Spirituality is a highly individual and contextual aspect of our inner most selves. Our spirituality can (and should be) fluid in its expression and progressive development. Our beliefs should be something finely honed, analyzed, challenged and questioned throughout our life times. How and what we choose to believe is usually a complicated amalgamation of experiences, social conditioning, education, familial and cultural background. What I do find strange about spirituality is our ability as a species to constantly revitalize the same narrative and believe it's something new, improved and better.
Reflecting on the tendency of humankind to reinvent age old narratives I find myself asking; why is it that even New Age Philosophy just repackages the Christian narrative? Yes, it does add in new buzz words, an altered vernacular and new final destination but I guess I find myself confused. Doesn't the term New Age imply and promise a novel and unique approach to life's most popular question and most highly sought after answers? On closer examination, however, we cannot seem to get out of a dualistic mindset even from a New Age perspective.
Christianity and New Age beliefs (as do many world religions) hold the same vision in a round about sense. They both posit that we are spiritual beings trapped in a material body. In extension, living in this material body is only a debased and vulgar incantation. Our bodies are crude matter that needs to be escaped in the promise of heaven or in altered vernacular, nirvana, ascension, 5D (the list goes on). In the quest to rise above our humanity the new age vernacular simply replaces the words spirit and soul with that of energy and frequency, heaven with ascension etc. Again, if we really think about it, we see the presentation of the same story emerging time and time again through the lens of most religious/spiritual dogma. The same story that as far as I'm concerned hasn't served us very well. But what if we started to tell a different kind of story?
I can't help but wonder how much of the sacred we miss and overlook everyday within these mindsets, spiritual and religious practices. What if all that is around us, that which we see every day, is the sacred hidden in plain sight? David Foster Wallace once said (and I loosely quote here), that often the hardest realities to see are those that are right in front of us. What are we missing by continually focusing on an after life or elevation to some other existence. It seems to me, from what I can see, this thinking leads to a variety of problems.
The kinds of problems that seem inherent to a dualistic type of thinking is a privileging of one existence over the other. Our material beingness and in extension those things that are considered to be in the natural order of things are seen as lesser existences. Could this be some of the reasons why we feel we are masters of our domain and above and separate from nature? Do these the implicit beliefs act as harbingers of destruction of our planet and extinction of species? Does this thinking lead us to the habit of commodifying our planet as we fail to see precisely the sacred reality all around us? I, for one, am ready for a new story. How about you? If so why not start with the video I shared below.
The beautiful world our hearts know is possible
Have a great day!
Kobie (Existential Hippy)