I like candy floss. There’s something delightful about its airy fluffiness and that incredibly sweetness! I even like the artificial colouring! Too bad there’s nothing really there and it doesn’t do you a bit of good.
I’ve been wondering if some of what passes for spirituality these days isn’t awfully similar to my cloud-like pink delight on a stick. Now, I know there are plenty of people out there who believe that anything outside of their own chosen traditions is worthless and shallow. I’m not one of them! My mind and heart are open to new wisdom and my own personal spirituality is drawn from multiple sources. Furthermore, I firmly believe that different people may thrive on different spiritual paths.
My question, though, deals with the practices and teachings that might make up such a path. Is everything equally valid? If not, what is the spiritual equivalent of health food, what is candy floss, and what is just plain poison! I know people who chant one word over and over again without much more understanding than that of the meaning of what they are doing. That seems to me to be more magical thinking than deepening, but perhaps I am too harsh.
Please comment. Share your experience. What has nourished you spiritually? What has been like junk food - nice in the moment but with no lasting benefit? And, if you have been unfortunate enough to come across poison in your spiritual smorgasbord, what was that like?
I suppose validity in term’s of one’s path is totally subjective. What might work for one person may not for someone else. If you don’t mind my saying this, Andy, I find assessing ‘validity’ a bit judgmental. Each of us has differing processes which allow us to find wholeness…..spirituality being part of that wholeness. Chanting and dancing/whirling can be processes which create an atmosphere which allows each of us to dive deep and resurface (borrowing from Carol Christ) into a more spiritual awareness. It is neither health food nor poison, it is just a means i.e. a process. So yes, I do think you are being a bit harsh.
Nevertheless, I feel that there are ground rules in which our spiritual processes must function. If we are processing a spiritual path alone, we must honour ourselves, our body and our surrounding environment. If we are processing a spiritual path in community, then it must engage the community consensually and with love.
If there is anything which I might label spiritual ‘poison’, it would be fundamentalism in all forms or transgressing the basic human rights of someone else. I don’t know if anyone remembers David Koresh and the Branch Dividians and the events in Waco, Texas in 1993. But that is my example of spiritual poison.
Then there is Jesus Camp where young ‘Christians’ (I mean 7 or 8 years old) are sent to be indoctrinated in evangelical, charismatic Christianity. Yet more spiritual poison.
Judy
PS: Perhaps another thread in this discussion could look at the differences/sameness of the spiritual and the mystical. Just another thought.
As an addendum, since we are discussing spiritual practice, I thought some of the ukspirituality readers might be interested in a website called ‘Daily OM: Nurturing Body, Mind and Spirit.’ I have been subscribed to their daily email list and receive a short mailing every day which always engages and sometimes uplifts me. I’ve received Daily OM mailings for about two years now.
Just thought you might want to know.
Judy
Hi there,
First of all love the site!!.
I think the difference between religion and spirituality, is that because we are not caught up in the dogma of our church is better than yours, we allow people to progress there own spiritual journey, according to there own faith, belief and comfortablity.
I try to stay, as Ernest Holmes said, ‘Open at the top’ and encompass all reliigions/spirituality, everything is one after all!!
“Then there is Jesus Camp where young ‘Christians’ (I mean 7 or 8 years old) are sent to be indoctrinated in evangelical, charismatic Christianity. Yet more spiritual poison.”
Have you ever been? Behind the bad image, charismatic Christians are full of happy, spiritual values and a positive spiritual outlook. They may be a bit doctrinaire, but then so are a lot of people - they just don’t admit it and these are. I’d rather my children - even as a Jew - went to Jesus Camp than stayed out on the streets killing each other or being pushed out of windows.