What is spirituality?
Spirituality is everyday life. It is goodness. It is acceptance. It is practical and it is enlightenment, as well as the opposite of all this.
Spirituality is a redundant word because, like love, it has been abused. If we are going to use it with any specificity, as I think we should, we must put together everything I just said, along with the disparate definitions offered by others who care about the so-called upper worlds and start a house. of course, so that we know what we are talking about. If not, let’s think of a whole new word! – because the function of language is to communicate.
Today we have a situation of the Tower of Babel; just look around at the wide range of spiritual teachers, religious traditions, new and old spiritual philosophies that are sometimes confusing, vague or obtuse, but always confusing. If we really want to communicate, I don’t think spirituality should be any different than cooking, medicine, or politics. Within these spheres of endeavor, if you are as confused as people seem to be in the spiritual realm, we would be talking nonsense with devastating consequences.
So what is the definition we should use to inform ourselves?
Spirituality is the term that describes the higher functioning of human beings. Without a spiritual dimension, human beings engage solely in animal concerns, such as group membership, mating and procreation, acquisition, and physical safety. In the intermediate stages of human development we are concerned with identity, socialization, compassion for others, and individual responsibility. The spiritual philosophies and methodologies are those that surround all this and go on to assume a higher aspiration for human fulfillment, an intrinsic need, felt by many, that we are more than what we seem to be and that the world of appearances is not all there. . it is.
Like Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
Yes, like self-actualization and peak experiences in Maslow’s model. But also like insights from the Upanishads, the Dhammapada, the Course in Miracles, Zen Buddhism, mystical Christianity, Sufism, and so on through transpersonal systems and spiritual maps too numerous to mention. But what they have in common is that human beings strive for final understanding in the belief that something elusive beyond the world of appearances gives meaning and meaning to life.
Why is spirituality a concern of relatively few people?
Spirituality is universal. It is everyone’s concern to discover who you really are, through the physical, psychological, mental, moving, and spiritual levels of human predicament. We can’t judge how committed individual people are to this, but it could be said that whatever a person is doing (thinking, working, forming relationships, vacationing) is an attempt to balance, engage, and understand themselves and the world. It is an answer to the unspoken and quiet question of existence.
And that question is?
Who I am? No one is free from the consequences of this question. The only difference is in how we choose to respond; in self-reference, self-definition or self-transcendence.
What about the etymological origins of the word? Spirit means breath, doesn’t it?
Spiritusmeans breath and spirit means the breath of God, which is the word from which we derive our term inspiration. So spirit is all about breath, divine breath prajna, the exchange with the universe that we experience when we inhale and exhale. When I breathe, the universe exhales or inspires me; when I exhale, the universe inhales or I breathe it in. What is it? From a spiritual point of view there is no difference, because the universe and I are the same.
So is spirituality about a relationship between soul, spirit and body?
Spirituality is also associated with seeking in the form of travel. It seems that we have to go on a spiritual journey, a quest or some kind of trial in which we are transformed in some way through suffering. The progressive narrative of that ordeal, the active search for that undertaking has been key to notions of spirituality for centuries. Depending on where and when we were raised, it took the form of the Pilgrim’s Progress, the Ramayana, the legend of Siddhartha, Dante’s journey through the underworld, the Native American vision quest, etc. What each of these narratives have in common is the main theme of striving toward a spiritual goal through striving perseverance, strong will, and determination.
Interestingly, very few of these spiritual maps go beyond effort. It is as if we are rewarded only when we try very hard. However, spiritual realization itself is personified by acceptance, receptivity, gentleness, and surrender, all very soft attributes. As you read these stories, you would think that the only way to heaven is through hell.
And it is not like that?
Heaven and Hell are points of view. You enter any of them at any time through your predisposition, which depends on your attachment to the ego, or separation from the rest of existence. Like several examples, both Jacques Lusseyrian during his imprisonment in World War II and Saint John of the Cross in a Toledo jail in the 16th century lived deep spiritual and divine epiphanies, despite enduring the most horrendous physical and mental abuse. Another example is Laurens van de Post, who taught thousands of prisoners of war in Java to resist bitterness and forgive their captors so that they survived the ordeal psychologically and emotionally intact, adopting a spiritual strategy.
Does spirituality imply disidentification from the body?
Rather, you spiritually relate to your body, as well as everything else. What this means is that you focus on the essence that is common to all that arises in consciousness and you feel the source of all that arises.
Does everything that arises at some point also ends?
But what is endless is the essence of spirituality. The spiritual quest is discovering and becoming one with the source of consciousness, the root of mindfulness. Spirituality is between what we call the mystical and the transcendence; It is not an end in itself, our intention should not be simply to practice spirituality, but to penetrate beyond where it takes us. So our understanding of mysticism, or the self-directed mystical path (as opposed to a religious path), takes us on a spiritual journey toward self-transcendence and encounter with the Divine.
For some this is God, for others Buddha Nature, infinity, the Absolute or Brahman. But all these terms are intellectual constructions; they are mere ideas. There is only one appropriate response to an encounter with the Divine: awe-inspired, mystical, breathing silence, because in that great calm one finally meets one’s true self, which is beyond the ideas of the mind, the interpretation. and description.
Does spirituality lead to an encounter with the Divine?
Or an encounter with yourself; is the same. To know yourself, to find out who you really are, you have to use spiritual methods, stick to a spiritual practice, but then you have to get rid of that practice, drop it completely to get to the place where it has been taking you. This is one of the difficulties in the Modern Era, as well as in ancient times. People are reluctant to destroy; they prefer to build. Today we call it materialism. Chögyam Trungpaeven coined the term ‘spiritual materialism’ to describe how spiritual practitioners stick to their achievements and practice.
Spirituality deals mainly with the internal aspects of the human being. It is true that a spiritual being displays certain traits, such as love, gentleness, compassion, and forgiveness. But none of these are worth anything at all unless they are genuine, truly experienced from the heart center of the person displaying them. To engage with the heart center, one of the perceptions that we must experience is that we do not lack … anything! Nothing at all is lacking in the human experience when it is felt, seen, touched, and fully experienced. When this perception has been fully understood, one has this experience of inner emptiness; it is deeply responsive and resonant and allows you to authentically connect with the rest of the world. It is the state of being within you, without activity, without restlessness of any kind, without disturbances, internal or external, it is solid, unshakable; You wouldn’t even call it spiritual, it would be more accurate to really call it one’s natural state.
Is this ‘natural state’ available to everyone?
OUI well south. But you have to want it and you have to want it desperately. You must also possess inner integrity, deep honesty about it, and you must not accept substitutes! Because the spiritual path is riddled with such distractions, difficulties, seductions and pretenses, impulses of the ego to drop everything and settle for some quasi-spiritual state that would be exalted from the point of view of the novice, the person who aspires. to the spiritual rewards of the path.
What can you do in this quasi-spiritual state?
Prepare yourself as a spiritual master! Play superior, tell people what to do, incite others to act as followers or disciples, write a book about your “spiritual” experiences, your enlightenment, while all the time you are simply grooming your ego. It is not uncommon in this dark age; the period the Hindus predicted we would be in now: the Kali Yuga.
But is the interest in spirituality, meditation and yoga surely growing?
Well, interest is not necessarily enough. The spirit world is full of dilettantes and seekers of pleasure and self-aggrandizement. This is not to detract from sincere, diligent practitioners, but even there you may run into an ego trap, because some people’s ego is kept alive by temptations like ‘I will never succeed’, ‘I am no good. Enough ‘- it’s just the antithesis of’ Look how great I am ‘,’ I’ve been successful because I’m better than everyone else ‘. Spiritually there is no difference between these two points of view; both serve the grooming of the ego state.
So what should we do? I am beginning to understand what he means by that the spiritual path is full of seduction.
Do not be seduced, apply diligently, do not stop until you reach the end of your spiritual journey, choose a teaching and teacher that makes sense and take nothing at face value, instead of questioning everything and don ‘Think for one minute you can do it on your own.
Does everyone need a guru?
Everyone needs the guidance of someone who functions as a teacher in their life and on their spiritual path, to preside over their spiritual endeavor and to correct and encourage, question and cajole and provide a model of authentic human being in the world. This is how we preserve the faith, we know that success is possible, and we cultivate the commitment and courage to move forward.