RE: Daft Question, maybe... what IS spirituality?
It's a huge question. I tend to think of all possible comments and include them all, ending up with a long post! So I had left this one alone. But in coming up with a definition of spirituality, a 'biggie' would be whether to include within it God or a Higher or Divine Power. In other words, something either outside of us, or more than the totality of ourselves, which we either look up to or aspire to.
There are certainly definitions possible without that, but I'd find them incomplete.
One other comment 😉 : spirituality to me would be an active thing i.e. we endeavour to help others, or to grow, to be whole. It's not something we just passively happen to have or to be IMHO.
Venetian
RE: Daft Question, maybe... what IS spirituality?
A friend sent me this link [link= http://www.nickroach.co.uk/email%20interview.htm ]http://www.nickroach.co.uk/email%20interview.htm[/link]
Nick Roach is being asked "Is psychological self-study (self-knowledge, etc.) necessary for spiritual change? Must we change the way we live and act?"
Nick seems to be saying, contrary to popular understandings, it's all spiritual.
The issue appears to me to be with the term 'Spiritual Change'.
To me there is only consciousness (I imagine this is what is termed 'spirit') and is experienced as 'I am' (or the stillness or nothing within etc). When experienced, the experience is that this 'I am' (or consciousness) is constant, though the conscious experience of it may not be. So, as far as it is seen, 'Spirit' does not seem to change. It remains behind the scenes, in the scene, watching the scene etc. Only the images change.
However, what does seem to change is one's relationship or experience of this 'I am' (etc), leading up to realisation of being 'I' as a constant and seeing it is creating all the forms. I take it this is what is termed 'Spiritual change'?!.
So the question to me is, which part of realising the spirit or consciousness or 'I' is termed 'spiritual change' and which isn't. Before a person asks questions such as 'Who am 'I'? and 'There must be more than this?' etc... I suggest they must have been changing for some time to get to the point of even asking the questions. A person cannot look within or seriously ask the big questions until they have had enough experience of being separate to now look for the truth.
That is why my answer may have seemed strange to you, and indeed why I struggled to give it any answer at all. There is 'spirit or consciousness' dreaming it is separate and after a while starts to see it isn't. The person is growing in self-knowledge with every experience, whether it is before it looks for the truth, while it is looking for the truth, or indeed after it seems to have found the truth.
RE: Daft Question, maybe... what IS spirituality?
Darren,
Our Definition:
Spirituality is the word best used to describe the desire to be unconditional love on earth.
That would involve all aspects of the "self."
RE: Daft Question, maybe... what IS spirituality?
Hi All !
It is really interesting to read the different meanings and concepts about 'Spirituality'. I have read the following explaination of 'Spirituality' repeatedly, because it makes my understanding clear and sharp about the subject.
"......spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience.
These things are of considerable value to mind and life; they are of value to the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to the mental evolution,the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there.
Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature."
Sri Aurobindo
The Life Divine
RE: Daft Question, maybe... what IS spirituality?
Darren,
Spirituality to me is doing all with the idea of not doing harm to another. Remembering that there are individuals in the world who have come to experience lives which may or may not be in accordance with our own. However we all have the right to express ourselves as is necessary.
My premise is that we all need to experience all that life has to offer here upon earth. I know that I have been here many times. This experience is, for me, one in which I am a 'light worker', however I have been a prostitute, a healer, a story-teller, a very bad shaman who allowed his ego to rule and many many more.
Knowing that we come to experience many many lives and that the only way we learn is by being the very thing which we need to understand, allows me not to judge others. They too are experiencing 'life' in all its wonder.
Simply put: once the premise of life is understood i.e. that in order to learn we must become that which we need to understand, there comes an allowance for everything and everyone. Non judgement.
Over simplification of a very serious topic, however at least a beginning.