Spirituality and Human Development

While watching the British Open Golf on TV this weekend I had a strong intimation of how realisation of the true nature of God (within each person) could help to banish all fear. As our true essential being is eternal (as God) then this life can never pass away despite phenomenal death. All fear and anxiety associated with death relates to the belief that something important is thereby lost. However what is really lost through death is but a temporary pheneoemnal identity bound up with space and time whereby our true identity is God (in the eternal present). Therefore what is truly essential in terms of our lives cannot pass away. However becoming free of fear while alive in the body requires release from attachment to secondary phenomena. So the fears and anxieties we suffer inevitably relate to such attachments (with ultimately no essential basis). A view that I frequently have found helpful relates to a scientific context with repect to the Many Worlds Hypothesis. Properly understoo...

I mentioned in another context how two major revolutions are required before science can be properly integrated with religion. The first of these relates to the limited nature of science (as presently understood) which is properly geared solely to the analysis of quantitative type phenomena. However there is an equally important holistic qualitative dimension to science that is properly geared towards - what I refer to as - Integral Science. Just like a scissors has two blades of equal importance, likewise when properly understood it is the same with science. So a comprehensive scientific approach requires both (analytic) quantitative and (holistic) qualitative aspects working in close interaction. The second of these revolutions relates to the need to demythologize the manner in which spiritual truths (with a truly universal meaning) are symbolically conveyed in the major religious traditions. And in this post I am confining myself to some of the major "myths" used...

We are certainly living now in the age of digital information. Computers, cameras, mobile phones, and already established entertainment media such as TV and radio are increasingly reaping the benefits of using information that is encoded in binary digital form (i.e. using the two digits 1 and 0). And potentially all information can be encoded in this binary manner! However I have long felt that this explosion in information capability that we are now witnessing is likely to give way to significant problems with respect to personal and social development. Put simply the binary system (for encoding information) is based on analytic interpretation that corresponds with just one logical system. Here opposite polarities in experience are clearly separated leading to the making unambiguous either/or distinctions e.g. subjective or objective, whole or part, true or false etc. There are two great processes that continually interact in all development i.e. differentiation and integration ...

I always find holiday breaks a good time for the reception of key insights. Intuition - especially of the most passive holistic kind - is aided by a relaxed frame of mind. Also material that had been incubating in the unconscious for some time can often be released through the welcome change of environmental context that a holiday can bring. While sitting in a tour bus on route to Venice watching the fields everywhere seemigly planted with vines, I received a particularly clear and extended intuition of the nature of our true relationship to God. Unfortunately in many traditions the master/servant kind of treatment has been over emphasised (certainly in my own Catholic faith). God is thereby set apart - literally as the almighty - to which we human beings, as undeserving creatures, owe everything (and always fall short in terms of our gratitude). In a certain sense this is correct. However our true relationship with God is much more intimate than this for quite simply our essenti...