Going Beyond Known Forms Of Spirituality:

Paradoxical as the term spiritual realism may seem to some, it carries deep original meaning and progressive revolutionary purpose.

Spiritual Realism is for people interested in spirituality, but who don’t like the superstition, magical thinking, and infantile emotions that go with what passes for religion and spirituality. We are all living in a local and global context which is entirely alien to the cultures and circumstances that gave birth to the spiritualities and religions of the past. In this era of radical spiritual change a new clarity is emerging.

Utopia means Dystopia:

Utopia means Dystopia:

Utopia has been on my mind for several thousand years, actually since the demise of the last golden age. Unfortunately almost no one can remember when that was now. We Homo sapiens have been around for at least 100,000 years or even more as some believe. Yet collectively we remember next to nothing. Things get really, really hazy, about 15,000 thousand years ago.

We would definitely like Utopia indeed many are depending on the return of the Messiah or the Mahdi or the coming Bodhisattva. In the mean time all we seem to get is more Dystopia as this list of movies makes all too evident. We keep trying for Utopia and ending up with Dystopia, probably because humanity is deluded in the extreme.

If someone even with awesome spiritual abilities showed up right now and claimed that they knew the way forward into a better future we would probably do our best to neutralize or destroy them. Why would we do that? Obviously the visionary would want to show us a totally different way of being. It would have to be that way because nothing we have done up to now has brought us one step closer to actual Utopia. That completely different way of being would come as a very real and profound shock to the human system.

If the Utopian visionary had enough energy we would get to project all of our shit and sickness onto them. We are hung up on power? We would get to accuse them of wanting power. We are hung up on sex? We would get to project our sexual problems onto them. We are obsessed with money? We would get to accuse them of being after money. We are negative and viciously violent? We would get to project our negativity and violence onto them. And so on like that with all the psychic sickness that assails us, being projected onto the spiritual visionary.

Our heavily projected sickness and dementia could easily make the visionary sick and demented, but we would refuse to own that, because that would mean actually looking at ourselves. Once the visionary was smitten with our sickness and manifesting our hangups to us we would be able to accuse them of fraud and deception.

In the end only the visionary would take real responsibility because they would be the only one capable of actually doing that. The visionary with their spiritual abilities would regain their full health and wholeness. But we would still be sick in fact now we would be even sicker and more demented.

Still we know that we are stuck in a spiritual rut, mostly hopelessly lost in our collective delusions, but no way are we going to trust a stinking Utopian visionary or become one ourselves.

The simple truth is this: None of us are going anywhere real spiritually speaking until we start to wake up to the actual nature of our confusion and understand what spirituality really is.

This is why we need to look deeply into how spiritual awareness states really function.

SpiritualRealistAwarenessStates

Nature Of Spiritual Reality:

Nature Of Spiritual Reality:

What I have been calling “spiritual realism” has developed over a few decades of direct engagement in the nature and meaning of spirituality. Even though spirituality has ceased to be ‘mainstream flavor of the month’ I know that it is deeply important to many thoughtful and creative people.

There are people who come to the spiritual cold; which is to say from a background of intelligent agnosticism or even atheism. Yet I think it is true that most spiritually concerned individuals come from a background of religion however loosely defined. Whatever the inner backdrop to a renewed concern with spirituality may be, the fact remains that false religiosity will tend to intrude itself into the awareness of spirituality. This is almost invariably due to familial or cultural religious conditioning. There is also the fact that many people are actually into religion but for various reasons- all of them bad- choose to call their religious preoccupations ‘spirituality’.

Religiosity in any form is a real obstacle to genuine spirituality. Spiritual realists reject religiosity, superstition, and comfort zone beliefs in all their forms. A vital living spirituality does not require tradition of any kind to prop it up. The truth of this statement becomes obvious the moment we realize that authentic spirituality is grounded in the eternal which is of course “ever present everywhere”.

The fact is that whatever state you are in as you read this; you are invariably in a modification of a spiritual state of being and awareness. A corrupt religious tradition tells us that we must do something in order to become spiritual beings but nothing could be further from the truth. If you were not already and always a spiritual being nothing in this world or any other could turn you into one. Fair enough that’s obvious too.

Now you may be asleep to the real nature of yourself, you may be strung out on distractions, sex, drugs, consumerism, or any number of mind numbing existential dead ends. But in all probability if you are feeling spiritually obstructed; the chances are that you haven’t learned yet how to think clearly about spirituality. Yet you must know that such a clear spiritual thinking is possible or you wouldn’t be surfing spiritual websites and blogs. Unless you just stumbled in the door are about to stumble/click right back out again.

By pointing to ‘clear spiritual thinking’ I am in no way advocating any kind of “spiritual science”; one pernicious version of which is popular with certain misguided Hollywood celebrities. Neither am I advocating the “spiritual scientific thinking” of nineteenth century brain washing cults or designer theologies like anthroposophy, or cabalism. The whole notion that by adopting a ‘spiritual ideology’ the answers to real spiritual questions can be found is patently absurd. This too must be obvious.

And what is more obvious yet is that none of these bogus ‘spiritual paths’ have made even a dent in our collective trance-tragic. If you are looking for a new pleasure machine, best thing is to stay away from spirituality all together or it will really mess you up beyond all recognition. If on the other hand you are striving to get to the heart of the matter of being human and aware that you are mortal, then it is only authentic spirituality that can adequately address that crucial all important concern.

The best approach is to assume that everything you think you know about spirituality is probably wrong. I do this at least once a day. Clears the mind and allows the one state of awareness that can help, to spring into focus. It is called “beginners mind”, not relying on anything you think you know, but simply allowing yourself to become totally aware of the state you are in right now. It can also be called “choice-less-awareness”. I call it “the here now” beyond conditioning, reaction, need, fear, hope, desire- fill in the blank.

In this “here now” I simply am the way I am, things just simply are the way they are. It all may be horribly difficult complicated and painful or dull boring and inane or apple pie nice and splendid. The main thing is that I am not allowing any outside authority, belief system or ideology, to decide what my existence “here-now” means to me. If you get this you see that it is radical in the deepest way because from “here-now” nothing can manipulate me, not science religion or philosophy and least of all politics and public opinion. And this is the beginning of spiritual reality. And this is the beginning of real freedom.

If you have arrived here from Spiritual Reality Now you were trying to read my webmaster notes at that site. I set up this weblog in order to have a more direct and convenient means of writing updates. One of the other reasons for this weblog is to make it more convenient for you to express your thoughts and comments.

This entry was first posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2006 at 3:09 pm: On theseus at labyrinth