Comments on: Lawrence Wollersheim on Open Sourcing Spirituality (5): Values and Principles 3

By: Dave Trowbridge

Dave Trowbridge — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:11:05 +0000

I have struggled for some time with how to describe what it means to me to be a Quaker when people ask. It never occurred to me to think of it as “open-source spirituality,” but that’s precisely what liberal Quakerism is. Much of what Wollersheim discusses is core to our understanding of spirituality in a tradition that goes back 350 years. For instance, his statement that “[e]very mentally sound person already possesses the internal means to be their own highest spiritual authority for discerning spiritual truth for their own spiritual path” is precisely what George Fox insisted on, and is still central to the liberal branch of Quakerism.

For some ideas on how to talk about spirituality without reference to “spirit” or other terms with which atheists may be uncomfortable, I recommend Godless for God’s Sake, a collection of essays by non-Theist Friends who represent a diverse range of nontheist viewpoints, including agnosticism, atheism, humanism, naturalism and nonrealism.

By: Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:40:04 +0000

Hi James,

I rarely use spirit myself in daily language, except of course when I’m writing or speaking to an audience specifically interested in a dedicated search in that direction. Otherwise, my take is that everybody is ‘spiritual’, and that atheism is a spiritual tradition like the others, with its specific answers on our place in the universe. I think a proper focus is not on any formal acknowledgement of spiritual vocabulary, but on the ethical engagement for a better world and how this plays out in real life for all of us. True spirit expresses itself in our consideration and care for others, nothing else. This being said, I do find Dawkins very reductionist in his approaches, both in terms of selfish genes and in terms of his attitude to religion, which really seems directed at christian fundamentalism, but uses a too broad brush to categorise all relition/spirituality under the same superficial condenmation. Spirituality for me is nothing else than a set of psycho-physical processes which discloses human potential, and they work without belief system. The efficiency and results of meditation, yoga, tantra or whatever other practice, can be felt/experienced outside of the belief systems in which it is embedded, and would enrich any atheist full understanding of what it means to be a human in the world. But again, if there is no interest for such things, and the ethical value and practice is present, then I do not see that as a problem. Lawrence’s language is ostentable not geared towards this crowd, but to the larger realm of ‘cultural creatives’, which according to Paul Ray, number one quarter of the western population. I would like to call these people both post-religious and post-secular, but open to spiritual concerns.

By: james

james — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:23:20 +0000

Hi Michel,
Replying to you comment above, I’m referring to a group of friends who i would consider in the geek/coder community, who whenever i use the word, “spirit”, or anything even hinting at some form of religion or reference to deep spiritual truths, i see eyes glazing over(it’s happened many times, even when i have clearly outlined anti-guru techniques for sourcing a shared understanding of truth, and collective knowledge gathering a la -blogging, wikis, etc). I would love to build a bridge between the languages of integral and athiest/dawkins reading public to try and find common ground. You outline that in your comment above, but i think you assume too much, that this public will read for instance 4 blogposts on integral spiritual approaches, without skipping. Can we have a taker on coming up with a hybrid approach? Can anyone explain integral spirituality without using the word ‘spirit’ or ‘Ever Present Origin’? Perhaps a history or atheism, a citation of shared approaches of inquiry, and where this could lead? Address where taking the dawkins route fits into great dialogue on religion and where integral comes into this? Something on these lines.

By: Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:10:33 +0000

Hi James,

I think there are two kinds of atheists, the traditional anti-clerical one, a product of the 19th century, but also the open-minded post-secular ones, who can distinguish between belief systems and real experience of the extra-cognitive (or whatever name you want to give to it). Lawrence’s approach, an open inquiry without pre-set belief system, should be attractive to the latter type. Of course, the language used does require a minimum of spiritual culture, but I think that the capacity to make minimal necessary distinctions is required in any field of serious practice.

As one of my other selves would remark: serious spiritual search is not for sissies.

Michel

By: James Burke

James Burke — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:56:18 +0000

To Atheists reading this post, when they read it they will either skip it, having seen the word ‘spiritual’, or may go ‘blah’ when they read about a spiritual commons or hear that mentioned about this thing called an ‘Ever Present Origin’. They might wander if you are referring to some sort of unhackable ‘author’. How would you reframe or get more specific with the language used above, to make yourself understood to a person who is an atheist? It might seem kind of strange with the disease metaphor, pathologies of thought, etc. Not to say that it doesn’t have some kind of logic.