In an earlier post I wrote about what it means to me to be mindful of spirit. Put briefly it means being aware of spirit and attending to it closely. It means that when we encounter another animated being (and what isn't animated?) we do not just attend to how the other looks, sounds, smells and moves. We also pay attention to the other's spirit, that which makes the other alive.
I do not think I would be writing about being mindful of spirit if I thought most of us already are mindful of spirit. I write about it because I think most of us aren't mindful of spirit. That's right, I believe that for the most part we're mindless of spirit. As such we're missing out on the essence of life itself. We're missing out on what actually makes us alive rather than dead. More than that, we're harming ourselves and others in our mindlessness.
Being mindless of other's bodies can lead to unintentionally harming them physically. Being mindless of other's feelings can lead to unintentionally harming them emotionally. Likewise, being mindless of others' spirits can lead to unintentionally harming that which animates them and makes them alive rather than dead. Such mindlessness can lead to broken spirits. Attending to what makes us alive rather than dead seems like an important thing to me.
There is a good bit of public discussion going on about manners and civility . There is an outcry about a lack of both, especially in on-line communications. The outcry is possible because there is a history of good manners and civility with which to compare current behavior. Manners and civility are generally agreed on practices by which we avoid harming each other's bodies and emotions. For example, we generally agree that it is rude to hit or insult another person without just cause. We generally agree that it is a good thing to avoid physically injuring another person or hurting their feelings.
That being said, what is the etiquette for spirit? Is there such a thing? If there is I don't know what it is. If you know, please tell me.
If there is no etiquette for spirit, why isn't there? I suggest that it's because we are for the most part mindless of spirit. If we were mindful of our own and other's spirit, we would have an etiquette for spirit. We would have generally agreed on practices for how to avoid harming each other's spirit and treat each other's spirit well.
In later posts, I'll write more about an etiquette for spirit. For this post, I simply wanted to raise the awareness of our mindlessness of spirit.
I am in favor of what I call a permaculture-and-partnership way of being in the world as my way of practicing spiritual etiquette.
ReplyDeletePermaculture is difficult to learn and practice but it is a system that works, and not just for the betterment of humankind but for the betterment of those bits of nature which we occupy and use.
Permaculture is also an ethic.
The word itself started out meaning “permanent agriculture” but its meaning has expanded now and it is considered to mean “permanent culture.”
There are many books describing “permaculture.” I recommend the original and still one of the best, “Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual” by Bill Mollison. The Wikipedia article on Permaculture is also quite good and provide further references to other books, classes and websites. There are twelve design principles and they can be applied to many human endeavors other than horticulture. There is an excellent example in Mollison’s book on how to apply permaculture to economics for example, or to governance.
Monica, thanks for your comments about permaculture and how meaningful it is to you. I read the Wikipedia article and found it interesting and informative. Could you say more about how permaculture is for you an etiquette of spirit. Since spirit is not explicitly discussed in the Wikipedia article it isn't clear to me how mindfulness of spirit plays a role in permaculture.
DeleteWhat a permaculturalist tries to do in a way mindful of nature and its resources, is to create layered systems and patterns that support human life and human joy that are in harmony with nature and with each other. A permaculture garden, while growing foods that humans can eat, also grows food for the consumption of the soil organisms, for the wild bugs and animals, and to support other plants in the "guilds" in which they are planted. There is no such thing as "waste" in a permaculture system. The understanding is that there is no "away" - that garbage stays in this ecosphere and therefore needs to be reused, recycled and dealt with in a reasonable manner, mostly by not generating any waste if at all possible, and ceasing to do those activities that generate waste. This system of living and of thinking of our world, I think, supports and sustains the ideals of thinking of everything in all the world as part of a living life form, each of us with a role, each with our needs to be met, and our own dignity of spirit.
DeleteOK, Monica, that helped. I can see how being mindful of the life of all living ones, as in permaculture, is also being mindful of spirit. Thanks.
DeleteI have given thought to spiritual etiquette over the years. Like many people, I know bad behavior when I see it. I smile as I type this because it reminds me of an old court case where the justices decided that “I know porn when I see it.” I often feel that these subjective answers are unacceptable, but it is hard to figure out how to judge some things in any other manner.
ReplyDeleteIn particular, I am especially opposed to writing down a list of rules and regulations and declaring that they are the end-all-be-all of doctrine, perfect and unchangeable. And yet, there are too many religions that do exactly that. My own idea of such things is more like “guidelines” - certainly subject to change and alteration and deletion when you realize that the old way is no longer sufficient or something better has come along, or you have acquired greater wisdom.
That said, I am tempted to say that life should honor life. But what what constitutes “honoring”? Without being able to define and justify “honoring” isn’t this just another way to say, “I’m the boss of my self and of this planet and I can do what I like?”
When I take a stone from its natural setting, then carve it and polish it into a work of art or use it, am I honoring the spirit of the rock whose life I have changed and put into a different form and function? When I move a boulder into a fence or a pretty design in my yard, am I violating the boulder? When I cut down a tree and use its dried wood to build furniture for my use, its body as a home for my shelter, or a fire for my warmth and pleasure, am I honoring the spirit of the tree whose life I have taken? Or would the tree, given its choice, prefer to have gone on eating sunlight, drinking mineral water, and breathing carbon dioxide until its end came by some non-human means? Are the structures humans build any less “natural” for our species than the nests of birds, the dams of beavers, or the towers of termites are for those species?
Monica, excellent questions! In my view answering such questions requires a relationship in which both parties are in dialog with each other. In order to be in dialog we humans need to (re)gain the ability to be mindful of the spirits of others, listen, and understand how they communicate with us and we with them. I think that the only way we can feel confident that we are honoring a rock by removing it from its home and carving it into an artificial form that we pleases us is by asking it and hearing what it says. This is the same way I would learn to honor you. I would ask you,"Monica, I want to relate to you in a way that honors you; what is best way for me to do that? Also, what must I avoid doing in order to avoid dishonoring you? Finally, when I do unintentionally do dishonor you, what do I need to do to restore our relationship?"
DeleteWhen I drink water, so that it then becomes a part of my body’s water in a variety of ways, am I honoring the spirit of the water?
ReplyDeleteDo intentions matter? If I take the rock and reshape it for my use and pleasure, does my intention to honor it matter to the rock? Should it matter at all, even to me?
When I take the life of the lettuce leaf as I eat it alive and turn it into fuel for my body, does my intention to honor its life matter to it? Does it experience torment from my bite and chew? Should it matter to me? When I eat the living apple, does the apple care? Does the tree from which it came? Should I care? Or am I honoring the apple, and its parent tree, simply by electing to support my own life by consuming its life?
When a cat “plays” with a mouse before it kills and eats it, is the cat, who is doing as its nature requires, dishonoring the life and death of the mouse by not killing it quickly and painlessly? Am I dishonoring both the cat and the mouse by wishing that sometimes things could happen in a way other than that which nature demands of both cats and mice?
Some are tempted to say, “We should behave as nature made us - this should be honor enough for any being.” The problem with this idea is that we don’t really understand “nature” and how we were “made” to be within it. We are born with some instincts, but not with the ones that can give us the moral, ethical, and religious answers we crave.
Monica, again you ask excellent, thought-provoking questions. Thank you. That we do not have clear answers to your questions could indicate how mindless of spirit we in the West have become. There have been and still are cultures, usually called indigenous cultures by members of non-indigenous cultures, who do have realtionships with the rest of nature. In there realtionships your questions are not asked. They are not asked because the answers are self-evident to them. They are self-evident because their relationships are such that they are integrated with the rest of nature rather than alienated from it.
DeleteI want to discus several things in response:
Delete(1) why, even though we both know what you are talking about when you talk about “indigenous cultures”, that we both might be making a thought-error there;
(2) that self-evident relationships with the rest of nature are not something human beings of any sort can acquire genetically (at the instinct level). Indigenous culture or not, all such knowledge is learned and practiced at the individual level - or not;
(3) that there is a hierarchy of communication, and that we need to be aware of it and to not lie to ourselves about just how much communication is really possible with beings very different from ourselves when even communicating with our fellow human beings is often challenging to the point of “why bother” for many.
I propose, if you are willing, to send you three short essays separately on these subjects in the hope that your feedback on these subjects will prove valuable and enlightening for me and for anyone following this blog.
Monica, did you receive my email in response to your proposal to send me three short essays? I haven't heard back from you.
DeleteSome Social Darwinists among us believe that nature is red of tooth and claw, and that a truly superior, “survival of the fittest” human being is made to fight and win by nature, and not to care about those who are nature’s “losers” in this world of struggle. Many who think this way tend to end up these days on the far right, politically and religiously.
ReplyDeleteIn the world view of the Social Darwinists, to be wealthy and powerful is to be successful. God is on the side of the successful and has punished the not-successful with poverty and unmet needs. Successful people should not be burdened by having to care for or provide any sustenance to those less successful. Some believe that this is God’s way, and to go against God by offering charity to the poor is not a good idea. Had God intended these underclasses to be successful he would have made them worthy. Therefore all social welfare programs paid for with pubic money, all social safety net provisions, all social health care services - these should all be deleted and replaced with private charitable contributions only as a matter of proper Darwinistic ethics.
In such a world a human being, as one of nature’s “winners,” should simply use other non-human beings as much as they can, for their own comfort and pleasure, without the slightest regard for who goes extinct, who is endangered, what damages are done to habitat, how genotypes are changed, bred, and manipulated, and whose lives are damaged or lost. One “honors” only one’s fellow winners, and mostly by making sure that you each have plenty of room to swing things about without hitting each other. And as soon as a fellow winner exhibits any sign of weakness, its time to close that distance and destroy him. This is "nature's way" refined as "God's way" by some.
In this Social Darwinist world view, governments likewise should be kept small and hungry and under the control of the “successful” - rather like a country club whose purpose is governance instead of socializing. The purpose of such country club government is to protect and defend the successful, keep the unsuccessful in their “rightful” place, and provide a minimalist infrastructure within which the successful can build their competing and warring kingdoms of power and might and keep their servants and warriors under their tight and inescapable control.
ReplyDeleteReligions likewise are tools of control for the “superior” human. The unsuccessful masses must be carefully taught to obey their betters, and to look forward to “life after death” or “the next world” - because this one, and certainly all its pleasures, belongs to their masters.
The masters in such a system are “exceptionalists” - the laws that apply to the peons do not apply to the successful ones among us because they “deserve” by being “superior” to be free of such things.
But the Social Darwinists have an incorrect, one-sided impression of the nature of Nature, because while Nature is often “red of tooth and claw” is it also filled with cooperation and altruism - both of which are highly important to survival and success, especially the survival and success of human beings.
When looking at how Nature is cooperative and altruistic, it is instructive to look at the life of forests and trees. There is a lovely book out there by Tom Wessels titled “Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England” that is an excellent place to begin learning about how survival and evolution is often about the survival of the cooperative and the altruistic. Pick up any book by Tom Wessels and learn a great deal about the true nature of Nature.
There are excellent books about how cooperation and altruism benefits both individual humans and groups of humans. Try “Supercooperators” by Martin Nowak, as a possible starting point, though there are many books and websites on this subject for those who care to look.
Monica, are you suggesting that Social Darwinism is a practice that is mindless of spirit. I'm not clear about how you posts about Social Darwinism relate to the topic of being mindless of spirit. What am I missing?
ReplyDelete