Thanks for the thread Gem,
It seems that participants rarely question the very premise of such activity, how it is undertaken, and what the possible benefits and deficiencies are before blithely entering into it - as evidenced by the tone and content of much discussion not only here, but in forums anywhere.
However, as you point out, the very nature of the spiritual quest and therefore the subject of discussion here or any forum where that is the dedicated purpose, e.g., discussion of spirituality, what it is and does - not only involves, but therefore requires sensitivity, awareness, and skillfully meaningful response to those very issues as a manifestation of what is actually practiced as ‘spiritual’ in one’s life. And participation becomes therefore, an unavoidable laboratory of refinement, clarification and transformation.
This is because of the comprehensive nature of spirituality regarding participation in life, its purpose in transcending ignorant cognition as a practical matter - is not merely ‘just another subject’ among many others - isolated - or, as far-flung abstraction that has an intrinsically tenuous relation to earthly experience. Spirituality is the conscious deliberate realization and integration of higher principle into life through direct experience - in all and every action.
It may be true then, that the nature, quality, and purpose of discussion is directly related to, is the practical result, and demonstration of participants’ own internal dynamics - energetic, mental, aspirational, etc., as consistently sustained in practice. This seems obvious, but only once considered, as this thread undertakes.
Regarding, “Caveat being, complimentary remarks can be encouraging.”, Yes true, but there is an insidious inversion whereby there is also abundant encouragement, agreement and flattery of often false and misleading preferences, which only serve to publicly reinforce and further perpetuate any ignorant cognition or means. For instance: that “everyone is already enlightened”; that “everything is spiritual”, that “enjoyment of life in-and-of-itself is spiritual”, etc.
These represent prevalent orientations which disregard, deny or deliberately distort the very specific nature of spirituality in human culture - involving subtleties which are the premise of these discussions which need skillful qualification....to avoid mistakenly equating spirituality with ignorant life by ignoring those subtle distinctions - an attitude which renders spirituality in that case to being just another dispensable subject or isolated abstraction - what one famous author once called, “being pimps for samsara”.
While it is true that ‘everything is spiritual’ in the most general sense, everything in life is not divine, and that is what spirituality seeks to remedy in the specific individual case. That distinction urgently needs to be qualified in many discussions that go astray on the topic, leading to much confusion and consternation, and that particular qualification in the microcosm is (imo) what this thread is an invitation to address on some level.
This issue points out a risk in public discussion besides any possible benefit, requiring the exercise of intuitive insight and discrimination - spiritually acquired by experience and also skillful but difficult - in observing and evaluating both the content and ‘tone’ of replies, because any and all of it represents (and is) consciousness in some form and quality..
Otherwise, absent deference to the sovereignty of individual souls, the divinity within each person (the true basis for ‘respect for members’), to make such determinations of what is true or useful given the options once presented, discussion may become a battle of ego assertion, attempted negations and coercions; vain admonitions, posturing, posing, self-promoting and boasting, recursive speculative opinion that is really subtle demand, vituperative personal recrimination, derogation, provocation, etc., etc.
This is the price of decentralization, the current dominant trend that substitutes one’s own freedom in place of ‘gatekeepers’ and external authorities and it is the direction the world is inexorably moving toward as humanity is no longer in its infancy. So this topic is quite apropos.
~ J
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