Ed. note: This is a paraphrase/re-edit of something I wrote in my journal the other night.
I've been trying lately, without much success, to re-envision my mission statement -- my personal creed, my statement of what my life's supposed to stand for.
It's certainly no longer about the struggle to live as spiritual a life as I used to. No, I won't mention the path by name, because 1) if you've been paying any attention, you'd have known it long before now and 2) it really doesn't matter because what I'm about to say can apply no matter what spiritual path I happen to be following.
Following such a path wholeheartedly means the acceptance of certain principles that can and should have a direct bearing on how you live your daily life, I don't care if it's Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or even Atheism. I've found the people who are the most content with their spiritual lives, no matter what path they choose, follow that path wholeheartedly, knowing full well how often it will bring them into conflict with the values of the world and/or the people surrounding us.
There's a whole chapter in David Brooks's Bobos in Paradise about Spirituality, about how the compromises that this new educated class make between old bourgeois and bohemian values extends to even the spiritual. Bobos (bourgeois bohemians, in case you haven't been reading this blog enough to see the term at least once a week ;) ) long for the community that comes with religious institutions, and want that sense of spiritual ritual, structure, and "higher values" to pass on to our children. But, they're unwilling to take it back to the age where "pope, priest, or pastor" or any set of teachings hold any sort of real authority without the individual having a "spiritual line-item veto" (my phrase -- wow, that almost sounds intelligent!) for anything they don't agree with.
Brooks uses the term "Flexidoxy" and says Bobos attempt to "build a house of obligation on a foundation of choice." I feel that's the choice I'm facing now. To go ahead and submit to spiritual compromises and fudges. Am I headed down the path to drunken orgies of Dionysian excess? Probably not. But, will I be following a path or a method of living that focuses ultimately on promises to come in the next life/lives/whatever?
It's a crossroads. In the past couple of years, I've seen with my own eyes that certain spiritual realities do exist. Now, whether or not I and people who believe as I do interpret them correctly is another issue. Yet one thing is clear -- people who feel the most satisfied with their beliefs, regardless of what they are, don't fit their beliefs into their life. They fit their lives into their beliefs.
Am I willing to do that at this stage of the game? What values are at the core of my life? What's my life now based on?
I've been trying lately, without much success, to re-envision my mission statement -- my personal creed, my statement of what my life's supposed to stand for.
It's certainly no longer about the struggle to live as spiritual a life as I used to. No, I won't mention the path by name, because 1) if you've been paying any attention, you'd have known it long before now and 2) it really doesn't matter because what I'm about to say can apply no matter what spiritual path I happen to be following.
Following such a path wholeheartedly means the acceptance of certain principles that can and should have a direct bearing on how you live your daily life, I don't care if it's Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or even Atheism. I've found the people who are the most content with their spiritual lives, no matter what path they choose, follow that path wholeheartedly, knowing full well how often it will bring them into conflict with the values of the world and/or the people surrounding us.
There's a whole chapter in David Brooks's Bobos in Paradise about Spirituality, about how the compromises that this new educated class make between old bourgeois and bohemian values extends to even the spiritual. Bobos (bourgeois bohemians, in case you haven't been reading this blog enough to see the term at least once a week ;) ) long for the community that comes with religious institutions, and want that sense of spiritual ritual, structure, and "higher values" to pass on to our children. But, they're unwilling to take it back to the age where "pope, priest, or pastor" or any set of teachings hold any sort of real authority without the individual having a "spiritual line-item veto" (my phrase -- wow, that almost sounds intelligent!) for anything they don't agree with.
Brooks uses the term "Flexidoxy" and says Bobos attempt to "build a house of obligation on a foundation of choice." I feel that's the choice I'm facing now. To go ahead and submit to spiritual compromises and fudges. Am I headed down the path to drunken orgies of Dionysian excess? Probably not. But, will I be following a path or a method of living that focuses ultimately on promises to come in the next life/lives/whatever?
It's a crossroads. In the past couple of years, I've seen with my own eyes that certain spiritual realities do exist. Now, whether or not I and people who believe as I do interpret them correctly is another issue. Yet one thing is clear -- people who feel the most satisfied with their beliefs, regardless of what they are, don't fit their beliefs into their life. They fit their lives into their beliefs.
Am I willing to do that at this stage of the game? What values are at the core of my life? What's my life now based on?
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