Spirituality Since the birth of humankind, our biggest inner struggle has been to achieve a level of complete peacefulness through religion or spirituality. Even though, religion has evolved and shifted through many individual beliefs, yet the essence spirituality has always been the same. First, I will try to explain religion and spiritually in a broader sense, and then I will explain why I prefer spirituality to religion. According to one of the religion writer, Malik Khan, Religion in actual practice is applied to a great variety of human ideas, acts, and institutions. All attempts to sift out from these some common element, which would represent the “essence” of religion, have ended in failure. (Khan 72) Considering the wide range of concerns called religious, it is at least clear to me that altogether they have played a highly significant part in human history. Men have fought and died for their religion. Art and literature have flowered forth as expressions of faith. I met many individuals have who acknowledged religion as the basis for strength, hope, and significance in their lives.
Generally speaking, I regard religion as significant in the degree to which it concerns the whole range of mans experience. From this point of view, a religion, which is relevant only to a part of mans life, would be relatively trivial. A second view of significance or importance is the extent to which the religion deals with “ultimate” rather than merely preliminary matters. Furthermore, a religion is trivial unless it continually leads one out from immediate and particular concerns to questions about ever-wider meanings, more extensive connections, and deeper implications. A principal of standard of goodness in religion can be summarized in one word, “community”. Broadly speaking, I believe community is the harmonious inter-relation of individual entities.
The Term Paper on Functionalism, Conflict, Interactionism and Religion
... other hand, affects the views of individuals, as far as the sociological institution of religion is concerned. The conflict theory affects the ... marriages, offering of sacrifices to God, transformations from paganism to spirituality and many other changes. The theory of functionalism is ... and it should provide all the basic needs to man with or without asking. The conflict theory further draws ...
By this approach, a religion is good when it ultimately promotes community and it is bad when it destroys community. The elements which enter into what I here call “community, are not necessarily human beings. Thus, I do not mean by this term only the social group. Harmonious inter-relation also apply to man to his non-human environment. Or it may concern the co-ordination of the diverse experiences in the consciousness of a single human being. The word spirituality is derived from the word “spirit.” As I check the thesaurus for “spirit” renders such diverse supposed synonyms as soul, apparition, ghost, phantom, specter, spook, animation, life, vigor, zest, allegiance, devotion, and loyalty.
When I examine the word spirituality itself, I discover devotion, holiness, piety, saintliness, and sanctity. According to one of the writers, Iqbal Shah as quoted in McGinns book, Spirituality is connecting to the “universal oneness” in everything and everyone around you. (McGinn 23) Spirituality is living one’s life from the realization that the body, mind, and ego personality I have been taught to identify with is just the tip of our iceberg, our little head sticking through the window of the senses into this world, whereas our true body is the universe. I feel that our perceived world is mostly an illusion and that the goal of life is to awake to our real Self which is vast and multidimensional-already intimately connected with all of creation, with a twin shadow self that is already scripted, mostly primitive, and hidden from us, but that this whole Self is already One with this believe which I call God whose essence can hardly be understood, but to which I acknowledge as Eternal Wisdom, Ultimate Reality, creator of all Life. I believe my spiritual journey is construing the precious meaning of this unique life given to me. I ought to recognize and accept this oneness, brought to me in many forms by the great mentor (God), in its various crises and transitions. In conclusion, I prefer spirituality to religion because religion is an organized structure but spirituality is something you feel deep inside.
The Review on Nisa The Life And Words Of Kung Woman By Marjorie Shostak book report 20223
Nisa The Life And Words Of Kung Woman By Marjorie Shostak book report 20223 In this paper I am going to discuss the book Nisa The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, by Marjorie Shostak. In doing this I will describe the culture of the !Kung people, a small hunter-gatherer tribe in Africa. Then I will go on with telling about their sociocultural systems that I have read about in this book. To rap ...
Furthermore, religion is about certainty and spirituality is about wonder. I believe many people escape into religion in order not to be challenged by God, because they do not want to have to continually rethink things, most of us prefer our illusions and private idols to reality, mystery, and challenge. In addition to, religion attracts those of a guardian type personality; spirituality attracts those of a more pilgrim type of personality more open to learning, wonder, and mystery. Personally, I feel spirituality by an “awakening” that I experience in life; consequently, my views about this world and about others shift. Word Count: 736
Bibliography:
Khan, Malik. Religion of Peace. New York: Random House Inc., 1999.
Bernard McGinn, ed., Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1978. Louis Bouyer, ed., A History of Christian Spirituality, 3 vol. (New York: Seabury, 1962-1964).
Lawrence S. Cunningham & Keith J.
Egan, Christian Spirituality: Themes from the Tradition (New York: Paulist Press, 1996) Michael Downey, ed., The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993).
