Tag: community

The Spiritual Connection
Society has undergone a spiritual revival in recent years. The notion of spirituality is cropping up in all sorts of contexts. It seems that we’ve caught on that there’s something important about it. But if you ask ten people to explain the word “spiritual”, you’re likely to get ten different answers. Whether it’s a theologian or a talk show host, an anthropologist or your average man on the street, pretty much everyone drifts into abstract vagueness when they speak of porno gratis matters spiritual. On the other hand, there are folks out there who never even mention spirituality; who would shrug and scratch their heads if you brought it up. Yet these same people could be deeply infused with spirit. Truthfully, we are all infused with spirit, every human being, but it seems that certain people are more developed in this regard.

It is quite correct to have discovered that spirituality is important. It’s a good sign. However, not everyone realizes just how important spirituality actually is. Important to the mental and physical health of every person, and important to the health of the world. Indeed, now more than ever a there is a critical need for the world to rediscover true spirituality. Vague hints are not good enough. Spirituality is not merely an abstraction, but an experience; not just a fuzzy notion, but a concrete and specific thing. And until you experience it yourself, there isn’t much use in hearing someone else describe it. Nevertheless, let me offer a few sentences by way of introduction, and then refer you to some of the more authoritative sources on the resource pages. (see Transcendental Meditation, other practices).

The Knower, The Knowing and The Known

From an intellectual standpoint, the key aspect of spirituality, the main point to grasp, is that reality consists of three parts: the knower, the process of knowing, and the known. These are the three primitives; the three irreducible elements from which all further discussion must derive. It’s should be intuitively clear that the entity which knows, the observer, is you. It’s also pretty clear that the process of knowing, or observing, has something to do with your five senses, and perhaps with other faculties as well. The known, of course, is all that is “out there”, in the environment.

An On-going Process of Internal Growth

But the known is actually more than what’s out there. For example, you can look at yourself, in which case the known becomes you. You would then be both the observer and the observed. This is actually a key concept: To know thyself … to know the knower. But here’s the trick. This is not just a concept, it’s a practice. It’s something that one does. Moreover, it’s possible to work at this, to improve one’s technique, and progress through stages of spiritual development as you progress through life. This is another important point: that spirituality is an on-going process of internal growth.
Internal means inside of you. Not inside your body, or inside your brain, but in the non-material region of the mind/body continuum. People who are further along the spiritual path are able to recognize this internal, mental aspect of life. The reason this is important is because being in touch with your inner side is the more natural way to live. They call this “enlightenment”. There are great benefits that come out of it, both physiological and psychological.

When you’re in touch with your inner self, your character begins to form. Your best qualities start to come out, including the quality of compassion. This is how the quality of life is affected. When a community contains greater numbers of enlightened, compassionate people, things get better. It has to do with the interaction among community members. The enlightened people affect the thinking and the behavior of the unenlightened simply by moving among them: working, talking, socializing, carrying on the routines of life. There are of course degrees of this – partial enlightenment – but any amount of enlightenment at all in the community is better than complete darkness. Taking it a step further, the more enlightened communities we have, the better the whole of society becomes. Unfortunately, for quite a while now most of the world has been carrying on in state that is closer to darkness than to enlightenment. There are signs that things are changing, but we still have a long road ahead of us.

All Religions are Included

Notice that we have not mentioned God or religion. When it comes to matters of civic responsibility, you need to be as inclusive as possible. If you talked about spirituality in terms of a particular religious tradition – Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. – there would certainly be folks from other backgrounds who will take exception to your arguments. Moreover, religion itself is just the envelope, the outer trappings, of a deeper personal experience – a divine experience – that transcends all religions. Whatever route you take to this experience is a good one. Whatever spiritual tradition you have is valuable when you pursue it to its ultimate source in the divine. Garden Zone Community Management calls for a renewal of interest in spirituality, and in fact depends on this renewal in order for it to succeed, but it also requires that a manager remain neutral from a religious standpoint in order to attract the widest ecumenical support.