The four cornerstones of the human organism are that we are bio, psycho, social, spiritual beings, kind of a quaternity of the aspects of the human organism. We're bodies, we're psyches, we're social animals, which has to do with work and love primarily, and we're spiritual beings, which is this deep human longing to experience the transcendent in our ordinary lives.
A healthy spirituality expects to experience the transcendent in the imminent. A healthy spirituality is personal - it’s [mine], I’ve hammered this out, I’m conscious that I’m a spiritual being and I expect to experience the transcendent in my love relationships, in my family, in my ordinary work life. So I experience myself as being in the presence of the holy or the transcendent no matter where I am or what I’m doing. The other thing it carries is no judgment, no judgment of another spirituality, no judgment of another’s tradition. The more spiritual one becomes the more inclusive she becomes. So a healthy spirituality is personal, imminent, and inclusive. (7:20)
Jesus taught over and over again: the wind blows where it will, you know not where it comes from or where its going. So there’s a kind of autonomy to the transcendent... we can’t control it in other worlds. There’s a magical thinking that “if I do this, that will happen,” well you can’t control the experience of the transcendent. Buddhists talk about enlightenment, they say it’s always accidental but spiritual practice makes you accident prone. (9:09)
The etymology of the word suffer is the word ferre to carry. Suffer means to carry from beneath. There are two view points on an effect. There’s a cause and effect, that’s called reductionism, “so I’ve had this trauma, what caused it?” Then there is the question of the teleology, which is teleos, which means complete or whole. So rather than saying what caused this, you can asked the question, “what does this want? what does this mean? what does this want from me? what is this leading to?” Now, it’s important to ask maybe both questions, but it’s the second question where we find the meaning. And so, in a quick etymological amplification, we understand by standing under. So we stand under and carry it until we can understand it. And when we understand it, we find its meaning and we can integrate it into substance and soul. I suspect the soul primarily is created in its substance through suffering rather than through success. (13:27)
One of the popular things to say today is “I’m spiritual, I’m not religious.” I get that, I even understand that and could maybe say it myself. If we do good etymology though we’re all religious, because the word religion comes from the root ligare which means Latin for “to connect.” So religare means to reconnect something that’s been broken or estranged. So the religious nature of the psyche is to become whole, take all our fraction or fragmented parts and this religious nature of the psyche is to seek wholeness. So we’re all religious, we’re not all called to the doctrinal, creedal formulation denominational religion but we’re all called to meaning, purpose, belonging, and wholeness. (42:43)
