The Truth About the Spiritual community

[ZenAlex]

Hey everyone!

I’m doing a survey for a project I’m working on. I want to get honest,open answers about what people within the spiritual community DON’T LIKE about it. I have 2 questions:

1.) What are some of your biggest frustrations about the personal development/spirituality/self help community?

2.) Are there any website or resources you go to in order to deal with these frustrations? If not, why?

[Inky]

Hi ZenAlex,

One big frustration I have is that everyone in the spiritual/holistic community tends to eventually or suddenly label themselves as an “expert”. LOL! Then they get mad that their followers/”followers” don’t seem to follow them! Of course in the religious community it’s worse!

Another frustration is that the communities tend to attract fringy or extreme people/personalities.

I actually get away by reveling in science, history and the world in general. Just for a refreshing perspective.

Best,

Inky

[Anonymous]

Dear ZenAlex:

I do not belong in a “spiritual community” – I am one of the human community. When a person is one in a spiritual community, by definition, they are less connected to individuals outside their community than they are to individuals within their community (not so spiritual?)

So at this point in my life, I reject the whole concept of a “spiritual community.”

anita

[Joe]

Hey ZenAlex!

I’m not sure if I really consider myself as being part of a spiritual community as such – I guess here on TinyBuddha, this is the closest thing to a spiritual community that I am part of and what I love about it is that there are many different voices and perspectives with different ideas.

In real life, I’ve been acquainted with a few people who are interested in spirituality or would describe themselves as being spiritual. I guess when people place this label on themselves, other people will always try and point out their less-than-spiritual behaviour – I understand that nobody is perfect but this particular person I speak of did tend come across as being hypocritical, preachy and sanctimonious and I don’t really care for that kind of thing. Another person in this group of acquaintances who loved to discuss his spiritual beliefs liked to drag other people into spiritual or theological debates – criticizing the belief system of somebody else in the group, challenging somebody else just because they had no beliefs whatsoever and making stupid ignorant assumptions about me (it never gets old and boring, just because I have tattoos and piercings and I listen to punk and industrial rock that makes me a heretical devil worshipper apparently!)

I guess I don’t like people who are into spirituality for all the wrong reasons – just using it to show off and boost their own ego “Oh look at me I am SO enlightened therefore I am SO much BETTER than you bla bla bla…” -I find people like that have their heads firmly lodged up their own backside. As they say, if you’re gonna talk the talk, don’t forget to walk the walk…

My current, personal definition of spirituality is trying to stay present (still got a long way to go on that one!) and doing things that bring me inner stillness and joy (creating my own weird and wonderful fantasy world with paints and paper with my illustrations, cooking and eating good food, looking at sunsets, playing with my cat and laughing at stupid things).

I really want to meet people in real life who are interested in spirituality but at the same time not coming across as being pious and pretentious.

But this is an interesting prompt for discussion, thanks for bringing it up 😀

[ejaccra]

Hi ZenAlex!

By “spiritual community” I’m assuming you mean the spirit-science type of people who enjoy discussing topics such as..”opening the third eye”, “chakras”, “meditation”… um..”astral projection?” haha, sorry if I’m wrong, that’s just what comes to mind at first..

Well I used to get frustrated with the community because it seemed they minimize quite often. For instance, I read a lot of articles about “how to overcome anxiety” or “how to beat depression” and it doesn’t really take into consideration those who have severe illnesses. Lately, I see less of this lately though (that’s why I love this website; they never minimize mental illness). Don’t get me wrong; I do think meditation can help a lot, it can be 10 times more difficult for someone going through mania, etc. and I feel a lot of the time spiritual writers almost assume that everyone is neurotypical.

To deal with the frustrations, I just go to psychology websites (or here).

[Anonymous]

Dear Reader:

The original poster of this thread is not back yet. I hope he will be. I don’t want this thread lost in case he is not back. I value the posts above and would like a discussion to continue about what is spirituality, what is a … spiritual community, and so on. So if you already posted here, or not, and you have input, please do post.

anita

[Joe]

Anita

Great point – and this is a really interesting discussion. I’ve been thinking a lot about the same prompts you have just asked – what is spirituality? What makes a spiritual person?

What is your personal definition of spirituality Anita?

Joe

• This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by Joe.

[Anonymous]

Dear Joe:

I don’t have a definition of spirituality. I don’t know what it means. From what I have seen, that is the way people use the word spirituality or spiritual, did not …entice me to try to figure it out.

I am a human being. I know that. I am an animal, evolved from previously existing animals and am one. I have a brain capable of a vocabulary and thinking that other species are not capable of. As a human, we humans are the only animals that can think about one’s thinking, think about one’s feelings, think about our own death…Because of this ability to think, we are thinking, a lot, about scary things and many of us are scared on an ongoing basis, excessively and ineffectively (anxiety).

And is so being able, humans invented a god “in the image of man”- the biblical one. Before that, humans looked for a god in the sun, the wind, etc. to explain what was happening in their lives. For the purpose of feeling that we/ humans have power over what we do not, we invented a god or gods and imagined if we are “good”- god will be good to us back.

That god or gods is anywhere from biblical gods (different bibles) to the New Age god: “The Universe”. I believe in none, no god, no gods: no entity that cares about what I think and feel and rewards or punishes me for what I think or feel, not even what I do. I do believe in cause and effect, consequences, but no justice. For example, I hurt a person, consequence: that person will hurt another, but not necessarily me.

There is more, but enough for now. What do you think about what I wrote, Joe? Anyone who may be reading this? Your thoughts???

anita

[Barry]

To me spirituality is more of an individual awakening of one’s consciousness. I feel like once you label it or place it into a community of sorts it begins to cross the line into a type of religion or following. When a so called leader labels himself or herself as an expert, that’s crossing the line. Real spiritual leaders do not label themselves. Buddha did not label himself, we did.

[Joe]

@Anita

Some interesting points you raise there. I guess I believe spirituality to be based on personal experience. I used to think spirituality was synonymous with things like new-age, astrology, astral projection and mediumship – indeed I used to believe in those things whole-heartedly but I find the more I get older the more sceptical I am of such things. I like to think I’m “open-minded” but such things don’t really concern me much any more. I want to concentrate on the land of the living now.

As for the whole god thing – I often think about this quite a lot but I still class myself as agnostic. I wasn’t raised or brought up to have religious beliefs as such, but I guess about 50% of the time I do believe there is something else out there (god/supreme consciousness/the universal mind/whatever) and I believe that there is still a lot that human beings don’t have the answers to. I’m not entirely against the idea of god but at the same time I’m no longer the kind of person who could blindly accept and agree to believe in something else and live my life according to somebody else’s rules and expectations. Sometimes I do believe there’s something else, sometimes I don’t – I’m on the fence. I used to ponder and wonder when I was a teenager and it used to drive me mad – “Is there a God? What is the point to all of this?” but I guess over the past two years I’ve relinquished this need to know, this need to be in the loop. I guess not needing to know and not having answers became liberating for me in a weird kind of way. It’s the same with the afterlife – I finally admitted to myself a few years ago that I don’t really know what happens and I felt relieved. Hakuna matana and all that.

So what of this “personal spiritual experience” I mentioned in the first paragraph? The feeling of deep peace I get when I get to look at a beautiful sunset, or an overcast sky (I’m weird like that, don’t ask why). The feeling of wonder and wander I get when I visit a new place. The weekend I spent in Granada, Spain with just myself for company (I’ve always loved the idea of travelling alone). Looking at amazing artwork. Listening to music that really touches me and feeds my imagination. Playing with and talking to my pet cat. When the internal white noise is turned off. All of those mundane things are as close to a spiritual experience as I can imagine.

But I do believe it’s possible to be “spiritual” without being religious, or without believing in any kind of higher power. Not knowing the answers is liberating and enlightening for me (I’m still human and prone to making silly mistakes).

@Barry

I totally agree with you on this one – spirituality is an individual experience. Like I said in my description of what I entail as being “a spiritual experience” – putting labels onto it, trying to put it into words, trying to put it into a box…Experiences are different for everybody – what a person believes to be a spiritual experience will probably be different to what somebody else believes their spiritual experience to be – we all experience different things and it’s difficult if not impossible to put into words. When leaders label themselves as experts or giving off the impression that they know everything and speaking with absolute conviction that their truth is the only truth, they are putting themselves on a pedestal.

Maybe I have never experienced what a true, proper spiritual experience should be – the examples I gave are just examples of times where I can truly feel calm and peace without internal dialogue and thought processes, that’s to me the best I can think of when describing a spiritual experience. Maybe other people would describe spiritual experiences as having some kind of trippy altered state of consciousness and perception. I don’t know.

How would you describe a spiritual experience? Has what you have described ever happened or occurred to you?

Joe

[Anonymous]

Dear Joe:

What you described as your personal spiritual experience fits me very well. This is how I would describe a spiritual experience in my life, if I was to describe one; the peaceful calm of watching a sunset is a desert, comes to mind, the silence and endless space of a desert as the sun sets (and so it is not too hot- when it is too hot I don’t feel calm!)

I also relate to you,Joe, feeling okay with not knowing the answers: and this is exactly where people go crazy, i believe, trying to come up with answers to questions that are impossible for us, as human beings, to answer. As in what happens after death. All I know is what I see, what is evident. I figure there is a lot going on that is not evident to me, forms of energy not defined yet (if ever) by science, colors not seen (UV is one, but I bet there are many not …. defined by science yet, if ever)- I don’t even know what I am talking about, at this point, here on this post, and this is my point: i don’t know.

And I am okay with not knowing. I am humble that way.

Great post, Joe: I enjoyed reading it. Would like to read more!

anita

[Joe]

Anita

Not knowing what will happen, not having the guarantee of life after death – this makes me more inclined to stay in the present and to focus on living my life and trying to do the things I want to accomplish.

I wanted to believe in things like ghosts, mediumship, out of body experiences, near-death experiences, the law of attraction and what have you because I wanted to escape my mundane life. I thought it would make for a nice diversion away from reality. Adding some excitement and interest into my uneventful life, wanting so desperately to live in a fantasy world. A convenient excuse for avoiding life – “Oh it doesn’t matter if I don’t do this, I have all the time in the world, I have the rest of eternity to fall back on, things will work out for me because I have the law of attraction…” Reading about things or hearing about things which contradicted or debunked what I was filling my head with caused a lot of cognitive dissonance and creating a lot of stress and anxiety. Back then I wasn’t open-minded at all – I was just blindly accepting whatever concept or belief system I happened to be reading about at the time without taking the time to ponder both sides of the argument.

That’s not to say I’ve instantly debunked and let go of certain beliefs I once had – I guess I’ve just lessened my hold on them over the past few years. I think I can read about things like that now from an objective point of view. It would be great if those things were real but I’m not going to hold my breath. I’ve got more important things to think about in the land of the living.

There are some things I do believe are possible – lucid dreaming for instance (waking up in your dreams) – I experienced this a few years ago when I wore a nicotine patch when I was asleep (nicotine patches make you have vivid dreams but I don’t do nicotine anymore).

Joe

Has anyone on this forum ever used hallucinogenics and psychedelic drugs to induce altered states of consciousness and spiritual experiences? I don’t partake in that kind of thing and I have no intention of going down that path but I would be very interested to read about your experiences with this.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by Joe.

[Anonymous]

Dear Joe:

It has been a delight reading your last post: refreshingly honest. You believed in those things as a way to escape a mundane life, you wrote; a diversion away from a reality. adding excitement to an uneventful life…avoiding life, living in a fantasy life… an excuse to avoid life… to avoid doing things.

There was a payoff then, for believing in those things… but also a price to pay: cognitive dissonance, as you put it, causing you anxiety and stress.

And your position at this point: concentrate on “the land of the living”- and I suppose you mean by that, concentrate on what is clearly here, not maybe, but clearly real.

Great post, speaks for itself… a Must Read, says I- you have my Wow, Joe.

Regarding hallucinogenics- no experience although I experienced a couple of hallucinations not induced by drugs: one in which I was flying, not in an airplane, just me, in the sky, endless sky. Felt so real.

anita

[anxiousangel]

Spirituality for me…is experiencing joys of spirit..which is lost in the socisl world ehich is dominated by personality.

Societys dictated norms values role obligations hierachies judgements desire for mobiluty..kees us rngaged in a nvr fulfilling game…trying to control all outcomrs in our favour..it feels stupid at times.

Whn ths stupidy reveals a whole new world of spiitual joy things open up. But it cn either b coz u r bored f mundane life..not doing well socially..want avego boost..so choose it as an escape..an intellectual entertainment…or u really realize the worth nd wajt a shift in ur perspective.

Coreconcepts whoch clear all problems in life like… Self love.acceptance.being in present.identfying basic desires.mending relationshop with self shud b disvussed in executable terms more on spiritual websites than more of theorizing and producing insightful arguemrnts. Thnx a lot.

[humour]

Each one is at a different stage in their life/evolution and so its best to take another’s opinion with a pinch of salt – not blame them/yourself for being/not being better. Also, like Inky said, sometimes communities could attract extremists – my guess is maybe these people just want to vent or maybe feel accepted by the community although it comes across as otherwise. That’s how I feel but who knows..

Also, if we can find like minded friends/groups with similar goals and friends who can help us become better then it works out to be really wonderful.

[Author]

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