Religious, Spiritual, Mystical
I remember when I was a kid. Things were a lot better. For starters the quality of television and food was better. People weren't always on diets, trying to get everyone else to diet and taking the taste out of my food. There were no trans fats back then. Actually, there are no trans fats now. Trans fats are a fiction invented to ruin food. Television was entertaining and taught by example using well planned, intelligent exposition. They didn't try to teach kids with psychology, meaning assuming everyone is retarded and doesn't realize there is only one item presented before them to choose from and so is given several minutes to think over the nonproblem while condescending adults on screen pretend the problem is harder than it actually is while providing phony reassurance. No cartoon characters tried to throw alternative lifestyles down our throats, or PC values, or teach us how to speak Spanish because English was intolerant and we had to cater to illegals.
And there were values, and discipline, and love. Since then the world has really gone to hell. People can no longer spend five minutes in silence. Instead they must play with their music boxes and ever more annoying phones. They must call up the people whom they will speak with in person in only five minutes so as to announce their arrival and prepare an itinerary of useless things to do.
And when we are not being dumbed down, told to abandon our cultural heritage in favour of a usurper's, presented with impossible standards of beauty in the name of the Almighty Dollar (stretch marks are ugly, dark circles around the eyes are ugly, hair here, there, everywhere is ugly! Why can't I decide for myself what I think is attractive and what is not?), we are told our God must go too. We are presented with a science that is the business arm of hard core materialists. We are presented with zealous atheists trying to convert us (or deconvert us, I'm not sure) or told we believe in a "mythic sky god," whatever that is, Mathfails never responded to my question.
And then we are told that more people are spiritual but not religious. What are they doing? They are chasing cars with no idea of what to do should they actually catch one. They are spiritual epicureans, tasting bits and pieces of whatever and turning it into fluff. They are drinking soy pudding and vodka and wheat grass juice (which is as disgusting as it sounds). They are forming drum circles and prancing around in their neohippie tunics, chanting about peace and love and not practicing either. They are trying to take materialist science, like string theory and many worlds, theories openly antagonistic to spirit, and wedding them to talk of goddess or the divine feminine, trying hard as hell to stay away from Christianity or masculinity. Their practices are spiritually vacuous, or worse, involve wisdom without compassion. Sure, they can sit under a tree for days but they're still heartless jerks, communist sympathizers, "spiritual atheists" (whatever the hell that means), or smug elitists.
More important than a Bill Gates. More important than a thousand workers in their prime is that little old lady, blind and crippled who is the storehouse of wisdom and virtue. She who has given of herself selflessly all her life and now, in one last act of compassion, has granted us the opportunity to give of ourselves to serve her for our own benefit, is who is truly important.
More important than all the material knowledge in the universe, than any potential technological progress is the potential we must grant ourselves and others to grow spiritually. The sun will fade, the Earth will be no more, but spirit is forever.
Ours is a society whose economy is bankrupt because we are morally bankrupt. A few who are corrupt, who have fallen to avarice, can destroy the lives of millions who are too comfortable with their cel phones and their reality television to stand up and take notice; to stand up and do something to fix the state of the world.
Being spiritual and not religious is like having a car and no map or a finely choreographed fight scene with no explanation of how the characters got into that mess and why it is significant. To be spiritual and not religious is to have content with no context for which to frame it. Not only is the content, the practice, important, but the context is important or you won't understand anything, and important too is the teacher. You literally need someone who is well qualified and has crossed the gulf before to drag you kicking and screaming into authentic mystical realization. No fancy words, no ego stroking, or getting in touch with your inner brat of a child. Sit down, shut up, get over yourself. As a great Scotsman once said, if you want to touch the sky you better first learn how to kneel.
-Dee
