Spirituality
I often wonder what spirituality means in the context of atheism. What we call spirituality is an aspect of the human experience of everyone, but if you don't believe in souls and spirits, it's something of a misnomer. All the same, it's something we all need.
Spirituality, then, is that feeling that you get when everything is as it should be. Inner peace. The ecstasy of being alive. It is calm and focus. It is the opposite of stress, and thus necessary for not just our mental but also our physical well-being.
I get that feeling when I am building things with my hands, making something useful, growing a garden, putting my hands in the soil and making something of it, or else completing a work of art. Some of our earliest compulsions are to play in the mud and build sand castles. When I'm working like this, I'm using my body and letting my mind truly rest. It's not like I'm not using my mind, but it's like feeding it a very small, healthy meal instead of junk food or a rich feast. A brain fast, of sorts. While one part of my brain is busy focusing on what's in front of me, the rest is able to drift off, stretch out, lay back, and do what comes naturally. It's like when people tell you they do their best thinking on the toilet or in the shower. The brain does its best work when you aren't trying to steer it.
Simply being outside, in nature, feels viscerally right to me. I'm not so naive as to believe we have any sort of ancestral memory, but there's something about certain environments that seems to naturally soothe us. We evolved on savanna and in the jungle, so is it any wonder that forests and lawns dotted with trees still hold enormous appeal for us? It only makes sense that hidden somewhere in our genes is an affinity for the environment that has historically sustained us.
I also feel like all is right with the world when I am with my friends, hanging out and talking and laughing and experiencing life with company. I can't get enough. Everyone needs some alone time, but it's rare when my social time is so excessive that I begin to be pressed for alone time. I enjoy my alone time a great deal, but I rarely seek it out.
I also remember that when I first started fucking, that was the most distinctively spiritual experience I'd ever had. It sounds cheesy even to me, looking back, but I felt like I was one with the universe. Yes, it's just a flood of hormones, but so is absolutely everything else we experience. That feeling of heady, mutual attraction and intense physical connection is something unparalleled, and I seek it as often as I can with as many people as I feel compelled to (within reasonable boundaries, as with all indulgences). Limerence is my church and my drug of choice.
Socializing and fucking are characterized by our society as base and frivolous pursuits, but, with rare exception, they are absolutely essential to our happiness. Loneliness is the bane of the social animal's existence, and more than any other creature on earth, human beings are preoccupied with sex. I don't mean that hyperbolically. We spend a greater amount of our time thinking about, looking for, and having sex than any other animal, even the infamous bonobo. A ridiculously high sex drive is as much of a uniquely human trait as our big brains are, and just as nifty, I think. Humanity took a sad, sorry turn when it decided to repress this urge instead of celebrating and indulging it.
I am not an essentialist, but a part of me feels like when I'm doing any/all of these things, I'm doing what I was meant to do, what I evolved to do. To paraphrase Joel Salatin, I am being allowed to express my distinct human-ness. As a chicken is truly happy when it's able to scratch and peck and dust bathe and forage and roost, I am happy when I am able to labor and create and relax and contemplate and be outside and socialize and fuck. I think these are the things we evolved to do. These are the things we need to be able to do to be spiritually healthy and happy. I don't think we spend *nearly* enough time focusing on them.
There's a growing movement to return our focus to, if not these things specifically, then to the more generic "simple things in life." In other countries, they recognize that free time is not just a luxury. It is required for our happiness. They have shorter workdays and more time off. After all, what's the point of working hard if you're miserable? Sadly, her in the U.S., we stubbornly insist that leisure time is something that only the rich can afford, and even then, not too much. We castigate the lazy bums who aren't too concerned with "getting ahead" and building a career. God forbid someone be happy at an undemanding job that meets their needs but doesn't require too much of their time. I suspect more of us, though, would take these jobs if there were enough of them to go around.
I don't see America adopting the shorter workweek we so badly need any time soon, unfortunately. All I can do is hope that by pursuing self-employment that I enjoy and find fulfilling I'll be able to make enough to quit this stressful, corporate, spiritually-diminishing part of my life for good.
Back to the grindstone...
Spirituality, then, is that feeling that you get when everything is as it should be. Inner peace. The ecstasy of being alive. It is calm and focus. It is the opposite of stress, and thus necessary for not just our mental but also our physical well-being.
I get that feeling when I am building things with my hands, making something useful, growing a garden, putting my hands in the soil and making something of it, or else completing a work of art. Some of our earliest compulsions are to play in the mud and build sand castles. When I'm working like this, I'm using my body and letting my mind truly rest. It's not like I'm not using my mind, but it's like feeding it a very small, healthy meal instead of junk food or a rich feast. A brain fast, of sorts. While one part of my brain is busy focusing on what's in front of me, the rest is able to drift off, stretch out, lay back, and do what comes naturally. It's like when people tell you they do their best thinking on the toilet or in the shower. The brain does its best work when you aren't trying to steer it.
Simply being outside, in nature, feels viscerally right to me. I'm not so naive as to believe we have any sort of ancestral memory, but there's something about certain environments that seems to naturally soothe us. We evolved on savanna and in the jungle, so is it any wonder that forests and lawns dotted with trees still hold enormous appeal for us? It only makes sense that hidden somewhere in our genes is an affinity for the environment that has historically sustained us.
I also feel like all is right with the world when I am with my friends, hanging out and talking and laughing and experiencing life with company. I can't get enough. Everyone needs some alone time, but it's rare when my social time is so excessive that I begin to be pressed for alone time. I enjoy my alone time a great deal, but I rarely seek it out.
I also remember that when I first started fucking, that was the most distinctively spiritual experience I'd ever had. It sounds cheesy even to me, looking back, but I felt like I was one with the universe. Yes, it's just a flood of hormones, but so is absolutely everything else we experience. That feeling of heady, mutual attraction and intense physical connection is something unparalleled, and I seek it as often as I can with as many people as I feel compelled to (within reasonable boundaries, as with all indulgences). Limerence is my church and my drug of choice.
Socializing and fucking are characterized by our society as base and frivolous pursuits, but, with rare exception, they are absolutely essential to our happiness. Loneliness is the bane of the social animal's existence, and more than any other creature on earth, human beings are preoccupied with sex. I don't mean that hyperbolically. We spend a greater amount of our time thinking about, looking for, and having sex than any other animal, even the infamous bonobo. A ridiculously high sex drive is as much of a uniquely human trait as our big brains are, and just as nifty, I think. Humanity took a sad, sorry turn when it decided to repress this urge instead of celebrating and indulging it.
I am not an essentialist, but a part of me feels like when I'm doing any/all of these things, I'm doing what I was meant to do, what I evolved to do. To paraphrase Joel Salatin, I am being allowed to express my distinct human-ness. As a chicken is truly happy when it's able to scratch and peck and dust bathe and forage and roost, I am happy when I am able to labor and create and relax and contemplate and be outside and socialize and fuck. I think these are the things we evolved to do. These are the things we need to be able to do to be spiritually healthy and happy. I don't think we spend *nearly* enough time focusing on them.
There's a growing movement to return our focus to, if not these things specifically, then to the more generic "simple things in life." In other countries, they recognize that free time is not just a luxury. It is required for our happiness. They have shorter workdays and more time off. After all, what's the point of working hard if you're miserable? Sadly, her in the U.S., we stubbornly insist that leisure time is something that only the rich can afford, and even then, not too much. We castigate the lazy bums who aren't too concerned with "getting ahead" and building a career. God forbid someone be happy at an undemanding job that meets their needs but doesn't require too much of their time. I suspect more of us, though, would take these jobs if there were enough of them to go around.
I don't see America adopting the shorter workweek we so badly need any time soon, unfortunately. All I can do is hope that by pursuing self-employment that I enjoy and find fulfilling I'll be able to make enough to quit this stressful, corporate, spiritually-diminishing part of my life for good.
Back to the grindstone...