Often it is
tempting to go with the novel and the faddish in spirituality. Spirituality came onto the national
scene---particularly for non-Catholics---in the 1980s. Before that time, it would have been rare to
hear churches or church leaders talking about “spirituality.” Instead, one typically heard words about
religion, theology, etc. In college
students took religion classes and theology classes. Maybe Roman Catholic seminaries talked about
spirituality, but I never heard about it.
However, in
the 70s and 80s things began to change.
What led this change is less important than the impact of the
change. No doubt, part of the change
came about because of Vatican II which opened up Catholicism by lessening
Protestant fears of Rome. There were
other windows of change that were thrown open.
The impact was enormous.
One feature
of this that resonated with my own religious tradition, Quakerism, was a new
focus on experience. Spirituality tends
to start with human religious experience.
This is different than beginning with doctrine or theology. Certainly, one can move from experience to
doctrine. But it is harder to move in
the other direction. For example, I
might have an idea of who God is. I may
“believe” in God. But that doesn’t mean
I have ever experienced God. I may have
no first-hand knowledge of God. To put
it bluntly, I may “know about” God without “knowing” God.
Spirituality
begins with “knowing” God. Spirituality
developed as a way to talk about how we help others “meet” or “encounter”
God. It might deal with something like
prayer before dealing with theology. In
fact, things like spiritual disciplines become very important in the concern
with spirituality.
I like the
way Roger Walsh puts this in his book, Essential
Spirituality. This book deals with
what I like to call spiritual fundamentals.
Walsh says, “The ultimate aim of spiritual practices is awakening, that
is, to know our true Self and our relationship to the sacred.” Spiritual practices are about the
fundamentals of the religious life. They
should be the beginning point rather than ideas about God or Jesus or
whatever. I also like that Walsh tells
us that the ultimate aim of these practices is awakening.
Why is
awakening important? I would say not
only is it important; it is crucial.
Let’s look at the phenomenon of awakening. What does it presuppose? Awakening presupposes that we have been
asleep, unconscious or otherwise out of it.
Awakening is a “coming to.”
Awakening is the process of coming out of the night of sleep into the
dawn of a new spiritual day. Awakening
enables me to become aware and, even, begin to pay attention to the potential
spiritual journey that I am choosing.
As Walsh
indicates, awakening enables us to come to know our true Self. This is a mighty concept about which books
are written. Obviously the true Self
stands in contrast to the false self.
The illusion of the false self is that it exists when, in fact, it does
not. The false self is a construct of
our ego and has us pretending to be someone other than who we really are.
The spiritual
journey is a journey away from the false self toward the true Self. Why is one spelled with a capital “S” and the
other with a small “s?” It is one way to
indicate only the true self is also an awakening into the realization that our
true self is also a participant in the Divine Self. This participation transforms the self into
the true Self. We discover that we are
no longer our own. We realize and
embrace the fact that finally we really are God’s. We are God’s children---God’s beloved
children.
The spiritual
journey is the journey to knowing our relationship with the sacred. This journey does nothing except to make us
saints. A saint is one who is in
conversation with the sacred and fully engaged in the sanctification process. That last phrase, sanctification process,
sounds like a page out of some holy-roller tradition. For a long time, I did not like the language
of sanctification. In some sense, I
feared it. But I was still asleep to its
meaning and potential for my own life.
Now I see and
accept that the spiritual journey is by definition a sanctifying journal. I figure we are either on the path of
becoming saints or sinners. There is no
middle ground. Only those of us stuck in
our false self assume there is a middle ground---the choice not to become a
saint, but certainly convinced that one is not a sinner.
I want to
awaken. I want to take on the spiritual
fundamentals so that I can begin to walk the way of sanctification and become a
saint. I don’t think this will
necessarily make me perfect. It will
enable me to become a child of God---one of the beloved. I can imagine no greater treasure than
this. But you can’t bank on it.
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