When people use certain words and phrases such as “I’m spiritual, not religious” and “inclusive”, I tend to dismiss them.
I’m not into touchy feely talk. Healing the wounded inner child within gives me the willies.
In my experience, most people who proclaim themselves spiritual but not religious are wanting the benefits of belonging to an organized religion without paying the price of its behavioral constraints.
I decided to convert to Judaism at the end of 1989. Since then, I’ve noticed that most of my fellow seekers wanted spirituality. They wanted to feel intoxicated with God.
My concerns were more pragmatic. What would make the world a better place? What would make me a better man?
I tended to dismiss spirituality as narcissism.
Over the past few months, however, I’ve come to see that my addictive emotional needs distort my noble intentions. I may tell myself that I want to be a good man, but when push comes to shove and I have the opportunity to get high (not from drugs or alcohol, but from romance and sex), I seize the highs, even if they’re not good for me and for others.
So according to the 12-step literature I read, I need spirituality.
I’ve swapped one organized religion for another and my addictions and my tendencies to use people are unchanged.
I hate the term “spirituality”, but without it, apparently, I am lost.
Where do I go from here?
Greg Leake emails: Hi Luke,
I am impressed by whatever 12-step course you are taking, because the emphasis on “spirituality” suggests that they know what they are doing and are too wise to pass off real requirements with some shibboleth about institutional religion.
Let me just offer some conceptual models simply for the purpose of pointing in the direction.
Moving from one religion to another is like rearranging the furniture.
Spirituality is finding your own soul.
One of the first things worth considering is that spirituality doesn’t have to have a bad connotation. In fact, this is one of the few places I disagree a little with Dennis Prager.
If you say the word “Baptist,” you can narrow that definition down to a very concrete set of ideas. If you say “spirituality,” it can mean virtually anything and is too nebulous a term. If you have contempt for “spirituality” that involves guys running out in the woods, beating drums, and reading poetry, I would share your contempt. But “spirituality” is a term that can take in a lot of territory.
For example, for some the Alexander Technique would be considered by some as “spirituality”. Various forms of meditation can be seen as “spirituality”. The history of religions at the University of Chicago, originated by Mircea Eliade, might be considered “spirituality” even though it is more meticulous than most other subjects.
So I think it would be wise to limit your contempt for things that deserve it.
Both Carl Jung and Paul Tillich were in general agreement that divinity was transcendental to creation and yet was also immanent in creation.
Transcendental divinity is, of course, beyond any thought, any philosophy, any conception, any possibility of man to grasp.
However, if divinity is also immanent, that means divinity is within me and within you and within others.
So because that divine spark is within us, we have a potential for being able to discern and discover our own “spirituality” because that divine spark is a part of the transcendental divinity.
The way that we can find transcendental divinity is through the virtue of finding that divinity within ourselves.
And this business of finding our own divine nature is the part where “spirituality” comes into it.
Religions can help or hinder or be indifferent to this process of discovering our own divine nature. Too often finding our divine nature has been dismissed to an extent by our religions which insist on finding G-d “out there”… somewhere as the author of the material universe. Sometimes we get so busy following the rules, and the observances, and trying to live up to benevolent social interactions and behavior, we forget to look for our own divine nature where our own “spirituality” can be found.
I could say a lot more about this if it were of interest or useful to you. Obviously, a 12-step program does not survive unless it produces results. And because of this, it cannot pass people off into collectivist institutional categories unless those categories can really come through in helping the bottom line — the bottom line, of course, being actual change.
