RE: A Religion for the Non Religious
July 14, 2015 at 9:54 am
(This post was last modified: July 14, 2015 at 9:55 am by Whateverist.)
Okay one impression my skimming left was the emphasis on stair cases and how there is always more we can achieve, consciousness-wise. I would have found such an analogy more exciting in my twenties. There are times in your life when you embrace growth, peaks and becoming. But it isn't because I'm washed up and cynical that I'm now critical of that perspective.
I now view the transcendence project as a little escapist. I owe James Hillman for this idea. He distinguishes between "soul" and "spirit". Don't worry, it isn't anything literal. But the impetus to climb the highest peak and put all of life's cares and woes in perspective -or at least make them look small down there- is at its root, escapist. Insight is good, it just isn't the only good. Spiritual questing and transcendence are the draw of the spiritual. From the rarified heights of the spiritual, what we are is no longer bound by being a human with a particular history and point of view.
By contrast soul embraces the particular. It takes what and who we are very seriously, and not just as inconvenient details to be gotten past. If spirit is about achieving the heights, then soul is about embracing the swampy quagmires on Dagobah. That is where Luke meets Yoda, confronts the inescapable but also finds inner power.
So the emphasis on staircases in the article identifies it as an enterprise of spirit. I know something about that too. Exhilarating it is, but ultimately sterile and lonely too. I would never abandon the swamp entirely. I embrace the animal I am and don't hanker for what is 'higher'. Been there, done that, got something but now it's good to be home.
I now view the transcendence project as a little escapist. I owe James Hillman for this idea. He distinguishes between "soul" and "spirit". Don't worry, it isn't anything literal. But the impetus to climb the highest peak and put all of life's cares and woes in perspective -or at least make them look small down there- is at its root, escapist. Insight is good, it just isn't the only good. Spiritual questing and transcendence are the draw of the spiritual. From the rarified heights of the spiritual, what we are is no longer bound by being a human with a particular history and point of view.
By contrast soul embraces the particular. It takes what and who we are very seriously, and not just as inconvenient details to be gotten past. If spirit is about achieving the heights, then soul is about embracing the swampy quagmires on Dagobah. That is where Luke meets Yoda, confronts the inescapable but also finds inner power.
So the emphasis on staircases in the article identifies it as an enterprise of spirit. I know something about that too. Exhilarating it is, but ultimately sterile and lonely too. I would never abandon the swamp entirely. I embrace the animal I am and don't hanker for what is 'higher'. Been there, done that, got something but now it's good to be home.
