• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: Xorkoth | Madness

What does it mean to be spiritual?

this thread cannot possibly be answered with words or explanations, as spirituality cannot be defined confined. the very definition: "incorporeal or immaterial nature" doesn't do anything to help the OP.

I agree.....I think its vague. If I must define spirituality to myself....it is the act of being a good person. All religions instructs you not to lie....not to steal....to help one another....etc. I think being spiritual encompasses the good qualities of a religion discounting the belief of a God...what kind of a God....etc.
 
I don't class myself as religious, or scientific because I "know" that these (and all) words can be deconstructed through postructuralist methods, and for this reason I don't class myself as a postructuralist - oh the irony! But this doesn't mean that I can't respect the views of others, and even share them (heaven forbid - that's right, I used the phrase "heaven forbid") - in myriad ways people are speaking of the same "thing" a lot of the time; they're merely using a different data-set from which to draw their mode of expression.

Using etymology in an attempt to deconstruct the word "spiritual" seems perverse, as with all words, meaning changes depending on context and time or the (psycho-socio-linguistic) view-point from which they are analysed - this is "true" of all words in all languages. Any text (read: discourse, anything that can be interpreted) changes constantly as it is read and reread and reread and re.... innumerable times and in innumerable ways depending upon the larger text(s) of which it(they) is(are) a part.

As to breathing not being controlled: Ever heard of pranayama? I used to not want to use that word for fear of being labelled "spiritual" and being categorised as a "new age hippy", but then I realised the absurdity of my negation through quitting my self-importance (which, amusingly, pranayama helped me achieve) and the illusion that I somehow "knew" more than anyone else.

I'd be more worried by those that are 100% sure of what they believe (no matter how they arrived there).

Shall I add "fluidity" and "acceptance" to further define the word "spiritual"?

<3
 
Last edited:
Just kidding. :) Im a Christian myself.

Ah. :D <3

Yagecero.. fluidity is a good word.. moving water rather than a stagnancy xx

I also think of the spirit in terms of wind or air..

This is one of my favourite bible texts:

'The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound thereof, but can not tell from where it came, and where it goes: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.' John 3.8

Peace n Love
 
Well I pray that

' the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus'

dovefingerslight.jpg
 
I don't think it means anything except what you make of it. Otherwise other people will be defining what spirituality is for you. It's just a word like "enlightenment" that everybody takes so seriously.
 
DJ 303 said:
now the term is ambiguous to say the least.
personally, as a rationalist, logical thinker, athiest, skeptic and myth buster I avoid the term entirely.
for me it carries too much meaningless ambiguity

See, this is a great example of what I was talking about before that irks me. (You too, ebola.) So you're not a spiritual person, feel that spirituality has no merit, and don't really enjoy the company of people who are vocally spiritual. You've made that abundantly clear, and I'm entirely cool with that -- that's your personal taste. What bothers me is why people like you feel the need to go a step further and say that the term has no precise meaning. People use the word all the time without having to explain what they mean, which to me indicates the word is not meaningless or ambiguous.

I think what you're really trying to say is that you reject spirituality because different people look beyond the material world and think they see vastly different things there, rather than one consistent thing. But the word spirituality refers to the action of seeking beyond the material world, not the entities that seekers apparently find there. It's a category of behavior, and this behavior happens in some consistent ways and for consistent motivations, regardless of whether there is anything to be found beyond than the material world.

By way of analogy, I am not a car-waxing man. Cars are merely a form of transportation to me, and as such, I feel that car-waxing is a waste of time and money. In my view, there is no tangible benefit or worthwhile effect to my car being waxed. I don't keep company with car waxers, and I'd tire quickly of a conversation about the joys of car waxing. If you asked me why I didn't see any merit in car waxing, I'd gladly tell you. Part of it has to do with the fact that different car waxers get different and inconsistent results. However, for all that, I acknowledge that the term "car waxing" has a valid and generally agreed-upon definition, which refers to a fairly consistent sort of activity. For all my distaste for car waxing, I would never think to say, "The term 'car waxing' is ambiguous / meaningless / imprecise."

Once again, I'm talking semantics and semiotics here, not metaphysics. I'm not asking you or anyone to explain why you think the spiritual quest is fruitless -- you've already made that abundantly clear. I'm asking you why you, and many other rationalists, have a problem with the very word itself.
 
lost >|< liberated

NSFW:

Into the line
I see it fine
Into the line
Our hearts entwine
Remember when
Your time again

Standing in the light
Always sitting on the line
Never on a side
Always wanting to be right
Pushing out the light
Standing in the light
I never wanted to be right
Now I'm attracted by the light
And blinded my the sight

Into the light
I see it fight
Into the light
A new horizon
Bleached into white
Kept out of sight

Dead ahead in the night
Burning in the light
And knowing that it's right
Driving in the night
Dead ahead in the light
Into the light
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Into the Light
goodnight goodknight




the machine is always working
 
I'm asking you why you, and many other rationalists, have a problem with the very word itself.

"if you can call that music"
some people will use that expression to mean they think its crap music, but they do know its music, even tho they would like to say its so bad it should not be considered music

i think those people feel the same way about spirituality because they have seen so many bullshit in relation to spirituality that the word itself becomes tainted with that foul after taste

i agree with you that the word is clear and easy to define but still most people when asked what is a color they will say blue some will say red...instead of explaining what it is as a whole
they will explain it through example
like in a dictionary you get the definition and then you get examples
a lot of people seem more comfortable with the example than the definition
since the definition is more abstract and the examples are more concrete
most people in this thread have being giving example of what it means to them
thats how they grasp what spirituality means
but then all those "definition"(through example) are different so yeah it looks "ambiguous to say the least" to some
 
^ Thanks, ninja. I think I understand now.

It's kind of like asking "What does it mean to be a good citizen?" One could simply answer, "It means to take into account the interests of your community when you act," and be done with the discussion. However, most replies wouldn't be like that -- they'd be statements of specific behaviors people consider examples of good citizenship, followed by heated debate by people who didn't agree.
 
MDAO said:
See, this is a great example of what I was talking about before that irks me. (You too, ebola.)

Ah. I actually just meant that I personally don't know what "spirituality" means, and I have had trouble discerning such from the variety of answers people give to the question. This doesn't entail that I reject spirituality as fruitless or meaningless. A lot of ambiguous things mean stuff. :p And how could I reject something without first knowing what it is? :p

But the word spirituality refers to the action of seeking beyond the material world, not the entities that seekers apparently find there.

To what extent would rejection of the distinction between material and immaterial as ontologically fundamental fit into the set of spiritual takes? Certainly, doing so fits with your prior definition, whereby the individual tries to look to a more fundamental reality beyond mundane appearances.

But what of the physicist who holds the ontological take that mathematical structures (or "information" in general), not matter, are fundamental to how the multiverse is structured? Is that a spiritual take?

ebola
 
i talked about elephant and their "ritual around death" and before that i said that spirituality was born when we started burying our dead
when i hear spiritual i hear spirit and ritual, ritual around death, death gives meaning to life
like if you are listening to some bob marley you might say his spirit lives on, he is dead but his music is alive, his life meant something
but you dont have to be dead to talk about spirit, what are you doing with your life ? is it meaningful ?

if you are rational where does meaning comes from ?
it comes from your imagination, your brain capacity makes it possible to create new stuff that dont exist by combining old stuff that do exist from your memory
so then a rock isnt a rock its a weapon, a stick isnt just a stick its a spear...
and life isnt just life anymore, its sacred, its special, its meaningful because we put meaning into it (whatever that meaning may be)

why did we wondered where we came from ? why did we came out with the idea of the theory of evolution ? because we are trying to give meaning to the world we live in
we use to have creation myth and now we have science to help us with that
but how is it that people dont see science as spiritual ?
i remember being in highschool reading books about astronomy and seeing those amazing picture of whats out there in the sky, those stars galaxies, nebula... and i would get a feeling of awe
and then at night i would sit down and watch the sky and find different constellation
i would think about the possibility of whats out there and inevitably that would bring me back to whats out here, that i am a little dot in the universe and im as meaningless as im meaningful, on a macroscopic or microscopic level

astronomy is one of the oldest sciences and see how those pyramids in egypt where perfectly align with the stars and how it was related to the afterlife, i mean pyramids where a burial monuments and they represented one of their most advance scientific and religious achievement at that time
it had meaning

what i guess im trying to say is that spirituality gave birth to science
because it gave meaning to the world we live on so we started to try to understand how that meaning worked

we buried our dead before we started doing math
in greece science and philosophy was use as a similar word
it was about reasoning,
using logic and rational thinking to obtain knowledge
we tried to understand the world we lived in because WE gave it meaning
science was a system built from turning that feeling (spirituality) into rational though



ps : elephants can do some calculus too btw
 
all seekers do seek seeked, and all seers do see something, the same as all keepers do keep kept. what matters the most, though, is when one sees how they have tried to of been over slept.


the early dramas of life are real scenes which we each share - they are the easel of the pallet of our lives -each of us individually- this is the same art of life that we might come to see in each other.

... its fun to brainStorm, give me a break!
<3<3<3
;-)
 
I don't think it means anything except what you make of it. Otherwise other people will be defining what spirituality is for you. It's just a word like "enlightenment" that everybody takes so seriously.

Yeah, it's an umbrella term like nirvana, which actually means annihilation, and that must suck.
 
My definition of spiritual: the non-material.
My definition of spiritual growth: the growth of what one identifies with (self, family, society, species, life, cosmos, etc).
 
Top