Spirituality is a placebo
for the festering libido
that seeks relief beyond
the borders of belief
Andy Mulcahy

 

Wild animals, one can assume, do not contemplate their past nor plan their future. They live in the here and now and their powers of concentration must be terrific--and badly needed in the rough jungles of life, where opportunity for prey and awareness of predator would dictate their daily survival. They respond instinctively,  unthinkingly, spontaneously, to external stimuli . The natural instincts that nature has programmed them with direct their actions and one can presume they are at one with the universe.

 

We, too, at one time, must have, like the deer and the antelope, gambolled freely, unashamed, free of inhibition, alert to the moment, acutely (and proudly) aware of ourselves and the world about us. 
But, as Erich Fromm once said: "The dilemma of the human condition is that it can never again be one of harmony with nature; only the animal condition is that."

 

For once we developed the ability to delay our immediate, instinctive response to Nature's demands, we had time to evaluate a situation, to choose a course of action, to, in other words, think. And thinking, of course, led to knowledge and the rest is history - - (cast out of the Garden of Eden, so to speak.JJ

 

But in the frantic world we now live in, with data steaming into our minds from computers, TV and cell phones, we can understand why we would often like to escape back into that reptilian stage from whence  we came. But Fromm is right--we cannot go back. Evolution works one way only, it appears. But we can seek  temporary oblivion from our complex world through mind numbing mantras, talking in tongues, focusing on the immediate-- anything , anything, that blocks out the world about us, anything that takes our conscious mind out of gear, so to speak.

 

Unfortunately, the euphoria  that such a release from  conscious responsibility  offers is often described as a spiritual state.. Well, if that is true, then all wild animals live in a spiritual state. I rather think their “state” might better be described as the very physical animal state. Nothing spiritual about it..
   
Which brings me to my beef As I see it, the word 'spirituality' is usually used  as a way of avoiding accountability by those whose premises can not be substantiated by measurable evidence. It is, as I see it, a determined effort to keep the ancient concept of duality alive in a modern, rational age,. Preachers and gurus  use the word  as a means of avoiding material evidence and quite frankly, I think the word should be described in dictionaries in a very specific way--as we do with other words.
 
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."
T.S. Eliot :
Cheers
Andy Mulcahy