Embodied spirituality

[sonia]

In response to sabotabby's requestblogging: great cosmic questions, I said I would talk about my sense of spirituality as being distinct from religion, and how someone can be both an atheist and spiritual.

I'm defining religion here as belief in deity, one or many. Organized religion is all the rituals and buildings and officiants.

For me, spirituality is an embodied sense of the aliveness of the world. Connecting with my body and the earth and all the beings around me. Spirit, inspiration, breath. Soul. Life. Aliveness.

It's not about belief or imagination, and it's not about what anyone else says. It's personal, internal, an ongoing sensory experience.

I studied and practiced Reiki for many years. Reiki is translated as "Universal Life Energy." In the practice of channeling the energy around me to my clients (it sounds woo, but I did feel it happening), it felt like this energy I was sharing was love. Caring.

My sense is that loving each other and the earth and seeing all the beings on it as non-human relations to be cared for (as sabotabby said) is profoundly spiritual.

Commenting note: This post is an attempt to put words around a strong felt sense that's personal and important. Feel free to share your experiences, and please don't argue with mine.

Comments

[sabotabby]

That's a beautiful way of putting it.

I didn't mention it in my post, but I have since childhood had this animism belief, a weird sense of the—not necessary soul or aliveness—but being of things. Which makes it hard for me to throw anything out, but also involves a sense of interconnectedness that I think is both politically and philosophically useful, if not theologically so.

[sonia]

*nods* That sounds similar to what I was trying to get at.

[thistleingrey]

I used to wonder how people sense emotion or blockage when someone's body language is neutral and not particularly stiff. Then I managed to convey sad disappointment strongly to my dog (not a person, but a large mammal with a sufficiently complex brain and nervous system) without yelling or crying, after she got onto a table and messed with my knitting; since then, she's taken yarn and cloth napkins a few times when she's had the opportunity, but never an active knitting project. I guess I now believe in shifting energy outwards!--and thus in the idea that some humans are sensitive enough to detect such flows deliberately, not only subconsciously.

I've felt a few times previously as though I were receiving energy from therapeutic practitioners, but each time I thought I could as well have imagined it (and twice, it tilted negative, heh).

[sonia]

I'm glad you successfully got the message across to your dog about not messing with your knitting!

Our nervous systems are electrical, and I believe/sense/know that they resonate with each other, so it doesn't surprise me that you sensed energy from your practitioners. Sorry to hear it tilted negative sometimes, and yeah, I've had that happen too.

[silveradept]

I think that's a regular distinction more and more people are making, the difference between the spiritual (the energy flow, the experience, the feeling of things) and the religious (ritual, sometimes with specific roles and officiants, often with a selection of beliefs or dogma). You do not have to have a conception of a deity to believe in the aliveness of things. So what you've described here makes perfect sense to me.

(The person who has taken the occasional coursework on other belief systems now sits on their hands.)

[sonia]

Glad it makes sense. Feel free to continue the chain of posts in your journal! I'm curious to hear what has come from your coursework.