Jenny and Erin

If, as proposed in the post Picking Sides: Spirituality or Science, the role of spirituality is to help enhance our life experience, then one of the primary tools is the myth. Myths can help us understand our emotions, our place in the world, good and evil or why we matter at all.

Although mythology is an essential element of spirituality, it is often poorly understood. This is especially true of those of a strict scientific or religious mindset. This misunderstanding is a shame as myths have played a critical role in cultures throughout time. In fact, many myths are so common around the world and through time that they are considered universal, although there may be slight variations based upon the time and culture in which they are told. At the most basic level myths serve as stories about humanities deepest and most re-occurring concerns, such as love, birth, evil and death.

Myths are not:

Myths are:

Myths guide us as we look for our purpose in life, instruct us how to overcome our weaknesses or hone our strengths, understand emotions such as love, anger and jealousy and teach us how to respond to the world and its people. Ultimately a myth’s function is to help individuals and society achieve revelations about both themselves as individuals and humanity as a whole through experiences and questions typically unavailable to us in our daily lives. They move our daily struggles into a new, often magical context and help illuminate just what we are capable of being and doing.

Although most of us are familiar with myths, such as those found in the Judeo-Christian tradition or amongst native people’s around the world, myths also abound in popular culture. Some examples of myths that have captured the imagination of large numbers of people in recent years include the Left Behind series, the Matrix movies or the Harry Potter series. All of these examples are deep in their insight about human nature, have several layers of interpretation and leave the viewer/reader with more questions than answers.

Are religion and spirituality the same thing? If so, why do so many people call themselves spiritual but bristle at being called religious? Why do the religious often discount the spirituality of others? Why are the stories in some sacred religious texts considered literally true but the stories in other religious texts considered myths by the exact same people?

Through long discussions, some research and much self reflection I have come to the conclusion that this confusion occurs because most of us do not understand that religion and spirituality play different roles in both society and one’s own life. It is possible to have one without the other.

Defining Religion

Religion begins with a person experiencing a direct revelation of the divine. For example, in the Judeo-Christian tradition this was when God talked directly to Moses. From such encounters and their resulting revelations come stories, or myths, of how the recipient was changed. These stories contain powerful messages about the human condition and are eventually written and collected as sacred texts. To share these messages, even with those who do not receive them directly, religions create common definitions, practices and theologies which serve to explain and lead believers towards personal experiences of the divine. These beliefs gradually become interwoven with social and cultural norms until they are nearly impossible to separate and over time solidify into rules about the correct way to live one’s life called doctrines and dogmas.

Religion is the belief in a conscious and all powerful God or gods. Its collection of myths are sifted, captured and passed down in sacred texts, such as the Bible. Religion gives its followers “truth” through the interpretation of these stories. It teaches unchanging, or at least slowly changing, rules and messages to its believers and is very hierarchal in nature. Further, its theologies tend to be written, shaped and enforced by members of the dominant culture.

Religions grow, are maintained and propagated to explain and contextualize personal spiritual experiences within the broader community. They are primarily communal in nature allowing societies to maintain social order in the face of often widely variable revelations about the divine (and remember revelations about the divine create the stories that tell us what a good life is). Comfortable borders are created around these revelations and pull outliers, individuals with deep spiritual revelations that are not the same as the religions, back into the communal whole in order to maintain social norms.

Defining Spirituality

Spirituality also begins with a personal and direct experience of the divine. For example a meditation practitioner experiencing an overwhelming interconnectedness of all living things. From this revelation also come stories, or myths, of how the individual was impacted. Similar to religion these “truths” are deeply meaningful and allow explanation of the troubling and beautiful aspects of the human condition. Although the stories are powerful, they typically are not immediately written, as the focus of spirituality tends to be on the experience not the dissemination of the experience. Instead, they are primarily passed on and adjusted as necessary through word of mouth or other informal methods of communication. Because spirituality tends to focus on the individual’s personal spiritual journey, rather than on a group of believers, the path to the divine is less clear and a formal language for communicating experiences of the divine has not been defined. Spirituality has loose or no theologies, doctrines or dogma, instead there is a reliance upon metaphors and symbols to help point seekers in a direction.

Spirituality may include the belief in a conscious God or gods, but it does not have to. Rather than claiming the truth spirituality claims one of many possible understandings of the truth. Often people who are spiritual in nature proclaim beliefs in things such as a vast energy responsible for creating all life and which can be tapped in and out of at will. Spirituality focuses on personal or small group experiences and passes down its understanding through myth, metaphor and symbolism. While it has some enduring aspects, they can change depending upon the time, culture and even the individual. It is not particularly hierarchal in nature and tends to be shaped primarily by the outsiders of a culture.

In summary, spirituality is culturally specific, it tends to pass down “shells” of its questions and insights, rather than the set-in-stone truths and social norms of religion. Both spirituality and religion are built upon stories, called myths. There are many myths that are common throughout time and place, such as stories about the origins of humanity. Although similar “shells” of most myths are observed worldwide they tend to adjust to the local culture and times. There are so many similarities in the myths seen worldwide that some people feel humans get these stories through a direct connection to the divine, or ‘the collective unconscious‘. In some cases the myths have been collected and are passed on directly from generation to generation adding the overtones of a culture with each generation making it problematic to figure out just where the spiritual truths end and cultural mandates begin.

Related Posts:
Understanding Religion and Spirituality
Picking Sides: Science or Spirituality

For years I’ve found the division between science and spirituality troubling. People around me seemed to divide into two camps; those who believe science is the means to truth and understanding and those who believe truth and understanding are possible only through religion and/or a strong spiritual life. I’ve often watched debates between these two groups get ugly – typically ending with angry declarations as to which side is ignorant and which side is on their way to hell.

I usually steer clear when these conversations are raging, as it’s been my experience the people involved have already cemented their perspectives and I don’t feel either side is all wrong or all right. However this changed when Mark over at The Winding Path offered a possible way of viewing science and spirituality I’d never considered. He proposed that spirituality is how we experience life and science is how we understand it. This rippled in my thinking and I was intrigued.

At first this question was hard for me to consider too deeply because the implication seemed to be that the rational thought and the hypothesis of science were somehow more true or better than the intuitive faith and oftentimes metaphorical truth of spirituality and religion. As I slowly pondered this I came to a conclusion that for the first time allows spirituality and science to equally co-exist in my thought process. I now believe they both offer a valid understanding of life’s truths, they just do it through different paths.

Science is the language of rational thought and is grounded in an objective world view. It relies upon observation and repeated testing to form its truths. Its language is literal and fact based. On the other hand, spirituality is the language of metaphorical truths and intensely personal subjective world views. It is solidly grounded upon commonly experienced individual truths of both the nature of the divine and of social order. The myths and theologies of the world’s religions explain its world views. Together science and spirituality paint a more complete picture of the world we live in than when either is viewed alone.

Put another way:
Spirituality = experience of life = subjective understanding
Science = observation of life = objective understanding

For instance, science tells us that men and women are attracted to each other for a variety of reasons; such as waist/hip ratio, finger size, waist/shoulder ratio, facial symmetry, scent and so forth. Spirituality offers the concept of a “soul mate”, finding one’s divine nature through the ritualized practices of tantric sex, it turns marriage into a spiritual union, gives rules on how individuals should approach relationships and defines what relationships are socially appropriate via more than one of the ten Christian commandments for example.

It is through combining the knowledge and perspectives of spirituality and science that I find an understanding of human nature, my own in particular, that makes sense. Is it, as Mark later asked, time to consider a new paradigm that blends the two?

Related Posts:
Understanding Religion and Spirituality