This chapter wouldn’t be complete if I neglected to address matters of the spirit. When I was a younger religious devotee, I observed many aspects of religious law and rituals, but inherently knew there was something more meaningful. I never pursued it until my college years, after reading Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death, which I will reference more in another chapter. About what we call the “spirit” – what is this being? I was told I have one, but how does spirit work? How does one manipulate or control it? How does one differentiate it from other ideas and forms? So many philosophies and religions attempt to define it, shape it, put it into a box.
Before I proceed any further, it seems necessary to preface that words used to describe and explain spirit can be faulty and rather abstract. Truly, matters of spirituality must be experienced only firsthand. When one tries to verbalize or record their experience of a spiritual phenomenon, words limit the full essence of that meaning. In most sacred texts, cultures record their understanding and experiences of spirituality. When embracing spirituality, one can read all “religious” texts and find that they are only a secondary source of the primary spirit experiences. For example, I can read the Vedas, but unless I have my own sense of spirituality, this ancient and sacred Hindu text will not address or supplement anything for me, except for basic knowledge of the religion. The same with all spiritually inspired texts. The texts themselves cannot administer salvation; they can only help guide towards the Truth. The spirit, then, is only subject to primary experiences and is not likely to experience the same experience as the sacred texts record. Nonetheless, the official texts do a great job at capturing the secondhand perspective of a spiritual revelation.
The spirit is the original entity of self, of which we are initially not conscious. When it is not awakened or even not inhabiting a body or organ, it yet has life and duty. It seeks value, a name, a purpose, or for some other reason, to be conscious and awake. This would be the time when spiritual journeys beckon for us to begin.
Spirit is such a mystery of abstract thought. Its ways are not known by mathematical formula or physical law; rather it is known by spiritual nature, by intuition or faith.
Click Follow to receive emails when this author adds content on Bublish
Comment on this Bubble
Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.