There is a difference between "spiritualism" and "spirituality". "Spiritualism" to me involves tarot cards, seances and the like. Spirituality is the search for ultimate truth using one's intellect and intuition. This quote by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman is about the spiritual path:
"You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed.
And yet, all this is a matter of faith
—the faith that there is a truth to be found.
It is another paradox: To truly question, you must truly have faith."
"I'm not religious, I'm spiritual". It was all the rage at one time to describe oneself that way. I never worked out what it was supposed to mean, other than "It's too much like hard work to actually delve through all the myriad religious beliefs, so I'll pick a description that is so nebulous that I don't have to".
I'm certainly not religious, but I have spent lots of time trying to make sense of various religious beliefs. So am I spiritual? I don't think so. The nearest thing I have to a guiding principle is the conviction that everything has an explanation if I can just dig deeply enough. So, I observed the vast majority of humanity having some kind of religion, concluded that there is rarely smoke without fire and set out to find and understand the "fire". I fear that I never found any "fire" that was not subjectively generated, or could be explained that way.
Once, I had what could be called a religious experience. Oh great, I thought, something I can finally get my teeth into. I felt that I was actually communicating with "something" that people identified as "god" but, true to my ideals, I decided to investigate it without making any assumptions. I joined a Christian church, but never accepted any of the core beliefs. Instead, I wanted a community in which to pursue my investigation. Oddly, I found a lot of nominal Christians that also doubted most of the "beliefs". A long story, but eventually I got some evidence that made me realize that I had cooked the whole thing up in my head, so I gave up on it. I did find one answer to my question about religion. That is that the human mind is a strange and amazing thing, which can create belief in whatever it wishes to be true. In my case it was the existence of some powerful "force" that would help me in my life.
To sum up, I wouldn't call myself "spiritual", too much baggage comes with that word. I would say "intensely curious" about the universe and with a probably impossible to prove "faith" that there is an answer to every question if we just look long and hard enough. I'm old now. I almost certainly won't find it.
There is a difference between "spiritualism" and "spirituality". "Spiritualism" to me involves tarot cards, seances and the like. Spirituality is the search for ultimate truth using one's intellect and intuition. This quote by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman is about the spiritual path:
"You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed.
And yet, all this is a matter of faith
—the faith that there is a truth to be found.
It is another paradox: To truly question, you must truly have faith."
"I'm not religious, I'm spiritual". It was all the rage at one time to describe oneself that way. I never worked out what it was supposed to mean, other than "It's too much like hard work to actually delve through all the myriad religious beliefs, so I'll pick a description that is so nebulous that I don't have to".
I'm certainly not religious, but I have spent lots of time trying to make sense of various religious beliefs. So am I spiritual? I don't think so. The nearest thing I have to a guiding principle is the conviction that everything has an explanation if I can just dig deeply enough. So, I observed the vast majority of humanity having some kind of religion, concluded that there is rarely smoke without fire and set out to find and understand the "fire". I fear that I never found any "fire" that was not subjectively generated, or could be explained that way.
Once, I had what could be called a religious experience. Oh great, I thought, something I can finally get my teeth into. I felt that I was actually communicating with "something" that people identified as "god" but, true to my ideals, I decided to investigate it without making any assumptions. I joined a Christian church, but never accepted any of the core beliefs. Instead, I wanted a community in which to pursue my investigation. Oddly, I found a lot of nominal Christians that also doubted most of the "beliefs". A long story, but eventually I got some evidence that made me realize that I had cooked the whole thing up in my head, so I gave up on it. I did find one answer to my question about religion. That is that the human mind is a strange and amazing thing, which can create belief in whatever it wishes to be true. In my case it was the existence of some powerful "force" that would help me in my life.
To sum up, I wouldn't call myself "spiritual", too much baggage comes with that word. I would say "intensely curious" about the universe and with a probably impossible to prove "faith" that there is an answer to every question if we just look long and hard enough. I'm old now. I almost certainly won't find it.
I expect the more time spent the more
likely the experience.
At Uni I wasn't so great a math.
But I don't know how to quit. So
sometimes i'd spend days! Then maybe
the answer in a dream. Ir waking flash of insight.
Stewing iver what grad school, this one that one.
Came down to three. Days and days thu king. Then
the Answer, so clear and certain! Bit then I'd be back
at it and in a few days, again, but now a different Answer.
This applies as I assumed would be obvious: "You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed.
Can't say I haven't had one, not sure I did have one. But if it wasn't one, I can darn close standing in front of the Bøyabreen glacier n Norway. Also while watching an Atlantic Ocean, east coast USA, during a storm, and another on top of the apply named Loon mountain in the white mountains while just looking at the mountain range
Definition of the term "spiritual" is a problem.
I'm thinking of commonly expressed experiences
of connection to all of humanity or higher powers,
ie, something more than ordinary personal growth.
And like you say; they are not uncommon and -though each slightly unique, because personal- they share certain characteristics and above all, have specific effects on those who experience them.
I have frequently had experiences in which I felt some combination of warmth, connection, belonging, safety, awe, mystery, and gratitude. Have you never felt some or all of that when experiencing a beautiful sunset? I feel that way when thinking about my wife and dogs, that all is well and good in the world. My wife describes something similar when gardening. It's how I feel when engrossed in moving music. I'm an amateur electric guitarist with a lot of experience who has learned how to sing with his hands, and the experience is rapturous. I feel that way when contemplating the night sky, the incredible distances involved, and my kinship with the stars and cosmos. I feel that way when laughing.
I call all of that the authentic spiritual experience. When I was a Christian, I attributed it to the Holy Spirit. Today, I consider it a mental state generated by the brain and don't attribute agenticity to the universe when experiencing it, which is a form of projection. I was projecting me onto the world out there and understanding t as experiencing something that was not me out there.
That's a common phenomenon - mistaking the minds own creations for sensing something external. The ancient Greeks had no concept of human creativity and understood creative inspirations as muses speaking to them. They were projecting the output of their own minds for external agents. It's also in the idea of good and bad desires and impulses being described in terms of angels and demons on one's shoulder having an argument in one's head. Once again, they are mistaking endogenous intuitions for external agents. Or with dreams understood as something sending a message rather than it being something generated in the brain from memories and other cerebral functions.
So, I can give a fairly clear description of what I call a spiritual experience, but phrases like spiritual journey and spiritual truth don't have meaning for me. Ask somebody to be specific about what they mean by these last two. If they can describe it at all, the spiritual journey they refer to seem like learning about oneself and what gives one lasting satisfaction - a search for wisdom and what is meaningful. OK, but I am not going to call that a spiritual journey because of the baggage there - the woo factor.
And spiritual truth? Ask for examples of these truths, and you get nothing back. The best I can do is say that that might refer to that acquired wisdom if one has actually acquired any wisdom on this "journey," but once again, why bring spirituality into that?
Here's an example of what I was referring to. This song seems to be about a search for meaning. The experience for the musicians deserves to be called spiritual. We're communing, connected to one another, hearing one another playing and influencing one another, each musician flying inside. The improvisation begins around 3:50 here. I guess what I'm saying is that I recognize that the feeling I get is endogenous, not sensing the world or spirits:
"I'm not religious, I'm spiritual". It was all the rage at one time to describe oneself that way. I never worked out what it was supposed to mean, other than "It's too much like hard work to actually delve through all the myriad religious beliefs, so I'll pick a description that is so nebulous that I don't have to".
I generally understand that usage of spiritual as a euphemism for religious by somebody who doesn't want to be stigmatized by the problems religions are having analogous to an atheist calling himself a freethinker or unbeliever. The word atheist carries baggage that one might want to avoid. So does religious now.
And both words are stigmatized for me, religious and spiritual. I don't call myself either.
Anecdote: I was treating an Iranian woman for back pain resulting from a fall in the shower with a prescription medication that was effective for her. When we had our first follow-up visit, she asked me why the prescription was for diazepam, which is better known as Valium, a word stigmatized by its overprescription for anxiety (think of the lyrics to Mother's Little Helper). I asked her why she called herself Persian rather than Iranian. She understood: baggage.
You allude to the confusion that the word spiritual causes with its association with spirits. You'd probably agree that a spiritual experience as I just described it is unrelated to spirits. Isn't that what the faithful mean when they use the word and claim that Christianity is a spiritual worldview but that atheism is not? They mean that they believe in spirits like god, angels, and demons. They you get a better understanding of that worldview and it is anything but spiritual as I defined it.
I have frequently had experiences in which I felt some combination of warmth, connection, belonging, safety, awe, mystery, and gratitude. Have you never felt some or all of that when experiencing a beautiful sunset? I feel that way when thinking about my wife and dogs, that all is well and good in the world. My wife describes something similar when gardening. It's how I feel when engrossed in moving music. I'm an amateur electric guitarist with a lot of experience who has learned how to sing with his hands, and the experience is rapturous. I feel that way when contemplating the night sky, the incredible distances involved, and my kinship with the stars and cosmos. I feel that way when laughing.
I call all of that the authentic spiritual experience. When I was a Christian, I attributed it to the Holy Spirit. Today, I consider it a mental state generated by the brain and don't attribute agenticity to the universe when experiencing it, which is a form of projection. I was projecting me onto the world out there and understanding t as experiencing something that was not me out there.
That's a common phenomenon - mistaking the minds own creations for sensing something external. The ancient Greeks had no concept of human creativity and understood creative inspirations as muses speaking to them. They were projecting the output of their own minds for external agents. It's also in the idea of good and bad desires and impulses being described in terms of angels and demons on one's shoulder having an argument in one's head. Once again, they are mistaking endogenous intuitions for external agents. Or with dreams understood as something sending a message rather than it being something generated in the brain from memories and other cerebral functions.
So, I can give a fairly clear description of what I call a spiritual experience, but phrases like spiritual journey and spiritual truth don't have meaning for me. Ask somebody to be specific about what they mean by these last two. If they can describe it at all, the spiritual journey they refer to seem like learning about oneself and what gives one lasting satisfaction - a search for wisdom and what is meaningful. OK, but I am not going to call that a spiritual journey because of the baggage there - the woo factor.
And spiritual truth? As for examples of these truths, and you get nothing back. The best I can do is say that that might refer to that acquired wisdom if one has actually acquired any wisdom on this "journey," but once again, why bring spirituality into that?
Here's an example of what I was referring to. This song seems to be about a search for meaning. The experience for the musicians deserves to be called spiritual. We're communing, connected to one another, hearing one another playing and influencing one another, each musician flying inside. The improvisation begins around 3:50 here. I guess what I'm saying is that I recognize that the feeling I get is endogenous, not sensing the world or spirits:
I generally understand that usage of spiritual as a euphemism for religious by somebody who doesn't want to be stigmatized by the problems religions are having analogous to an atheist calling himself a freethinker or unbeliever. The word atheist carries baggage that one might want to avoid. So does religious now.
And both words are stigmatized for me, religious and spiritual. I don't call myself either.
Anecdote: I was treating an Iranian woman for back pain resulting from a fall in the shower with a prescription medication that was effective for her. When we had our first follow-up visit, she asked me why the prescription was for diazepam, which is better known as Valium, a word stigmatized by its overprescription for anxiety (think of the lyrics to Mother's Little Helper). I asked her why she called herself Persian rather than Iranian. She understood: baggage.
You allude to the confusion that the word spiritual causes with its association with spirits. You'd probably agree that a spiritual experience as I just described it is unrelated to spirits. Isn't that what the faithful mean when they use the word and claim that Christianity is a spiritual worldview but that atheism is not? They mean that they believe in spirits like god, angels, and demons. They you get a better understanding of that worldview and it is anything but spiritual as I defined it.
You allude to the confusion that the word spiritual causes with its association with spirits. You'd probably agree that a spiritual experience as I just described it is unrelated to spirits. Isn't that what the faithful mean when they use the word and claim that Christianity is a spiritual worldview but that atheism is not? They mean that they believe in spirits like god, angels, and demons. They you get a better understanding of that worldview and it is anything but spiritual as I defined it.
This applies as I assumed would be obvious: "You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed.
People who believe them don't question superstitions. In the spiritual realm it's quite different. From Jewish Kabbalah though I can find many examples:
"We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are."- The Talmud
"You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed.
And yet, all this is a matter of faith
—the faith that there is a truth to be found.
It is another paradox: To truly question, you must truly have faith." - Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Beware of any system which discourages questioning. Anyone who stifles questions is afraid that it could uncover the falseness of the beliefs." - Rabbi Noach Weinberg
There is an old tale where the rabbi was asked by one of his students “Why did God create atheists?”
After a long pause, the rabbi finally responded with a soft but sincere voice. “God created atheists” he said, “to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his sense of morality. Look at the kindness he bestows on others simply because he feels it to be right.
When someone reaches out to you for help. You should never say ‘I’ll pray that God will help you.’ Instead, for that moment, you should become an atheist – imagine there is no God who could help, and say ‘I will help you’.” —Martin Buber, Tales of Hasidim
I answered it but you did not respond to my answer except to ignore it. But maybe it needed to be spelled out more
People who believe them don't question superstitions. In the spiritual realm it's quite different. From Jewish Kabbalah though I can find many examples:
"We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are."- The Talmud
"You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed.
And yet, all this is a matter of faith
—the faith that there is a truth to be found.
It is another paradox: To truly question, you must truly have faith." - Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Beware of any system which discourages questioning. Anyone who stifles questions is afraid that it could uncover the falseness of the beliefs." - Rabbi Noach Weinberg
There is an old tale where the rabbi was asked by one of his students “Why did God create atheists?”
After a long pause, the rabbi finally responded with a soft but sincere voice. “God created atheists” he said, “to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his sense of morality. Look at the kindness he bestows on others simply because he feels it to be right.
When someone reaches out to you for help. You should never say ‘I’ll pray that God will help you.’ Instead, for that moment, you should become an atheist – imagine there is no God who could help, and say ‘I will help you’.” —Martin Buber, Tales of Hasidim
I answered it but you did not respond to my answer except to ignore it. But maybe it needed to be spelled out more
People who believe them don't question superstitions. In the spiritual realm it's quite different. From Jewish Kabbalah though I can find many examples:
"We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are."- The Talmud
"You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed.
And yet, all this is a matter of faith
—the faith that there is a truth to be found.
It is another paradox: To truly question, you must truly have faith." - Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Beware of any system which discourages questioning. Anyone who stifles questions is afraid that it could uncover the falseness of the beliefs." - Rabbi Noach Weinberg
There is an old tale where the rabbi was asked by one of his students “Why did God create atheists?”
After a long pause, the rabbi finally responded with a soft but sincere voice. “God created atheists” he said, “to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his sense of morality. Look at the kindness he bestows on others simply because he feels it to be right.
When someone reaches out to you for help. You should never say ‘I’ll pray that God will help you.’ Instead, for that moment, you should become an atheist – imagine there is no God who could help, and say ‘I will help you’.” —Martin Buber, Tales of Hasidim
I have frequently had experiences in which I felt some combination of warmth, connection, belonging, safety, awe, mystery, and gratitude. Have you never felt some or all of that when experiencing a beautiful sunset?
I feel that way when thinking about my wife and dogs, that all is well and good in the world. My wife describes something similar when gardening. It's how I feel when engrossed in moving music. I'm an amateur electric guitarist with a lot of experience who has learned how to sing with his hands, and the experience is rapturous. I feel that way when contemplating the night sky, the incredible distances involved, and my kinship with the stars and cosmos. I feel that way when laughing.
I call all of that the authentic spiritual experience. When I was a Christian, I attributed it to the Holy Spirit. Today, I consider it a mental state generated by the brain and don't attribute agenticity to the universe when experiencing it, which is a form of projection. I was projecting me onto the world out there and understanding t as experiencing something that was not me out there.
That's a common phenomenon - mistaking the minds own creations for sensing something external. The ancient Greeks had no concept of human creativity and understood creative inspirations as muses speaking to them. They were projecting the output of their own minds for external agents. It's also in the idea of good and bad desires and impulses being described in terms of angels and demons on one's shoulder having an argument in one's head. Once again, they are mistaking endogenous intuitions for external agents. Or with dreams understood as something sending a message rather than it being something generated in the brain from memories and other cerebral functions.
So, I can give a fairly clear description of what I call a spiritual experience, but phrases like spiritual journey and spiritual truth don't have meaning for me. Ask somebody to be specific about what they mean by these last two. If they can describe it at all, the spiritual journey they refer to seem like learning about oneself and what gives one lasting satisfaction - a search for wisdom and what is meaningful. OK, but I am not going to call that a spiritual journey because of the baggage there - the woo factor.
And spiritual truth? As for examples of these truths, and you get nothing back. The best I can do is say that that might refer to that acquired wisdom if one has actually acquired any wisdom on this "journey," but once again, why bring spirituality into that?
Here's an example of what I was referring to. This song seems to be about a search for meaning. The experience for the musicians deserves to be called spiritual. We're communing, connected to one another, hearing one another playing and influencing one another, each musician flying inside. The improvisation begins around 3:50 here. I guess what I'm saying is that I recognize that the feeling I get is endogenous, not sensing the world or spirits:
I generally understand that usage of spiritual as a euphemism for religious by somebody who doesn't want to be stigmatized by the problems religions are having analogous to an atheist calling himself a freethinker or unbeliever. The word atheist carries baggage that one might want to avoid. So does religious now.
And both words are stigmatized for me, religious and spiritual. I don't call myself either.
Anecdote: I was treating an Iranian woman for back pain resulting from a fall in the shower with a prescription medication that was effective for her. When we had our first follow-up visit, she asked me why the prescription was for diazepam, which is better known as Valium, a word stigmatized by its overprescription for anxiety (think of the lyrics to Mother's Little Helper). I asked her why she called herself Persian rather than Iranian. She understood: baggage.
You allude to the confusion that the word spiritual causes with its association with spirits. You'd probably agree that a spiritual experience as I just described it is unrelated to spirits. Isn't that what the faithful mean when they use the word and claim that Christianity is a spiritual worldview but that atheism is not? They mean that they believe in spirits like god, angels, and demons. They you get a better understanding of that worldview and it is anything but spiritual as I defined it.
