“How Can We Talk About Our Spiritual Experience? ” Comments, Page 2
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26 Responses (3 Discussion Threads) to “How Can We Talk About Our Spiritual Experience?”
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Thanks Jean, like you I think spirituality is about experience. Thanks for your comment.
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cheerful monk quotes campbell:
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive”
exactly. i have to confess that to this day i cannot understand why people get so concerned about the meaning and purpose of life. the fact that we are here is undisputable, much more real (more experiential?) than the why’s and what-fors. rather than speculating on the unanswerable question of “why?”, we can use our intellectual and emotional resources to figure out testable answers to “how?” how do we best use the life we have? describing, or attempting to describe, spiritual experiences can be very helpful there.
(having said this, i’d like to temper my indictment of the “why”. it seems to me that the motivation for the question is important. the motivation that i find difficult is the one that is seeking an answer in order to plan the course of one’s life. a motivation that comes out of sheer metaphysical or scientific curiosity would be much more acceptable to me.)
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Hi Isabella, I like that you distinguish the different senses of “why”. I think the concern for meaning arises from experiences of dissatisfaction – needing to do things not linked to our motivation/needs (like much of schooling). Usually our meanings and needs are spontaneous when we are in the situation that our action is unrelated to these then our focus will become the meaning of what we are doing.
I’d like to know whether you and others find this true to your experience.
Thanks for your comment.
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sorry, i don’t quite understand this sentence: “Usually our meanings and needs are spontaneous when we are in the situation that our action is unrelated to these then our focus will become the meaning of what we are doing.”
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Hi Isabella, reading that sentence again I’m not surprised. What I meant was that usually our actions flow from our needs and desires and make sense (have meaning). We also have curiosity – a need to investigate and find out, to make sense of our situations.
When we are in situations where this usual process is inhibited then the focus shifts. If we are in school and can’t learn what we are interested in at a particular time (my experience of schooling) then our focus can shift to a need for meaning. I vividly remember us students in our high school maths class why we had to study one particular subject – the answer was, “To pass the exam”. In these kinds of situations our focus can shift to the need for meaning.
I hope this puts it more clearly. (I think my fingers must have disconnected from my brain to produce that other sentence.)
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what you’re saying then is that the more one’s actions and objects of attention are removed from or irrelevant to one’s needs and interests, the more there is a possibility to pay attention to meaning.
in other words, “hey, why am i doing this, this doesn’t have anything to do with me!” then when one notices that other people have a similar experience, the more general general question arises, “why are WE doing this?”
however, the real culprit, in my opinion, is not a GENERAL lack of meaning or purpose (“what is life all about?”), it’s a SPECIFIC lack of meaning/purpose (“why am i/are we doing this nonsense?”). and as you say, often the reason is quite clear (“to pass the exam”). the “why” is then often used out of fear because the next question really should be, “do i really want to do this? what are the consequences of stopping or continuing?” again, those would be questions that look at and lead to experience, rather than explanation. and experiences typically look more scary than explanations.
which goes for spirituality, too. it’s much safer to read books about buddhism than to practice it :)
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As you say Isabella, experience is more scary than explanation. Thanks for your comment.
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[...] a while ago we talked about the lack of scripts for talking about mental illness (at least in “polite society”), and before that we had a conversation about how uncomfortable it can be to engage in peaceful communication. and now evan took up the topic the other day and asked how can we talk about our spiritual experience? [...]
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Thanks for the mention spiritual language.
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Great post! I agree wholeheartedly: spirituality is about experience. People can spend years reading all kind of books about the spiritual journey called Life, while forgetting to actually live it. Spirituality is about embarking on a pilgrimage towards the silent, dark solitude of one’s inner depths; reading about all kind of methods on how to do it is still something different than actually creating a first footstep on this path yet to be made.
Nowadays we like to walk the known paths, because it feels so much safer, but I feel that genuine spirituality is an authentic expression of the unique soul each one of us was given. This requires courage to face our own fears of the Great Unknown, our innate imperfect nature, and a persistent hope, trust and faith in something greater and deeper than us that everything will be alright eventually.
God sowed us as little seeds in a verdant valley. We were all given the burning essence of the same flower species, called “human”, still unfolded in its seed coat. But it remains up to each one of us to let this precious seed germinate within the dark, fertile soil of the Earth, so it can grow to become the unique flower each one of us truly is.
Perhaps that’s why it’s so difficult to find a common language. Every attempt to do so would result in a dramatic devaluation of the authenticity of each individual experience. At best we could try to make generalizations about the inner topography of the human soul (as for instance Jung tried to do); just as each one of us has the same physical organs, so we all might share more of less the same soul structures, which form the collective framework for our individual experiences.
I feel spirituality is indeed a -highly individual- experience. Perhaps the only thing we might do regarding the relation between different lives/spiritual experiences, is to cultivate a deep, natural sense of Human Virtues to accept other people’s experiences truly as they are, without trying to judge or explain them from our own, wholly different perspective. Even though the paths of two people are utterly different at their core, they might be able to understand each other to an astonishing degree when they have developed a high level of self-relativism, and a deep humility and receptivity towards the other person.
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Hi Anamchara, Many thanks for your extensive and thought through comment. My hope is that there is indeed a way to speak to each other about what is most individual to us. Like you I think deep humility and receptivity are necessary. Perhaps we could talk about the kind of soil we need for our own seed to germinate(?). If you have some thoughts on this I ‘d like to hear them. Many thanks for your comment.
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