Board Session: What is Spirituality?

It fell upon me, starting last Sunday, and continuing today, to lead a discussion on Spirituality at my church. What a heavy topic. Who am I to stand up in front of many people, some old enough to be my parents and even grandparents, and presume to give them any information that they don't already have? Although occasionally I volunteer to lead such discussions, once I have done so, there is always an internal panic of, "What have I gotten myself into?"

I had some ideas of maybe where to begin on a discussion of spirituality, but was still unsure that I would be able to bring anything useful to the table, besides a series of inspirational quotes from men and women wiser and more respected than myself.

My talking board

As on many other occasions where I find myself looking for guidance, I decided to ask The Collective. If you are just finding this blog for the first time, I do this via a talking board.

I sat down at the board with my husband and going through our normal routine of checking to see if there were any important messages for either of us, I asked if there was any guidance that they could give me that would help me with my discussion of spirituality. Of course, they did not disappoint.

The following is the summation that I put together based on the explanations that They gave us about spirituality during that particular board session on June 15, 2013. This includes what they told us directly, and answers to questions we asked. It is all in paragraph form, as I have yet to possess the free time if would take to write up an actual transcript of an audio recording, as I would prefer. I have done so in the past and discovered that it consumes hours that I don't have. As is often the case, They used metaphors to illustrate Their points.

Spirituality

June 15, 2013

Picture a treasure map. Here is a dotted path that tries to explain to you how to get to the X that marks "The Spot." The X, of course, is the Treasure. The thing is, no one really knows what the Treasure is. Sure, there are stories and legends, but no one you know has seen it with their own eyes and lived to tell about it. And even if they have seen it, their description never really helps you, because it's still secondhand information, that is being filtered through another person's lens of interpretation. Also, the treasure map is flat and plain. You see maybe a path to the treasure in a dotted line, but this path does not tell you what you'll encounter along the way. The map doesn't tell you that you'll have to hack your way through a jungle, scale a mountain, fight off wild beasts, or contend with a mutinous crew. It only gives you an idea of where X is and some vague idea of how to get there, and wherever "there" is, you don't even know what you'll find once you get there. 

You have a compass, and it can at least tell you where North is, but it cannot, by itself get you to The Treasure. You also need this infuriatingly vague map. And you need to do your own footwork.

Like a thumbprint, Spirituality is unique for each and every person. And even two people who ostensibly "believe" the same things on paper - they attend the same church, and in conversations with each other agree that they both believe in the same tenets - these two people actually still have their own personal interpretation of their beliefs, that is filtered through their own unique lens. Deep down inside, in their personal little Black Box of Things That They Don't Talk About To Anyone Else, there are shades of belief that make them different than even their most similar neighbor. Each person's experiences, circumstances, and environment make up their own individual Secret Blend of Herbs and Spices that informs that person's Spirituality. In the same way that no two people are alike, there are no two Spiritualities that are alike. 

Therefore Spirituality is a very personal journey for each of us. I am not on the same journey that you are. Our treasure maps look different, and our compasses each claim that a different way is North.

There is an emphasis that it is the Journey that is the most important part. When you watch a movie that involves a treasure map, it's The Quest for the Treasure that takes up most of the movie, no? Sure, we get to the Treasure at the end, but after that the credits roll, gosh, no one seems to bother to ask what happens after that. Maybe because it's not that important when compared to the Search, the Journey.

Spirituality is the Compass. It is oriented specially to each of our own personal Norths. It can help guide us on our Quest. What do I mean, "Personal North?" isn't North the same for everyone? Not in this arena. Each of us has chosen to come into this life for our own unique and personal reasons. We have elected, beforehand, before we are born, to place ourselves in certain circumstances, to place specific sets of challenges in our path, to make our way through life with a particular set of tools, all of these carefully designed to assist us in growing in the way that we need to grow. We have built an obstacle course for ourselves that is custom-designed to target our weakest muscles, so that we can build them up where we are deficient. Because each of our lives is its own unique little universe, we each have our own way North.

What do I mean, by "our own way north?" Well, because we are each different, our priorities are different. What we each value is different. What we each feel is Right and Wrong is different, if even ever so subtly, from our fellow Seekers of Treasure. Your neighbor is not seeking the same Treasure as you, and this makes you unique. What makes us all the same, however, is that we are all seeking A treasure.

And what is this Treasure then? Where is the common ground for all of us, where we can have a feeling of sharing and commonality in a discussion such as this? The Treasure...is Enlightenment. But that may not mean what it sounds like at first.  As I have said, we have each placed specific challenges in our life path that are meant to teach us lessons. When we actually manage to figure out what those lessons are, we have found what we are looking for, we have found The Lesson Plan, The Syllabus. This is Enlightenment. This is The Treasure. 

It doesn't even matter so much if we are able to learn the lessons in this lifetime. To know what they are is the epiphany. The moment of clarity. How would you expect to build a house with no blueprints? You might have a whole stack of building materials and not even be sure what it is that you are supposed to build, or that you are meant to build anything at all. You might be meant to start a bonfire with it all this lumber for all you know. Ah, where are the plans? What am I supposed to be doing with all this stuff? WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA HERE ANYWAY?! The Plan, The Lesson Plan, The Syllabus is your Enlightenment, your Treasure.

What is the difference between Religion and Faith and Spirituality? 

I may have faith that my car is parked outside, but the car is out there, even if I have no faith that it is. That car, in this metaphor, is Spirituality. Now this is just a metaphor, because there are obvious debates about whether anything truly exists outside of our perception of it or belief in it, but just try to roll with the train of thought here.

If Spirituality is the Compass that guides you toward your Treasure, the discovery of your purpose in this life, much like the car in the driveway, whether you have faith that it is there or not, you still have a guide that can point you in the right direction, whether or not you believe that you have such a tool. There can be signs pointing you, and friendly elbows nudging you in the right direction without you even being aware that they are doing so, or believing that this is their purpose. As long as you get to your destination, it doesn't matter whether you are aware of the tools you are using to get there, or how they work. I don't need to know how to build a computer to go on the internet.

Spirituality is a human thing, for this physical life. People on the other side, Spirits, whatever you would like to call our energies once they have shuffled loose the mortal coil have no need of it; they can already see the big picture. They know what The Lesson Plan is. Of course they do; that's how you chose your life before you got here: you needed no Compass then, you knew what to do.

Dead People Don't Care About Lighting

image credit: prairieghosts.com

So recently I convinced my husband to try table tipping. I follow a number of Spiritualist groups on Facebook, and have seen a few of them post about participating in this particular kind of physical mediumship, so I thought I would see for myself what all the fuss was about. That's how I roll. I'm a "see for yourself" kind of person.

Now, I confess, I could have researched it more. I perused a few videos on YouTube, and I surmised that even if you could get the table to move, it would be a very slow means of receiving information, as it looked like you could only ask yes-or-no questions, and the table would tip one way or another. Still, I imagined that perhaps in the same way that the leaf moves around our talking board, via a combination of our energy and "outside" energy from whatever entities are present at the time, that the table tipping concept might work in a similar manner.

My husband didn't want to try it, but I talked him into it. "It's total bullshit," he warned me. I took it with a grain of salt; what was going to happen anyway? If it doesn't work, then so what?

So we used a tiny, antique end table we have here at the house. We sat there with our hands on it with about the same level of casual expectation that we have when we use the board. And: nothing happened. I felt a few brief moments of maybe a pulling sensation, as if the table wanted to tip, but didn't have the momentum, and a bit of a vertiginous feeling myself, but yeah, nothing. Oh well.

I'll probably research this practice more seriously at some point, because I have seen other people do it and I would like to see it work in person, even if it's not a technique I'd be likely to use. Perhaps I was not approaching it correctly? I don't know.

So I searched for "table tipping how to" online. One of the first links I came to was from ehow.com. This ought to be rich, I thought, clicking the link.

The article "How to Talk to Spirits by Table Tipping" featured such gems as "Pick up a special table from an antique shop to give your table tipping a little historic feel," and "Take the table to someone else's home or to a more haunted location if you don't get a response." But none of them made my eyes roll back in my head so much as:

"Provide indirect lighting for effect. Have candles around the room or indirect lighting so that you have a spooky ambiance."

Yes, because when trying to talk to dead people, the most important thing is "spooky ambiance."

image credit: companionspirit.com

This is why we can't have nice things. I can recall a few times when I thought it might be nice to share our board with others who had never used one before, and being asked by one of the new participants, "Should we turn down the lights? Should we light candles?" Just so we're clear: spirits, the dead, whatever you would like to call them, don't give two shits about the lighting in the room, or any special "prayers of protection." Protection from what? People who want to help you?

Now, I agree that I am probably being harsh. If someone has never done anything like this before, how should they know what is important and what isn't? I guess I just get annoyed with the misconceptions that are out there about what talking to the Collective entails. It's not a spooky 80s horror movie. These people don't occupy the physical plane in the same way that we do; it's immaterial to them (literally) how bright it is in the room, what it smells like, what time of day it is, how loud you talk, or anything else like that.

You don't need to be in a "haunted location." The Collective is everywhere and yet not physically anywhere. You can talk to them from pretty much anywhere you'd like. The only preferences I have seen them even express so far is that there not be a whole lot of distractions, like the TV being on, or being with too large a group of people, but that seems to have more to do with the energy in the room than anything else.

Talking to dead people isn't spooky. It isn't mystical. It is as normal as talking to any other person, just these people don't have flesh to lug around. Now let's put on our grown-up pants and stop with the movie lighting effects and silly chanting, mmkay?