r/InsightDialogue

What do we mean by the word “spirituality”?  

Often it seems to be related to crystals, chakras, auras, ghosts or the worship of dangerous, violent gurus.  And these behaviors seem to be motivated by some desire for happiness that might be acquired via magical means.

And the more sceptical amongst us are turned away by this kind of behavior.  Spirituality looks like dangerous nonsense, like a form of confused, weirdly oriented greed.

Would it be helpful if we knew what we meant by the word?  Would an understanding of the concept be useful?

Here’s a modern definition : Spirituality relates to the search for meaning and purpose, connection to the sacred, the transcendent, or to the inner-self.  And we can also say that it's got something to do with the “spirit”.

Unfortunately that's still a long way off from useful - at best it's vague; nearly word salad.  

A useful definition of Spirituality includes an understanding that Spirit is an old word which could be replaced by mind or consciousness.  That by sacred meaning and purpose we mean the highest essence and values of humanity - and that which needs to be transcended is the incoherent (ie. harmful) behavior of our inner-self (ie. psyche).

Such an understanding could transform the Spiritual mind from a movement of greed based in the supernatural, to a movement of curiosity akin to an interest in Psychology, self-awareness or the Philosophy of mind.

As an aside : meditation is a concept that is shared by both the woo and the rational branches of spirituality - for some meditation is a magical means to an end, for others it's the state of choiceless awareness - an allowance for compassion and intelligence moment to moment.

We are living in our own subjective reality based in thought - and our distorted way of perceiving the world, our irrational behavior or intellectual dishonesty has been studied for a while now.
Many of us are familiar with concepts like the : Dunning-Kruger effect, confirmation bias or cognitive dissonance.   All of which are to do with our primitive and confused relationship with ideas.

The Dunning-Kruger effect can be summarized as the feeling of knowledge and understanding that occurs when we adopt a narrative.  For example when we feel that we understand the subject after merely hearing one short story about quantum physics.

Confirmation bias is our natural tendency to notice everything that confirms that my belief is correct, and to ignore the stuff that proves me wrong.

Cognitive dissonance is the problem of holding beliefs that contradict each other, and the emotional stress this creates. - eg. wanting to smoke and not wanting to smoke at the same time.

In dialogue, as in everyday life we are affected by our psychological relationship with ideas.  Here’s a picture summarising the results of a study about how we come to consensus when we deliberate about our opinions.

Basically, the story we hear first, and the story we hear the most, feels most real to us.

Hi all, I’ve written a short book called Unbecoming: A mirror, not a method. It’s a series of vignettes of everyday characters acting out the patterns of becoming.

The intention of the book was to encourage one to turn in on oneself to look at their own patterns of thought, instead of using their patterns of thought to look.

The collapse of the observer is one of the most crucial element of K’s teachings. It’s invisible while it’s operating. Which is why I designed the entire book as the observer acting out, to expose its patterns, as opposed to offering another method or a path which can so easily be hijacked by the observer.

It’s available on Amazon in paperback and kindle: https://amzn.eu/d/0cZF6uFZ

Much love, X