Reflection on "Spiritual Grounding"

1. Are you religious or spiritual? Why?

I am not religious because I no longer identify with any religious group nor do I engage in religious activities as an expression of faith – only as a matter of personal education and social function or obligation. I am a humanist. If the following threads of consciousness qualify me as “spiritual”, then I can say I have a sense of spirituality: (a) Awareness of an existential connection to the universe at large and the interconnectedness of the animate and the inanimate in this world; (b) Possession of core values that encapsulate my notion of secular morality; (c) Appreciation of the psycho-social functions of the diverse communities of faith in the world today; and (d) Daily striving to make each day worthwhile by improving myself, helping a fellow human being’s burden to become lighter, and thus hopefully making the little corner where I am better.

2. As an educator and teacher does it matter if you are spiritual or not? Religious or

not? Why?

It matters for me as an educator and teacher to be spiritual (as I understand the concept to mean) because my sense of spirituality guides or even determines the direction of my career goals, educational philosophy, work ethic, and interpersonal relations. In this context, being religious for me is not essential to being an educator or teacher.

3. Considering your age, how far have you been spiritually grounded in your life’s

journey? What values resonate with these? Cite examples.

After leaving Fundamentalist Christianity to which I belonged for the first 30 years of my life, I can say that I have become more spiritually grounded now as a Freethinker who strives to daily live out self-reflexivity, gratitude, compassion, and fruitfulness. This does not mean being amiable all the time, for there are types of people I choose to avoid, ignore or even detest; nor does it mean having a positive in outlook all the time, for some real-life situations demand skepticism and criticism or drastic action. Nevertheless, self-reflexivity allows me to continually question my assumptions and be open to appreciating the good even in matters like religion although I consider myself free from it; a sense of gratitude enables me to see how fortunate I am about the fact that I ever existed at all and experience life in all its beauty and ugliness. This naturally leads to compassion, which involves doing whatever good I can to another human being, knowing that the opportunity to show kindness to someone may present itself only once. And so being fruitful is what I aim for – providing for my family, being a father and friend to my children, pursuing higher education, fulfilling my obligations at work, contributing to the betterment of my community (e.g., language documentation), or doing such other things that will enable me to leave something for others to fondly remember me by.

4. What factor/s distract you from being intimate with God?

How do you cope with these?

I don’t really know how to adequately respond to these questions because honestly, if by “God” is meant the Supreme Being as conceptualized by organized religion, then I cannot say I am seeking to be intimate with this god; I am simply trying to live life to the fullest in hopes of ultimately adding more meaning to this place of existence even in the least way possible. As an Indigenous person, I find the concept of Kavunyan as understood by my ancestors as more believable, albeit not as an entity I could call a “personal god”, if there is such a thing. I thus don’t cope with such an imagined or imaginary struggle; I simply aim to make my life count.

One of the subjects I was required to take in the last term of my coursework in my ongoing PhD in English Language and Literature study was on "Augustinian Spirituality" in which we were tasked to go over some of St. Augustine's writings and to write a short reflection on "Spiritual Grounding" in response to four interrelated  questions.

It is oftentimes difficult to discuss spirituality because it is either ill-defined, given some nebulous meanings, or subject to varying -- if not conflicting -- interpretations.  Some equate it with religiosity, while others differentiate the meanings of these two terms; some attach it to a concept of a deity or supreme being, while others simply anchor it on the "mysteriousness" of the universe; some associate with transcendence, while others pin it on immanence or both.

It is thus important that we first qualify what the word means before claiming that we are or are not spiritual.

In my case, I offered some responses that explore what spirituality may entail.