What is the point of Creation Spirituality? cover art

What is the point of Creation Spirituality?

What is the point of Creation Spirituality?

Listen for free

View show details

About this listen

 My friends often joke that I am a predictable, spiritual stereotype. They joke that they can predict my answers and ideas based on the punchlines of comedians who mock the religious… They aren’t wrong.The Meaning CrisisI am one of those people the meaning crisis beat into the darkness from which I thought I would never return. Over my life I became increasingly disconnected from my family, my friends, my faith and my life. My family tend to judge me without care or compassion for my own mental or physical health. I am an avatar for their wishes, dreams, and expectations and not a person in and of myself. Friends are physically so far away, because I have lived all over the country, my friends live all over the country and it is hard to keep in touch with them, especially as it has become harder for me to travel. The church abandoned God for the Republican Party. My body keeps me from doing so many of the things I want to do as my chronic ailments have gotten worse over time.The results of all of this is I am left drowning in the same sea of disconnection and loneliness as everyone. I’ve been able to keep my head above water, but it is so tempting sometimes to just let myself go under. While I know or at least see a path to the shore, riptides keep pulling me back out to sea.Current events don’t help. Every time I watch the news, my faith in the social contract, progress, and our ability to correct errors is shaken and cracked. I know historically, the ideological pendulum swings back and forth. It is hard to live through this prolonged swing to the right especially when as the mechanics of the state have been twisted to cover up and prevent the pendulum from swinging back the other way.I know I am not the only one feeling all this, but I don’t see enough spiritual teachers being honest about it.The Light in the DarknessAt the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to became a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.- Emma Goldman, Living My LifeWe are not at our best when we are serious and solemn, entirely focused on the Cause, whatever the “Cause” might be. We are at our best when we are really and truly alive and bringing that vitality to our causes.Anarchism is simply the rejection of unjust hierarchies and working through right relationship in accordance with the sovereignty of ourselves and others to build an equitable world. I want to build and live in a just, equitable, and compassionate world. That goal is the light on the path out of the meaning crisis for me. That is why I share it to the best of my ability.Science and reason are great, but they have nothing to offer to the search of meaning, purpose, or fulfillment. We can study those things all we want, but their is no way to objectively measure happiness, fulfillment, meaning, purpose, and connection. We need a different technology for those things, and we have three: religion, spirituality, and magic. The problem is they have been used to control, dominate, and suppress people. Any technology can be misused, that doesn’t mean we throw it out. We have to reclaim it for its proper and good use.How do we find meaning?These are like diagnostic questions you can ask about in order to (sort of) measure how much meaning in life you have. What do you want to exist even if you don’t?Second, how real is it? Is it really real? Third, how much of a difference do you make to it now? If you can answer all three of those you have meaning in life. If one of them is missing, it’s reduced. If they’re all missing, you’re in trouble.John Vervaeke, Metaphysics of MatteringThese are the diagnostic questions to discover how much meaning we have in our lives:* What do we want to exist even if it doesn’t?* How real is what we want to exist? * How much of a difference do we make to building it now? The ...
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.