Monday, April 23, 2007

Spirituality

People do a lot of things to achieve what they consider as spirituality! One can say someone has achieved this great feat when someone has reached a stage in life where abstinence is the supreme word... Abstinence from all worldly pleasures!
The word abstinence in itself gives the wrong connotation... As in you abstain from doing something means you can actually do it, but you really are controlling yourself from doing it!
Take in case of sex, the greatest sages of the world have followed abstinence from sex, or you can call it celibacy. Why do you call someone celibate? As he has always in his mind an urge to have sex, which is the primal need or instinct in him, and he is able to control it.
Shouldn't be spirituality a bit more persuasive? I mean shouldn't it be the state when there is no feelings for worldly pleasures at all? Might be there is chance that this state is throughly unachievable?
People who achieve this state are normally the mentally ill, who have no thoughts or meanings for these pleasures. Their case can be also suspect in some cases, wherein they are termed by society as mentally ill, when thier acts are normally not acceptable to society and there is no way to justify thier actions. Something like the Virginia Tech killings last day. (my utmost deep felt condolences to all who were victims of this senseless act). We stereotype and try to find out some way to justify their actions, but then there is no way that there can be a continuous pattern in all this too, as human behaviour has no pattern. So this leaves the mentally ill also away from the group who can ever achieve the Spirtiuality platform.
I think this leaves only two groups, who can be termed actually the most spiritual. They are the actual sons and daughters of god, unfazed, by all what is happening around them, not disturbed by any such worldly pleasures... I would say they are infants, thier instincts are so pure, so much only for survival, and thier love for all is fearless... The other group are the mentally challenged. They too are spiritually on a higher platform... they abstain from anything which can be termed as bad, and they can never be possesed by the satan. They are pure...
So I feel all spirituality leads us to god, butI think the true spirituality everywhere can be achieved by fearless love... Like infants, like the mentally challenged! I feel to attain spirituality we should never think of abstinence as a path... As if we are prone to some worldly pleasures, that is right, as god intended us to enjoy to the best possible in our lives. So the only true path to spirituality is fearless love... Love everyone to your best possible... Even your enemies, strangers, anyone... If all will follow this way to spirituality, I am sure the "world peace" that the otherwise bitching beauty pagent winners wish for will be so easy to achieve.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ed,

i think this is OSHO line of thnking ( do every thing to maximum and you will reach god).

while you said that abstinance is wrong way to reach god, i think you forgot to consider that fact that, abstnance in itself is nothing if you donot consider "control" you have to excert to attain abstinance (be it a cigeratte or sex).

this control that you develop through abstinance givs you the power you need for "absolute love". with out this control, it will be very dificult (impossible) to practice absolute love (coz you cant prevent envy, jelousey etc. so you are abstaining from envy, jeousy etc).

but yes, i agree with you, absolute love is the best way to attain samadhi. but i think that you have to practise control for attaining that state wher you can get to love absolutely and abstinance is the most common way to practice control (just like popular fasion)