Inclusive Spirituality - A Positive Approach

Inclusive Spirituality - A Positive Approach

“It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received.  It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters”

 – Amit Ray, Meditation: insights and inspirations.

1. God works in a Mysterious Way – A Story on positive approach

A Frenchman, who got into the wrath of Napoleon and was thrown into a dungeon, his friends and family, it seemed, had forsaken him and forgotten his existence.  In utter loneliness and despair, he took a stone lying in the corner of his cell and carved out the words: Nobody Cares!

One day, a green shoot appeared through the cracks in the damp and moist floor of the dungeon.  Gradually, it began to grow and reach out upwards, towards the light in the tiny window at the top of the cell.  The prisoner watched its progress. Despite being given only just enough water to survive, he would save some of it pour it onto the blade of green until it blossomed into a healthy plant with a beautiful blue flower bud.  As the petals of the blue flower delicately opened and the sunlight lit up its gently bent head, the solitary prisoner shed a silent tear of joy and gratitude.  He walked up to the wall, crossed out the words he had previously written and replaced them with the words; God Cares! 

2. Spirituality – An Introduction

‘Spirituality’ is a word that, in broad terms, stands for lifestyles and practices that embody a vision of human existence and of how the human spirit is to achieve its full potential.  In that sense, ‘Spirituality’ embraces a positive approach, whether religious or secular, to the meaning and conduct of human life.  It is difficult to define “spirituality”. It can be concluded as spirituality is associated with the concept of spirit; something that is non-material. common understanding of spiritual person is a person having qualities like humility, selflessness, forgiveness, unconditional love towards human and other living things.

2.1 . Spirituality – An Origin

Spirituality originated in Christianity with the Latin adjective spiritualis, or ‘Spiritual’, which translated the Greek adjective pneumatikos as it appears in the New Testament.  Importantly, ‘The Spiritual’ was originally not the opposite of ‘bodily’ or ‘physical’.  Rather, it was contrasted with ‘fleshy’ which meant worldly or contrary to God’s spirit.  So the distinction was basically between two approaches to life.  A ‘Spiritual person’ (1 Corinthians 2: 14-15) was simply someone who sought to live under the influence of God whereas a ‘fleshy’ person was concerned primarily with personal satisfaction, comfort or success.   The contrast between ‘Spiritual’ and ‘worldly’ remained common until the European middle ages when an important intellectual shift took place. This resulted in a sharper distinction between ‘Spiritual’ and ‘bodily’.  The noun Spirituality in Middle Ages simply meant the clergy.  Subsequently it first appeared in reference to ‘the Spiritual life’ during the 17^th century.  It disappeared for a time but re-established itself at the end of the 19^th century in French, of which the modern English word ‘Spirituality’ is a translation.

3. Spirituality – An “Interconnectedness” of Reality

Spirituality gives the feeling of an “interconnectedness” of reality.  This interconnectedness can allow a person to feel that nothing happens without a purpose. This can be a practical solution for the pain and problems which happen in our day to day lives.  A person can come to a conclusion that problems, failures, pain are shared human experience, one that draws all humanity together.  Thus, a person does not have to feel lonely.

4. Spirituality outside Theological and Religious field

Spirituality is a striking feature of our contemporary age.  This stands in extreme contrast to a decline in traditional religious belonging in western countries.  During the last decades of the twentieth century, the concept of spirituality moved well beyond its origins in Christianity, indeed beyond religion itself.  There is now a broadly based quest for spiritual experience and spiritual practices expressed in a variety of ways.  As an area of study, spirituality increasingly finds a place outside theology and religion in such academic fields as the social sciences, psychology, philosophy and gender studies.  The theme of spirituality also regularly appears in professional worlds and trainings such as health care and nursing, counseling and psychotherapy, social work, education, business studies, the arts, and sports education.

4.1. Spirituality – Scientist’s Opinion

Scientists agree there is an essential relationship between prolonged life and spiritual practices.  There was a study conducted to analyze morality in relation to spirituality and found that people with an ingrained view of a higher power lived about 18 percent longer than those without spirituality.  Thus spirituality is nothing but having a healthy intake for a healthy life, it is an essential part of everyday life.

4.2. Spiritual Traditions and Religious Doctrines

Most of the religious doctrines and spiritual traditions promote the practice of forgiveness, and for good reason. On the one hand, a person releases blame and negative feelings, he/she receives lower blood pressure,  a better immunity, greater cardiovascular health, and a fuller, more vibrant life.  On the other hand, if a person releases anger, he/she receives a high heart rate, high blood pressure and respiration increase, which affects that person a lot. Thus, spirituality paves a way to rebuild and also helps a person to look the purpose in a clear way.

4.3. Religious Doctrines – An Inbuilt Positive Approach

Spirituality makes more practical healthy decisions both to body and mind. Spiritual traditions hold high rules regarding strict kindness to the body.  A person is meant to avoid unhealthy behaviors.  In Christianity, one of the seven deadly sins is “gluttony” which is nothing but over eating. In Islam, consuming alcohol is strictly forbidden.  In a nutshell, religious doctrines focuses toward a decrease in violent and criminal activity which can also be called as an inbuilt positive approach. 

5. Is Spirituality Individual or Social?

Spirituality relate to a sense of ultimate values in contrast to an instrumentalized attitude to life.  This suggests a self-reflective existence as opposed to an unexamined life. The contemporary approaches to Spirituality provoke two critical comments.  First, is spirituality essentially individual or is it also social?  If we explore the internet, the majority of the available definitions of Spirituality emphasize inner experience, introspection, a subjective journey, personal well being, inner harmony or happiness.  Second, is Spirituality more than a useful form of therapy concerned with promoting everything that is comforting and consoling! In that sense, is spirituality individual or social?

6. Spirituality - An Alternative Way   

The contemporary interest in Spirituality is a part of broader process of cultural change during the late 20^th century.  After a century of world wars, the end of European empires, a big tide of social change in the world regarding the equality of women and the status of ethnic minorities, inherited religious and social identities or value systems came to be seriously questioned.  As a result, many people no longer see traditional religion as an adequate channel for their spiritual quest and look for new sources of self-orientation.  Thus ‘Spirituality’ has become an alternative way of exploring the deepest self and the ultimate purpose of life.  Increasingly, the spiritual quest has moved away from outer-directed authority to inner-directed experience which is seen as more reliable.  This subjective turn in western culture has created a diverse approach to spiritual experience and practice.

6.1. Spirituality so far – Exclusive or Inclusive?

Humans are the being in this planet, which can transmit ideas of right versus wrong, good versus bad, dark versus light, etc.  They can even utilize symbolic language to talk about a higher realm, a higher order.  These languages yield even ideas of demons, fairies, gods, angels, heaven and hell.  Different languages and different communities have built several different ideas about their spiritual worlds.   When we flip into the pages of history, all through the years people have fought wars and killed millions in order to keep their spiritual world ideas intact.  One community’s spirituality can hold completely different ideas than another community’s ideas. In this perspective, when we delve on the space of religion and spirituality, spirituality has been exclusive rather than inclusive.

7. Inclusive Spirituality - A Positive approach

Inclusive spirituality is not just an attempt it is the need of the hour.  Learning to live and think as Christians in our time requires learning to engage with understanding the other faith just like understanding planets that revolve around sun, religions are revolving around God.  It means that inclusive spirituality is purely, a positive approach which understands and respect, Spirituality from all the dimensions. It gives an opportunity to shape a world where we respect other religious friends with an open heart and mind. As a matter of fact, it builds a positive relationship that does not gives a negative impression “nobody cares” but a positive impression “God cares”. As Amit Ray rightly points out, It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received.  It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters.  So, let us move towards an inclusive spirituality!