Spirituality:Everyone has one.How is yours?

Created by Shari GuilfoileBased on ideas from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

Spirituality defined (Pages 4-5)01

table of contents

How spirituality is created(Pages 6-8)02

Characteristics of a healthy spirituality(Pages 13-14)

04Some spiritual challenges(Pages 15-18)05

Some striking examples(Pages 9-12)03 Direction to move forward

(Page 19)06

It is no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, it would seem, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated, and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always greater than satisfaction.

Ron RolheiserAuthor, Speaker, President of The Oblate School of Theology

4

The word “spirituality” is often misunderstood.

Few words are as misunderstood in the English language as the word spirituality. Spirituality wasn’t even part of the English vocabulary 50 years ago. Neither churches nor the secular world had any interest in the concept.

Today, bookstores, religious and secular, are overflowing with books on spirituality. Despite this explosion of literature in the area of spirituality, there are still major misunderstandings about the concept.

For many people, the word spirituality conjures up images of something mystical, churchy, holy, pious, otherworldly, New Age, and/or optional.

Rarely is spirituality understood as referring to something vital, non-negotiable, and lying at the heart of our lives.

This is an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Spirituality defined

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

section 01

5

What is spirituality?

Before describing what spirituality is, let’s be clear about what it is not.

Spirituality is not:

Something on the fringes

Optional About rationally

choosing certain spiritual activities like going to church, praying, meditating, reading spiritual books, or setting off on a spiritual quest.

It’s far more basic than that.

Spirituality defined

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

section 01

We all have a spirituality whether we want one or not, whether we are religious or not.

Integrated or Falling apart

Within community or Lonely

A life-giving force or Destructive

Loving or Bitter

Spirituality is about being:

6

Our spirituality is shaped by our response to the restlessness, energy and desire within us.

There is within each of us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul.

We are not serene human beings who occasionally get restless. The reverse is true. We are driven persons, living lives, as Thoreau once suggested, of quiet desperation, only occasionally experiencing peace.

How spirituality is created

section 02

Who is restless? We all are.

This dis-ease is universal. No one is exempt.

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

7

Spirituality is what we do with desire.

When we act, what we do will either lead to more

integration or disintegration

within our personalities, minds and bodies.

How spirituality is created

section 02

Desire makes us act.

And it will lead to either the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to others and to God.

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

8

Spirituality is the manifestation of our choices.

How spirituality is created

section 02

Sound easy? Not exactly, because every choice is a thousand renunciations.

To choose one thing is to turn one’s back on many others. To marry one person is to not marry all others.To have a child means to give up many other things.To pray means to miss watching TV or meeting up with friends.

This makes choosing hard. It’s not that we don’t want certain things, it’s just that we know that if we choose them, we close off so many other things.

Yet not to choose is also a choice.Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

9

Choices can create very different spiritualties.

Some striking examples

To offer a striking example of how spirituality can manifest itself, let’s compare the lives of two very famous women: Mother Teresa and Janis Joplin.

Most people would consider Mother Teresa a spiritual woman, but not an erotic one. Yet she was a very erotic woman, but not in the Freudian sense of the word. She was erotic because she was a dynamo of energy. She was a human bulldozer with incredible discipline. Her powerful energy was dedicated to one thing: to God and the poor. This singular focus was her signature, her spirituality. It made her what she was.

section 03Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

10

Choices can create very different spiritualties.

Some striking examples

Janis Joplin was a rock star who died from an overdose at age 27. People think of her as the opposite of Mother Teresa, erotic, but not spiritual, yet she was a very spiritual woman. Janis Joplin was not so different from Mother Teresa, at least not in raw makeup and character. Like Mother Teresa, Janis Joplin was an exceptional woman, a person of fiery eros, a great lover, a person with rare energy.

However, unlike Mother Teresa, who directed her powerful energy to one thing, Janis Joplin’s energy went out in all directions – to creativity, performance, drugs, alcohol, sex, and neglect of rest. That was her spirituality. It was how she channeled her energy. Rather than integrating her energy, she dissipated it, and eventually she broke apart due to too much pressure.

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

section 03

11

Most of us have a complex spirituality.

Some striking examples

Most of us do not have the discipline of Mother Teresa; and thankfully, most of us don’t die from lack of rest at age 27 like Janis Joplin.

section 03

Most of us may be more like another

famous woman, Princess Diana.

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

12

Most of us have a complex spirituality.

Some striking examples

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

Unlike in the case of Mother Teresa or Janis Joplin, most people consider Princess Diana to be both erotic and spiritual. And like Mother Teresa and Janis Joplin, Princess Diana obviously had great energy and fire within her. People, whether they recognized it or not, were drawn to her because of her great energy.

In Princess Diana’s attempts to channel the energy within her, we see something most of us can identify with: a tremendous complexity, a painful struggle for choice and commitment, and an oh-so-human combination of sins and virtues. She chose a mixed road. She chose some things, her causes, which left her more integrated in body and soul, and others, like Mediterranean vacations with playboys, which tore at her body and soul. Such was her spirituality.

Our spirituality is most likely the reflection of conflicting choices as well.

section 03

13

A healthy spirituality must perform dual roles.Maintain Our Vitality

The first role of a healthy spirituality is to give us energy, maintain our vitality and ensure our joy for living. In this sense, the opposite of being spiritual is to have no energy, to have lost all zest for living – lying on a couch, endlessly watching TV or surfing the internet is an example of this.

Keep Us Glued Together

The other role of a healthy spirituality is to keep us glued together, integrated, so we do not fall apart. Under this aspect, the opposite of being spiritual is to have lost your identify, to not know who you are anymore, to fall apart. When I feel my inner world hopelessly crumpling, when I don’t know who I am anymore, and when I am trying to rush off in all directions at the same time but do not know where I am going, I lack a healthy spirituality.

Characteristics of a healthy spirituality

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

section 04

14

A healthy spirituality balances the principles of order and chaos.

Too much order and you die of suffocation; too much chaos and you die of dissipation.A creative tension results from trying to balance these two competing principles, which is why we sometimes experience such intense struggles within ourselves.

The question of what contributes to a healthy spirituality is very complex because, on any given day, we might need more energy rather than integration, or vice versa. For example, if I am feeling dissipated, unsure of who I am and what my life means, I may need to spend more time in solitude rather than socializing. Conversely, if I feel dead inside and cannot find any enthusiasm for living, I might want the reverse.

Characteristics of a healthy spirituality

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

section 04

15

Difficult questions arise in trying to achieve a spiritual balance.

Am I being too hard or easy on myself?

Am I unhappy because I am missing out on life or because I am not being true to myself?

Where is the fine line between discipline and enjoyment?

What is real growth and what is simply my ego demanding more?

Why do I always feel so guilty?

What do I do when I feel I have betrayed a trust?

These are perennial questions that every generation has to answer for itself. However, they pose themselves quite differently from generation to generation.

Past societies were more overtly religious, but they had their own religious problems. They believed in God easily, but then struggled with superstition, slavery, sexism, unhealthy notions of fate and predestination, and excessive fears of eternal punishment.

Every generation has struggled spiritually. There has been no golden age.

Like generations past, our generation struggles spiritually.

Some spiritual struggles

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

section 05

16

Our generation struggles spiritually:It is naïve about the nature of spiritual energy.

One of the major spiritual stumbling blocks of our time is that we believe we understand our energy, that we control it, and that we need little, if any, external help in coping with it.

We dislike any external force, religious or secular, that in any way censors or restricts an absolute freedom to let energy flow through us.

We are not unlike an adolescent boy or girl whose body is bursting with hormonal energy and who feels that he or she is up to the task of coping with that tension without any rules or guidance from elders.

Such naiveté is, as we know, both arrogant and dangerous.

Some spiritual challenges

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

section 05

Problems arise when we attempt to handle the energy within us without the proper reverence, safeguards, taboos and mediation.

We find ourselves stripped of all joy and delight (depression), or so full of ourselves (inflation) that we are a menace to our families, friends, communities and ourselves.

17

Our generation struggles spiritually:It is prone to lack interior depth.

Some spiritual challenges

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

section 05

We are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion. It is not that we have anything against God, depth and spirit. We would like these, it is just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens.

We are more busy than bad, more distracted than non-spiritual, and more interested in the social media, sports and shopping, and the fantasy life they produce, than we are in our faith.

18

Our generation struggles spiritually:It struggles to find a healthy balance in anything.

Religion and secularity are often pitted against one another. Religion is perceived as being anti-sex, anti-creative, anti-enjoyment, and anti-this world. The secular world is seen as the champion of sex, creativity and enjoyment, but is seen as anti-God and anti-church. How do we find balance between the two?

Private and social morality are too rarely found in the same individual, the same group, the same ideology, or the same church. How do we simultaneously lead the prayer group and the protest, take action for family values and against poverty in the inner cities, and balance contemplation with action?

Some spiritual challenges

Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser

section 05

We struggle with true selflessness. We are all too familiar with the situation where one sacrifices for a friend but ends up being bitter about it and feeling used. Anyone who is sensitive and good is burdened by duty. How do we become a person burdened by duty who is not resentful about it?

A balanced rather than an “either-or” approach is needed for us

to healthily channel our spiritual energies. For example:

19

Sincerity is not the issue, but lack of direction is.

Direction to move forward

No one doubts our generation’s sincerity. In terms of spirituality, our struggle is not with sincerity, but with direction. Our hearts are good, but it is our minds and feet that do not know which way to go.

There are many perspectives that can be used to formulate a healthy spirituality. There are valuable insights that can be drawn from secular, humanistic thought, and even more obviously, from various world religions. God still speaks in many and diverse ways and no one person or religion has a monopoly on truth.

That being said, in another digital mini-book, similar to this one, a specifically Christian framework will be used to show how a healthy spirituality can be created and sustained.Adapted from The Holy Longing by Ron Roleiser

section 06