Spiritual conversations — The present and future of spirituality

Spiritual Conversations past conversations’ articles you can find here: Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, and Part IV here.

This is a series of articles based on the conversations in several meetings that are taking place with folks from all over the world on the questioning and understanding of each of our own spiritual beliefs, trying to align and comprehend what are our conceptions and misconceptions about “the other and their belief systems”.

The idea that God over Science would be an eternal conversation is starting to make little sense. If in Modern times it was thought that Science would “kill the idea of God” as Neitczshe warned about, it’s possible that it didn’t and that’s actually a good thing. A recent census suggests that 80% of the world’s population believes in a good God, and 20% prefer not to talk about it.

But the fruits of tomorrow’s spirituality have a great responsibility in hands of those who are in the lines of teaching spirituality.

This conversation was held in three parts, so this article will be divided into those parts. We had guests, such as Niradhara Amma at the second meeting and Rhonda Magee at this latest meeting, come to speak to us.

PART 1

The future is realizing love.

A small twenty-minute conversation, in which we agreed consensually that love is the answer to all prayers, love is the answer to all problems. “If it’s dark, switch on a light”, someone said recently in my email inbox and it’s true. The darkness of ignorance can only be in tune with beauty if it loves — deeply, its core and self, to advance to a more fulfilling ground. Much like the ideas of Heaven and Hell — Hell here being ignorance, and Heaven the bliss of understanding. Much in line with religious traditions of love, it’s true that in a way, humanity hasn’t lost its way, even with what’s on the news.

The future is also ecologically conscious — to see Nature as God, or a small flower as important as a person, is a difficult task.

Gabriele Donati and I come from different backgrounds, I was born in China with a secular view at home through the lens of my parents and with a very religious view outside of the house through the lens of culture. At 7 years old I would go to Temple and talk to the Buddhist Gods. I had a great admiration for the story of Buddha, and how he overcame it all. I would ask if my life was going to be difficult, and for support through it all. Not once in my life did I feel completely abandoned, the love that I have for my spirituality did save my life, quite literally. Gabriele comes from Catholic Switzerland, and has found himself studying the depths of Catholicism and Christ, and how philosophical is religion. We both went through periods of relinquishing spirituality in light of other things, and we both found our ways back, and to these conversations.

For us, love is a solution, not an emotion. Gabriele mentioned Marianne Williamson and I leave here a quote by her:

“Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.” — Marianne Williamnson

PART 2

The future is realizing ourselves and the truth.

Niradhara and I spoke about how needed a Sangha is for today’s world. How needed it is to have truth above all else — honesty, loving awareness to the meaning of spirituality in today’s life and also to each individual. She mentioned the Disneyland aspect of spirituality and how people may see the outside as some sort of looking through a glass of a beautiful side of what seems spiritual, but in the end, it’s a facade meant to allure — true spiritual commitment takes time, all of your life, and it’s not always pretty and shiny. Awakenings are messy, commitment takes a toll on your willingness to continue, and life itself proves to us that we must carry on because it’s what makes sense. The truth of what’s behind Bali or India and Yoga retreats are awful, people starving and little living conditions abound — it’s not Disney, but it is very spiritual.

The importance of a Sangha, somewhere with people to talk to and to be in tune with conversation is a very needed thing. The importance of having people who know more, who have been longer on a similar path. And the importance of the realization of the individual on the path. The individuation of the spiritual path is at foremost the important aspect — it’s to find one’s self, to relinquish it yet to find it again, the journey of being spiritual. Always, to remember to love and to be kind, to be fair and promote equality, to promote what we can support or what we can relinquish as individuals and collectives, and to not be a part of the Disneyland of the Spiritual, because it’s a form of denial that we are in fact, not spiritual at all, in the Disneyland, we just consume items of spirituality like a task to be done to show to others, and that’s all — there is no path walking.

It reminded me of this quote that I’ll be sharing here:

“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” ― Adyashanti

PART 3

The future is to reveal the sacred.

It was a meeting that did want to happen but not on our terms, we had troubles with getting people to join, with meeting connection issues, with recording the conversation, you name it. In the end, the conversation did happen and it was great, relaxing, and at the same time very in-depth of what we’ve been discussing these past few months. We were able to invite Rhonda Magee (author of “The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness”, also Professor of Law) — to have a conversation on the topic of the future of spirituality. It took me about 20 minutes to be able to fully appreciate the conversation, between the remaining issues occurring in the background, but thankfully, I was able to write down a few issues discussed.

We presented ourselves and then had a small tea conversation on how the future of spirituality is such a difficult topic to talk about — so vast, so full of intricacies. The present moment of the spiritual is most often delusion after delusion of what the spiritual could be. People often neglect the difficult aspects in light of being always with the front idea of “achieved enlightenment”, without the sacredness of sacrifice in it.

The etymology of sacred means “to consecrate the holy”, and of sacrifice which from Latin means the same, “to make something holy”. The root word of both words is “sacer”, which means sacred — like a circle we can’t escape.

I’ve been talking a lot about sacredness lately with my students and with people who are willing to listen — the sacredness of relationships, how we need to tune in to the love that is there to find it. Our relationships with people, nature, life itself — to see the sacredness in everything, assuming the sacrifice of understanding and leaving our past selves behind. Gabriele mentioned this without me touching the subject, which I found an absolutely beautiful moment, as just an hour before, I was making a presentation exactly on the subject. A sacred relationship means we understand that holiness — the essential love and goodness — is in between the “me” and the “other”.

In terms of racial justice, is absolutely needed to understand this — from all parts of society. I mentioned at one point, that studying in the UN we could see beyond race, I wasn’t able to voice it but to study with people from all races and backgrounds and to understand one single monolithic group of people who have one single goal: To make life sacred, to help build a better world, to end inequality by all means possible — to work together as one. It’s beyond human, beyond race, beyond fairness and unfairness — it’s holy.

Rhonda spoke about how difficult it is to pass this point in a lot of places nowadays, how intricate the notion of separation between the “me’s” and the “you’s” is relentlessly so that there are so many unjust situations that can lead to despair. I got a great deal of respect for Racial Justice Spiritual Teachers because it’s a path very difficult to undertake — if you’re in it to go all the way, despair, deep sadness, and feelings of abandonment and loneliness will surface. The abandonment of people by the color of their skin is by far one of the most unsacred parts of our human world, and thank Holiness we are finally starting to speak about all this freely.

For me, this has to do with realizing ecological awareness is ultimately spiritual awareness — how can we be racist towards different colored petunias? Why do we treat ourselves this way? Ecological awareness is understanding the spirit of what we call things, their identities, of a tree, of a river, of an ocean, of a speck of grass — and understanding our tiny tiny roles inside of it all. If you watch a speck of grass grow, you have the notion of how little control humans really have — all we can really do is remove it, which does not mean another will not grow in its place.

In the end, the three conversations melted into a future which will be about connection, conversation, and dialogue, not just bursting out information, but supporting the understanding of the spiritual, the sacred, the sacrifice, the life that is there waiting to be known. The Disneyland aspect of the spiritual is not more than a tourist attraction, since it’s not really spiritual, it doesn’t even enter the equation — to overcome it, we need more responsible teachers to teach in honesty that life may be difficult — it may be overwhelmingly difficult, and we need to support one another. Each for another.

Conclusion

We’ve been doing these conversations since May 2021, and they started out of a need I had to see multiple perspectives on what it means to be spiritual. Reading all the articles since these conversations started, they converge in connection through love and understanding. To be scattered across the globe and to be able to discuss issues so important as this one, is a blessing, it is sacred. I hope more conversations are to arrive, more articles on the subjects, and hopefully, more time dedicated to finding the sacred in our relations.

You can join our conversations by logging in to TimeRepublik and finding our community named Spiritual Conversations.