Spiritual challenges? Surely, spirituality is something you either feel or you don't? Something more profound than mere religious ritual and doctrine... The spiritual search should not stand as a challenge; surely it comes naturally? And yet, in our materialist, physicalist-reductionist world, having a spiritual worldview can be a challenge...
As a child, I felt that spiritual realm in moments of transcendence, as the sun streamed in through the living-room windows, highlighting motes of dust in the air. Or experiencing that strange sense of familiarity from another time and another place upon looking at a picture in a book. As a child, however, I was unable to define it. Church-based religion offered an inadequate explanation of what I felt spiritually.
As an adolescent I came to reject religion as overly dogmatic, claiming to know all the answers. However, as a parent, I reconsidered religion, this time more instrumentally, as something socially useful in the process of raising young children. Today, I have become critical of all religions for the way they all tend to co-opt the innate human yearning for the numinous, the metaphysical, the infinite and eternal for the purposes of social control.
And so we come to a fork in the road. Accept religion and outsource your spiritual curiosity to an institution that claims to have all the answers. Reject religion and there is the danger of falling into the abyss of materialist consumptionism, narcissism and status obsession. Wanting external affirmation for your ego.
There is an alternative that neither submits to dogma or materialism, and it is based on affirmation of the experience that no one can deny – the experience of consciousness.
I do have a core sense, a deep intuition, that there is more to reality than matter and ego, that consciousness is fundamental, that our subjective experience of being alive and sentient is at the heart of everything, and that this experience is somehow connected to the whole of creation. This intuition is gaining definition as I get older, though the older I get the further away it seems. The journey to complete understanding will take a myriad of lifetimes. That very notion is a challenge.
As biological entities, we are insignificant on the Cosmic scale of time (13.8 billion years) and space (90+ billion light years). However, as observing consciousnesses (or souls), we are – each and every one of us – subjectively the epicentre of the Universe.
Grasping this paradox is a fundamental spiritual challenge. Casting aside the Ego, as it becomes less necessary to project oneself upon the human status hierarchy, while maintaining the sense of self as a curious, observing awareness requires focus. [Why am I writing this? For the ego-satisfaction of page-view metrics? Or for the discipline of staying focused on reaching a tighter definition of what I really hold to be true?]
The more vociferously any religion insists that it – and only it – holds ultimate truth, and all unbelievers are damned, the more I shun it. I am deeply wedded to the insight I received a few summers ago that everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way.
Many do not seek God; fine. I am not attempting to change their minds, though I'm more than happy to enter into a discussion on spiritual matters with them should they wish to converse. A spiritual challenge. Others are on their own pathway to God, different to mine; perhaps it is a pathway that lies within the framework of an established religion. Fine! Again, I will not attempt to change their mind. In spiritual conversations with them I focus on a search for common ground, seeking that which unites us spiritually, rather than digging up doctrinal divisions.
Assuming that you too are on a path to spiritual growth, to enlightenment, to a deeper understanding of reality, to greater wisdom – should you consider your journey to be a challenge? Or a series of challenges? Or does it all come naturally, with ease?
Moments of connectedness with the infinite and eternal. Moments when you feel consciously plugged into the Cosmos. Moments of awareness that you belong to far more than just your physical body. My challenge is to seek such moments, notice them when they happen, and learn from them, and grow from them; Lent helps me focus my mind.
Lent 2025: day 25
Say farewell to materialism
Lent 2024: day 22
Ego vs. Consciousness – the Individual vs the Collective (Pt II)
Lent 2023: day 22
God, Aliens and the Unfolding Universe
Lent 2022: day 22
The Good Lord and the Environment
Lent 2021: day 22
Muscle Memory, Mindfulness and Metaphysics
Lent 2020: day 22
Repeatable Metaphysical Experiences
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