Types of spirituality..

MehGuy · Jul 18, 2020

Inspired by my other thread. While I left the definition of spirituality vague and open to personal interpretation, I am curious about the different types of spirituality out there.

In my mind there are two base ones. One I call hyper emotional empathy that has to do with concepts such as love and caring for others. While the other has more to do with submission to a higher power. Both themes you can find within Christianity and other popular faiths.

From my personal experience as a theist I leaned more to the former. Personal reasons led me to develop a great distaste for submission and I even actively choose to purge as much of it as I could in my spiritual life. Interestingly despite grasping spirituality intuitively as a kid, I never even engaged in submission back then. There were a few instances of my Christian life where curiosity got the best of me and I allowed myself to embrace the submission side of Christianity. I will report the spiritual experience was quite different than my usual emotional empathetic one. One big difference is that emotional empathy is easier to control. You meditate to feel it, and if you no longer want to feel it the spirituality is easy to opt out of. While with submission I found that I had uncontrolable after effects for hours.

Submission also produces a "drunk" like feeling. Which the phrase "drunkenness' in the spirit" probably refers too. While I have limited experience with this spirituality, it is one where I think it might be possible to obtain trippy experiences with and possibly see visions. Things that I was not very adapt at with my Christianity due to avoiding submissive spirituality.

One might wonder what I mean by emotional empathy and spirituality. I think one example is that one can feel spiritual when with a big crowd of people, like a rock concert. You are able to achieve this with your mind if you can see God within everything. Just as a being with a crowd of people can overload your emotional empathetic senses, seeing God everywhere can do the same. Which, when it comes to empathy themes of love and caring for others are quite relevant. Although to be fair, maybe submission requires empathy, although might be the more cognitive kind and isn't quite the central theme as well.

I am curious about the types of spiritualty others see, and perhaps practice themselves? Understandable this can be a difficult topic to explain (especially with me and my language disorder), but we can try our best. Given the difficulty of the subject many of us have probably come up with custom language to best describe our experiences.

awitch · Jul 18, 2020

I'm also going to strongly reject submission to higher powers. I believe the gods want us to succeed as a species. We have to work through our issues and overcome our obstacles on our own. They aren't going to do it for us, nor are they going to dictate how we should. But they are cheering for us.

Regarding loving and caring, I think those should be independent of spirituality. Humans are social creatures and it's in our best interest for the survival of the species. Loving and caring should just be a given.

A big crowd of people is more likely to spark my anxiety. Now a big flock of birds would be a spiritual event - knowing these tiny creatures with limited intelligence and language can coordinate by the thousands and fly halfway across the planet multiple times just to survive is pretty awe inducing.

Occams Barber · Jul 19, 2020

MehGuy said:
Inspired by my other thread. While I left the definition of spirituality vague and open to personal interpretation, I am curious about the different types of spirituality out there.

In my mind there are two base ones. One I call hyper emotional empathy that has to do with concepts such as love and caring for others. While the other has more to do with submission to a higher power. Both themes you can find within Christianity and other popular faiths.

From my personal experience as a theist I leaned more to the former. Personal reasons led me to develop a great distaste for submission and I even actively choose to purge as much of it as I could in my spiritual life. Interestingly despite grasping spirituality intuitively as a kid, I never even engaged in submission back then. There were a few instances of my Christian life where curiosity got the best of me and I allowed myself to embrace the submission side of Christianity. I will report the spiritual experience was quite different than my usual emotional empathetic one. One big difference is that emotional empathy is easier to control. You meditate to feel it, and if you no longer want to feel it the spirituality is easy to opt out of. While with submission I found that I had uncontrolable after effects for hours.

Submission also produces a "drunk" like feeling. Which the phrase "drunkenness' in the spirit" probably refers too. While I have limited experience with this spirituality, it is one where I think it might be possible to obtain trippy experiences with and possibly see visions. Things that I was not very adapt at with my Christianity due to avoiding submissive spirituality.

One might wonder what I mean by emotional empathy and spirituality. I think one example is that one can feel spiritual when with a big crowd of people, like a rock concert. You are able to achieve this with your mind if you can see God within everything. Just as a being with a crowd of people can overload your emotional empathetic senses, seeing God everywhere can do the same. Which, when it comes to empathy themes of love and caring for others are quite relevant. Although to be fair, maybe submission requires empathy, although might be the more cognitive kind and isn't quite the central theme as well.

I am curious about the types of spiritualty others see, and perhaps practice themselves? Understandable this can be a difficult topic to explain (especially with me and my language disorder), but we can try our best. Given the difficulty of the subject many of us have probably come up with custom language to best describe our experiences.

I see people on CF and Christians generally regularly referring to spirituality and I have to confess I have no idea what that means. I have never had any experience which I could vaguely describe as spiritual and I seriously don't know what you're all going on about. I wonder if it isn't just a made up word to describe a vague emotional reaction.

My lack of spirituality (if spirituality actually exists) may be connected with being on a very even emotional keel. I rarely get sad or angry or wildly happy or suffer any extremity of emotion. I tend to be pragmatic and analytical with a dash of optimism. I am not unhappy.

If any of you ever get any spare spirituality please bottle it and send it over. I'm curious to know what it tastes like.

OB

Quid est Veritas? · Jul 19, 2020

Occams Barber said:
I see people on CF and Christians generally regularly referring to spirituality and I have to confess I have no idea what that means. I have never had any experience which I could vaguely describe as spiritual and I seriously don't know what you're all going on about. I wonder if it isn't just a made up word to describe a vague emotional reaction.

My lack of spirituality (if spirituality actually exists) may be connected with being on a very even emotional keel. I rarely get sad or angry or wildly happy or suffer any extremity of emotion. I tend to be pragmatic and analytical with a dash of optimism. I am not unhappy.

If any of you ever get any spare spirituality please bottle it and send it over. I'm curious to know what it tastes like.

OB

Well, it isn't fake. It has real neurobiological correlates and has been shown to be associated with good mental and physical health. Here is a review article on it, if you are interested:

Current Understanding of Religion, Spirituality, and Their Neurobiological Correlates

Why you apparently lack it, I would assume that would be merely lack of development thereof, perhaps associated with a failure to recognise a spiritual impulse when it crosses your way. I am sure some people are naturally less spiritual than others. However, humans are naturally intuitive theists as children, so a lot of schooling is actually about suppressing innate spirituality as causal factor to focus on the Empiric:

SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

Quid est Veritas? · Jul 19, 2020

It seems to me there are essentially Motivational, Cultural, and Cognitive Intuitive forms of spirituality - although I am cribbing this off a study I read arguing for why people fall to disbelief.

Essentially, some seek an existential meaning and perceive a spiritual impulse from that, which perhaps broadly corresponds with your Empathic view, which is Motivational from awareness of mortality, lack of control and from a social impulse. Your submission, may be cultural or perhaps intuitive, if someone is brought in awe before what he does not understand. The cultural has to do with learned practices and cultural prestige - like meditation - and the Intuitive more a sense of Teleological purpose or mind perception.

That said, I don't think Spirituality can really be subdivided in this manner. It is an organic whole, and all these things play a part to some extent. We can see certain factors, but each has to do with the other, and just like no organ system can long survive in the human body without the rest, aspects of each has to be present or spiritual qualia would wither, I think. They have ears but do not hear, eyes but do not see.

Robban · Jul 19, 2020

I would say in Swedish there is not so much unclear about what spirituallity is.

Ande=spirit, ande also=breath.

Not sure but before at 21:50 just before the shipping forecast the was the evening

Andakt, ten minutes of andlig-spiritual food for the soul.

Nowdays it is called "Thoughts for the day" or something like that,

not sure I do not listen to the radio.

Otherwise I would say other worlds/realms,

Having both feet on the ground but heart in heaven.

Where then is heaven?

Could be,

"What the eye has not seen"

Occams Barber · Jul 19, 2020

Quid est Veritas? said:
Well, it isn't fake. It has real neurobiological correlates and has been shown to be associated with good mental and physical health. Here is a review article on it, if you are interested:

Current Understanding of Religion, Spirituality, and Their Neurobiological Correlates

Why you apparently lack it, I would assume that would be merely lack of development thereof, perhaps associated with a failure to recognise a spiritual impulse when it crosses your way. I am sure some people are naturally less spiritual than others. However, humans are naturally intuitive theists as children, so a lot of schooling is actually about suppressing innate spirituality as causal factor to focus on the Empiric:

SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

I could be spiritually underdeveloped or suppressing innate spirituality or perhaps it could be that I have no particular need for it.

Since the article ties spirituality firmly to religion then, by it's own definition, someone who does not have a religious faith cannot have a spirituality which can be defined. What the article is really looking at is the impact of religion with spirituality firmly lodged under the religious umbrella.

I fully accept that religion provides a number of benefits to it's adherents. Since I don't accept the existence of a god I see these benefits as akin to placebo, that is: real benefits based on a false premise.

This, from the Introduction, immediately vaporises any concept of spirituality outside of a religious context. I accept that religious thought may employ different neurological pathways. That isn't exactly startling.

By contrast, spirituality has had more varied definitions, ranging from the original meaning tied closely to religion, including religious lives that reflect the faith’s teachings (such as Mother Theresa or Mahatma Gandhi), to the more recent broader and nonreligious applications of the term to include life purpose and meaning, connection with others, peacefulness, comfort, and joy.1 The latter definition has been criticized as being meaningless and tautological, with the consequence that it raises significant methodological problems for research.1 For the purposes of this article, the original meaning of spirituality as tied to religion—namely, to people whose lives reflect the teachings of their faith—is used both for methodological utility and to maintain the distinctiveness of the term.

Your 'Sage' article confirmed that religious thinking is intrinsically a feature of childish thinking as are imaginary friends:

A review of research on children's concepts of agency, imaginary companions, and understanding of artifacts suggests that by the time children are around 5 years of age, this description of them may have explanatory value and practical relevance.

1 Corinthians 13:11 is particularly relevant here:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

OB

Quid est Veritas? · Jul 19, 2020

Occams Barber said:
This, from the Introduction, immediately vaporises any concept of spirituality outside of a religious context.

Well, yes, I don't think you can be spiritual yet not religious. That has always struck me as remarkably silly. However, religion comes naturally to humanity - as historically humans have been almost universally religious, and children are also naturally so. As you freely admit, and empirically proven, religion has marked physical and mental benefit. That you ascribe that to placebo effect, that is just a pure assumption on your part - and not born out by research into religion and health, as fundamentalism and devotional practices, and the institutional nature of a religion, makes clear measurable differences to its effects, while this should be neglible if it was down to placebo effect. As a false premise, usually Science invokes pragmatic effects to support the validity of the premise, so again there is little ground beyond opinion to say that.

Here is another relevant review article on the neurologic mediation of religious activity:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10339-009-0261-3

Occams Barber said:
1 Corinthians 13:11 is particularly relevant here:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

That is called taking something out of context. So something you naturally do in childhood, that has marked benefit, is put aside merely because it is associated with childhood? That is like arguing that older people shouldn't run, in spite of its clear health benefits, because it is a childish thing to do.

Rather, I'd say I agree with Matthew 18:3 - rather be as little children.

MehGuy · Jul 19, 2020

awitch said:
A big crowd of people is more likely to spark my anxiety. Now a big flock of birds would be a spiritual event - knowing these tiny creatures with limited intelligence and language can coordinate by the thousands and fly halfway across the planet multiple times just to survive is pretty awe inducing.

I am the same way, ever since I was a kid I have dealt with extreme social anxiety. An overload of people's presences. Sometimes I wonder if that is a common side effect of being sensitive to emotional empathy. While I do not have any data, it would not surprise me if people higher on the spiritual spectrum were more often than not introverts, lol.

MehGuy · Jul 19, 2020

Occams Barber said:
I see people on CF and Christians generally regularly referring to spirituality and I have to confess I have no idea what that means. I have never had any experience which I could vaguely describe as spiritual and I seriously don't know what you're all going on about. I wonder if it isn't just a made up word to describe a vague emotional reaction.

From my experience I would not say its' a vague emotional reaction (unless I'm missing what you mean by that). Honestly it can be quite powerful and intoxicating.

My lack of spirituality (if spirituality actually exists) may be connected with being on a very even emotional keel. I rarely get sad or angry or wildly happy or suffer any extremity of emotion. I tend to be pragmatic and analytical with a dash of optimism. I am not unhappy.

Probably. Most likely there were times in your life where you felt things similar to how other's describe spirituality, but you're mind thus far has no reason to have such a category. Part of spirituality is just perception.

Curious though, you were one of those kids who became atheist early on?

I do have one strange experience in kindergarten. The teacher was talking about different religious views of an afterlife. She ended with "and atheists believe there is no life after death" and I remember thinking to myself.. "yeah that one is probably true".. which was out of character for me at the time.. If religion wasn't so emotionally beneficial for me, I'd probably have become an atheist years before I actually did.

Occams Barber · Jul 19, 2020

MehGuy said:
From my experience I would not say its' a vague emotional reaction (unless I'm missing what you mean by that). Honestly it can be quite powerful and intoxicating.

"Powerful and intoxicating" is not something I can recall ever experiencing nor can I recall ever being overcome by emotion. I used the term vague because I didn't know how else to describe something I've never experienced (and never want to experience).

MehGuy said:
Probably. Most likely there were times in your life where you felt things similar to how other's describe spirituality, but you're mind thus far has no reason to have such a category. Part of spirituality is just perception.

Curious though, you were one of those kids who became atheist early on?

I can honestly say that I've never experienced what you're describing. From the time I was old enough to think about God I've never seen a reason to believe or understood why other people believe. I can understand how the concept of gods happen in an academic sense but how modern people can continue to believe is beyond me.

MehGuy said:
I do have one strange experience in kindergarten. The teacher was talking about different religious views of an afterlife. She ended with "and atheists believe there is no life after death" and I remember thinking to myself.. "yeah that one is probably true".. which was out of character for me at the time.. If religion wasn't so emotionally beneficial for me, I'd probably have become an atheist years before I actually did.

I have an analogous experience. As a toddler I was parked in an orphanage for a year while my mother was ill. It was run by nuns - Catholic or Anglican - I'm not sure. While the limited memories I have of the place are not entirely unpleasant I sometimes wonder if it acted as a kind of vaccine conferring an immunity against Christianity

OB

cloudyday2 · Jul 20, 2020

Occams Barber said:
I see people on CF and Christians generally regularly referring to spirituality and I have to confess I have no idea what that means. I have never had any experience which I could vaguely describe as spiritual and I seriously don't know what you're all going on about. I wonder if it isn't just a made up word to describe a vague emotional reaction.

I am also confused by the way people define "spirituality". I think the definition in the OP by @MehGuy overlooked people like me who consider themselves "spiritual" because we are fascinated by the possibility that spirits and other paranormal effects exist and would like to have some evidence - even evidence that only satisfies the experiencer.

There is also a desire for meaning in addition to curiosity. For example, I often hope that God exists and that my life has fulfilled God's plan in some way, because that would make me feel better about disappointments in life.

I have no interest at all in spirituality as a way to feel things or give my life meaning UNLESS it is actually based on a reality of spirits. (And I don't mean to criticize people who do make the feelings and meaning their primary goal without being as concerned about the reality of spirits. There are many atheists who legitimately claim to be spiritual, because they are like that.)

So that's a different perspective on spirituality. It's a question and a curiosity and a hope rather than a faith and a practice. (Not claiming that my perspective is the only legitimate perspective of course, but I didn't want it to be overlooked.)

dlamberth · Jul 20, 2020

There's also gnosis. Which is knowledge from direct inner experience and a different trajectory different than "Christian Gnostics". There's Mystical spirituality which is gnostic in it's approach. Being aware of and flowing with/in the Life Force running through all of this Creation is a Mystical spirituality as is sinking into the Consciousness of all. Be like melting snow is a spiritual image to think about. For some when they reach out into Consciousness they experience and are aware of a bee hive of Consciousness bubbling up in Nature around them. I'm having a hard time labeling this as a "type" of spirituality though.

MehGuy · Jul 20, 2020

Occams Barber said:
"Powerful and intoxicating" is not something I can recall ever experiencing nor can I recall ever being overcome by emotion. I used the term vague because I didn't know how else to describe something I've never experienced (and never want to experience).

Wow, that is interesting. Consider yourself lucky, while intense emotions are fun you often pay the price for them. You might enjoy experiencing them once. The ones I know won't suck you in like that. Despite all the complications I do consider myself grateful that I was able to experience a spiritual life.

I can honestly say that I've never experienced what you're describing. From the time I was old enough to think about God I've never seen a reason to believe or understood why other people believe. I can understand how the concept of gods happen in an academic sense but how modern people can continue to believe is beyond me.

Yeah, I do not mean to be offensive towards anyone but I have a hard time believing peers my age (30) still believe in god. One of my sisters seemed to have a reverse path in life as me. She considered herself agnostic during her young teenager days, but now as an adult she's a Christian (albeit a pretty liberal one), and now I consider myself an atheist (agnostic). That one perplexes me more.. but I've seen it from time to time. Some pretty seemingly active atheists become Christians later one. Some of these people are quite seemingly lucid and intelligent too.

I have an analogous experience. As a toddler I was parked in an orphanage for a year while my mother was ill. It was run by nuns - Catholic or Anglican - I'm not sure. While the limited memories I have of the place are not entirely unpleasant I sometimes wonder if it acted as a kind of vaccine conferring an immunity against Christianity

OB

Sorry to hear about that. My father was raised Catholic (went to catholic school) and he said it drove him to atheism for a time.

Quid est Veritas? · Jul 21, 2020

MehGuy said:
Yeah, I do not mean to be offensive towards anyone but I have a hard time believing peers my age (30) still believe in god. One of my sisters seemed to have a reverse path in life as me. She considered herself agnostic during her young teenager days, but now as an adult she's a Christian

That was my experience too. I used to be an Atheist as a teenager and into early adulthood, until converting later in life. I have to admit I never experienced anything I'd have considered 'spiritual' as a teenager. Later, I did have spiritual qualia once I started investigating the religious facet of life, and then realised that I had indeed had proto-spiritual experiences in my earlier life, though I would never have considered it as such at the time.

I think this is easily explicable from a neurologic viewpoint. When things aren't used, the pathways to support it atrophy. That is why adults speaking non-tonal languages struggle to acquire it, but adopted children that had heard it in infancy, even if before their own language development, do so more readily, for instance (this was the basis for the erroneous idea of racial memory). We all know if we don't use something, we forget it; but likewise, if you don't use the faculty to discriminate objects in detail from the surroundings, you lose that too - so herders or hunters are less susceptible to optical illusions. I see no reason why this would also not be so for Spiritual perception, and every reason to expect it so - from personal experience, as well as from the neuroscience. As that review article I posted earlier describes, we cannot really demonstrate whether God arises from the mind or whether the mind perceives Him, but similar to those authors I think that a false dichotomy. Children are primed to be religious, as I already discussed, but if this dissipates for some reason, their pathways to experience the spiritual probably will as well. In Biblical terms, a generation that stops it ears; that has ears but cannot hear, eyes but do not see.

Robban · Jul 21, 2020

MehGuy said:
Inspired by my other thread. While I left the definition of spirituality vague and open to personal interpretation, I am curious about the different types of spirituality out there.

In my mind there are two base ones. One I call hyper emotional empathy that has to do with concepts such as love and caring for others. While the other has more to do with submission to a higher power. Both themes you can find within Christianity and other popular faiths.

From my personal experience as a theist I leaned more to the former. Personal reasons led me to develop a great distaste for submission and I even actively choose to purge as much of it as I could in my spiritual life. Interestingly despite grasping spirituality intuitively as a kid, I never even engaged in submission back then. There were a few instances of my Christian life where curiosity got the best of me and I allowed myself to embrace the submission side of Christianity. I will report the spiritual experience was quite different than my usual emotional empathetic one. One big difference is that emotional empathy is easier to control. You meditate to feel it, and if you no longer want to feel it the spirituality is easy to opt out of. While with submission I found that I had uncontrolable after effects for hours.

Submission also produces a "drunk" like feeling. Which the phrase "drunkenness' in the spirit" probably refers too. While I have limited experience with this spirituality, it is one where I think it might be possible to obtain trippy experiences with and possibly see visions. Things that I was not very adapt at with my Christianity due to avoiding submissive spirituality.

One might wonder what I mean by emotional empathy and spirituality. I think one example is that one can feel spiritual when with a big crowd of people, like a rock concert. You are able to achieve this with your mind if you can see God within everything. Just as a being with a crowd of people can overload your emotional empathetic senses, seeing God everywhere can do the same. Which, when it comes to empathy themes of love and caring for others are quite relevant. Although to be fair, maybe submission requires empathy, although might be the more cognitive kind and isn't quite the central theme as well.

I am curious about the types of spiritualty others see, and perhaps practice themselves? Understandable this can be a difficult topic to explain (especially with me and my language disorder), but we can try our best. Given the difficulty of the subject many of us have probably come up with custom language to best describe our experiences.

I think "spiritual" can be misleading when used to describe an experience,

I see it often as describing something from the darkside.

For example, seance, contacting the dead.

It can mean many things.

We all have a spirit it is part of the make up of our soul.

Spirit/Ruach is the emotional self and "personality".

God fearing and Godly would I think be more better to use.

It tends to direct the eyes upwards and not downwards.

cloudyday2 · Jul 21, 2020

Robban said:
I think "spiritual" can be misleading when used to describe an experience,

I see it often as describing something from the darkside.

For example, seance, contacting the dead.

It can mean many things.

We all have a spirit it is part of the make up of our soul.

Spirit/Ruach is the emotional self and "personality".

God fearing and Godly would I think be more better to use.

It tends to direct the eyes upwards and not downwards.

Another perspective might be whether a person is sensitive to his/her "God-shaped hole".

In the Bhagavad Gita, a person might be in one of three modes:
(1) ignorance - where the person is driven by immediate gratification and feelings such as an addict
(2) passion - where the person is driven by future gratification such as a hard-working achiever
(3) goodness/enlightenment - where the person sees either type of gratification as ultimately worthless

Robban · Jul 21, 2020

cloudyday2 said:
Another perspective might be whether a person is sensitive to his/her "God-shaped hole".

In the Bhagavad Gita, a person might be in one of three modes:
(1) ignorance - where the person is driven by immediate gratification and feelings such as an addict
(2) passion - where the person is driven by future gratification such as a hard-working achiever
(3) goodness/enlightenment - where the person sees either type of gratification as ultimately worthless[/QUOTE

First time I have heard of a God shaped hole.

Is it some kind of sales tactic?

cloudyday2 · Jul 21, 2020

Robban said:
First time I have heard of a God shaped hole.

It's a common expression in Christian circles. It describes how a person sometimes has a psychological need for God, so it is like God is the missing piece in that person's jigsaw puzzle.

A lot of people seem to be perfectly happy without God. Also a lot of religious people seem to be perfectly happy without God, and that is why they so easily transition from believer to atheist IMO.

Robban · Jul 21, 2020

cloudyday2 said:
It's a common expression in Christian circles. It describes how a person sometimes has a psychological need for God, so it is like God is the missing piece in that person's jigsaw puzzle.

Could be easily mistaken for the grave,

hole in the ground and all that.

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