Re: Spiritual Growth?

Dear Quest,

Spiritual growth is an oxymoron. Anyone who seriously has experienced any bits of enlightenment, breaks in normal consciousness, for lack of a better term, will tell you that one does not grow spiritually. At best it's just regular old growth and change, a process of becoming. Once you know and change, there's always room for more. From my experience, this type of knowledge comes from some sort of practice. Surely William James offered a very extreme example in your citation, but from what I remember he also gave less painful examples of spiritual pursuit and resulting enlightenment.

I am no religious fanatic. In fact, I am very pragmatic about the experiences that I have had meditating, maintaining that they are probably a result of some process not understood by science, but embraced in religious practices, and often misused. I am very happy that there are people out there who speak about the often dangerous and oppressive nature of organized religions.

Jane

Replies:

Re: Spiritual Growth?, by Lindsay Smith, 04/28/01 Trying to Make Effable the Ostensibly Ineffable , by Quest, 04/29/01 Re:Trying to Make Effable the Ostensibly Ineffable , by Jane, 05/02/01 Re:Trying to Make Effable the Ostensibly Ineffable , by Quest, 05/03/01 Re:Trying to Make Effable the Ostensibly Ineffable , by , 05/04/01 Re:Trying to Make Effable the Ostensibly Ineffable , by Jane, 05/04/01 Woops...I used ambiguous phrasing, by Quest, 05/05/01 MEDITATION & SPIRITUALITY, by Lindsay Smith, 09/01/01 Re:MEDITATION & SPIRITUALITY, by Lindsay Smith, 09/02/01

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