Spirituality

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Spirituality

Although the word "spirituality" was originally a Christian one, derived from the Pauline definition of whatever was under the influence of the spirit of God, its roots were planted firmly in the Jewish tradition of God's abiding presence. Until the twentieth century, religiousness and spirituality had similar meanings. In fact, many non-Western languages have no separate word for spirituality. Modernity, the growing distrust of authority, and the rise of secularism have contributed to shaping our present understanding of these words as different though related concepts.

The uncertainties of modernity have created problems that, for many, are no longer solved by traditional religious institutions. These concerns involve issues of identity, meaning, and a general loss of faith in authority and moral order. Authority's response to the attempts of 1960s activism to bring about peace, justice, and equality shocked many adolescents and young adults out of comfortable conformity. This period of disillusionment occurred at a time in the lives of baby boomers when people typically seek meaning and direction and contributed to a growing distrust of institutional authority and traditional leaders and solutions. But though many of these children of modernity were disillusioned and distrustful of tradition, they did not stop searching. A search for direction in a time of crisis is part of what makes us human.

In A Generation of Seekers, Roof (1993) argues that baby boomers are a generation of educated and active seekers who have rejected traditional religion and forms of worship. Having experienced estrangement from cultural institutions, this generation consists of middle-aged spiritual nomads on a search for personal meaning. Joined by the Generation Xers, they have developed a highly individualistic spirituality. Heelas (1996) points out that this personalized rather than institutionalized spirituality is to be expected in modernity, where a key aspect is a shift from an external locus of control to an internal one. When meaning and stability are no longer to be found in the world around us, the individual is forced to search within. Thus, for many, the self rather than the church or temple becomes the major spiritual resource. This gives spiritual meaning to some of the widely held concepts of modernity, such as the importance of autonomy, the search for authenticity, self-responsibility, and immediacy, and makes them accessible to all. The new, democratized spirituality can be seen as a cultural resource.

But if authority cannot be trusted, how does the self recognize truth? How does it strip away the layers of meaning embedded in our social institutions and in the ways we have been taught to think, behave, and be? For many, reason is not enough. No longer trusting what they have been taught to be true, these seekers turn to the spiritual truth that comes from their own subjective experience, and they privilege experience over belief and reason. Spirituality thus becomes both democratized and experiential.

The contemporary search for identity and meaning in experiential spirituality is holistic, grounded in lived experience and praxis rather than existing outside of it. Humans experience with their hearts as well as their heads, and with all their senses. This is where contemporary spirituality differs from the traditional otherworldly, ascetic practices of the past. If spirituality has reached a crossroads, as some theologians declare, this is where the road divides. One path, though individualistic and experiential, continues to be otherworldly, as can be seen in the popularity of "rapture" films of the 1980s, where Christians awaited the destruction of the world and their removal to a transcendent paradise. A further example is the world-denying spirituality of Heaven's Gate, where believers, some of them castrated, committed mass suicide in the belief that they would be transported to a spaceship above the earth's surface and take on "heavenly bodies."

Rather than otherworldly, the second path in the road is in and of this earth. Here, matter is imbued with spirit. The dualisms inherent in Cartesian philosophy are rejected. Spirituality is radically embodied. These dualisms are not limited to those of spirit and matter, mind and body. King (1993) points out that until fairly recently, a spiritual person was usually one whose spiritual practice included upholding and even reifying gender roles. The spiritual quest was traditionally a male journey, while for women spirituality often revolved around issues of obedience. Religion, as the guardian of this profoundly dualistic, otherworldly spirituality, saw the world, pleasure, and the human body as impediments ranging from distasteful to dangerous. However, beginning with the second wave of the U.S. women's movement in the 1960s, the cry "the personal is political" was quickly joined by "the spiritual is political." Feminist writers, artists, and theologians began to point out how the act of demeaning the body is profoundly linked to the societal demeaning and oppression of women. Male-dominated religions typically associate men, the mind, and culture, and place these in opposition to women, the body, and nature. When they also emphasize transcending the body and nature, the subjugation of women is given religious mandate.

While gender dualism is still much in evidence in many but not all groups' spiritual worldviews and practices today, the dichotomizing of spirit and matter is increasingly challenged. Pentecostalists, for example, affirm the body as a feeling, sensing self and privilege an experiential stance that is both communal and empowering. Creation spirituality places primacy on a nondualistic interconnectivity that is body-based and earth-based. New Age spirituality focuses on a radical holism that is an experiential, individualistic search, not for salvation but for self-actualization. Practitioners of Goddess or Gaian spirituality believe that both the body and nature are sacred and sources of spiritual revelation. Because of this, the divine is understood as immanent, and the erotic is celebrated as the interlinking life force in everything. It is creative energy empowered. From Native American spirituality these practitioners borrow the concept of the interdependent web of life in which humans are a very small part.

These groups are among the many that experience the divine in this manner. Different from religion though not entirely unrelated, contemporary spirituality is individualistic, experiential, embodied, nondualistic, and celebratory.

See alsoCreation Spirituality; Ecospirituality; Feminist Spirituality; Masculine Spirituality; New Age Spirituality; Spiritual Path; Spiritualism.