Coming late to the discusssion and I’ve been reading the spiritual direction tangent with interest. @fineline, your post sums up my own approach well. I’ll maybe add my own two pennyworth, were it not that I’m due to see one of my own folk shortly.
...I absolutely realise that my opinions are not the least bit important here, or in life in general...
I don't think anyone here has said or would say anything along those lines, and I think you know it. The issue is, as noted earlier, the gnat-straining/tail-chasing aspects of hashing and rehashing and re-rehashing the same details multiple times. It's hard to pursue the discussion when it's constantly tugged back over the same ground.
One can be an atheist and still believe in the supernatural. The supernatural is not exhausted by God, so that if you take away belief in a god, all of the supernatural goes with it. That's a very narrow and hidebound view of what the supernatural is.
One can be an atheist and still believe in the supernatural. The supernatural is not exhausted by God, so that if you take away belief in a god, all of the supernatural goes with it. That's a very narrow and hidebound view of what the supernatural is.
Interesting idea - can you give any examples? I cannot think of anything at all which would come under the heading of supernatural that I would believe.
...I absolutely realise that my opinions are not the least bit important here, or in life in general...
I don't think anyone here has said or would say anything along those lines, and I think you know it. The issue is, as noted earlier, the gnat-straining/tail-chasing aspects of hashing and rehashing and re-rehashing the same details multiple times. It's hard to pursue the discussion when it's constantly tugged back over the same ground.
Would you then prefer that there were no non-faith views here? Would you apply the re-hashing aspect only to non-faith beliefs?!*
*written with smile, not confrontation!
Corrected quoting code to make it clear which words are whose. BroJames Purgatory Host
...I absolutely realise that my opinions are not the least bit important here, or in life in general...
I don't think anyone here has said or would say anything along those lines, and I think you know it. The issue is, as noted earlier, the gnat-straining/tail-chasing aspects of hashing and rehashing and re-rehashing the same details multiple times. It's hard to pursue the discussion when it's constantly tugged back over the same ground.
Would you then prefer that there were no non-faith views here? Would you apply the re-hashing aspect only to non-faith beliefs?!*
*written with smile, not confrontation!
Corrected quoting code to make it clear which words are whose. BroJames Purgatory Host
I don't know, Susan. I suppose if this was an atheist forum and theists came into every discussion insisting that the deity be brought into it and vowing to continue making these points until the day they die, that might start to get annoying.
In fairness, I can't think of an exact parallel for continued questioning of why "spiritual directors" are not open to a wider variety of option to suggest to people because non-theism is generally a minority or historically less popular view.
This discussion does remind me of M Scott Peck, who definitely did appear to advise clients to try different (possibly opposite) faith options depending on what he thought would help them. So that kind of view does exist.
But in the main, people working within a faith community understandably limit the options they suggest to those which they think are compatible with their faith.
I don't see why this is really a point of discussion.
One can be an atheist and still believe in the supernatural. The supernatural is not exhausted by God, so that if you take away belief in a god, all of the supernatural goes with it. That's a very narrow and hidebound view of what the supernatural is.
Interesting idea - can you give any examples? I cannot think of anything at all which would come under the heading of supernatural that I would believe.
I'm almost certain I never said that every atheist believes in the supernatural, far less that you do. I said it was a possibility. Not everybody has your unshakable faith in the unprovable and unscientific idea that all religious beliefs are 100% faith-driven and have 0% evidence. Let alone non-religious but spiritual or supernatural beliefs.
The example of supernatural atheists that used to be given were animists, who don't have a creator God. However, many people have expressed queasiness at this idea, since it seems based on a rather technical definition of atheism.
Percy Shelley believed in the supernatural forms and was an atheist. One might think that his worship of intellectual beauty was worship of God under another description, but that's not how he described himself.
One can be an atheist and still believe in the supernatural. The supernatural is not exhausted by God, so that if you take away belief in a god, all of the supernatural goes with it. That's a very narrow and hidebound view of what the supernatural is.
Interesting idea - can you give any examples? I cannot think of anything at all which would come under the heading of supernatural that I would believe.
I'm almost certain I never said that every atheist believes in the supernatural, far less that you do. I said it was a possibility. Not everybody has your unshakable faith in the unprovable and unscientific idea that all religious beliefs are 100% faith-driven and have 0% evidence. Let alone non-religious but spiritual or supernatural beliefs.
The only evidence I have is the earliest writings of the church. In believing them to be a valid reaction to the actual incarnation I am exercising faith. Where can science come in?
One can be an atheist and still believe in the supernatural. The supernatural is not exhausted by God, so that if you take away belief in a god, all of the supernatural goes with it. That's a very narrow and hidebound view of what the supernatural is.
Interesting idea - can you give any examples? I cannot think of anything at all which would come under the heading of supernatural that I would believe.
If I may, astrology, past-life experiences, ghosts, palmistry, clairvoyance, Tarot, telekinesis, telepathy, curses, out-of-body experiences, fairies, witchcraft, spirit guides, spirit animals, guardian angels....
I don't believe in any of them but countless people do believe in some of them.
The New Age stuff tends to have a fashionable trend, such as past lives or geomancy, that will disappear to be replaced by another fad. Crystals and witchcraft are perennials, if you are thinking of setting up a shop. But I don't know how atheist the purveyors or buyers are. I often stay in Stroud, which is quite hippy, and very mellow.
All of this is why I didn’t say the supernatural and restricted my wonderings to spirit. That’s the rub. I’ve difficulty in understanding how someone could affirm atheism and spirit at the same time, at least consistently.
But how important is consistency.
I don't make a distinction between the supernatural and 'spirit'. I understand them as perceptions of the same unknowable 'thing'. It follows that I think you are defining 'spirit' far too narrowly. In any case, Wikipedia's article on secular spirituality makes it clear that one can be spiritual without believing in any kind of 'spirit', at least as I think you are defining it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_spirituality
Wiki's article on spirituality starts with this: The meaning of spirituality has developed and expanded over time, and various connotations can be found alongside each other.
Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man", oriented at "the image of God" as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world. The term was used within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit and broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life.
In modern times, the term both spread to other religious traditions and broadened to refer to a wider range of experience, including a range of esoteric traditions and religious traditions. Modern usages tend to refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live", often in a context separate from organized religious institutions, such as a belief in a supernatural (beyond the known and observable) realm, personal growth, a quest for an ultimate or sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with one's own "inner dimension" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality
I suspect you are trying to restrict 'spirit'to its older meaning but it is not how it is presently used.
The New Age stuff tends to have a fashionable trend, such as past lives or geomancy, that will disappear to be replaced by another fad. Crystals and witchcraft are perennials, if you are thinking of setting up a shop. But I don't know how atheist the purveyors or buyers are. I often stay in Stroud, which is quite hippy, and very mellow.
I live in Glastonbury. I suspect it makes Stroud look like Suburbiton.
Apologies to those who think we are straining at gnats. From my perspective, the degree to which some Christians appear to wish to deny certain experiences to non-theists or see a contradiction between atheism and a spiritual outlook is very troubling.
If you look on Daily Meditations - The Center for Action and Contemplation there is an interesting reflection today:
Richard Rohr - A New Way of Thinking
'Our worldview will not normally change until we place ourselves or are placed in new and different lifestyle situations.
You do not think yourself into a new way of living, you live yourself into a new way of thinking.'
Food for thought.
I like that sentiment but the article's reading of history is bonkers.
The sentiment resonates with me because I have noticed changes in my attitudes to nominally spiritual beliefs has changed since I moved to Glastonbury at the end of last year. If you are unfamiliar with Glastonbury, it is a small town in the west of England and a fount of New-Age beliefs. Pretty much every form of spirituality is available here.
I remain someone who believes there is no God, and will always, I expect, do so, but I've lost any hostility towards or defensiveness to spiritual practices. In particular a series of guided meditations centred on the Akashic Records has provided a surprisingly useful method of investigating my own thoughts and creativity.
Apologies to those who think we are straining at gnats. From my perspective, the degree to which some Christians appear to wish to deny certain experiences to non-theists or see a contradiction between atheism and a spiritual outlook is very troubling.
What's troubling to me is that some people seem to think that Christian spiritual directors should be secular ones, rather than helping people to develop spiritually through Christianity as believers, which is a given as they have approached Christian spiritual directors.
The tangent has now moved to another thread, so hopefully there will no more gnat-straining here.
Apologies to those who think we are straining at gnats. From my perspective, the degree to which some Christians appear to wish to deny certain experiences to non-theists or see a contradiction between atheism and a spiritual outlook is very troubling.
What's troubling to me is that some people seem to think that Christian spiritual directors should be secular ones, rather than helping people to develop spiritually through Christianity as believers, which is a given as they have approached Christian spiritual directors.
The tangent has now moved to another thread, so hopefully there will no more gnat-straining here.
I thought that particularly tangent had been resolved some time back and the discussion had moved on.
I'm glad you read it. I was greatly struck by it this morning. And he's a very interesting contemporary theologian.
To take the example of monasticism the communal lifestyle, the pattern of the daily offices and the living out of the values of hospitality and reconciliation all gradually form a person into someone with an unselfish, compassionate and spiritually aware outlook on life.
The author of A Nun's Tale wrote that when she left her convent during WW2 and became a nurse these attitudes had become so embedded in her that her colleagues regarded her as a delightful revolutionary who practiced a quite new and unheard of way of life.
I'm glad you read it. I was greatly struck by it this morning. And he's a very interesting contemporary theologian.
To take the example of monasticism the communal lifestyle, the pattern of the daily offices and the living out of the values of hospitality and reconciliation all gradually form a person into someone with an unselfish, compassionate and spiritually aware outlook on life.
The author of A Nun's Tale wrote that when she left her convent during WW2 and became a nurse these attitudes had become so embedded in her that her colleagues regarded her as a delightful revolutionary who practiced a quite new and unheard of way of life.
The same could be said of any communal way of living, such as at Findhorn, and is not dependent on a God-centred way of living.
What I took from the article is that the author thinks everything since the 12th century has gone downhill. In particular, the line [St Francis preceded] a pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war appears to conflate rationalism with consumerism and ignores the centuries of perpetual war that preceded St Francis. I can't help feeling that someone with such a skewed view of history (one could say a self-serving view of history) hasn't much of use to say about anything.
Alternatives to consumerism are a very topical subject. The monastic life is very eco-friendly.
I think he makes a good point that it is the living it out that transforms your way of thinking rather than the other way around. Not everyone is called to be a monastic, but their values are significant for building stable and healthy communities. Which is another very topical subject.
For lay Christians the practice of daily prayer or the daily office, community worship and spiritual direction gradually develop an outlook which is formed by theological reflection.
That’s a rather monstrously unjust dismissal of Rohr’s thought. You read one minor passage and dislike one sentence and decide he hasn’t much use to say about anything? Wow.
The passage is such a huge misreading of history that yes, it does undermine anything else Rohr might write. Though having looked him up on wikipedia I applaud his attitude to the LGBT&Q community.
Alternatives to consumerism are a very topical subject. The monastic life is very eco-friendly.
I think he makes a good point that it is the living it out that transforms your way of thinking rather than the other way around. Not everyone is called to be a monastic, but their values are significant for building stable and healthy communities. Which is another very topical subject.
For lay Christians the practice of daily prayer or the daily office, community worship and spiritual direction gradually develop an outlook which is formed by theological reflection.
I would say the communal life is very eco-friendly and communal values are often healthy values. Unless my ideas are out of date, monastic communities are not self-sustaining in the long term because they require a supply of new recruits. Communal communities can be self-sustaining because children are born within the community.
But I agree that how and where you live can transform how you think and in part that's why I moved to Glastonbury.
Rohr has written a lot of interesting books on contemporary Christian spirituality. I particularly like his Falling Upward.
I think that he is right to say that living it out is the key to spiritual transformation. And the most convincing witness of the reality of faith. There are two lovely Christian ladies in my church who go around unobtrusively making cups of tea for everyone and warmly greeting all the visitors. They are like the angels of the church.
Perhaps it would interest you to go on a day trip to visit a monastery. My favourite is Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire but it's a long way for you to go. But there is Buckfast Abbey which many tourists go to visit. And it makes nice beer and cider too.
Rohr has written a lot of interesting books on contemporary Christian spirituality. I particularly like his Falling Upward.
I think that he is right to say that living it out is the key to spiritual transformation. And the most convincing witness of the reality of faith. There are two lovely Christian ladies in my church who go around unobtrusively making cups of tea for everyone and warmly greeting all the visitors. They are like the angels of the church.
Perhaps it would interest you to go on a day trip to visit a monastery. My favourite is Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire but it's a long way for you to go. But there is Buckfast Abbey which many tourists go to visit. And it makes nice beer and cider too.
Of course their faith is real. It's the thing they have faith in that's imaginary! And I have no desire for spiritual transformation.
What I find odd is that you are inviting me to go to abbeys but did not engage at all with my experience meditating on the Akashic Records. At present I have all the spirituality I desire.
That’s a rather monstrously unjust dismissal of Rohr’s thought. You read one minor passage and dislike one sentence and decide he hasn’t much use to say about anything? Wow.
The passage is such a huge misreading of history that yes, it does undermine anything else Rohr might write. Though having looked him up on wikipedia I applaud his attitude to the LGBT&Q community.
You extracted from that passage material which isn’t there. Try reading one of his books instead of his Wikipedia article.
I disagree. God gave St. Francis to history in a pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war. Francis was himself a soldier, and his father was a tradesman in cloth. Francis came from the very world he was then able to critique, but he offered a positive critique of these very systems at the beginning of their now eight centuries of world dominance. is complete and utter nonsense. It actually reminded me of the kind of nonsense right-wingers spout.
To have real faith in the imaginary is neither logical nor authentic. Spiritual people come to mirror the Spirit which they embody. And if you visit a monastery then you can experience the spiritual atmosphere at first hand. It's not something that can be expressed in words.
I had never heard of the Akashic Records but I have looked online and see that they are a library of vibrational energy. The compendium of all human thoughts sounds like the Logos of John 1.
Whom do you think is receiving your meditations on the etheric plane?
Of course their faith is real. It's the thing they have faith in that's imaginary!
Would you mind getting into the habit of saying 'in my view' or 'for me' a little more often when you make statements like that? For me, God is not at all imaginary - and it's not hard to add those couple of words so as to keep open a space for discussion amongst people of very different views, which (for me) is one of the big strengths of these boards.
I don't see any theists here denying that non-theists can have a sense of mystery, the numinous or spirituality in the broad sense of the term. Perhaps I'm missing something.
What I do see are non-theists saying, 'How dare you theists try to monopolise spirituality. Why, the audacity of it, there are even spiritual directors around who recommend spiritual practices associated with their own particular faith tradition! What utter, utter bastards!'
I disagree. God gave St. Francis to history in a pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war. Francis was himself a soldier, and his father was a tradesman in cloth. Francis came from the very world he was then able to critique, but he offered a positive critique of these very systems at the beginning of their now eight centuries of world dominance. is complete and utter nonsense. It actually reminded me of the kind of nonsense right-wingers spout.
Eh? The idea that Francis stood at the cusp of Western Europe's transition into a more mercantile, utilitarian, and anthropocentric society that recognisably gave rise to our own is absolutely bog-standard. Historians have long debated (and will presumably continue to debate) the exact relationship between humanism (in the Renaissance sense), the growth of the merchant classes, and new conceptions of reason and reasoning. They've also debated quite a bit about the exact role of the mendicant orders in all of this, and whether they were more a symptom or a cause. But to assert that they all arose and co-evolved together is so commonplace it's banal.
With warfare I'm not so clear. Certainly it was getting better-organised, professionalised, and bigger in Francis' time; we're moving out of the age of courtly nobles smashing each other and into the era of the mercenary and citizen army. Here, though, I'm on less certain ground - I don't know what the standard account is here, or even if there is one.
Anyway, Rohr's writing is dramatically telescoped here: he's shrinking eight centuries down to a sentence and focalising it exclusively through St. Francis, so obviously a lot drops out of the mix. But it's not nonsense. Let alone 'complete and utter' nonsense.
That said, Charles Taylor sees Francis's emphasis on the goodness of the Lord's Creation as a powerful motivator toward study of the natural world in the High Middle Ages, and thus one of the first steps down the road to what he calls modernity's 'exclusive humanism'. So perhaps the atheists are St. Francis's inheritors as well.
Whoa, I said that? Colin Smith said that. Try to get your attributions right. I never got anywhere near that quote, nor posted since it was introduced. I can't imagine how you plugged me into that. I'm not happy about it.
I have now corrected the quote attribution. BroJames Purgatory Host
Ooops, sorry @mousethief, mis-edited the quote markup in my frenzy of typing. It was indeed @Colin Smith who originally wrote the original and over-quick dismissal.
I have now corrected the quote attribution. BroJames Purgatory Host
To have real faith in the imaginary is neither logical nor authentic. Spiritual people come to mirror the Spirit which they embody. And if you visit a monastery then you can experience the spiritual atmosphere at first hand. It's not something that can be expressed in words.
I had never heard of the Akashic Records but I have looked online and see that they are a library of vibrational energy. The compendium of all human thoughts sounds like the Logos of John 1.
Whom do you think is receiving your meditations on the etheric plane?
In my view, no one at all. There's no one there and there is no etheric plane. I find the meditations useful as a metaphor or personification of my own thought processes and as an aid to creativity and my imagination. God, in my view, functions for those who believe in God in much the same way.
The Akashic Record has many similarities with aspects of other beliefs, Christianity being but one, but crucially for me does not require belief in any deity.
Also the meditation workshop involved one hour long session once a fortnight which is completely different from what happens in a monastery.
I wouldn't say I was a spiritual person but it's nice to do something spiritual every so often.
I don't see any theists here denying that non-theists can have a sense of mystery, the numinous or spirituality in the broad sense of the term. Perhaps I'm missing something.
What I do see are non-theists saying, 'How dare you theists try to monopolise spirituality. Why, the audacity of it, there are even spiritual directors around who recommend spiritual practices associated with their own particular faith tradition! What utter, utter bastards!'
Would that be a fair summary?
Except that as far as I'm concerned the whole spiritual directors thing was dealt with ages ago.
I did see at least one theist here questioning whether atheists could be spiritual or believe in the spirit.
Of course their faith is real. It's the thing they have faith in that's imaginary!
Would you mind getting into the habit of saying 'in my view' or 'for me' a little more often when you make statements like that? For me, God is not at all imaginary - and it's not hard to add those couple of words so as to keep open a space for discussion amongst people of very different views, which (for me) is one of the big strengths of these boards.
I will attempt to do so but I wonder how many here prefix or suffix their statements of belief with those words.
Human beings are all innately spiritual. And naturally drawn to spiritual things.
I learned the Christian technique of silent meditation known as Centering Prayer in a series of one hour worships in a similar way. There are a variety of different ways of praying and it is part of the role of a SD to resource you to find the method of prayer which works best for you. You pray as you can and not as you can't.
You are praying but you are just naming it differently to yourself.
I disagree. God gave St. Francis to history in a pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war. Francis was himself a soldier, and his father was a tradesman in cloth. Francis came from the very world he was then able to critique, but he offered a positive critique of these very systems at the beginning of their now eight centuries of world dominance. is complete and utter nonsense. It actually reminded me of the kind of nonsense right-wingers spout.
Eh? The idea that Francis stood at the cusp of Western Europe's transition into a more mercantile, utilitarian, and anthropocentric society that recognisably gave rise to our own is absolutely bog-standard. Historians have long debated (and will presumably continue to debate) the exact relationship between humanism (in the Renaissance sense), the growth of the merchant classes, and new conceptions of reason and reasoning. They've also debated quite a bit about the exact role of the mendicant orders in all of this, and whether they were more a symptom or a cause. But to assert that they all arose and co-evolved together is so commonplace it's banal.
With warfare I'm not so clear. Certainly it was getting better-organised, professionalised, and bigger in Francis' time; we're moving out of the age of courtly nobles smashing each other and into the era of the mercenary and citizen army. Here, though, I'm on less certain ground - I don't know what the standard account is here, or even if there is one.
Anyway, Rohr's writing is dramatically telescoped here: he's shrinking eight centuries down to a sentence and focalising it exclusively through St. Francis, so obviously a lot drops out of the mix. But it's not nonsense. Let alone 'complete and utter' nonsense.
That said, Charles Taylor sees Francis's emphasis on the goodness of the Lord's Creation as a powerful motivator toward study of the natural world in the High Middle Ages, and thus one of the first steps down the road to what he calls modernity's 'exclusive humanism'. So perhaps the atheists are St. Francis's inheritors as well.
The nonsense is that by associating rationality, functionality, and consumerism with "perpetual war" Rohr attempts to smear the last 800 years of human progress. Anyone who thinks the superstition-ridden twelfth century was in any possible way better than modern western society is a fool.
Human beings are all innately spiritual. And naturally drawn to spiritual things.
I learned the Christian technique of silent meditation known as Centering Prayer in a series of one hour worships in a similar way. There are a variety of different ways of praying and it is part of the role of a SD to resource you to find the method of prayer which works best for you. You pray as you can and not as you can't.
You are praying but you are just naming it differently to yourself.
I was not praying. My thought processes were very close to those I apply when writing fiction, with the exception that I placed myself in the scene and at all times my thoughts were directed inwards rather than outwards.
Colin I don’t particularly go for the idea of monastic living but I think you dismiss going to check out a monastery too quickly. Just because it is Christian does not mean it has no value. If only for architectural and artistic value.
Meditation as you have described it is not the same and cannot be compared. I don’t do Meditation of any kind Christian or otherwise. It just does not work for me. I have tried it though. There is value in visiting a monastery beyond any spiritual meaning
Colin I don’t particularly go for the idea of monastic living but I think you dismiss going to check out a monastery too quickly. Just because it is Christian does not mean it has no value. If only for architectural and artistic value.
Meditation as you have described it is not the same and cannot be compared. There is value in it.
Err. I've been to quite a few abbeys and the like. I had a job interview at Buckland Abbey and worked at Mottisfont Abbey (albeit that had been a private residence since the Dissolution. I've also visited, to name a few, Glastonbury Abbey, Whitby Abbey, Bayham Abbey (albeit a long time ago) along with Wells, Salisbury, St Davids, Ely, Exeter, Winchester, and Canterbury Cathedrals, and countless numbers of parish churches. I'm no stranger to church architecture.
I don't see any theists here denying that non-theists can have a sense of mystery, the numinous or spirituality in the broad sense of the term. Perhaps I'm missing something.
What I do see are non-theists saying, 'How dare you theists try to monopolise spirituality. Why, the audacity of it, there are even spiritual directors around who recommend spiritual practices associated with their own particular faith tradition! What utter, utter bastards!'
Would that be a fair summary?
Except that as far as I'm concerned the whole spiritual directors thing was dealt with ages ago.
I did see at least one theist here questioning whether atheists could be spiritual or believe in the spirit.
Sure, but as far as I understand it, they were interpreting 'spirit' in a more restrictive sense. I accept that goes some way towards fleshing out your complaint, and I'm not unsympathetic. We've just had Rublev apparently trying to appropriate your meditative experiences within the purlieu of theistic prayer.
So fair do's.
That said, I still don't see those theists who use the term 'spirituality' in a more restrictive sense out to deny you the right to pursue these things in your own terms nor deny that you have a sense of mystery and the numinous.
Comments
*written with smile, not confrontation!
Corrected quoting code to make it clear which words are whose. BroJames Purgatory Host
I don't know, Susan. I suppose if this was an atheist forum and theists came into every discussion insisting that the deity be brought into it and vowing to continue making these points until the day they die, that might start to get annoying.
In fairness, I can't think of an exact parallel for continued questioning of why "spiritual directors" are not open to a wider variety of option to suggest to people because non-theism is generally a minority or historically less popular view.
This discussion does remind me of M Scott Peck, who definitely did appear to advise clients to try different (possibly opposite) faith options depending on what he thought would help them. So that kind of view does exist.
But in the main, people working within a faith community understandably limit the options they suggest to those which they think are compatible with their faith.
I don't see why this is really a point of discussion.
I'm almost certain I never said that every atheist believes in the supernatural, far less that you do. I said it was a possibility. Not everybody has your unshakable faith in the unprovable and unscientific idea that all religious beliefs are 100% faith-driven and have 0% evidence. Let alone non-religious but spiritual or supernatural beliefs.
Thank you for editing - both here and on another post a bit further back.
The only evidence I have is the earliest writings of the church. In believing them to be a valid reaction to the actual incarnation I am exercising faith. Where can science come in?
If I may, astrology, past-life experiences, ghosts, palmistry, clairvoyance, Tarot, telekinesis, telepathy, curses, out-of-body experiences, fairies, witchcraft, spirit guides, spirit animals, guardian angels....
I don't believe in any of them but countless people do believe in some of them.
I don't make a distinction between the supernatural and 'spirit'. I understand them as perceptions of the same unknowable 'thing'. It follows that I think you are defining 'spirit' far too narrowly. In any case, Wikipedia's article on secular spirituality makes it clear that one can be spiritual without believing in any kind of 'spirit', at least as I think you are defining it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_spirituality
Wiki's article on spirituality starts with this:
The meaning of spirituality has developed and expanded over time, and various connotations can be found alongside each other.
Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man", oriented at "the image of God" as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world. The term was used within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit and broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life.
In modern times, the term both spread to other religious traditions and broadened to refer to a wider range of experience, including a range of esoteric traditions and religious traditions. Modern usages tend to refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live", often in a context separate from organized religious institutions, such as a belief in a supernatural (beyond the known and observable) realm, personal growth, a quest for an ultimate or sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with one's own "inner dimension"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality
I suspect you are trying to restrict 'spirit'to its older meaning but it is not how it is presently used.
I live in Glastonbury. I suspect it makes Stroud look like Suburbiton.
Richard Rohr - A New Way of Thinking
'Our worldview will not normally change until we place ourselves or are placed in new and different lifestyle situations.
You do not think yourself into a new way of living, you live yourself into a new way of thinking.'
Food for thought.
I like that sentiment but the article's reading of history is bonkers.
The sentiment resonates with me because I have noticed changes in my attitudes to nominally spiritual beliefs has changed since I moved to Glastonbury at the end of last year. If you are unfamiliar with Glastonbury, it is a small town in the west of England and a fount of New-Age beliefs. Pretty much every form of spirituality is available here.
I remain someone who believes there is no God, and will always, I expect, do so, but I've lost any hostility towards or defensiveness to spiritual practices. In particular a series of guided meditations centred on the Akashic Records has provided a surprisingly useful method of investigating my own thoughts and creativity.
What's troubling to me is that some people seem to think that Christian spiritual directors should be secular ones, rather than helping people to develop spiritually through Christianity as believers, which is a given as they have approached Christian spiritual directors.
The tangent has now moved to another thread, so hopefully there will no more gnat-straining here.
I thought that particularly tangent had been resolved some time back and the discussion had moved on.
I'm glad you read it. I was greatly struck by it this morning. And he's a very interesting contemporary theologian.
To take the example of monasticism the communal lifestyle, the pattern of the daily offices and the living out of the values of hospitality and reconciliation all gradually form a person into someone with an unselfish, compassionate and spiritually aware outlook on life.
The author of A Nun's Tale wrote that when she left her convent during WW2 and became a nurse these attitudes had become so embedded in her that her colleagues regarded her as a delightful revolutionary who practiced a quite new and unheard of way of life.
The same could be said of any communal way of living, such as at Findhorn, and is not dependent on a God-centred way of living.
What I took from the article is that the author thinks everything since the 12th century has gone downhill. In particular, the line [St Francis preceded] a pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war appears to conflate rationalism with consumerism and ignores the centuries of perpetual war that preceded St Francis. I can't help feeling that someone with such a skewed view of history (one could say a self-serving view of history) hasn't much of use to say about anything.
Corrected italics code. BroJames Purgatory Host
I think he makes a good point that it is the living it out that transforms your way of thinking rather than the other way around. Not everyone is called to be a monastic, but their values are significant for building stable and healthy communities. Which is another very topical subject.
For lay Christians the practice of daily prayer or the daily office, community worship and spiritual direction gradually develop an outlook which is formed by theological reflection.
The passage is such a huge misreading of history that yes, it does undermine anything else Rohr might write. Though having looked him up on wikipedia I applaud his attitude to the LGBT&Q community.
I would say the communal life is very eco-friendly and communal values are often healthy values. Unless my ideas are out of date, monastic communities are not self-sustaining in the long term because they require a supply of new recruits. Communal communities can be self-sustaining because children are born within the community.
But I agree that how and where you live can transform how you think and in part that's why I moved to Glastonbury.
I think that he is right to say that living it out is the key to spiritual transformation. And the most convincing witness of the reality of faith. There are two lovely Christian ladies in my church who go around unobtrusively making cups of tea for everyone and warmly greeting all the visitors. They are like the angels of the church.
Perhaps it would interest you to go on a day trip to visit a monastery. My favourite is Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire but it's a long way for you to go. But there is Buckfast Abbey which many tourists go to visit. And it makes nice beer and cider too.
Of course their faith is real. It's the thing they have faith in that's imaginary! And I have no desire for spiritual transformation.
What I find odd is that you are inviting me to go to abbeys but did not engage at all with my experience meditating on the Akashic Records. At present I have all the spirituality I desire.
I disagree. God gave St. Francis to history in a pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war. Francis was himself a soldier, and his father was a tradesman in cloth. Francis came from the very world he was then able to critique, but he offered a positive critique of these very systems at the beginning of their now eight centuries of world dominance. is complete and utter nonsense. It actually reminded me of the kind of nonsense right-wingers spout.
I had never heard of the Akashic Records but I have looked online and see that they are a library of vibrational energy. The compendium of all human thoughts sounds like the Logos of John 1.
Whom do you think is receiving your meditations on the etheric plane?
Would you mind getting into the habit of saying 'in my view' or 'for me' a little more often when you make statements like that? For me, God is not at all imaginary - and it's not hard to add those couple of words so as to keep open a space for discussion amongst people of very different views, which (for me) is one of the big strengths of these boards.
What I do see are non-theists saying, 'How dare you theists try to monopolise spirituality. Why, the audacity of it, there are even spiritual directors around who recommend spiritual practices associated with their own particular faith tradition! What utter, utter bastards!'
Would that be a fair summary?
Most bizarre tangent ever.
Eh? The idea that Francis stood at the cusp of Western Europe's transition into a more mercantile, utilitarian, and anthropocentric society that recognisably gave rise to our own is absolutely bog-standard. Historians have long debated (and will presumably continue to debate) the exact relationship between humanism (in the Renaissance sense), the growth of the merchant classes, and new conceptions of reason and reasoning. They've also debated quite a bit about the exact role of the mendicant orders in all of this, and whether they were more a symptom or a cause. But to assert that they all arose and co-evolved together is so commonplace it's banal.
With warfare I'm not so clear. Certainly it was getting better-organised, professionalised, and bigger in Francis' time; we're moving out of the age of courtly nobles smashing each other and into the era of the mercenary and citizen army. Here, though, I'm on less certain ground - I don't know what the standard account is here, or even if there is one.
Anyway, Rohr's writing is dramatically telescoped here: he's shrinking eight centuries down to a sentence and focalising it exclusively through St. Francis, so obviously a lot drops out of the mix. But it's not nonsense. Let alone 'complete and utter' nonsense.
That said, Charles Taylor sees Francis's emphasis on the goodness of the Lord's Creation as a powerful motivator toward study of the natural world in the High Middle Ages, and thus one of the first steps down the road to what he calls modernity's 'exclusive humanism'. So perhaps the atheists are St. Francis's inheritors as well.
Corrected quote attribution. BroJames Purgatory Host
I have now corrected the quote attribution. BroJames Purgatory Host
I have now corrected the quote attribution. BroJames Purgatory Host
I have now corrected the quote attribution. BroJames Purgatory Host
In my view, no one at all. There's no one there and there is no etheric plane. I find the meditations useful as a metaphor or personification of my own thought processes and as an aid to creativity and my imagination. God, in my view, functions for those who believe in God in much the same way.
The Akashic Record has many similarities with aspects of other beliefs, Christianity being but one, but crucially for me does not require belief in any deity.
Also the meditation workshop involved one hour long session once a fortnight which is completely different from what happens in a monastery.
I wouldn't say I was a spiritual person but it's nice to do something spiritual every so often.
Except that as far as I'm concerned the whole spiritual directors thing was dealt with ages ago.
I did see at least one theist here questioning whether atheists could be spiritual or believe in the spirit.
I will attempt to do so but I wonder how many here prefix or suffix their statements of belief with those words.
I learned the Christian technique of silent meditation known as Centering Prayer in a series of one hour worships in a similar way. There are a variety of different ways of praying and it is part of the role of a SD to resource you to find the method of prayer which works best for you. You pray as you can and not as you can't.
You are praying but you are just naming it differently to yourself.
The nonsense is that by associating rationality, functionality, and consumerism with "perpetual war" Rohr attempts to smear the last 800 years of human progress. Anyone who thinks the superstition-ridden twelfth century was in any possible way better than modern western society is a fool.
I was not praying. My thought processes were very close to those I apply when writing fiction, with the exception that I placed myself in the scene and at all times my thoughts were directed inwards rather than outwards.
Please stop misconstruing what I am saying.
Meditation as you have described it is not the same and cannot be compared. I don’t do Meditation of any kind Christian or otherwise. It just does not work for me. I have tried it though. There is value in visiting a monastery beyond any spiritual meaning
Err. I've been to quite a few abbeys and the like. I had a job interview at Buckland Abbey and worked at Mottisfont Abbey (albeit that had been a private residence since the Dissolution. I've also visited, to name a few, Glastonbury Abbey, Whitby Abbey, Bayham Abbey (albeit a long time ago) along with Wells, Salisbury, St Davids, Ely, Exeter, Winchester, and Canterbury Cathedrals, and countless numbers of parish churches. I'm no stranger to church architecture.
Sure, but as far as I understand it, they were interpreting 'spirit' in a more restrictive sense. I accept that goes some way towards fleshing out your complaint, and I'm not unsympathetic. We've just had Rublev apparently trying to appropriate your meditative experiences within the purlieu of theistic prayer.
So fair do's.
That said, I still don't see those theists who use the term 'spirituality' in a more restrictive sense out to deny you the right to pursue these things in your own terms nor deny that you have a sense of mystery and the numinous.