People are always calling other people "spiritual". What does that word mean? That is a very ambiguous word. Does it mean kind, loving, empathetic, devoted, etc.? Do you have to believe in God and/or a religion to be spiritual? If somebody is "good", does that mean he/she is spiritual? Does a person need to be Christian to be "spiritual"? How about the "pagan" Indians who were considered "spiritual"? Is any religious leader "spiritual?" Is any wise politician who helps many people "spiritual" no matter what his/her religious beliefs are?

Interesting topic!

If someone is acting spiritually, as in "kind, loving, empathetic, devoted, etc." and small animals or babies are not involved, I am suspicious.

It's pretty easy to spot someone who seems to be acting spiritually or trying to act spiritually. If I spend any time with such a person I keep checking my wallet and car keys. That because I'm a heathen and am suspecting trickery.

I don’t know what it means—at least I don’t know what it means to Mormons.

In my TBM days, people often commented on how spiritual I was. I remember after I was released from a stake calling, someone commented on my successor by saying “brother xxxx is great, but he’s just not spiritual like you.” People would tell me how they felt the spirit from my lessons, talks, or even prayers. The funny thing is, I never felt the spirit.

So then we're talking posture, speech patterns, voice mannerisms, facial muscle play, and then on through the Boy Scout thingie:

"trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent."


Wasn't Ted Bundy good at this?

I’m pretty cool, but I’m no Ted Bundy. ;)

A high-pitched, breathy voice is a dead giveaway.

In my family if you were a woman it meant conspicuous (learned) helplessness. "Oh, she can't use an ATM but she is so spiritual!"

"Spiritual" is a lot like "special."

27% of Americans say they're 'Spiritual But Not Religious'

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/06/more-americans-now-say-theyre-spiritual-but-not-religious/

Even though those who identify as religious has decreased in recent years, those who identify as "spiritual but not religious" has increased. Among the “nones,” there has been a 5-point rise in recent years in the share who say they frequently feel spiritual peace (from 35% in 2007 to 40% in 2014).

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/21/americans-spirituality/

“To me, the root meaning when we speak about spirituality is interior life,” Tippett says.

In 2018, scientists at Yale University and Columbia University found the “spiritual part of the brain” — an area they're calling the “neurobiological home” of spirituality. It's an area that lights up during more traditional religious experiences of feeling in touch with God, but more broadly also when that "transcendence" involves communion with nature or humanity, the research finds.

Tippett says she's noticing the emergence of a powerful secular spirituality.

"We are a culture that has for a while now really only privileged and rewarded exterior accomplishment," she says, pointing out that "not too long ago" most people had some kind of religious identity that they inherited.

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/01/13/spirituality-krista-tippett

schrodingerscat Wrote:
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> In 2018, scientists at Yale University and
> Columbia University found the “spiritual part of
> the brain” — an area they're calling the
> “neurobiological home” of spirituality. It's
> an area that lights up during more traditional
> religious experiences of feeling in touch with
> God, but more broadly also when that
> "transcendence" involves communion with nature or
> humanity, the research finds.
===============================

Bet the same neurobiology is active for the NeoNazi engulfed in the mass rally:
We Are One

too many of these 'feel good' terms have been shopworn / abused because of over-used clichés.

Buzz words. Heavily emotional signals



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2021 01:53AM by GNPE.

Thanks for asking this question, although I still don't know the answer. In French, "spirituel" means "witty"... I like that definition.

So...people who are somewhat spiritual are half wits?

What's wrong with being half-witty? At least they're trying!

I like that definition because to be witty one must have an understanding of what connects us, our commonalities, and witty is communication which is a key to spirituality.

I have always felt that spirituality was being in tune with all of life including nature. Feeling part of something eternal even if you have your own personal expiration date. The opposite of a clique, a country club mentality, a need to be the only ones God likes.

I know some equate spirituality with religion, but I think religion kills it the way I define it. In the end though, defining spirituality is like trying to nail jello to the wall.

Culturally accepted and justified emotional thinking. If ones emotional thinking is different from the current group culture, they'll join a different more compatible one that reinforces their emotional thinking practices.

Thus you'll see such ideas as being right-minded or right-thinking in their argumentation.

May be it's from spiritualism - ancient metaphysical belief that all is composed of matter and spirit. Folks that had a lot of the spirit were "spiritual" --- communication with the dead, spirit knocking (it's a living), seances. So someone spiritual has a better likelihood of catching the wind from the other side.

Latin spiritus is breath, which also means soul, an idea swiped from the Greeks

And then there's the whole breath of life thing

Since "spiritual" and "spirituality" are psychological terms; i.e. they relate not to assertions of facts about the world, but to inner feelings or an inner state of mind, it might be best to think of spirituality at least initially in those terms. From there, we can ask just what such feelings refer or relate to.

Religion, of course, claims the word 'spirituality' as its own, but in modern times there has been resistance to any such exclusive claim. The following quote by Einstein is helpful, and it points to a trend as exemplified in such later book titles as "The Sacred Depths of Nature" (Ursula Goodenough) or "Reinventing the Sacred." (Stuart Kauffman)

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. . . It was the experience of mystery . . . A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds -- it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. . . I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." (Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, page 11)

Here Einstein never mentions "spiritual" but it is easy to equate this statement with this term. Again, it is a feeling laced with emotion. But that is not the gist of it. Spirituality is, "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate." In other words it is knowledge of and connection with the transcendent. And the spiritual person (presumably) is one who both acknowledges such a reality, and feels a personal connection to this reality. Thus, Einstein was a spiritual ("religious") man in this sense.

What I want to know is this: Once you step out on this limb of the transcendent, it raises an immediate question as to its nature; and most importantly its source. And that question cannot be answered by a casually mundane appeal to the laws of physics, or the neuroscience of emotions, because in that very appeal, transcendence drops out, and 'spirituality' is lost.

> Here Einstein never mentions
> "spiritual" but it is easy to
> equate this statement with
> this term.


Or it's impossible to equate mysterious with spiritual.

There's no such connection in my mind, and I bet I'm not alone!

Seriously! They're each 'words' - empty containers which everyone loads with a distinct and likely different meaning. You cannot count on walking up to someone and asking, "Are you spiritual?" and expect that you share the same meaning or context of that word.

"Oh, yeah, man, I'm super-spiritual, man..., especially when I'm trippin'. Wanna get high, man? I got this weed from Hawaii; you've never been so spiritual, man!"

The fact that words -- like "spiritual" or "mysterious" -- are ambiguous in a language, does not mean that they are devoid of content when used by a speaker in some context. Moreover, it does not mean that such words do not have a meaning that is historical and more conventional than other uses of the word. And when, as in this case, the word ("spiritual") historically and by common usage implies some sort of *experienced* transcendent reality, you cannot conveniently dismiss the claimed experience by simply appealing to the ambiguity of its use.

In general it is arguably the underlying transcendent *experience* that motivates the use of the word "spiritual" (whatever the source or context of that experience might be. (Religion, drugs or whatever)

Finally: I am merely trying to answer the question posed by the OP. It is both false, and not an answer to merely label the word "spiritual" as an "empty container" for people to use as they see fit without concern for its historical or religious connotations. This is the kind of answer I would expect from someone that is only interested in dismissing the word as essentially meaningless, and not much interested in explaining it; much less in addressing the experiences that generate its use.

Your dismissals at the ends of your comments have become quite amusing really.

You chose the very best words to use in your over the top definition. Why not let it stand on its own? Why the need to declare yourself the winner?

I never declare myself "the winner" of a discussion on the Board, and did not do so here!

As a young student I was once told by a wise philosophy professor that the winner of an (intellectual) argument is always the person who learns something; and that the loser is the person who does not. It is always my hope that there are more winners than losers on the Board; but sometimes I wonder.

You can just as easily replace it with words like magic and faith, or compound words like make-believe.

We can say that there is a chemical state of the brain on psylocibin that is routinely identified as transcendent and spiritual. This doesn't make the experience a factual connection with something else nor does it preclude it. But that it's a chemical state weighs more on the materialist side imho.

dogbloggernli Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You can just as easily replace it with words like
> magic and faith, or compound words like
> make-believe.

Who is the "you" you are referring to here? Certainly a third person considering an account of a spiritual experience can do that; i.e. describe it using their preferred language. However, I suggest that the person having the experience would not agree that such alternative words are accurate or adequate in describing the content of the experience.

> We can say that there is a chemical state of the
> brain on psylocibin that is routinely identified
> as transcendent and spiritual. This doesn't make
> the experience a factual connection with something
> else nor does it preclude it. But that it's a
> chemical state weighs more on the materialist side
> imho.

Of course, you can tell a person reporting a spiritual experience that it was "just a chemical state of the brain." But that physical cause--even if true--does not capture the transcendent nature of what was actually experienced. Deterministic physical states and functions are not transcendent because by definition 'transcendent' experiences are experiences that feel or seem like they are identifying something beyond the mundane physical cause that may have generated them--even if such feelings are illusory. In short, the physical brain state cannot capture what was experienced.

by definition is meaningless as a claim on reality. How Humans use words does not bind the universe to behave that way.

"How Humans use words does not bind the universe to behave that way."

That made me feel spiritual. You plucked the right ones out of the universe.

G. Salviati Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "The most beautiful experience we can have is the
> mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which
> stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
> . . It was the experience of mystery . . . A
> knowledge of the existence of something we cannot
> penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest
> reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in
> their most primitive forms are accessible to our
> minds -- it is this knowledge and this emotion
> that constitute true religiosity; in this sense,
> and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. .
> . I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity
> of life and with the awareness and glimpse of the
> marvelous structure of the existing world,
> together with the devoted striving to comprehend a
> portion be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that
> manifests itself in nature." (Einstein, Ideas and
> Opinions, page 11)

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." Einstein, (February of 1950 letter to Marcus)

Maslow had a term for this 'task' or peak human need, self-transcendence.

“Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos”

(Maslow, 1971, p. 269).

According to Maslow, self-transcendence brings the individual what he termed “peak experiences” in which they transcend their own personal concerns and see from a higher perspective. These experiences often bring strong positive emotions like joy, peace, and a well-developed sense of awareness (Messerly, 2017).

https://positivepsychology.com/self-transcendence/#:~

> It is both false, and not
> an answer to merely label
> the word "spiritual" as an
> "empty container" for people
> to use as they see fit with-
> out concern for its historical
> or religious connotations.

> This is the kind of answer I
> would expect from someone that
> is only interested in dismissing
> the word as essentially meaning-
> less, and not much interested in
> explaining it; much less in
> addressing the experiences that
> generate its use.

Word salad, designed to hide the salami.

You acknowledge that "... words -- like "spiritual" or "mysterious" -- are ambiguous in a language", but then you want me spanked because I point it out?

Language is a tool. I love using it. It's already complicated enough. Although it was interesting to watch you jump from 'spiritual' is ambiguous to labeling me as not being interested in "...addressing the experiences that generate its use.

I am always interested in poking at the experiences that generate its use. Like sex! I like poking at that!

You're just saying that because you want to see more spankings.

I was giving EOD points for the elegance of his spanking.

And points mean... something or other ;-)

This is how I think of it...and no, you don't have to be religious to be spiritual, at least from my standpoint.

"You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul"

Swami Vivekananda

> There is no other teacher
> but your own soul


Speaking from a personal (male) perspective, you haven't had the right girlfriends.

Huge shout-out to Rayetta Kay, who 61 years ago taught me all about French kissing! You go, girl!!!

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Huge shout-out to Rayetta Kay, who 61 years ago
> taught me all about French kissing! You go,
> girl!!!

Wait a second. You told me she taught you about French kissing when she was 61. Why are you changing your story now?

Cosmological Constant!!

What? She's STILL 61?

Cosmological Constant!!!!!

What part of stop trying to make sense don't you get?

I'm beginning to think you're more a Great Tractor than a Great Attractor...

It's "spirchul," dangit.

I'm pretty sure it means "total horseshit".

For nevermos, it generally means that someone is interested in things of the spirit, or things unseen. The interest does not have to be Christian in nature. The person involved might or might not be involved in a church, temple, or religious practice. You will often hear the phrase, "spiritual but not religious," meaning that a person retains private beliefs and perhaps prayer, but does not normally attend religious services.

I think for Mormons, it has a somewhat different meaning. IMO it means someone who believes wholeheartedly in the Mormon dogma, and who is more likely to attend church than not. In other words, it's someone who is all in, and who probably doesn't question a whole lot. It could also mean someone who puts on a good show of following the program and what is expected.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2021 10:20AM by summer.