How Can We Talk About Our Spiritual Experience?
It seems to me that we need to speak about (or otherwise represent) our spiritual experiences. In most places it is hard to do this without embarrassment.
I find it hard to talk about spirituality.
Finding a Language to Speak
My feeling is that there isn’t a language we share and that is widely understood. I can see lots of different languages: Christian, Buddhist, New Age and so on. Spirituality is one of the most talked about topics.
In the media these languages are presented side by side, and we have the sense that these are options we can choose between. It is as if we go shopping for our spirituality.
This is usually not the way that people experience their spirituality. Spirituality can mean dealing with the depths of who we are. There can be a sense of discovering who we are — that I now see what has been me all along (but that I didn’t understand or was blind to). Spiritual traditions speak of waking up or dying and being re-born. This is a very different feeling to going shopping.
Spirituality can have a feeling of inevitability. There can be the sense that we discover ourselves and reality; this is a very different experience to choosing among options or creating something. There are times when we feel challenged by our values — called upon to be something newer, to transcend the past (not just finish with it or use it).
This confusion of languages brings its difficulties. There is much misunderstanding and confusion. Consider the way the words ’self’ and ‘ego’ are discussed in the blogosphere; it seems that there are many different understandings of these words.
This confusion of languages may also bring benefits. It seems to me that we now have the opportunity to talk to people from all kinds of spiritual traditions and even those who don’t have one. The remarkable possibility is that we can discuss our spiritual experience and communicate across traditions. It seems to me that this is a remarkable and important time in our culture, a time when (compared to the past) there is the freedom to explore our experience and the spiritual dimensions of it. This leads to the remarkable possibility of developing a language that can cross the different spiritual traditions.
How We Find the Language
It seems to me that we need to speak about (or otherwise represent) our spiritual experiences. In most places it is hard to do this without embarrassment. (In the US, I think this is far more possible than in the other Anglo-Saxon countries.) It is only in this way that we can avoid just repeating the past.
I think we will need to use poetry at least as much as prose. It is likely that we will be telling our stories for a long while before we will be able to analyse them. There will also be much music and visual art as well.
We will need to become sympathetic and respectful listeners (and viewers and doers). Our language will need to stay close to our experience.
Beliefs?
Religion in the West has often been presented as a matter of belief. This belief is often taken to be intellectual.
I think this leaves out much of our experience: the delights of the senses, the connecting with others through emotion, moments of transcendance and intimacy, to name only a few. This is unfortunate; it is a huge reduction of our lives and our spirituality. There have always been protests against this reduction — not only philosophically but also through various art practices and spiritual disciplines. There seems to have been a constant desire for spirituality to embrace all the aspects of our lives. The idea that spirituality is about belief is at best a partial truth: spirituality is about experience.
That spirituality is a matter of our experience seems not to be understood by those who attack religious traditions. The new militant atheists attack belief — in the West the focus is naturally on the dominant religious tradition, Christianity — and then don’t understand why the ‘believers’ don’t convert. Who can blame them? The religious tradition has been presented this way by its adherents (or at least a good number of their official representatives).
I think that our minds are part of our experience too. I don’t see why intellectual work is less spiritual than other kinds. But the spiritual traditions are far more about experience than about reflection upon it.
This post I hope is just a preliminary. I would like to hear about your spiritual experiences and whether these experiences have led you to any particular tradition; have you drawn on various different traditions, or even formulated your own? What aspects of your life do you regard as spiritual? Are there some parts of your life that you don’t see as spiritual? I look forward to hearing your comments.
Other articles by Evan Hadkins
This article was last reviewed by Dr Greg Mulhauser, Managing Editor on Monday, 19th October 2009. You can leave a reply below.
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20 Responses (Including 2 Discussion Threads) to “How Can We Talk About Our Spiritual Experience?”
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Evan Hadkins11
Thanks Jean, like you I think spirituality is about experience. Thanks for your comment.
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12
cheerful monk quotes campbell:
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive”
exactly. i have to confess that to this day i cannot understand why people get so concerned about the meaning and purpose of life. the fact that we are here is undisputable, much more real (more experiential?) than the why’s and what-fors. rather than speculating on the unanswerable question of “why?”, we can use our intellectual and emotional resources to figure out testable answers to “how?” how do we best use the life we have? describing, or attempting to describe, spiritual experiences can be very helpful there.
(having said this, i’d like to temper my indictment of the “why”. it seems to me that the motivation for the question is important. the motivation that i find difficult is the one that is seeking an answer in order to plan the course of one’s life. a motivation that comes out of sheer metaphysical or scientific curiosity would be much more acceptable to me.)
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Evan Hadkins13
Hi Isabella, I like that you distinguish the different senses of “why”. I think the concern for meaning arises from experiences of dissatisfaction – needing to do things not linked to our motivation/needs (like much of schooling). Usually our meanings and needs are spontaneous when we are in the situation that our action is unrelated to these then our focus will become the meaning of what we are doing.
I’d like to know whether you and others find this true to your experience.
Thanks for your comment.
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14
sorry, i don’t quite understand this sentence: “Usually our meanings and needs are spontaneous when we are in the situation that our action is unrelated to these then our focus will become the meaning of what we are doing.”
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Evan Hadkins15
Hi Isabella, reading that sentence again I’m not surprised. What I meant was that usually our actions flow from our needs and desires and make sense (have meaning). We also have curiosity – a need to investigate and find out, to make sense of our situations.
When we are in situations where this usual process is inhibited then the focus shifts. If we are in school and can’t learn what we are interested in at a particular time (my experience of schooling) then our focus can shift to a need for meaning. I vividly remember us students in our high school maths class why we had to study one particular subject – the answer was, “To pass the exam”. In these kinds of situations our focus can shift to the need for meaning.
I hope this puts it more clearly. (I think my fingers must have disconnected from my brain to produce that other sentence.)
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16
what you’re saying then is that the more one’s actions and objects of attention are removed from or irrelevant to one’s needs and interests, the more there is a possibility to pay attention to meaning.
in other words, “hey, why am i doing this, this doesn’t have anything to do with me!” then when one notices that other people have a similar experience, the more general general question arises, “why are WE doing this?”
however, the real culprit, in my opinion, is not a GENERAL lack of meaning or purpose (”what is life all about?”), it’s a SPECIFIC lack of meaning/purpose (”why am i/are we doing this nonsense?”). and as you say, often the reason is quite clear (”to pass the exam”). the “why” is then often used out of fear because the next question really should be, “do i really want to do this? what are the consequences of stopping or continuing?” again, those would be questions that look at and lead to experience, rather than explanation. and experiences typically look more scary than explanations.
which goes for spirituality, too. it’s much safer to read books about buddhism than to practice it :)
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Evan Hadkins17
As you say Isabella, experience is more scary than explanation. Thanks for your comment.
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18
[...] a while ago we talked about the lack of scripts for talking about mental illness (at least in “polite society”), and before that we had a conversation about how uncomfortable it can be to engage in peaceful communication. and now evan took up the topic the other day and asked how can we talk about our spiritual experience? [...]
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Evan Hadkins18.1
Thanks for the mention spiritual language.
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