Modern spirituality

By Rod Mitchell in All Sorts

how do we discern the spiritual in everyday life

What happens when you have two strong thought directions for a connections article? Let me briefly highlight the two ideas and then see where this might take us.
The first line of thinking that was entertaining my mind was associated with 'what type of experience' could be considered religious (Spiritual) or trust worthy of being a message from the source of life? This question has been surfaced as I have been reading Dr Paul Debell's book entitled 'Decoding the Spiritual Messages of Everyday life' with a subtitle 'How Life shows us what we need to know'. However some of the stories he told pushed my boundaries of credibility so I was left excited by the concept of a church full of people decoding spiritual messages but wondering what happens when people at different levels and stages of spiritual maturity seek to come to a common mind on the many different interpretations of the various spiritual messages offered. Or perhaps it doesn't matter so long as people are seeking to buildup the community in love, faith and hope.
This set me on a second line of enquiry namely, so what is 'spiritual' and how might this be understood and shared from within a common faith community. So I turned to a complex book that I read some years ago called 'Integral Spirituality', subtitled 'A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world', by Ken Wilber. I have to confess to being a Wilber nut while well aware that many people have serious reservations about where Wilber is coming from. I have read reviews claiming that he is too 'New age' in his outlook, too complex, too arrogant in his claims. Many of these reviews seemed to me to be attacking the person rather than what he was trying to say. This way of describing his work is meant to quickly dismiss all that he is trying to declare.
Whereas here is a comment from a careful researcher Roger Walsh a professor of psychiatry at the University of California who states in
reference to Ken Wilbers book: "Vast in scope, profound in depth, and far reaching in its implications, Integral Spirituality is, quite simply, the most encompassing account of religion and spirituality available in our time."
Wilber highlights four different ways of using the word spiritual leading him to declare that the word 'spiritual' is a very slippery word indeed. People need to know which of these four different ways they are using the word if communication is going to be intelligent and helpful. Briefly the four ways are (1) People have peak experiences which they claim to be spiritual, a profound dream or experience within nature that moves the person deeply. (2) Like intellectual intelligence people can claim they have a spiritual line of development that is like one of the multi- intelligences, (3) some people use the word spiritual to refer to a particular attitude, like for example being a very loving / forgiving person. (4) Spiritual can be seen as the highest point of moral development. A person who displays compassion for the world rather than just being concern for their own individual personal existence could be seen as having a spiritual concern that is bigger than their own ego or family or religion.
Both books mentioned above have as a core component of what they are sharing, being a need for people to find contemplative practices that assist them in experiencing messages or a spiritual vitality to life that can bring about a difference. In the push and pull of life we will have opportunities to experience deeper structures of life addressing us to be responsible, encouraging us to be co-creators in the unfolding chapters of our life's journey. What we need are meditative prayer practices that help us grow our spiritual skills of discernment about the many experiences we are encountering in our daily lives.
Rod Mitchell