After writing the previous blog post, I started thinking about philosophy and spirituality. I tried to figure out my slight aversion towards philosophy–while I enjoy pondering on philosophical questions, I realize that engaging a question through a philosophical lens is just not my thing. I wouldn’t call myself in an expert in the philosophical field, but my impression is that philosophy is mostly concerned with finding answers…hence the quest for truth. Spirituality, for someone who is inclined to thinking philosophically and abides by both rationality and logic, is about finding an answer beyond argument. It is about finding the ultimate answer, or it is a contest for the ultimate answer.
For me, my way of engaging spirituality is much more intuitive; it’s more metaphorical, emotional and almost poetic. It’s all about feeling things. It’s about asking the right questions, instead of finding the right answers. It occurred to me that the general view on spirituality or the general understanding of spirituality is has to do with process and not the product. To seek to connect to the Spirit, the Universe, God, All that There Is, or whatever you address the great beyond–it is the process or the journey itself that matters. To be honest, one of the reasons why I dislike a philosophical approach is the obsession with answers, logic, and proving the others false. Personally it doesn’t feel very productive to be always arguing or trying to prove your point. I mean it’s certainly interesting, but to try to rigidly self-assert one’s point of view is kind of self-defeating. There’s the need to win, to view the world in absolutes. But the thing is the world is never absolute. Something we can know absolutely is that there is nothing absolute about the way we live or this world we live in.
I was talking to my friend, who studied philosophy and was advising me to considering both sides of the argument before coming to a conclusion. I appreciated her insight but to me it was irrelevant. I think what I think, I don’t need to be proven right or proven wrong; my only need is the need to self-express. I don’t believe there is one correct perspective in which we have to embody when we try to think about or understand the world. That notion seems completely and utterly ridiculous to me. My personal truths are just as valid as your personal truths. The most important is: do our personal truths benefit us, empower us and make us happy? If so, what’s the point in trying to find an ultimate, absolute truth that exists beyond the Self?
Anyway. I’m getting a bit off topic here. Spirituality is about vibes; it’s about personal choices. It’s about our own personal connections and what we can personally relate to. It’s about what we choose and what we not choose. I don’t think there’s a right answer for everybody when it comes to spirituality. It’s annoying to me to think that there is an ultimate answer that will solve everybody’s problem.
“Truth will bring you freedom.” Maybe. But it is not truth that brings me freedom. If knowing something to be the truth sets me free, it is because I choose to accept the truth and allow myself to enter a state of being free. I can always choose to look the other way, ignore it, deny it, twist it and make it suit my own will. But if I don’t, it is because I choose to accept the truth as the truth. I feel like that has nothing to do with the truth itself.
SO MANY THOUGHTS!! I guess that’s what a good philosophical discussion does. But I still think that I’m not one for philosophical discussions. Someone who is well-versed in philosophy will probably think that I’m always generalizing, uttering statements based on irrational and unsubstantiated “feelings” other than logic or fact. But hey, that’s me in a nutshell. It’s how I function. You don’t have to agree with me, just like I don’t have to agree with you.
