Showing Spirituality

As I examine the subject of spirituality
I am struck by three prominent ideas:
First, how frequently I find spirituality
Once I have learned how to recognize it;
Second, how often I have overlooked
This simple connection during my life;
And third, how this innocence has been unfortunate.

Now anyone who accepts spirituality
And has an active and prosperous spiritual practice
May choose to avoid hearing what might be considered
‘Preaching to the choir’ by ending their audience here.
That is, if you are indeed part of the choir.
This poem is intended for those who don’t--
And in a different way, possibly for those
Who might like to help someone else--
Recognize or acknowledge spirituality.

I take no particular credit or assume no
Substantial valor for developing this message.
It has only taken me about 40 years to
Understand what many others see as so obvious.
This is not a poem of mourning or bemoaning,
Which I see now as the antithesis
Or two antonyms for spirituality;
It is not a poem of praise or rejoicing either,
Although that is much closer to the point;
It is a too long, overdue poem of acknowledgement.

This is a seeing and pointing, even a confession;
Possibly a showing to someone receptive.
The very act of showing involves two people
Communicating, finding a new agreement,
Even between a dead author and his neophyte
It is significant as being the best kind of teaching
It is truly an art form when two minds can meld, also
An elementary spiritual practice that anyone,
Atheist, agnostic, deist or skeptic can enjoy.
This poem is created to fulfill that noble purpose,
To hopefully compensate in some small way
For having overlooked this important connection
In the past. I have unfortunately shunned spirituality.

From the beginning we are cuddled, hopefully, by parents
As a result of a natural bonding; a healthy, compulsive
Instinct to touch and feel the passing of love.
A marvelous wonder and greater than life satisfaction
Resounds easily from the simplest acts of kindness.
For both child and parents this is a fundamental
spiritual practice that turns sacrifices into joys.

Even if this nurturing and caring is a learned response,
It is easy to appreciate this as a fundamental, intelligent act.
The presence of mystery, love, passion, and empathy
Ought to convince most people who have known this
Either as blessed recipient or sincere benefactor,
This involves spirituality at a very core level.

I still feel this impulse and the passing of love
Touched by or when touching my two adult sons.
There is a special bond that defies explanation.
How can this mysterious feeling between us persist?
And now my daughters give me the same blessing!

I like holding hands, rubbing shoulders, hugging
As greeting and at farewell. I recognize as healthy-
And commend to the attention of the reader-
These gestures and practices as connected to spirituality.
This becomes in the most basic way the essence
Of what it means to have a spiritual experience.
There doesn’t need to be mysticism or occultism,
Not even belief in an afterlife or anthropomorphic god
To enliven this sense of spirituality; this is it!

The acts of nurturing, showing and teaching by parents,
The teaching conducted spontaneously by siblings,
Even when they argue and complain to each other
And as I just wrote so deliberately, the act of
“…commending to the attention of the reader…”
Are by degree less obvious, but still spiritual
When done honestly, altruistically, without guile
Without expectation of praise or profit. And
I have for all these years been innocently ignoring
this subtle connection, or while appreciating it
and benefiting by this spirituality, I have
simply failed to recognize it for what it is.
I have thus failed to deliberately expand spirituality,
I have been in this way frustrated like the sculptor
who has no clay, unable to expand my vision.

Part of what makes these simple acts spiritual
Is the motivation behind the doing; the why of it,
Even when we feel instinctively compelled to do it.
The satisfaction of an ethical claim or obligation
And the honest joy this fulfillment can bring
Is in part diminished when I have failed
in the first instance to see clearly that my
teaching and showing was a spiritual practice.
These practices had both kinds of virtue, both ethical – practical;
and a shared form of beauty beyond description.
This is where language fails at describing, and the beauty
can be felt in those brief moments of meditation and reflection.
This can easily happen without being named, but
To make it happen consistently, it must be understood and claimed.

Another aspect of spirituality is in plane sight,
As this poem. The act of telling and listening
May be a spiritual practice between two receptive people.
Likewise, when one reader makes a new connection
between these common words and their own life,
That qualifies this writing as a sophisticated spiritual practice.
It is the reader’s enlightenment in the future that raises
the level of these poor words to a brighter status.
A showing emerges when even this one person benefits.
There is a magical moment when we create understanding
And in anticipation of that, I can justifiably claim
that as I write this poem it is a spiritual practice.

I have often done these simple practices in my life
Not having appreciated this esoteric connection.
Was I doing a spiritual practice even when
I did not wish to acknowledge it as such?
Yes, I say apologetically and heartily now! Because
I followed a spiritual practice so well
Incorporated into our dignified society,
The roots and origins of it have been lost. The magic
Is reduced to the status of common perception.

Likewise, we use many words without knowing their sources,
We rhyme and scheme, we joke and pray, rant and rave
But the language operates and we communicate
Even though we are ignorant of philology.
Meaning and understanding ought not be trivialized,
These thrive on trust, good will and ancestral experience.
Likewise, we use spirituality in social conventions:
Shaking hands, bowing, congratulating, winking,
Flirting, sensing with educated intuition and smiling.
Even as we might in our ignorance deny this,
We bless those who sneeze, out of politeness.

Could my peace and joy in the past been heightened
had I been able to make this connection?
Yes, it is that understanding that brings happiness
to each moment of my day when I avert my eyes
away from my intended direction and focus
on the stillness of my surrounding solitude,
and sense the beauty that confronts me.
There is no need for companionship to attain this happiness,
The hole where loneliness once infected my Soul, is filled
with this sense of being every moment in a spiritual practice.

I see as through a veil of confusion opening:
When I gave up obsequious god worship-
A popular and recognizable spiritual practice-
I foreswore spirituality with a smug assumption.
How offensive their hex and curse flung in vain
At those who depart Mormon rituals and practices.
So many dogmatic spiritists, mystics and occultists
Overdo their teaching attempting good. Blindly
Obsessed with guilt, ethnic and racial prejudice,
They denigrate other useful, casual practices
Which sustain decent culture and every day life.
Possibly this is the nature of their curse:
the force of personality it takes to stand alone
against their tactics, is that which also generates
a callous disregard for spirituality in life.
It need not be so. I can be both sensitive and strong.

Traumatized as I was by religious brainwashing,
So indoctrinated, I could not see simpler, honest forms.
Rejecting that, I rejected all positive spirituality, but
Thinking that does not make it so, as I can show.
This is the dark, insidious side of spiritual practice
Co-opted improperly in order to control adherents.
Human ambitions turn into priesthoods, spawn gurus,
Serve chauvinism and dabblers in sexual asceticism.
Denying the existence of spirituality is an assertion
That does not pass the test of time or common usage.

The Buddhist and Hindu teachings that take the best talent
away from the world to a life of celibacy and asceticism,
are no less corrupted by emotional blackmail.
They begin by emphasizing the suffering of the world
then provide an artificial solution, exaggerating
the perceived rewards to be received
engaging in a subtle form of emotional blackmail.
When adherents remove themselves from the world
into altered states of mind vacant of art;
they are as much engrossed in human sacrifice
as the Christians who celebrate the “atonement” of Christ.
Each samadhi is the sacrificial victim; an irony of surrender.
Their artificial stimulation could just as equally lead to love.
Sincerely seeking rewards, practitioners wish merit
on a path of ulterior motives that would lead
to at best “nirvana” or at least to an improved after-life.
This is a spiritual practice taken to extremes.

These lame abuses of spirituality do not deny its virtues.
As appalling and revolting as this imposition can be,
With generous, forgiving eyes I see past this veil,
Recognizing what is both inspiring and beyond convenient
And rational explanation about our simple lives.
This is not talk of accepting superstition, this is
Seeing the beauty in art, naming the aesthetics in life.

So many abstract nouns leave me wondering, connected
As these are to infinite resources upon which we all depend.
Healthy, modest spiritual practices can thrive, improving
Culture and Enlightenment even as language changes.
Not only can anyone enjoy life better and prosper
By developing some healthy spiritual practice,
It is damn near impossible, unless one is insane or an idiot
To remove oneself from a world enhanced by spirituality.

The simple acts of friendship, curiosity, choosing, modesty,
Even proving with rational logic involves accepting rules;
Later we advance to understand and benefit from emotions.

Examining and challenging one’s religious heritage,
Is a genuine spiritual practice, easy to imagine.
Failure to acknowledge and to deny spirituality
Is not uncommon but unfortunate, as suggested.
This innocence can lead to callous, mean habits,
To beliefs and thought patterns that are
Destructive, insensitive and self-defeating.

What will convince the harshest skeptic
That even in their darkest mood of pessimism
They are, in one covert way or another
Following an unavoidable spiritual practice?
Try this simple exercise:
Close your eyes.
Examine your feelings -- Calm, happy, indifferent,
Bemused, arrogant, confident, perplexed--
This self-examination and the capacity to do so
Is a simple beginning of a useful spiritual practice.

When this is practiced with discipline, with a goal,
It may lead to a healthy, beneficial self-awareness.
When these realizations are shared moment to moment
As between two lovers, this cultivates and fosters love.
How hard can that be? I say this with a smile
Because as I write these unburdened thoughts
I am forced to humbly acknowledge that
I am at once learning from this heuristic kind of teaching,
And, I am surely repeating lessons heard before.

I have been blessed with an acquaintance with science
And mathematics. I understand that proofs must
Respond to both necessary and sufficient conditions.
To deny the existence of spirituality I have challenged
my perceptions and emotional responses with
this grueling logic, grinding away at the point
of my own sensitivity. At last I understand.
Is it Necessary for a practice to be spiritual that it responds
as above, giving some kind of deep emotional
satisfaction that I have described. Probably not.
What can show Sufficiently, conclusively
That a spiritual practice is not just superstition
Or figment of imagination, an act of volition or
deed following the agenda of a charismatic leader?
Must there always be this leap over logic to validate faith?

There can be other solutions to this dilemma. For me
The ontological nature of Man gives rise to Sufficiency.
The fact that we are here, capable of being spiritual,
Capable of feeling in the same way some other animals feel,
Love, passion, dedication, joy, bonding, justice and more.
The grace of this existence, the given in an equation,
Obviates the need for an answer to the question Why?
It is a misuse of language to ask this recurring question.
Logic and mathematical proofs are rules we follow, but
We do so because we give ourselves these rules.
Explanations must come to an end, because of the very
limitation of our existence in time;
we have but to decide the What and When.

The rules of our logic neither dictate nor contradict
existence of Man, our manifest talents and capabilities.
Since the elaborations of Godel’s Proof, we know that
Any logical system can be internally inconsistent.
Logic does not need to prove the existence or character
of the intelligence that created it.
Its functions can be limited in time and scope,
and are not required to be reflexive to prove,
in this case, the capacities of man, our own intelligence
and ability to feel and sense beauty in a numinous way.

If we extend this innate talent, extrapolating from these feelings
Rules and truths as found in dogmatic creeds,
That is when we error, and ought to pass the test
Of being both necessary and sufficient, because
These creeds are mental constructs, built on the will of man,
While spirituality is a fundamental capability of man.

Hopefully the simple exercise of identifying feelings,
consciousness of self-awareness, is convincing
Enough to set the most skeptical and obdurate free-thinker
On a path of self-discovery and self-guided spirituality,
Which is the option I have selected for myself.

I would be most complimented and content
If some former skeptic were to say in rebuke:
You are simply stating obvious truths.
Then I would know we are in agreement, there has
Been a successful and positive Showing.
If writing this poem can accomplish this,
I suspect it can ignite a spark of spirituality
in even the most intransigent reader, as I was.
May it be so!
I.J. Hall February 5, 2004