Spirituality and spirit cultivation.

I as a person have trouble exploring myself. Over a year ago I affirmed myself as an atheist or at least as a person who rejects organized religion at least and I was satisfied. I never felt the need to pray, except in a few situations out of despair, like every single person in this world, and my world made perfect sense without a divine figure.

But what was missing was actually what I hastily rejected along with the religion: my spirituality. Like it or not, I was born and raised in a very spiritual family who manifested its spirituality through Christianity, and this spirituality at least is a big part of my education and the “spiritual part of my brain” is irreversibly developed.

Standing here, I don’t feel capable of defining spirituality, since I am a materialist who denies the existence of spirit. We are all just molecules. So defining spirituality relatively to a “spirit” would be contradictory with my convictions. And just to be clear, I only call it “spirituality” for the lack of a better word…

In order to define something we can try comparing it to other things or placing it in contexts. Spirituality clearly can be taught, and even without the use of religious texts; it can provide a person with fulfillment on an emotional level; it can be achieved through diverse processes like meditation or prayer, not really to a god, or anything really; it’s more of a dialog between one and oneself... I used to define religion as one part morals and rules and one part spirituality, and by that I meant the comfort, the fulfillment that it gives humans who have this instinctual need to believe in something… so can I really talk about spirituality which isn’t based on belief? I’M LOST.

YES, YES WE CAN. Religious people pray to a god asking for help, for forgiveness of their sins, or thanking him for his blessings. If we ignore god in that equation we obtain people who have analyzed their obstacles and their capacities and feel they need an extra push in order to achieve their goals, people who want to make up for their errors, and people who appreciate what they have, and that is what spirituality is all about: people who are conscious enough to know what they need, what they have, and what they should do.

Spirituality is consciousness. Cultivating a spirit helps in achieving goals and results in a smart person, who isn’t deluded, and truthful to oneself. Spirituality is consequently an infallible key to happiness.

We are not like them

"We are not like them", she said. "Well I'm not like you either" I thought to myself.

It is human nature to want to aggregate in groups that have something in common, and that usually revolve around common roots and beliefs. But as we can usually observe, while some groups form, others separate, and new ones are born all the time depending on external conditions.

WHY.

We humans have this basic, instinctive need to travel in packs, a characteristic that we share with many other animals. While this - now futile - instinct has persisted for favoring survival in the past, we still haven't gotten over it and nor will we anytime soon. Elliot Aronson was the first to refer to the human being in his famous work as "The Social Animal". That is after all what distinguishes us from any other animal; and although we might lack the organization that other animals have, we sure focus a lot of our time and energy to stay integrated in a social organization we don't really need; and although it is this organization that made humanity the supreme species it is today, we can clearly see that this particular social arrangement is trivial and futile.

When I say all that, I'm not talking about human relations and their need for contact with other humans in small circles, but about the whole multidimensional, gridded, and varying hierarchy of society.

It starts out from the youngest age and goes on to adulthood. Though we might find some schools that escape this hierarchic madness, we still can't but find kids who get together and think of themselves as superior to others, and exclude other kids on the sole condition of them being different. This might not be representative of our adult society but it gives us an idea about the inborn instinct that accompanies the man since its birth.

In adult life, the criteria differ, but we still have that same exclusion/inclusion. Money adds itself as a condition to enter a social group, and we still find the same old fear of the Other and the comfort when being surrounded by people who are like us. And what makes it even more ironic is the fact that the more exclusive the group, the less humanity governs the relations between its members.

But we can affirm that after all, it's not a matter of hierarchy as much as a matter of belonging. Of course there is always the ineluctable feeling of superiority of the group one as an individual belongs to, but this only goes back to the natural born vanity of human beings.

At it all goes back to the jungle law and the protected feeling we get when in a mass.

We are all a bunch of civilized sheep.

Organized religion

As a person born and raised in a Christian family, but who was also taught to doubt and think, I came to struggle a lot with my religious beliefs since my early adolescence and up till now.

What bothers me in my religion: that same religion that I’ve taken to be sacred, holy, and not to be questioned, should in fact be questioned when you see all its flaws and all the wrong turns it took - and still takes - the world into. It’s very easy to say that it’s being misinterpreted that’s the only excuse religious people find to defend the horrors their religion has induced on the world; but is it really what is happening?

Religion is one of the primary excuses make wars and conquests: Crusades, Jihad, I could go on and on…

Religion is the reason behind all the discrepancies and the injustice… it’s the only thing that stands between us and a world where “All men are – truly that is – created equal”, and by that I mean regardless of their sexual orientation or their beliefs. What is theoretically an invitation to love one another is actually the primary cause of hatred.

Religions are in fact, an application of texts written a couple of thousand years ago and which have been altered for sure to suit political purposes. Should we really believe in Jesus when all we’ve actually seen and all we have proof of is the wars the Bible entailed and the rise of the clergy to the highest social ranks? And should we believe in Mohammed when we know that he was a conqueror and a prime leader who used a religion of his making as a way to unite Arabs / as a motive to conquer more territory?

That is how I came to reject religion as a whole. But still, I feel that there is some inexplicable, intangible aspect of life that we will never figure out… and that made me narrow down my rejection to only organized religion. I will continue, though, to cultivate my spirituality with every sip of coffee until I find what I truly believe in. 

Poem in French, 12/7/2009

Je regarde vers toi, tu regardes vers moi,

Je te regarde, mais tu regardes à travers moi.

La lueur dans tes yeux aussi chaude qu’un hiver,

Et tes cheveux frisés qui enlacent les airs.

Dans un pas de confiance et les bras étendus,

Tu célèbres une victoire jusque-là inconnue.

Une guerre contre le monde, contre l’humanité,

Tu l’as gagnée – ça te remplit de vanité.

Laisse tomber la robe et les souliers de verre,

Princesse sauvage, tu es une vraie guerrière.

Une croisade, entre le bien et le mal,

Tu l’as emportée – écoute son cri animal.

Tes armes disparaissent, comme ton habit de guerre,

Tu restes toute nue, tu n’es plus femme de fer.

Des mètres de soie viennent épouser ton corps,

Tu resteras femme à jamais, voilà ton sort.

Conquêtes, il y en aura, et des guerres tu feras,

Dans ton monde de femme où tout, tout ira.

Je te regarde, regarde ta robe de soie,

Je te regarde, mais tu regardes à travers moi.

Poem 1, 17/08/2011

As she rises from the water,

Royal beauty like no other,

And sparkles in total madness,

She kisses away the darkness.

Her eyes linger in perfection

Where love and death embrace

Giving all hearts a satisfaction

And living there a trace.

Nature obeys to the sound of her voice,

Earth, water, and air combined,

No human being has a choice

If she chooses to toy with his mind.

Such power emanating from so little words

A perfect warrior in a perfect nymph’s body

Little time has a man before he crawls

And kneels before her magnificent majesty.

Goddess of illusion, criminal and savage beauty,

Your might may be infinite, your perfection too,

Sanctified you shall stay, or else you may,

Make them, like I did, kneel before you. 

Socialism - part 2: Equality and injustice.

Equality is the opposite of justice.

We live in a world where no two people are born equal: not in talent, nor in abilities, nor in character, nor in beauty. Each and every person is unique and every man has different, limited potential. And yet we are all equal in the eyes of the law, and that is what we are most proud of in democratic countries. Blindly applying the law on all citizens regardless of their circumstances would be the embodiment of injustice, as it was revealed to us by the study of ancient societies which applied the Bible by the letter, or modern societies that outrageously apply outdated laws taken from sacred texts; and that the reason behind the creation of the judicial branch of the government.

Nevertheless, in every society nowadays (even the most corrupted ones) we all can (formally at least) agree on the most basic piece of legislation: all men are equal in rights and in the eyes of the law. As our fathers struggled to put through this piece of law, others tried to absurdly extend it into what came up to somehow be the exact opposite of what was initially meant.

We are all entitled to living under a roof, we are all entitled to receiving a proper education, and we are all entitled to proper healthcare. All that is quite true, as long as we EARN IT, with minimum effort.

Socialism, though a wonderful and humane doctrine, somehow managed to ignore that last part. One might say: What can be more perfect from the citizen's point of view? Well, nothing really, that is for the citizen in the bottom of the social pyramid. For he would be living a life he didn't earn: he was forced by the law to finish middle school and after that he went and searched for a mediocre job (best case scenario), and he was satisfied, and he lived happily ever after off the money which his country gives him in order to make things more "fair". One can't expect such a citizen to complain. As the system congratulates itself for this good deed, it fails to hear what the people on the other end of the social pyramid have to say: those great and bright people who chose to go through years and years of education and hard work to arrive to their current social and intellectual position, and who have to pay a greater percentage of what they earn every year so that the less-than-average citizen can afford luxuries he wasn't entitled to.

Humans are after all natural-born passive leaches, who will always take more than they give if they ever had the chance to do so. Socialism is only a way to encourage them to embrace that side of them.

Now that that's out of my system, anyone for more coffee?

Toxic time.

As you navigate through adulthood, life sometimes hands you more time than you need. Though at the first sip it might seem like a great gift, in the long run too much time on your hands might lead intoxication.

It started with the beginning of the new semester: since then I didn't have to make one cup of coffee.

Phase 1: Euphoria.

You start enjoying every minute of your time, squeezing in activities that you didn’t have time to do when your schedule was packed.  These activities range from partying to total inactivity and idleness. Being the lazy man par excellence, I caught up on some series, played video games and spent whole days in bed with occasional going-out-getting-dead-drunk soirees a few times a week.

Phase 2: Guilt.

As you start getting used to this lifestyle of doing nothing, your conscience kicks in and starts making you feel guilty about spending so much time doing nothing productive. It happened to me as I was not used to having this much free time on my hands: my schedule had always been jam-packed. You may start looking at your books from the corner of your bed, and you might get the urge to get dressed in the morning, saying to yourself “I’m going to get things done today!”, but worry not, that is a short phase that you will immediately shake off.

Phase 3: Boredom.

There is nothing left on the internet, there are no more video games for you to play, there is nothing left in the world that you could possibly do. So, you clean your room.

Phase 4: Panic.

You get things done. You decide to finally take care of that pile of official bank papers that has been on the corner of your desk for an eternity now, you settle on living a healthy lifestyle, you shop for healthy foods, you join the gym, you do everything your parents tell you to do in your free time, make resolutions that you will not break…

… at least not until the next day, when you decide that you deserve a break, and go back to doing nothing.