A purely conceptual view of spirituality

For the the last several thousand years, man has attempted to better understand his place in being. What is his reason for existing? What does he need to accomplish before death? Will he be remembered when he is gone? Will his legacy fulfill his ultimate desires and continue the line of his passions. Man has struggled with concepts which are always just out of reach, questions for which there are no ascertainable answers.

Mankind suffers similarly. Will the human species progenerate for several thousand years more? Is the end near? Is fate all governing? Who is right and wrong in the eyes of the ultimate judge? Again, the answers vex us in being unattainable. With all the doubt and worries of the modern age, and respectfully the previous ages, life continues to move on, day by day, with no abrupt termination.

Is it hope that moves us forward? As humanity grows grey, merely sprouting fingers and toes before our universe, we find ourselves more cultured, educated, and enlightened, as a whole, than any of our past generations. What has changed in the last few eons that makes us any better? Is our belief in a creator, seeing us a child, as we witness in nature, our strongest motivation to continue? Is this a necessity? In many parts of the world, organized religion tries to push us into this understanding. We are the child of a masterful being, and we will one day become closer to the ultimate, personally and in community.

The closest thing to a grand answer that we have found is spirituality, a concept of wholyness which goes unseen and often unrecognized.

Spirituality appears to transcend religion, and as such seems to offer more answers with less words. Religion preaches methodologies, and it can be argued that philosophies do the same. Religion sets moral guides which philosophy will debate. In the view of religion there are those well received for their actions and then there are the pariahs. Religion measures just in actions, philosophy disputes reason, and spirituality exists in an unrelatable sense to the other two. Spirituality is a system which places all things as equal and complete relative to and inclusive of all else.

In the mundane, the principal of wholeness eludes us. We try to make the world as best we can, in balance with our own immediate desires. Ego rears its face in most every action we commit, even in the guise of favorable action towards others. We strive to be excellent, and while doing so take liberty in the subjugation of those around us. This is universal however, it is the nature of survival. As symbiotic parasites we feed off of the land, and destroy it in the process. Fortunately nature is resilient, and likewise are those which we inflict with our being everyday.

While ego is responsible for much of man's struggle, it is justified in many cases. It can be considered the ego of the body to consider itself before others by breathing. Ego can be seen as any action which takes for the self. Negative ego however, can then be viewed as anything which takes for the self alone and yields no beneficence. This is the scourge of man that creates tendencies of greed and distrust.

A spiritual view of struggle can bring further justification. In a view with no concept of time, all things have balance. What may have been considered wholly egotistical for one person, may in the end prove profitable for all else. The perspective to see life in this way is beyond us physically, but spiritually and with a spiritual consciousness we can begin to understand that all things complete a cycle, complete with good and evil as we perceive it.

The cause and effect that we promote for the events of our civilization lacks a deeper view of time. We lack the ability to see the root cause of a problem, problems which can easily elapse thousands of years of human struggle. In our naivety, we claim things to be unjust, with insight transcending time, spirituality, we find that all things have a place in the ultimate cycle for which we each play our small and crucial roles.

In only the last several thousand years we have arguably made the greatest bounds in our understanding of acceptance based on wholyness. As time progresses we will hopefully stretch our understanding of the unfathomable. With this we may tend towards greater acceptance and peace, the goal of most all religions. Man has struggled for a very long time, and while the struggle continues, hope guides us forward, wherever that may be.

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