A slide version of the SunWALK holistic education model – on what it is to be fully and positively human:
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Category: Living in the now
What’s the difference between spirituality and religion?
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How do you answer the question above?
Below is how far I have got with this issue.
Spirituality is how we relate to the unknown and unknowable – to Ultimate reality – and the meaning and motivation we derive therefrom.
Our worldview, as a consequence, is how we ‘read’ the world. Our worldview includes that of which are conscious, plus that which derives from enculturation. Becoming more fully conscious of Oneness, and acting accordingly, is our purpose.
Religion is the agreed set of relationships, teachings and customs held in common with any religious group of which one has membership.
Progress in spirituality is measured by regularly bringing oneself to account – in relation to the standards of your spirituality, world-view and religious group/s (if any).
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Etymological issues:
The English word “religion” is derived from the Middle English “religioun” which came from the Old French “religion.” It may have been originally derived from the Latin word “religo” which means “good faith,” “ritual,” and other similar meanings. Or it may have come from the Latin “religãre” which means “to tie fast.”
Doing your own research:
A very good starting point is provided by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. See HERE
The definitions I like best from this source are;
George Hegel: “the knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind.”
Paul Tillich: “Religious is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern”
Others are;
The Religious Tolerance group tell us that David Carpenter has collected and published a list of definitions of religion, including:
Anthony Wallace: “a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man or nature.”
Hall, Pilgrim, and Cavanagh: “Religion is the varied, symbolic expression of, and appropriate response to that which people deliberately affirm as being of unrestricted value for them.”
Karl Marx: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Don Swenson defines religion in terms of the sacred: “Religion is the individual and social experience of the sacred that is manifested in mythologies, ritual, ethos, and integrated into a collective or organization.”
Paul Connelly also defines religion in terms of the sacred and the spiritual: “Religion originates in an attempt to represent and order beliefs, feelings, imaginings and actions that arise in response to direct experience of the sacred and the spiritual. As this attempt expands in its formulation and elaboration, it becomes a process that creates meaning for itself on a sustaining basis, in terms of both its originating experiences and its own continuing responses.”
He defines sacred as: “The sacred is a mysterious manifestation of power and presence that is experienced as both primordial & transformative, inspiring awe & rapt attention. This is usually an event that represents a break or discontinuity from the ordinary, forcing a re-establishment or recalibration of perspective on the part of the experiencer, but it may also be something seemingly ordinary, repeated exposure to which gradually produces a perception of mysteriously cumulative significance out of proportion to the significance originally invested in it.”
He further defines the spiritual as: “The spiritual is a perception of the commonality of mindfulness in the world that shifts the boundaries between self and other, producing a sense of the union of purposes of self and other in confronting the existential questions of life, and providing a mediation of the challenge-response interaction between self and other, one and many, that underlies existential questions.”
My final question – “Why are there so many religious intolerance groups?”
To read the full article by the Religious Tolerance group go HERE
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True achievement, success and happiness lie in being fully and positively human –
through our caring our creativity and our criticality –
developed via service to the communities to which we belong.
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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the
PhD. Summaries are HERE
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Happiness as nowness: 31 inspirational quotations for December
My chosen favorite quotations for December and mainly about enlightenment, ‘now’ and the importance of living in the now. They are not by Eckhart Tolle – but by an extraordinary variety of writers, even though Tolle is the outstanding teacher about now-ness. My thanks espcially to two of the very best sources of quotations online WisdomQuotes and the Quote Garden
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RUMI
1 Into my heart’s night / Along a narrow way / I groped; and lo! the light,……. – Rubaiyat of Rumi
ANON
2 Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. – Anon (?)
VIKTOR FRANKL
3 “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” — Victor Frankl
W.B. YEATS
4 “Man can embody the truth but he cannot know it.” – W.B. Yeats
MARK TWAIN
5 ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.’ Mark Twain
BUDDHA
6 “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” (Buddha)
SENECA
7 “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” (Seneca)
KEVIN KELLY
8 There is only One machine.
The web is its OS.
All screens look into the One.
No bits will live outside the web.
To share is to gain.
Let the One read it.
The One is us.
Kevin Kelly (see YouTube)
KAREN ARMSTRONG
9 “Like poetry, religion is an attempt to express the inexpressible.” – Karen Armstrong
M SCOTT PECK
10 Love = “The willingness to extend myself for the spiritual growth of myself or another”. (From “The Road Less Travelled”).
ANON and ECKHART TOLLE
11 The voice of God is silence
ANON and GHANDI
12 He/She/It has no religion.
ANAIS NIN:
13 The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
ANAIS NIN:
14 We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
ANNE FRANK:
15 How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
ARTHUR MILLER:
16 The word now is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.
BRENDA PETERSON:
17 The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN:
18 Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
CORITA KENT:
19 Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING:
20 Light tomorrow with today!
GWENDOLYN BROOKS:
21 Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.
HENRY FORD:
22 History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.
HUGH PRATHER:
23 To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.
THICH NHAT HANH:
24 Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life..
JOANNA RUSS:
25 Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler’s bet: it’s an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, the old Eternal Now.
KALIDASA:
26 Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
MARGARET BONNANO:
27 It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
MATTHEW ARNOLD:
28 Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done…
PEMA CHODRON:
29 Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
ROBERT FROST:
30 Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:
31 The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
Soul Needs - One Garden 