Hi,
I still regard myself as a Christian, although I am anything but orthodox in the modern sense. I believe that spirituality is an aspect of life which arises from a right-brain dominance, just as the arts, empathy, creativity and intuition do. In fact, these things are often associated with religion – even music is supposed to be governed by the right side of the brain, despite it’s mathematical structure. Of course we have and use both sides of the brain, but those of us who have a right-side dominance tend towards some kind of spirituality – even if it isn’t regarded as religion.
The critics of people like me have a left-brain dominance and they find my comments imprecise and lacking in exactitude, they say my meaning is all nebulous and unable to be distinguished. They use their abilities in critical thinking and logic to argue with me and so effectively fail to see the point. Unless they use their underdeveloped abilities from the right-brain half, we will never come to common ground. Although, curiously, these people often use their right-brain abilities at will as a form of inspiration.
There are, of course those who are religious and yet use their left-brain side, and who find logic and reasoning quite usable for their religion, which is somehow a reckoning similar to math, and they agree that my kind of spirituality is nebulous and call it “New Age”. The problem is that they are regularly shown that their logic is fallible and, if their religion is at all spiritual, it must involve those nebulous aspects as well. But these people also use their right-brain abilities when it suits them.
My thesis is that we need both sides of our brains to be full human beings and although it may be that we can’t use both sides simultaneously, it is important to be aware that we have a dominance and that we do in fact alternate at will, even if we think that we are, for example, either very logical or very creative. This may be one reason why we tend to overlook our duality and get caught up in one side of the story, failing to acknowledge our “blind-spots”.
Having visited the parish I was once an Elder to because they were writing a history of the parish and I was part of it, I watched the members carefully, seeing their traits that were still visible through their illnesses, losses and old-age. Most of them were suffering, their words stumbled over their attempts to be humble, tears came spontaneously, deep sighs interrupted their statements and I had a very clear feeling that the project was causing them pain, even though they had intended to celebrate the 100-year history of the parish. In fact, I thought that here and there, people were present despite their convictions. The parish had become divided by an argument about one of the clergy who had been asked by the Elders, me being the spokesman at that time, to leave. As an aside, the Pastor is a friend of mine and now enjoys his calling in another Parish where his talents are fully employed.
As I watched the people struggle through the afternoon, I thought about how lacking these people were of the teaching of impermanence and how they struggled with life. What especially came to mind is that their belief in the cross of Christ challenged them daily, expecting them to struggle on until death and then find deliverance from their suffering. They failed to recognise the basic teaching of Buddha, which I also find in the Gospels, that suffering is caused by clinging to desire, and that there are methods which can help relieve the suffering. They failed to see that it was those things that they were clinging to which were becoming the source of pain.
This gave me more conviction than ever that spirituality is what people need in such cases, and that each culture has its own various traditions – more importantly, that what we need is to see that the teaching of some traditions are clearer in certain aspects than others, and that we need to appreciate that we can dip in to all traditions without “betraying” our own. We need the whole spectrum of human experience to cope with life.
Any thoughts?
The problem with spirituality is that it disappears as soon as we think on it. Spirituality isn’t and can’t be a definition, it is an unspoken understanding. How we react to our moments of heightened awareness is of duality, which in a perverse way, leads us away from our spiritual experiences. That which is ineffable is… ineffable. I’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t have spirituality, we ARE spirituality - but only if we let it go. Digging in the garden is just as spiritual as practicing meditation in a cloister. Spirituality is the sum of us and all about us. I would say more, but…
