Being Spiritual, What Is It? (page 2)

PopeOfEruke

Spiritual is Roy Orbisons voice or Bob Dylans lyrics.

Pope

Guest 77

jjrizo gave us some food for thought. Galations 5:22 sums up what a 'good' spiritual person posseses. It concludes by saying, "..Against such things there is no law."

Guest 77

IMHO, being spiritual is to recognize the presence in your mind of a spark of the actual divinity of the unqualifed absolute reality and to attempt to make contact with that ultimate reality, discover its will for you, and make a sincere effort to do it.

In fact, attempting to do the will of God seems to me to be the ONLY gift that a human can make to God; that is, to consecrate the free will - which we have as a unique gift - to doing the will of God. What else could we "give" to God that is of ANY value whatsoever: this gift of the free will to do the will of God?

$0.02.

Francois

Farkel

: Being Spiritual, What Is It?

Those who attempt to describe spirituality do it a grave injustice. Those, like the leaders of Jehovah's Witnesses who turn "spirituality" into a system of merit conveyed upon them based upon prescribed deeds and quotas are an outrage to the very notion of spirituality.

Truly spiritual people are wise enough to know it cannot be explained. It is a way of being that is manifest in the person and any words to describe it diminish what it really is, IMO. If someone put a gun to my head and said "define spirituality or die," the best answer I could give would be "Dali Lama."

That being said, be very wary of people who tell you how "spiritual" they are. I am.

Farkel

Pathofthorns

I find it frustrating even in the exJW community when you have conversations with those who constantly lecture me on my failure to be "conscious of my spiritual need".

Since I would consider myself agnostic, I think spirituality for me is an awareness of the bigger picture, of one's role in the community and nature and how we view and accept that role. It is a constant journey of learning from others and the world around us and then sharing that knowlege with others as they grow as well. Accepting that death is inevitable and appreciating our time is relatively short should drive us to spend these few years in love and peace instead of hatred and war and making the world will be a better place for the generations that follow.

Path

Lady Lee

Spirituality for me probably can best be summed up as "to thine own self be true" Now this isn't as egotistical as it sounds.

When I am connected to myself - really connected - I am listening inside for my answers. When I am listening and following that inner voice I am living in a way that is true to myself. When I do this I have no guilt. I live so that wehn I go to bed at night I feel good about the choices I have made during the day - no regrets.

I find that if I compare this inner voice to the Christian ethic (not JW but scriptural) it is carries the same moral code. I would suspect but have not checked that this moral code is the same regardless of the religious code book - Bible, Koran, etc.

My spirituality crosses all lines and is not connected to any religion or beleif system other than "to they own self be true" My spitituality is also connected to nature in that when I am in a natural setting - water trees earth I feel most connected to myself.

I am not perfect at this. I still forget to listen to my inner voice and when I do I get into trouble but I am getting better at listening

SEAKEN2001

Thank you jjrizo! You have just cleared up the mystery of life for me! You are my Bhudda, oh wise one!

Sean

SEAKEN2001

Farkel,

I generally agree with you. However, I see here many describing what spirituality means to them, and that's OK. As long as they are not intent on leveraging their own definition and putting it over on everyone else. I do think there is some value in describing how you feel about spirituality. I think most who are honest with themselves will realize that the words are inadequate, similar to how a writer of a love song searches for words to express the mystery of love.

I am given to the idea, expressed by several so far, that my spirituality is tied to my awareness of my place in the world. The more comfortable I am with myself and how I interact with the world around me the more spiritual I feel. I feel there is a direct correlation between my own inner spirit and the great spirit in the world or universe around me. I lean toward the myths of the North American Indians and how they attempt to explain the connections between the spiritual and material worlds. I have no belief in such myths as if they were some definition of reality but I share a kinship with the idea, as I do with many other philosophies about the human condition. I guess I would say I think spirituality is a concept, or idea, or philosophy, or mystery, (choose the word) that is present in all elements of our world. But, as was suggested, there are no good words to describe it.

Sean

Farkel

: The more comfortable I am with myself and how I interact with the world around me the more spiritual I feel.

That is exactly what I'm talking about. No one can explain any experience in such a way that another person can fully experience the experience that happened by the one trying to describe it.

One cannot truly describe the experience of love anymore than one can describe the experience of spirituality. Our words merely point at it and around it, but do not convey it. I will agree that words are the best tools we have, but in cases like this, they are woefully inadequate.

Farkel

lauralisa

Hi larc, what a good thread.

I think one's spirituality has to do to a large degree with how they reason.

No matter how "reductionist" one is when approaching an explanation for anything - reducing things to their essential components (ideally for some: a physical equation) so as to keep all things confined to our three dimensions, there's still way too much that defies our comprehension.

Attributing the "supernatural" for lack of better term (metaphysical?) to a "higher power" is one approach.

Just being open to discussion about such stuff is being spiritual, imo

lauralisa

Being Spiritual, What Is It?

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