Religion Versus Experiential Spirituality
Everything Worth Anything is Experiential In an earlier entry about 'Meaning,' I spoke about my random moments of transcendence, in which complete fulfillment occurs. They are rare, and they are completely beyond description. Nothing that I write here will convey their true power and significance to me. But I can feel, in these moments, that I’m touching on the true nature of myself, the world, and all that exists in the universe. There’s no denying that this is a spiritual experience – it has to do with something that I can’t see, touch, measure – heck, I can’t even describe it accurately. In fact, that seems to be the key point: these moments are experiential. It’s only through the experience of this that I can understand it. If someone were explaining their own similar transcendent moment to me, I would mentally try to align what they were describing to my own experience with this. I would hear their words and try to understand, but the ultimate understanding can only come through MY experience. Everything that interests me in life only interests me because it’s touching on something that I have experienced directly. Stories only become fascinating to me when they are accessible and relatable, in some way. My experience is like my in-road into everything conceptual. When I hear someone describe an apple, for instance, the words to describe it are only accessories to actually eating an apple…. The texture of it, the color, the smell, the taste. Descriptions are fairly meaningless to me without a personal experience that A.) makes me curious about the thing being described, or B.) enables me to better understand the thing being described. Religion I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and I’ve heard my city referred to as the “Protestant Vatican of the world” or the “Buckle of the Bible Belt” many times. It’s true. It’s difficult to drive a block down the street without passing a church, and around here, when introducing yourself to a new person, it’s common to hear the question, “and what church do you go to” as a standard inquiry, almost as frequently as, “what do you do for a living?” I grew up here, and I’ve almost always found myself sitting in a sea of people that identify as Christians, including all of my family members and many of my closest friends. For that reason, when I hear the term “religion” – the image of a church, or a cross, instantly pops into my mind. Like many Americans, this is the religion that I’ve had the most experience with – and the experience has been widely varied due to the huge number of Christians in this country and the diverse array of applications and conceptualizations of the belief system. As a kid coming of age, I was told by a number of peers that I would go to hell if I didn’t “accept Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.” This instantly put the religion on my bad side; I could never get over wondering why I would be sent to burn in hell fire for all eternity by a God whose claim to fame was unconditional love? I’ve always felt like a fish out of water in this regard (partly due to the unusually high concentration of Christians in my city), and because of this, I’ve often had a fidgety, uncomfortable, and sometimes hostile reaction AGAINST Christianity. Several years ago, I might have considered tattooing the phrase, “I am NOT a Good Christian Girl” across my forehead as an act of rebellion. I felt the need to define myself as very firmly NOT a “Bible Thumper.” As I’ve gotten older and seen more of the world, my attitude toward Christianity (and by extension: religion in general) has changed from my rebellious, angry beginnings. I’ve had the privilege of expanding my view of Christians beyond the 13-year-old peers that warned me of my imminent eternal demise. Christians, I’ve discovered, are by and large, an infinitely diverse array of people finding fulfillment and meaning in their own experience with teachings centered in, or inspired by, stories in the Bible. That may sound like the most basic thing in the world, but it was a huge revelation to take a step from the land of opposition over to the land of understanding that there’s really no evil plot here, not at the core of individual experience (which, as I stated above, is the only thing that truly matters to me). Christianity is a way that people access their own transcendent moments, and that’s something that I can understand, having experienced a few of those myself, albeit I wasn’t thinking specifically about Jesus at the time. Nowadays I find myself feeling jealous of the conciseness and instant recognition that one simple word holds for almost everyone that considers themselves a part of the Christian faith: Jesus. That word signifies more than a key person or God-presence, it encapsulates the essence of a personal, transcendent connection with the divine. The common belief system allows people that “get it” to know that, at least on some level, other Christians “get it” too. Other religions probably have similar verbal methods to communicate what seems to be inexpressible to me. Whenever I talk about this stuff, I fumble my words and can never convey exactly what I want to convey. I could do it so much better if I had a word like “Jesus” that would enable others to know, on a level beyond intellect, what the heck I’m blabbering about. I’m Not a Christian, but I’m Not NOT a Christian, Either So, herein lies my dilemma. Experientially, I feel a deep appreciation for what I believe to be the core message of Christianity. To put that core message into words feels clumsy and inadequate, but for the sake of clarity: I’m referring to an all-encompassing love here. Granted, I know I’m missing a lot with that sentence, and it’s not sufficient to explain the full scope of the Christian belief system, but the way I understand it, there’s nothing more important than that love, as represented by Jesus/God. I get that, and that feels very important and wonderful, and it’s almost enough to make me want to go to Church and sing hymns. But to label myself as a Christian would imply things that aren’t true. I see Christianity as a point of access for a large number of people, rather than factual truth above all other truth, and as such, it feels inauthentic to don the label of a Christian. However, nowadays it makes me sad to say to people that are Christians (which is, you know, almost everyone, especially in my neck of the woods), “I’m not a Christian.” I avoid saying that sentence outright as much as possible. Defining myself as contrary to Christianity implies a level of distance that isn’t completely warranted in reality (although to try to explain this to someone in everyday, idle conversation would be overkill). It also risks alienating many wonderful individuals that wish to be spiritually bonded with others first and foremost. All across my city, people meet to talk about philosophy, ethics, and divine truth almost every day. These things fascinate me. I want so badly to throw my two cents into that profound dialogue, but the discussion is predominantly centered in Christian gatherings that use the Bible as a cornerstone, and that simply feels too limiting to me. Religious Texts Are Not Necessarily Experiential Anything in the Bible that doesn’t resonate with me experientially, I reject as a source of genuine spiritual truth, and that makes it very difficult to identify with any particular set of religious beliefs. A religion requires faithful adherence to some things that may not make sense to each individual person right away. And this is why I can never label myself as a religious person. Until I get to access the experience that makes a certain text hold meaning and truth for me, then I’m not on board with that piece of text. The text may be interesting historical information, or a neat story, but not a part of my core spiritual map. Out of all the major world religions, I identify most with Buddhism, because of its primary focus on discovering truth experientially. However, I still don’t feel comfortable identifying myself as “a Buddhist” for the same reason that I can’t identify as a Christian. It’s too limiting, even though Buddhism is far more expansive, in it’s scope of ways to access “God.” Most of its texts merely send the message: go experience this for yourself and see what you think. Still. Identifying wholeheartedly with a religion would force me to get out of alignment with my own true, authentic experience, even if only for a few minutes while saying a short prayer that rings hollow in my chest, or taking communion simply because everyone else in the church is doing it, or bowing down to a figurine when I’m not entirely sure why I’m bowing. On a more basic level: Religions seem to nail down, in concrete terms, things that can’t be stated so explicitly. Religion itself is an effort to conceptualize spiritual experiences that can’t be described. Maybe that’s why so many religious texts don’t penetrate my own sphere of truth: it’s someone else’s description, and I just can’t relate to it fully. (It may be fascinating material, like a great novel, but I can’t use it to guide me in my life above other texts.) In the process of building and maintaining a religion, people gather, discuss, build fellowship, and they do great things sometimes (at other times, they persecute others, try to scare people, and prey upon human weaknesses, so it’s not all roses, I realize). I want the fellowship very badly, but I don’t want the religion. I want some degree of consistent peer support as I explore my own spirituality, but I don’t want those peers to try to teach me something that I can only find out for myself. I want the transcendence, but I reject the doctrine before I get there on my own terms. We Get It Every time I’m asked to define myself in spiritual terms or label my beliefs, I always create an artificial distance from some people (i.e., those that identify with a different “religion” or philosophical stance towards spirituality) and an artificial same-ness with others (i.e., those that identify with that limiting label). I also feel further away from the truth, which is similar to saying that I feel further away from God because I connect “truth” with divinity. I’m talking about gut-level, instinctual, profound, limitless truth here. The kind of truth that is capable of changing one’s life, jarring you into another realm of understanding, and bringing you home. Saying that I am an agnostic, or a Buddhist – it feels too small. And yet – these are the terms that we use to understand each other’s stance on all things spiritual. In this area, spoken language seems like a prison to me, and religion is the ultimate manifestation of that prison. Religion serves to cage and isolate my own experiential spirituality even as it opens up dialogue between people that can embrace a specific belief system. I often wonder if other people have the same difficulty, and I’m assuming that of course they do. This stuff is too big, too all-encompassing, too universal… and paradoxically, too deeply personal, for there not to be a huge gap in communication, even for those that do adhere to a major world religion. Sometimes it seems so simple for others: “I’m a Christian. I love Jesus.” But beyond those words – there’s a whole dimension of meaning, and it’s limitless. I see it everywhere – in music, books, architecture, photographs, prayers. I see it on my mom’s face when she looks at me with slightly teary eyes that convey bittersweet messages like, “it’s too much to absorb. You grew up too fast, and I’m a witness to something magical.” I think maybe we all “get it.” In various ways. Infinite ways. I'm not certain that I'll ever be able to adequately communicate my spirituality, and I'm not sure why this surprises me. I've said myself several times in this entry: it's indescribable. Despite the fact that I can't ever fully explain it, I still actively observe people grappling with this same problem, and that in and of itself, makes me feel closer to others. We're all making our way through the dark. I have a world full of invisible companions on this journey, and it has to be enough that those companions exist, even if we don't understand each other.
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