Open Writing

Do we need spirit?

Who's for spirituality? Count me in for sure. It's a sure winner. Just get that grand old man with the flowing beard on side by saying a few prayers, chanting a few mantras and helping your neighbour's wife and you're in. St Peter will open the Pearly Gates for you and you will live out the rest of eternity in peace and plenty.

What's that? You say that I am being a bit frivolous about the whole thing? You say that spirituality is a serious matter and there's no time for laughs. Nonsense! Life without laughs would be dead boring and I cannot believe that Whoever/Whatever gave humans life meant life to be boring.

Back to spirituality. It rates 3,500,000 entries in my search engine. So somebody must think it is of interest. It stands for the idea that humans have a spirit as well as a body. I'm all for that. If all I had was the body I am currently parading around in, I would feel that I had been cheated.

At a workshop, the lecturer put this question to the class. "Do you consider yourselves to be human beings?" Everyone put their hands up. He then asked "What do you accent in your lives—the 'human' with its problems and limitations—or the 'being' with its possibilities and expansiveness and freedom?" The answer—after a minute of silence—was that everyone accented the human side.

The human-ness of life can, it must be admitted, get one down. For most of our working lives, we get up, dress, have breakfast, go to work, come home, have the evening meal, watch the nonsense on the telly to relax, have a tinny or three and go to bed.

Or we get up, get the kids up, make breakfast, get 'himself' off to work and the kids off to school, do the dishes, the housework, the clothes-washing, the ironing, the shopping, snatch a bite of lunch, do more of the same after lunch, have something to eat for the kids when they come home, get dinner, eat dinner, wash up after dinner, have a few intimate moments with the family, watch the telly to relax and stagger into bed.

A bit of spirit wouldn't go astray. Just something to relieve the deadly monotony of life would be a lifesaver.

A tad of investment in spirit would seem to be a worthwhile investment. But I've tried prayers and they don't get answered. Meditation gets me nowhere because all it achieves is time for all my problems to surface. Chanting mantras is a bit steadying but doesn't change anything in my life.

Spirit and love receive a double billing in most articles and discussions on spirituality. Now, love does appear to be a real winner. For starters, love has 73,000,000 entries on my search engine. That makes it very much the senior partner and spirituality the junior partner in that relationship. Clearly, lots of people have a thing going for love. Yet it is such a many-faceted word. People love everything from their cat, to their dress, to their job, to the film they saw, to their bed, to their boyfriend, to the latest CD.

There is a rather challenging definition of love which avoids the emotiveness so often tangled up in 'love'. It is "unconditional acceptance". Now that's a very uncompromising definition and sparks off a lot of hidden information into what spirituality is on about.

Unconditional acceptance is a very tall order. It requires a tremendous tolerance of a whole wide range of human behaviour. It requires detachment from preconceived ideas and opinions and values. It requires a non-judgemental approach to all sorts of things that people do and say. It eliminates 99 per cent of gossip. If it can be done, it takes a great load off one's mind because there is so much less to worry about, so much less to be concerned about, so much less to clutter up one's mind.

Unconditional acceptance begs the question of why we are born into this human existence. Does it have a meaning and a purpose? "Meaning of life" rates 4,000,000 entries on my search machine—about the same as for spirituality—covers a wide range of approaches to the subject and assumes that there is a meaning to our existence on this planet.