WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?

             I was reading a book (much sought after and widely read) written by Ronald Rolheiser, titled SEEKING SPIRITUALITY. Since the Title of my blog is "A Thirst for Meaning," What Rolheiser seems to say is that Everyone is seeking - seeking for wholeness (fullness of meaning). "seeking" is a virtue/vice that we find in the young people of today. So I thought What Rolheiser has to say about spirituality is applicable for the youth of today. He says that Everyone has a spirituality - a spirituality that can either integrate a person or disintegrate a person. Hence, even a terrorist has a spirituality (my addition). The following is a summary of a chapter on "What is Spirituality?"

To answer the question what is spirituality, Rolheiser unearths one fundamental and foundational thing ‘desire for wholeness’ which implies that spirituality is rooted in desire. Desire is stronger than satisfaction. It is the straw that stirs the drink. The desire for wholeness is expressed in all forms – literature, poetry, art, philosophy, psychology and religion. They all name and analyse this desire. For example Freud would say that this desire has such characteristic that everyone is hopelessly overcharged for life. Carl Jung says that it is not an energy that is friendly. Doris Lessing says that it is a voltage within us. Rolheiser says that there is a certain wild energy that we need to access and understand more fully what leads us to unrest and he asks the question have we understood it correctly. The new age gurus say that we are affected by the planet’s movements. He says that everyone feels a dis-ease and an unrest.  Everyone talks about it, of course wording it differently. This dis-ease is expressed as ‘a congenital all-embracing ache’, ‘an unquenchable fire,’ ‘restlessness,’ ‘longing,’ ‘disquiet,’ ‘appetitiveness,’ ‘a loneliness,’ ‘ a gnawing nostalgia,’ and a ‘wildness that cannot be tamed.’ At the outset Rolheiser says that Spirituality is what we do about this desire.

What is spirituality?: Plato lays out a broad spirituality when he says that we are on fire, our souls come from beyond, the soul through its longing and hope creates fire in us and draws us back towards itself. Augustine borrowed from platonic tradition and continues – “you have made us for yourself Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’ Having made that distinction, Rolheiser says that Spirituality is a misunderstood concept in English and the word ‘spirituality’ is a common phenomenon. At the outset he clarifies the notion of spirituality by carefully examining the misunderstood side of it.

Spirituality was understood as esoteric, exotic and not something that issues forth from the bread and butter of ordinary life. It was understood as a paranormal, mystical, pious, churchy and optional. If spirituality is understood in this way it is a tragedy, says Rolheiser. He then says that everyone has a spirituality, either life-giving one or destructive one. There is not choice precisely not to have a spirituality because we are fixed into life with certain madness and spirituality is about what we do with this madness.

Spirituality is not serenely choosing certain spiritual activities. It is far more than that. Spirituality is more about whether or not we can sleep at night than whether or not we go to church. It is about being integrated or falling apart, about being within community or being lonely, about being in harmony with mother earth or being alienated from her.

What shapes our actions is our spirituality. What shapes our actions is basically what shapes our desire. Desire makes us act and when we act what we do will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds and bodies – and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to God, others and the world.

Rolheiser gives us three examples in three different personalities who had to do with their eros (desire). Spirituality is disciplining the eros (desire).

• 1.      Mother Theresa: A religious woman, a saint who channeled her energy for the one thing – God and poor. She could will through discipline and she gained wholeness through her undivided attention. She is a saint precisely because she was able to will one thing.
• 2.      Janis Joplin: A rock star. She could not will the one thing. She willed many things, gave over to creativity, performance, drugs, alcohol, sex, lack of rest and caused a young death.
• 3.      Princess Diana: In her we see the existence of two tremendous energies – erotic and spiritual. With the figure of Princess Diana, Rolheiser makes a reflection that we all experience the polarities in us. But dealing with it makes us whole. Hence, every choice is a renunciation. And every selection is also a deselection. And finally he arrives at the conclusion that spirituality is about what we do with our spirits, our souls.

Then Rolheiser points out two important functions of the soul. He defines soul as not something we have, but something we are (Aristotle calls it entelechy). The two functions of the soul are:

1.      It is a principle of energy. It gives energy, a glue that holds us together and makes us one. A healthy soul does two things: a) it puts some fire in our views, keep us energized, vibrant, living with zest, and full of hope as we sense that life is beautiful and worth living, b) it keeps us glued together. It continually gives us a sense of who we are, where we come from, where we are going.

2.      It is a principle of chaos and order, implying that a healthy tension between the two is necessary for a wholesome living. And living is not a simple task because we always live with opposites – fire and water, passion and chastity, energy and integration.

There is also a complexity involved in what makes our souls healthy and unhealthy. This is the reason in all religions they use symbols to understand the mystery of a soul. The soul is omnipresent by nature. And not only we have a soul and spirituality but every living thing has it. We have to consider our existence in a wide context, in the context of the cosmic world. Teilhard di Chardin explains, ‘human person is an evolution become conscious of itself.” We are not separate from nature, we are part of it. And our spirituality is an all-inclusive one. ‘All things in nature, just like all human beings are fundamentally dis-eased and are driven outward’ is enough to explain why our spirituality is an all-inclusive one. Everyone has to have spirituality. It is true to say that if we do things which keep us energized and integrated, on fire and yet glued together, we have a healthy spirituality.

The Non-negotiable Essentials

Rolheiser says that there is no clarity in the area of spirituality because there exists a rich, confusing pluralism. We are faced with many questions, especially the question of what is essential in spirituality. Rolheiser presents to us four non-negotiable pillars of the spiritual life that constitutes the Christian spirituality. He also lets us know a brief history of the spirituality that have brought us thus far.

1.      Roman Catholicism: for a long time Roman Catholic Church and spirituality was characterized by a number of clear and distinct emphases like going to church, observing church laws, devotional practices, etc. doing things merely made you a catholic; it need not be a healthy one. Participation was a key word. Later spirituality also developed the need to practice social justice.

2.      Protestantism: Protestants, on the other hand placed emphasis on the Bible – reading it and trying actively to guide life by it. They emphasized on the need for personal justification by God. It was biblical and non-monastic.

3.      Secular society: secular spirituality viewed that everyone has spirituality. With enlightenment, the religious practices were considered important only in the private circles and no more places in public domain. Secular society has its own religious fervor – positive thinking, the cults of physical health, it is replete with more demanding forms of asceticism, it replaced the old spiritualities regarding the soul.

The situation today is drastic because we find all kinds of spiritualities- spirituality of the oppressed, nature meditation, visualization, etc. and there are millions of books written on how to master a particular spirituality. In this situation, Rolheiser suggests four main pillars of a Christian spirituality. They are closely interlinked and cannot be practiced separately.

• 1.      Private prayer and private morality
• 2.      Social justice
• 3.      Mellowness of heart and spirit
• 4.      Community as a constitutive element of true worship.

A combination of these four and their balance constitute a true spirituality.