INTELLECTUAL "MASTURBATION" VERSUS PARTICIPATION
There is some discussion on this thread "about" God--who she or he might be, signs of existence, signs of non-existence, characteristics, religion versus folklore, and so on...all "about" these subjects--meaning individual opinions from individual people. The quality of these comments is along the line of what you might expect from a sports writer, commenting about a particular football team and its greatness or lack thereof. Then again, a certain portion of the comments are about the general subjects of:
"I am right, he is wrong". "You just don't understand"
"You are a fool" and so on.
I've contributed my share of personal comments as well. They could, in my view, be classed as "intellectual masturbation", and sometimes they are not particularly "intellectual", and maybe would be more correctly characterised as "egoic" masturbation, because they mainly talk about the "talker" and his/her observations.
There is a great difference between being a talker "about"
a football team and BEING a member of a football team.
The latter has certain absolute requirements, without which you do not even make the team, and other requirements if the team is to BE a great football team.
Similarly, with Spirituality. You can "pretend" to be a
good (Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc, etc) by attending the
weekly religious ritual and socializing with other members of your "group". A huge amount of conventional religiosity is like that.
A smaller number of people are driven by a greater need and desire to understand the nature of their situation, the "meaning" of life (beyond the Monty Python take on it),
whether they can PERSONALLY relate to God, having some understanding of the signs of God, and so on.
Still others become saints and mystics, and encounter a very different personal experience as a result.
A very few of these complete some or all of the process of
God-realization and turn around and teach and help others to do the same. Such people are traditionally called Spiritual Masters, and they generally are the Spiritual resource from which religions arise. Then, over time, the religions become corrupted by the priest class and the
mass participation of people with limited insight and commitment.
Comments about the "team" or its members, made by an observer who has never played on any serious team are often
quite disconnected from the subject. In other words, it's all theory, and no practice.
You can speculate all your life about what it takes to ride a bicycle, but really you don't know a damned thing about it until you get on one and ride it. After you have done a lot of that, and can ride your mountain bike down mountains, through rivers, over boulders and whatever, you may have some insight into momentum, force, balance,
relationship of the rider to the bike, mountain, cosmos.
But you don't know anything of this as the commentator lacking any personal experience.
Similarly, with Spirituality. You can be LIVED by God, SURROUNDED by God, existing in a context in which there is NOTHING BUT God. But you (as the separated, egoic, non-participant observer) can't see any of that.
Why? Because you are not interested enough! And because you don't want to be a partipant. You just want to speculate
"about" (for or against).
From that distanced, non-participatory stance you can pontificate endlessly about any subject, including God.
But you will never really know much until you decide to walk the talk, and not just talk the talk.
Namaste!
Jim |
