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In Reply to: Spirituality posted by Goth88 on June 30, 2002 at 17:24:18:
"Spirituality to me is a state of being, and you can be that whether you are atheist, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or any profession, or none."
I've been reading what you wrote about spirituality, and I couldn't agree more. I've always said that sprituality supercedes religion.
One of the silliest ideas being in the Family and fantasizing we were missionaries, was showing up on "mission fields" and trying to tell spritually rich people that they were spiritually hungry, and shoving stuff down their throats. It was just neo-colonization, a romantic replay of the West Christianizes the heathen. But so often when anyone talked to us and we thought they were sheep, it was just because they were dazzled by all things Western, and they were drawn into the illusion that we had something better than them.
It's so funny to see Westerners traveling en masse to the East believing the exact opposite, on some kind of pilgrimage to absorb Eastern spiritual values. In a typical market place in Goa, the locals are all standing by the stalls hawking Western goods, and the Westerner backpackers are all standing around the stores trying to buy a piece of the peace they find in the East.
I can relate to what you've said about spirituality very much. Your story about being helped by a communist in Sweden seems more like an example humanity though. I can remember falling off a bus in the slippery snow in Russia. I was dressed really well, and a frail old man who could barely stand himself struggled to hold me up. It was the look on his face I'll never forget. It was like he gave no second thought to helping himself first. He didn't look at me and judge me first. There was no awareness of class, creed or nationality. All he wanted was for me to manage to stand up. I was just a fellow human. Communists often seem to be the most humanistic people in the world.
