s4
consciousness is a good word for spirituality too imo
Humane purposefulness, another
As An Atheist: Finding Real Spirituality After JWs
by Seeker4 20 Replies latest jw friends
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onacruse
seeker4, thank you for starting this topic. It is a question with which I've struggled for many years now.
"Spirituality," "the connectedness of all living things," etc. Along with what others have said above, and what Kate and I have talked about more than once: we're all just disconnected bags of minerals and relatively more or less complex molecular processes that "make us do what we must do."
And what we "think?" That too is an overlay, a conditioning, an inevitability of the finiteness of our physical being. Every word in this post is just that (Wittgenstein, etc).
Just this morning I had a long and somewhat heated conversation with a very good friend, and as I told him what I "felt" about our working relationship, he honestly looked at me with the "I don't have a clue what you're talking about"...yet we have been together for 30 years.
If there is a connectedness of humanity, it seems to have eluded me.
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JamesThomas
Seeker:
Perhaps it might be better expressed as being connected with life, the world you live in, being in the here-and-now, awareness based on compassion for what is around you. I'm not exactly sure how to express it, but I see it as learning to live with as much awareness and respect and connectedness as possible.
Yes, how to express what words can not capture: the reality and actuality which the mind exists within, but can not circumscribe. For me words like God, Divinity, etc, only point to what is actual and real, right here, right now. Not as some thing objective and separate, but rather so close, so connected, intimate and real as to be ones true and boundless identity.
You explained as well has I have ever seen it explained, Seeker4.
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Seeker4
JamesT:
Thanks. It's not something I've fully thought through or grasped, and therefore the search for how to express it.
Sometimes I think enlightenment (oops! another loaded word!!) might be as simple as living with a sense of wonder and a positive attitude.
All I know is that writers I've been reading for half a century, from Aldous Huxley and Colin Wilson to Ken Wilber and Daniel Dennett, have been writing about what I'm experiencing.
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Scully
Given that all human experiences, real or imagined, are ultimately reducible to neurochemical synaptic communication, I would be curious if anybody could provide a non-nebulous, meaningful definition of "spirituality" that can be demonstrated beyond mere sociocultural conditioning. We have now even identified the precise regions of the cerebral cortex responsible for generating so-called "religious" experiences.
I'm kind of partial to the term self-actualization in lieu of spirituality. But you all knew that already, didn't you?
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nvrgnbk
Great thread seeker4,
While I was still an elder I slipped that in as often as I could, "too often we confuse the words spiritual and theocratic."
The totally brain-washed would stare bewildered. Those that still did some of their own thinking would say "that's so true."
I'm liking secular humanism as an approach to life. If you have no read "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris give it a glance.
Regards.
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Narkissos
Kid-A,
I have a methodological problem with what I would call the "reductionist" and "exclusivist" sound of your post.
Any object of knowledge can be approached under a potentially infinite number of different angles. Those are not mutually exclusive. Nor do they add up as distinct causes -- as if a given mental phenomenon, for instance, could be explained as 30 % socio-economical, 20 % cultural, 15 % neurochemical, 8 % genetic, etc., and the total should add to 100 %. That's ludicrous. If you are looking this way (not) to find a 0.001 % of "something" you would call "spirit" or "god" and is not explainable otherwise you won't. Of course.
Maybe no single approach can account for 100 % of anything, but all of them overlap a lot and adding them up will always lead to a total of "explanation" vastly superior to 100 % -- not implying that any of it is wrong. Iow, it is not either / or. Neuropsychiatry and psychoanalysis, for example, offer different "explanations" for the very same "things," both of them tending to totalism in their respective processes, yet (at least in Europe) they are not considered as mutually exclusive in principle -- and they can result in beneficial complementary practices.
Let me briefly comment on what you wrote (and highlight the reductionistic assumptions):
Given that all human experiences, real or imagined, are ultimatelyreducible to neurochemical synaptic communication, I would be curious if anybody could provide a non-nebulous, meaningful definition of "spirituality" that can be demonstrated beyond mere sociocultural conditioning. We have now even identified the precise regions of the cerebral cortex responsible for generating so-called "religious" experiences.
Should I point that (1) neurochemical and (2) sociocultural are already two overlapping approaches? Why would you accept that the same phenomenon can be explained by both (1) and (2) and not by others -- e.g. political, economical, philosophical, and (God forbid) religious or "spiritual"?
IMHO, "spirituality" is just the ugly cousin of "theism" and spirituality by its very definition necessitates a belief in the supernatural, which would make a believer in said phenomena a "pan-deist" or possibly "agnostic" but certainly not an "atheist".
I strongly disagree with the last assumption. Although I personally dislike the term "spirituality" for its "nebulosity," I think what it stands for can easily be construed as an "economy" of reality (involving both nature and culture) and not require any "real "supernature" whatsoever. In that sense you might be 100 % materialist and 100 % spiritualist -- ask Spinoza (allowing for the cultural differences between his cultural setting and ours).
I would certainly agree their is a collective, sociocultural "spiritual" trait present in human culture, but I strongly disagree that there exists any intrinsic "spiritual" nature in modern homo sapiens that cannot be explained by cultural conditioning.
Again, that it can be explained 100 % culturally doesn't rule out that it can be also explained in many other ways.
I would further add that those insisting on using terminology such as "spritual" or "divine essence", etc etc, are simply replacing one form of psychological anesthesia (belief in a sky-god) with another (belief in some ill-defined, nebulous "force" that represents some hypothetical "pure" essence)......
I tend to avoid those terms for the very same reason, but I don't deny their validity to those who use them. I personally choose to interpret them metaphorically, but to me that doesn't invalidate the experience of people who take them at face value.
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JWdaughter
Spirit and spiritual as defined in my dictionary works great for these purposes. We really don't need to re-invent anything. Religious/deist implications for the words are there, but far more have nothing to do with 'god'. Rather than boring you with my dictionary, I suggest that you quickly look at your own or online. Mine is Oxford.
I agree that there is 'sin' whether one has a religious meaning to it or not.
I think this is an interesting thread, thanks!
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RAF
Yep interesting thread ... ...
Quiet interesting to realiase how even the word SPIRITUALITY do not mean the same to everybody I guess it's because, Religious fan s have made this word their own regarding their doctrines ... IT'S NOT A RELIGIOUS MATTER !!!
EVEVRYBODY have a spirituality but then it is well or bad spirited ... I found that S4 explained it very well -
PrimateDave
"What Western anthropologists noticed when they first studied the so-called primitive peoples (and they’re not really primitive, they’re just not as technologically sophisticated as we are) was that there was not a divide between activities that were sacred and activities that were profane. Life was knit into a fabric of meaning and ritual; even the most mundane acts were seen as part of a sacred existence and a higher purpose." From the sermon "The Spirituality of Basketball" by Unitarian Universalist minister Dr. Arvid Straube.
A "spiritual" JW answers from the paragraph at the meetings, gets out in service 10 hours a month, is at meetings 20 minutes before and after, and seldom misses a meeting. You see, it's all measured in activity, but so seldom did we ever discuss the mindfulness needed, the compassionate attitude that should be brought to all aspects of life, an attitude that could make EVERYthing a person did a spiritual activity. - S4
What you describe here would appear to me to represent the culture that the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses sprang from: Western Industrial Civilization as opposed to egalitarian tribal societies.
I would argue that most of us, even after we have left the regimented routine that the WTS prescribes, still live our lives by the clock and calendar because of our culture. (That is, unless someone reading this lives with a "primitive" tribe.)
I think that many of us, having seen through the scam of religion and god, still seek some kind of "spirituality" because we are stuck in a culture that for the most part denies us the Power Process that "primitive" peoples still enjoy: the freedom and responsibility for complete control in one's life.
Further, it has been stated that increased technological dependence of necessity decreases personal freedom by requiring greater societal restraints. Born of an industrial culture with its relatively advanced technology, the religion of the Witnesses is replete with social restraints and requirements. But so is our civilization in general. I think "spirituality" is a way of expressing a desire to return to a simpler way of being. As such, the Theocratic Treadmill is anything BUT spiritual.
I wish I could explain this idea better. It is just my observation. Any other ideas?
