Religion-less Spirituality

From two days ago: “It seems to me that after nearly twenty years involvement in the vast New Age movement that spreads itself particularly in the secular countries of Protestant heritage, that a kind of spirituality is distributed that is insufficient to meet world horror …”

Twenty years involvement in the New Age movement, a movement so hard to define that almost none of its participants can agree to a name for it. But a movement that encompasses many who reject mainstream philosophical materialism and seek meaning in interior paths, psychotherapeutic, esoteric, so-called holistic. Interior paths, which reject religion - especially it seems to me, Christianity.

Yes, in the New Age rejection of VAST amounts of tradition – implicit or not – there is little justice, it now seems to me, to the claim of being ‘holistic’. Though it took me so long to see this.

Then there is my less extensive involvement with Anthroposophy. Another attempt at ‘Religion-less Spirituality’. Which moreover, it seems has created a highly religious system. It seems to me that many Anthroposophists have far more **beliefs** than the formally religious …

Then there is my turning from Religion-less Spirituality to religion. Which proved unexpectedly rich beyond belief, deepening my human-ness in ways the above never did …

But what links my participation in all of these is my concern for the world. All my adult life, I could never understand ‘politicians’ – by which, I mean those who felt the world’s ills could be addressed by **purely** political solutions.

Whether socialist, environmentalist, distributivist, decentralist. And so forth. Whatever the banner - I couldn't see these strategies working in isolation. But all my adult life it has seemed to me that the healing of the world required profound attitudinal, psychological, spiritual, yes ultimately mystical transformation.

Jung said the healing of the individual soul was ultimately a religious matter. And so, it seems clear to me, is the case with our collective and world soul.

And yet this simple idea that seemed so utterly clear to me did not seem that way to so many others.

Like so many others, I turned to the New Age, rejecting the forms of Western religion I grew up surrounded by: American fundamentalism, and later an admittedly more intelligent, but humanist-socialist-political, well-intentioned British Protestantism. Yes well-intentioned, but somehow uninvolving and unmysterious …

But at the age of 34, I finally discovered that traditional Christianity (Catholic and Orthodox) was saying something so very, very, very different from all I had been led to believe about Christianity. ‘Led to believe’ … And who led me …?

Yes, this 2000 years of tradition, embracing not just 1.4 billion people (who often escape the notice of the English-speaking world) but also a living set of practices and Sacraments, and not just beliefs … As well as Mystery, Spiritual Mystery.

This week my mind, my heart, are reeling more than ever before at the world situation.

And all that I personally have is what my own very personal journey has led me to see. The failure of Anthroposophy. The frequent poverty of so-called holistic approaches, although my time at Findhorn and my time setting up a New Age centre in Cambridge certainly also had great riches.

But can these religion-less spiritualities CARRY the Spirit in our world? My experience of Ireland, if nothing else, would alone lead me to feel that the vessel of religion can carry the Spirit into our society far better than any of the other vessels I encountered …

And then there is my sense that although the John Paul papacy has been buried in lies, something extraordinarily living is happening in a Church that is REGENERATING. ‘There is my sense’ … that is again to say: so it seems to me.

In my inner world are so, so many pieces that seem to me –if not to others- directly relevant to what James Lovelock has told us this week. And like each of us, I must take what I have, and assemble them into the most effective response I can make to the world horror.