Monday, December 15, 2008

Spiritual, but Not Religious

In the old days this meant you didn't go to church, you liked crystals and Buddhist meditation, and you believed God was "a force, like an energy" or similar gobbledy-gook.

Never mind that. Try this. If you have a profoundly powerful disposition to feel grateful that you are alive as a human being in this world and this disposition makes it easier for you to pursue the moral virtues, then you are spiritual. If at the same time you don't cotton to churches, rituals, dogmas and everything else associated with religions, then you aren't religious.

If, in addition, you shrug off the criticism that you are a fool to eschew the wisdom of one of the organized religions and go off on your own, then you are unabashedly spiritual-but-not-religious. If you are aware of the manifold foolishness partaken in by the organized religions, then you are also well-armed. If you acknowledge much that is good in organized religions, as well as the foolish, then you are level-headed, as well as well-armed.