Blog o’ Gnosis

I’ve spent most of my life thinking about different kinds spirituality and which kind mine is. I don’t think I’ve spent any time at all until today with the question of what exactly spirituality is. What makes a person leading a spiritual life different from a person leading any other kind of life?

I am not a theologian, but I have been working outside in a cold wind that has chilled me to the bone in the past couple days. Perhaps that is why today I felt the need to contemplate what spirituality is when stripped of all its religious and visionary trappings. When all the language and mumbo jumbo are peeled away, what remains?

Obviously, a person trying to lead a spiritual life must first believe that spirit is something which exists, and that it is a good thing to have. She might have a definition of what spirit is, and how (or whether) an individual’s spirit interconnects with the spirits of other things. But these are all ideas. What behaviors, if any, make the daily life of a spiritual person different from anyone else’s?

Today, I think spirituality is an agreement. An agreement with ourselves to consistently make the better of any two choices. An agreement to cause the least harm, no matter what we do. An understanding that our presence affects the world, and we are here to polish that light within us until it shines its brightest.

In exchange we understand that living a spiritual life brings its rewards, most notably a stronger spirit. Always choosing the better of two options is very good exercise for the spirit. It is also a lot of work, and a huge commitment.

At this moment I am feeling the weight of that commitment, and the difficulty of doing the better rather than the easier thing. I turn to Carl Jung’s famous quote about free will and fate: “Free will is the ability to do gladly that which I must do.” Our actions have consequences, and so does our inaction. Knowing what is worth defending, and choosing not to defend it at the moment when we have that opportunity is an error which inevitably does harm.

It seems to me that much of our spiritual searching boils down to an effort to figure out what kind of light we have and how to measure harm. If we are lucky, we will find ourselves in the company of others who remind us of our agreement. Luckier still, in one another’s company we become aware of all the choices we have at any given moment, so that we can pick the better of them. With the best of luck we do all this, and do it gladly.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Spirit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.