it! When we look at the human spirit, we become the looker. When we observe the human spirit we become the observer. Again, trying to study it, we become it.

The second characteristic of the human spirit then, is its unknowability. We can’t observe the observer within us. Our own human spirits are, and will always remain a mystery to us. It is, by definition, un-observable because in the very act of observing it, we become it.

Hmmmm.

Next post: what then, is spirit-consciousness?

Spiritual but not Religious: Part 1

I understand what people are saying when they say they are not religious. They don’t go to special building to perform religious rituals or say ceremonial prayers. They reject the rules and practices of any particular tradition. “Not religious” is pretty easy to understand.

But when people say they are “spiritual”, it’s less clear what they’re saying. Sometimes they mean they’ve had an unexplainable mystical or semi-mystical experience. For others it means they regularly sense the Divine Spirit intersect their lives; perhaps an answered prayer, maybe a sign from heaven. Still others cobble together bits and pieces of disparate religious traditions, gleaning the best from each, and define spiritual as this synthesis.

I resonate with the spiritual but not religious life. Like many, I’m put off by most religious ritual and despise the toxicity of empty religious rules. However, I sense within me something unshakably deep, and present, and spiritual. I use the word to describe my sense of something inside me that is bigger than my mind, more real than my personality, preferences, tastes, or strengths. I sense some ill-defined thing inside me that is more real than the other, more tangible parts of me. Yes, chemical reactions inform my consciousness, actions, and reactions, but this thing, though more elusive than my body, harder to define than my minds or emotions, I have come to believe, is the deepest part of me.

Next post: defining terms, the spirit as observer.