Spirit stuff
Is there a way to be “spiritual” without getting ripped off? I see two dominant ways by which one can become spiritual:
Join some kind of organized religion. The issue here is that (for me, at least) there is always going to be some kind of precept which both a) I disagree with and b) is critical to the foundation and practice of said religion. And if you’re going to pick and choose what you believe in, then what’s the point of professing adherence in the first place? Judaism seemed really interesting to me for a while, until I realized that I would never be able to promise to raise my kid in the faith, let alone get him circumcised. Baháʼí seem pretty anti-LGBT, as do the various strains of Christianity. I guess there’s the argument of becoming a cultural [whatever], who just does the rituals and hangs out but doesn’t buy into the more strident aspects, but then if you’re trying to find some sort of authentic spiritual vision, that approach seems antithetical to actually getting any results.
Do a more self-guided approach where you’re figuring out what spirituality actually means to you. There are two main problems here. First, there are countless charlatans in this space. I find it impossible to trust anyone who’s making money off of selling their spiritual vision to others. Second, seeking spirituality in this way seems rather lonely. If the point of spirituality is, I think, to find a connection with something bigger than yourself–be that the world or the after-life or the weltgeist–then to attempt to find your own idiosyncratic connection with The Bigger Thing must necessarily wall you off from those who come at the search from a different angle, or who have different results. Unless you come down on “Any spirituality essentially works, and nothing in particular is more correct than anything else.” Which seems like a cop-out, a way of rendering the personal search for spirituality essentially meaningless, and also inherently contradictory–how can all these religions be correct if more than one of them are concluding that some or all of their fellow religions are wrong? And if we’re picking and choosing which parts of these religions are correct in an attempt to satisfy the “all religions are correct” premise… at that point, things are starting to get pretty wishy-washy.
So I dunno. Are both of these paths non-viable? Obviously there’s no proving any of this, so do you need to be an atheist in order to be consistent? (Although atheism seems almost too certain of its conclusion. And agnosticism seems… kind of tepid.)
Maybe it’s the masculinity of modern religion that throws me. You’re always hearing about a God who is the Father and He does stuff and you better not piss Him off or defy His will.
I feel very restless about this, and I’m not sure how to address it. There are no quick fixes, I suppose.