| Spirituality
or Spiritual Escapism? by Jennifer Palmquist and Dan Cohen Question: What do you think about the increase in spirituality over the past 20 years? Response: For some it's great, for others it's a step in the opposite direction. Question: What do you mean? Response: There are some people who are becoming more spiritual in many aspects of their lives, but for many it's mainly a coping strategy to avoid dealing with the painful issues that they face in their lives. Question: That's ridiculous. How can spirituality be a coping strategy? Response: That's why it's such a good strategy, because the idea of spirituality being a coping strategy seems so implausible. It often appears that the person who "becomes more spiritual" has decided to take the high road and live a more spiritual life. In fact, it often signifies their choosing to not deal with their issues by avoiding them -- a way of coping -- escapism. Unfortunately, consciously deciding to act more spiritually doesn't clear away our subconscious programming and therefore, our deeper beliefs, feelings and behaviors don't change, nor do our lives. Question: How do you avoid your problems under the guise of spirituality? Response: What was it that Scarlet O'Hara said? Something like, "Tomorrow's another day." When you invoke spirituality, you can decide to not worry about it today, tomorrow or at all, because it no longer fits your definition of a spiritual issue -- or you can delude yourself by creating an image of yourself that is above the need to deal with these issues. Question: Can you be more specific? Response: Consider that we humans are physical, emotional, mental and spiritual beings. If your focus shifts to "becoming more spiritual" then, based upon your definition of spirituality, you will typically become less accepting of your other aspects. For instance, it becomes particularly easy to deny our emotional selves, especially when we experience "negative" emotional feelings such as anger, shame, jealousy, etc. Most people wouldn't define these emotions as part of their spiritual experience. Question: That sounds great to me. Why deal with the bad stuff if you can avoid it? Response: How can you become more spiritual if you're denying aspects of yourself? How do you spiritualize parts of yourself? I guess it's all in how you define "becoming more spiritual." Question: How do you define it? Response: Becoming more spiritual as a human being means spiritualizing all of myself, which includes the physical, emotional and mental. Trying to split myself into pieces and dictate which parts of myself should be left as is and which should be spiritualized is clearly an example of the insane running the asylum. Question: So how do you become more spiritual? Response: Twenty years ago, spirituality was less popular, more esoteric and elusive. For some, words like spirituality and soul still carry those connotations, while for others they have religious significance based primarily upon the person's adopted beliefs. As these words have become more mainstream, we have tried to define them intellectually because our society is heavily biased towards science and mental processing with less weight given to the experiential. Becoming more spiritual means practicing spirituality, not just thinking it or pretending to have arrived as a spiritual being. Question: And how is that done? Response: One day at a time, little steps, an idea, a thought, a hope and a dream with a big dose of commitment. Question: Be serious, how do you practice spirituality? Response: Physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. It's a shift in your attitude, your beliefs, feelings and behaviors. It's allowing more of your soul to come into play. It's allowing more of you to participate in life. Question: I hate when people say things like, "allowing more of you to participate in life." What are you talking about? I am what I am. I'm here! Response: You are, but our ability to be aware of and accept ourselves more completely is limited, because we use coping strategies. We use these strategies to avoid accepting aspects of ourselves that are painful, but for them to work, they must limit our awareness to only what we are willing to perceive. In doing so, we reduce our awareness and acceptance of our soul, because we are whole beings and denying the subconscious denies the soul. Our payoff from these strategies is that we get what we think we want and we achieve approval from others to appease ourselves. However, on a conscious level, because we have closed our awareness/acceptance of much of ourselves, we have reduced our ability to participate in life more consciously aware of our whole selves. Question: Ouch. That seems like too high a price to pay for an illusion. Response: Fortunately, spirituality is moving away from the esoteric towards the practical. The soul is starting to be viewed and experienced as more real and impactful in life as opposed to being simply an intellectual concept. We can embody our souls by enhancing our feeling nature. It is very achievable. Question: It still seems like a just a concept to me. Response: And it will continue to be just a concept for as long as you only read and talk about it, but that's a starting point. Question: I guess talk is cheap, but commitment to moving in this direction seems hard. Response: Yes, that's why we pretend, but tomorrow's another day. Jennifer Palmquist and Dan Cohen have created and teach Conscious Unfoldment™, a comprehensive program designed to increase conscious awareness. It is for those individuals that are ready to better understand and accomplish their life's purpose. They can be reached at (952) 943-4010 or send an email to dcohen@cns.com. Copyright (c) 2002 Jennifer Palmquist & Dan Cohen |
||
|
|
|
