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re: What IS "Spirituality"?
ER — (archived)

Spirituality is the recognition of the infinite. It manifests itself to the human mind as beauty. That which is beautiful, is transcendent, is beyond physical reality, is spirituality. Beauty is the realization of the complexity and interconnectedness of human existence and its relation to the physical world, and to other minds than ours. Watching a bird build it's nest, a child at play, a pretty girl putting on her makeup, the sea in a storm, the Milky Way on a dark night, a good workman using his hands to create something useful and beautiful; these are spiritual experiences that are subjectively much more than the underlying mechanical objects and operations involved.

For most, spirituality is the awareness of a supernatural controlling influence, and even more so, one that can be negotiated with, cajoled, convinced into working for us. This is why I have always rejected the presence of spirituality in religion. I have always seen religion, what we normally associate with spirituality, as a system that allows us to bargain for our own happiness, a quid pro arrangement--prayer for success, sacrifice for luck: tell your fortune and cheat your fate. It is a sycophantic bargaining with the universe I find distasteful and degrading and which diminishes our humanity and cheapens our relationship with the cosmos.

I remember once bursting into tears listening to a chamber orchestra's rendition of the 3rd Brandenburg. The performers were high school students, and they were having a rough go with JSB's intricate sine waves and Hamiltonians of sound, it was really beyond their level of skill. But they were trying so hard, and I knew they had rehearsed it exhaustively, and they were giving it everything they had because they loved the music as much as I did. I knew the music well, and I could fill in their little mistakes, but I could also sense the other, and I was so proud of them and that remarkable old Kraut who had written down those divine notes three and a half centuries earlier. I felt honored and privileged to be there to witness those kids attack Bach's impenetrable fortress with everything they had, win or lose, and to share it with me. We were all in there together, sharing something across the centuries and across the room at the same time. I loved them infinitely.

It just hit me. Spirituality is also the recognition of being human, and that we too, everyone of us, is a universe unto himself, and that we have every right to be here. Every single one of us.

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