Patterns of Spirituality

Custom - building Spirituality

In past periods of Europe, life was hard and often bleak, so ideas on spirituality reflected this. Religion, as the most visible arena of the spirit, was also hard and often bleak, with emphasis on unyielding moralities. Nowadays, as many people find that life is easier, so spirituality becomes reflected in more diverse ideas about it. In hard times, ideas about spirituality are narrow, whereas in more affluent times, spirituality becomes refined and spreads out into countless channels.

The key factor here is usually the ability to find sources of information. When information is restricted, then beliefs become restricted too. In past times, churches were the sources of information, and anything different from what they said was heresy, apostasy, lies, temptations from the devil, and any other label you can think of. Hence there were few ideas about spirituality that were socially allowed, and to compensate, there were a lot of mythical and romantic ideas attached to the saints. Western religions taught that man was bad, so the saints became reflections of the hope and goodness that people needed to believe in.

Nowadays, there is a lot of different information appearing all the time, and so it becomes possible to custom-build spirituality to suit a person's abilities, needs and desires. By that statement I mean that there is now no ultimate Earthly source of authority for spiritual ideas in the way that the churches once were. So each person can now explore pathways to spirituality that suits him or her.

The idea here is to follow what really interests you, and see where it eventually leads you. To bring in a little bit of metaphysics, each person has his/her own soul, and that soul is the usual source of the big moments of spiritual influence in that person's life. The soul shapes its influences and guidance to what the person can accept, and this usually is determined by what really interests that person. What you believe about spirituality is not always important ; what is important is what ideals you have, whether ethical, new age, humanitarian, or religious. Ideals are the ways by which the soul can influence you. Ideals are the routes by which a person upgrades his character and standard of ethics.

Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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