on spirituality and feeling good

[bluegreen17]

on spirituality and feeling good by susan dane*

*because my browser won't let me copy and paste certain things on lj...

edit:
terabithiabeth has kindly copied and pasted to a comment...so you don't need to click to an outside link...just click on comments to read it. thanks beth!

Comments

Re: on spirituality and feeling good

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

I can't see it because I'm not a member of the group...

Re: on spirituality and feeling good

[bluegreen17]

oy. sorry about that. thanks for letting me know! i thought the setting was public. i've now fixed it.

[aprilstorme.livejournal.com]

thank you for posting that. it makes sense.

Re:

[bluegreen17]

you're welcome. it's much the opposite of a lot of what i've encountered over the years,but i think it makes sense too. life is full of paradoxes,it seems!

I'm not a group member, but I see it anyway...

[terabithiabeth.livejournal.com]

...... and can cut and paste for you.

****************************************************

'How can we know if something we're reading is genuinely inspired by Spirit? At present "feeling" is our most common criteria. If when we read something or hear someone speak, we feel something extraordinary, something apart from the day-to-day, then we presume it must be spiritual--especially if it makes us feel "better."

This "feel-good criteria" is drastically misleading. We're so sure that scripture is supposed to make us feel better, that we shade the words any way we have to so that it does just that. We skip sections, slide over contradictions, avoid the parts we don't like, rely on commentaries and commentators to explain everything to us, and then read our same favorite parts over and over again. We actually reduce and manipulate the words on the page until they bring us this desired effect which they are "supposed" to.

Art by contrast is supposed to wake us up, stir something inside, create a dilemma, leave us with a question, and thereby move us toward something more authentic and original within ourselves.

This really is the summation of the whole problem: We think Spirit, unlike art, is always supposed to make us feel better. With this as our only criteria, it is no wonder we are so quickly moved by enthusiastic teachers, and so quick to call most anything that makes us feel better, "spiritual." And in so doing, we confuse the merely inspirational (or motivational) for the truly spiritual. Our criteria for spiritual writings should not be, "Do I feel better?" but rather, "Is something of the habitual, blind, dull self being disturbed, uprooted, and dissolved?"'

Re: I'm not a group member, but I see it anyway...

[bluegreen17]

thanks for doing that. i added an edit saying that if someone wants to read it,it's right in your comment and they don't have to click outside lj.

it's one of the limitations of my msntv browser. i can copy and paste some things,and not others,so i put that on my yahoo group so i can save it for myself as well as share it!