WPenner's Blog

The Spiritual Elites

One difficulty I see with the spiritual elites' game is its elevation of those with the "correct" thinking, experiences, actions, and so on over those without that blessing. This accommodates the amazingly few (the remnant, the elect, the chosen, etc.) with such experiences, and leaves the majority alienated (unelected, damned, heathens, gentiles, etc.).

This creates an everlasting craving for something that is only talked about, not achieved, for those who can't see through the facade. Those who assert having such experiences find the situation terrific. It fuels an enormous market in trinkets, books, donations, meetings, retreats, conferences, seminaries, and so on across all the religious or spiritual systems world-wide.

Just imagine if all the spiritual seekers found what they're looking for within their preferred systems. The market would disappear, as seekers would no longer seek.

Like the market for skin creams and other potions, the spiritual marketplace trades in hope. We all intrinsically believe we are just millimetres away from greatness. That we are, as Jeffery Kripal writes in the book Superhumanities, Superman, even if stuck living out a Clark Kent experience. ¹

Crass commercialism in spirituality and spiritual elitism are two forces pushing people to identidy as "spiritual; not religious". Others go further, accepting only the material as reality. Both of these responses represent criticism and a retreat, whereas I hope to create something useful.

From Exclusion to Universalism

In order to move beyond criticism to creation, a key problem is the definition of "spirituality", or more pointedly, the lack of definition. Bregman², notes how Unruh, Versnel and Kerr found 92 definitions for spirituality, which they reduced down to 6 basic types.

Felix Adler goes further, describing the common ways of thinking about the concept of spirituality as "muddy thought and misty emotionalism".³ Bregman suggests that the fuzziness may be a feature, rather than a bug, since the word gets pressed into service in too many contexts.

Or perhaps the fuzziness allows spiritual elites to play the game longer by not defining their terms. LaCour, Ausker, and Hvidt ⁴ point to researchers who define spirituality as having the characteristics of positive human values such as calmness, inner peace, and so on, who then conduct research to find that spirituality produces such characteristics. They describe the cheat as merely using two different scales to measure the same thing and then finding a correlation.

The exclusivity surrounding so many spiritualities fails to compel me. Faced with a system where few ever reach enlightenment, salvation, meeting aliens, or other goal they claim worth striving for, I simply disengage. When the game is monstrously stacked against the vast majority of humanity by definition, I choose not to play.

Such exclusivity is unnecessary, as everyone already has everything they need to access to spirituality at all times and places: no mystical or supernatural experiences, no special equipment or knowledge, no special relationships or permissions required.

As an aside, my version of open spirituality stems from one ancient Jewish vision of the times of Moschiach (partially derived from the experience of the exodus, the Red Sea's crossing, and receiving the Torah). Just like those experiences where the entire nation experienced the revelation, this version of end times imagines a world wherein everyone knows Gd without need for instruction, because everyone just knows.

It seems to me we are within spitting distance of experiencing that reality today. But it requires being much more clear-eyed about the spiritual world's composition.

One definition of "spiritual" without a supernatural component is "anything unquantifiable."

This definition puts the spiritual outside of material reality and science, dependent as it is on the measurable. Yet it does not reference the supernatural. Some examples to illustrate the point: we can quantify friends, but not friendship; we experience justice, art, and love when we see it, but can only measure laws, cases, objects, or lovers; we can compare the justice one person experiences to another, but never with exact quantities or percentages.

By defining spirituality as anything unquantifiable, I don't mean it's the only way to define the term, nor exclude a few people's deeply meaningful experiences. Rather, I want others like myself who don't have such mystical or esoteric experiences to stop feeling they're somehow second-class citizens of the transcendent.

Accessing the Transcendent

Once we define spirituality as "anything unquantifiable", transcendence becomes easy to experience. Since our physical experience is quantifiable, everything unquantifiable becomes transcendent. Recognizing such casual access to transcendence itself inspires awe.

Beyond attention, what is the action that allows us to experience a spirituality as simple as "the unquantifiable"? Connection.

Adler, for example, describes connection, seeing things in relation to each other, as a type of sanity. He advocates setting aside time daily to see our affairs in relation to other things and especially to the highest ends we can imagine.

Connection is one of the most basic human desires, one we are increasingly cutting ourselves off from as we focus instead on experiencing artificial reality mediated through our devices. While connection happens in multiple ways, emotionally and intellectually are the most easily accessible. We naturally desire to connect with anything and everything: from other humans to plants and pets. We spontaneously connect with ideas, groups, values, experiences. And many find their highest desire is to connect with the transcendent reality described as Gd.

Spirituality is often described in terms of meaning, human values and emotions. Spirituality as unquantifiable through connection recognizes these experiences and provides a predictable pathway to them.

Most people describe their moments of greatest meaning deriving from the personal, emotional, intellectual connections to the people and things around us and above us. We find great joy and pleasure when subsumed in shared experiences of an athletic contest as much as a political contest, a concert, or religious service. And the same experiences are also available by connecting with dry and boring things: law, philosophy, science, the patriarchy, to name just a few.

These are all connections with realities which transcend our material experiences. All these and many more are spiritual experiences are available by opening ourselves to the possibility.

Eliel Saarinen coaches designers to think through problems by considering the "next larger context". For example, when designing a chair, think of the entire room. ⁵ When designing our lives for spirituality, the same sort of concept applies. Instead of focusing on the quantifiably material, connect with the next larger context.

With just a modicum of attention and intention, we can live, moment by moment, day by day, aware of the spiritual surrounding us. This form of spirituality does not require a guru, priest, pastor, rabbi, or other coach. No need for ritual, extensive discipline, travel, latest book, or trinket. No gods, ghosts, angels, demons, supernatural energy spikes, lights, or other inexplicable experiences required.⁶