Essays
 

Why Do We Need Spirituality? Or Why Spirituality and Globalization are the chocolate and peanut butter of the New Millennium?
An Essay by Geoffrey L. Breedon

For the last year and a half I have been writing a book about spirituality and globalization. I have noticed over the course of the research, writing, and revisions, that there are usually three typical responses when people ask me about my project. The first response is a blank faced, glassy-eyed stared that immediately signals to me that I should change the subject as soon as possible if I want to retain any hope of continuing the conversation. The second response is to begin grilling me about my opinions on the hot button topic of globalization. The general purpose of this questioning is to try and determine if my attitudes fall into either pro-globalization or anti-globalization camp. These conversations can become quite interesting because while I am in support of globalization as an ideal, I am fervently against the current globalization paradigm, which means I tend to agree with many of the critiques of the anti-globalization movement while disagreeing with many of their solutions. However, the most interesting conversations have come with people who follow the third response and ask me what I mean by spirituality, as this usually evolves into a conversation about their personal spiritual experience and practice.

Oddly, few people have ever quizzed me about the connection between spirituality and globalization. Most folks seem to be largely interested in one or the other. People interested in globalization don't generally seem concerned in spirituality, and those fascinated with spirituality don't usually know too much about globalization. This is reflected in the dearth of books devoted to both subjects. Michael Lerner's Spirit Matters, Peter Russell's Waking Up in Time, and Duane Elgin's The Promise Ahead are some of the few exceptions. It would appear that not many people have realized that these two great tastes taste great together.

On the rare occasions when someone does ask me how spirituality relates to globalization, they tend to begin where those folks interested only in spirituality do. They start by asking me to define what I mean by spirituality and why it's important. In essence they are asking: who needs spirituality? My answer is always the same: Everybody. Of course, explaining this, takes a little longer.

Globalization and spirituality both deal with transformation, and this is the key to how they are related. Globalization is a single word that describes the world we are creating; a world of accelerating technology, freely flowing capital, reduced trade barriers, and shifting global power. It is a word implying transformation of our physical, social, and cultural spheres. Spirituality is also about transformation, but of the individual. Specifically it is about transforming the way we perceive the world, shifting our view from one based solely on the self, and our sense of separation, to one that sees the inherent unity of all things. I'm not talking about a New Age spirituality of self-help and ego massage. While a healthy ego-self is important to mature transcendence, true spirituality is about a direct realization of the Divine, not an amplification of our natural tendency toward self-cherishing. True spirituality is a personal realization in that we experience it individually, but it transcends the individual person by opening us up to the beauty, wonder, and importance of all persons and of the whole of the universe. It is a spirituality based not in a craving to escape the world, but in a desire to see and be in the world more fully. It is not based in some new fad or fashion but in the paths and practices that inform and support all of the world's wisdom traditions. The heritage of a real spirituality does not emerge out of the psychedelic experimentation of the 1960s, but stretches back more than 2,500 years. At its core is a sacred experience that finds its expression in the mystic writings and realizations of all the world's religious traditions. Moreover, it is a spirituality that is available to all of us regardless of social or cultural background. This transformative way of perceiving the world is what we desperately need to counter the narcissistic, close-minded, and materialistic worldviews that dominate the sphere of human affairs today. It is this vision, this deeper way of perceiving reality, which will help us guide the global transformations that we are engaged in. Just as globalization transforms the physical structures of the world, real spirituality transforms the deeper structures of the self.

At this point in the conversation I am greeted by either a warm smile of mutual knowing, or a quizzical glare that makes it clear I am being uncomfortably vague. This is where the conversation, by necessity, takes a more personal turn, as I attempt to explain in my own words what spirituality means to me.

When I was a young boy, growing up in rural Michigan, it was my responsibility to take the dogs out for their nightly walk. More often than not the dogs would run off down the dirt road we lived on in search of some faint olfactory treasure that I had no hope of sensing. The road went on for a mile or more of wooded darkness, our house being the last small signpost of civilization. I would run through the pitch black night hoping not to trip and fall, knowing that the dogs could hear me as well as they could see me, though I could gain no apprehension of them until stumbling upon them in a rush. Finally bending their desires to my will, we'd walk back toward the house. As we walked I would stare up through the branches of the trees at the glowing mass of stars that blanket the country night, the silent children of creation; sparkling miniature suns, swimming in ebony.

An avid fan of science fiction and Carl Sagan's Cosmos, I knew that there were "billions and billions" of stars and even as many galaxies filling an unimaginably unfillable universe. I knew that I could not fathom the expansiveness and depth of the cosmos, but walking beneath the mantle of distant suns, the dogs licking my hands, I would stare up into the face of infinity and try nonetheless. A feeling would wash over me, slight, and nearly imperceptible. A feeling I did not label at the time, but that I later came to think of as spiritual. It was not a profound mystic experience of union with the universe, simply a deep sense of connection with everything. A feeling that, while I was an infinitesimally small part of the cosmos, I was an important part, because I was aware that I was part of it. By the time I reached the front steps, the notion had faded, but the sense of it continued to cling to me.

Nearly everyone has had an experience they would describe as spiritual, like those I encountered walking the dogs on star-filled nights. Like most people, for many years, I thought of myself as spiritual without ever really knowing what I meant by the word. It was only when I began reading the sacred texts of the world's wisdom traditions and the writings of modern transpersonal psychologists that I began to have an inkling of what I meant by spirituality. And this inkling only grew into an understanding when I began a regular practice of meditation. And so, today I have a simple definition of what I mean when I use the word spiritual. To me, the word spiritual implies a direct realization of the numinous or the Divine, the apprehension on some level of Spirit as the Ground of All Being. It denotes a shift of our normal way of "seeing" the world and a transcendence of our separate sense of ego-self for a wider grasp of reality. It is an experience, on one level or another, of the Divine, or Spirit, as an inseparable wholeness, manifesting as the entire cosmos, moment by moment, in a timeless now. Not surprisingly, it is an explicitly mystic worldview. As theologian Paul Tillich pointed out in The Courage to Be, mysticism "plunges directly into the ground of being and meaning, and leaves the concrete, the world of finite values and meanings, behind." It does not forget this concrete world, but transcends it. In its highest form, is an experience of the nondual awareness of the singularity of the universe found most clearly in the superlative paths of the Advaita Vedanta and Buddhist experience of Emptiness.

By consequence, I define spirituality as a path or practice that leads to a spiritual awareness, such as those mystic paths that are the revelatory core of all the major religions. Psychologist Roger Walsh explains in Essential Spirituality, "The ultimate aim of spiritual practices is awakening; that is, to know our true Self and our relationship to the sacred. However, spiritual practices also offer numerous other gifts along the way….Gradually, the heart begins to open, fear and anger melt, greed and jealousy dwindle, happiness and joy grow, love flowers, peace replaces agitation, concern for others blossoms, wisdom matures, and both psychological and physical health improve." Similarly, Michael Lerner writes in his book Spirit Matters, "Spirit or God or Highest Reality is the phenomenon that allows us to transcend the human tendency to act out on others the pain that has been acted upon us and thus to break the 'repetition compulsion.' To speak of that capacity to transcend and break the repetition compulsion and become embodiments of generosity and love and goodness is to talk about Spirit. Our meaning in life comes from being embodiments of that Spirit, elements of the transcendent consciousness of the universe as it moves to actualize goodness and beauty."

These brief definitions of Spirit and spirituality are by no means exhaustive, and for absolute clarity I am not claiming a spiritual superiority of any kind. I am just a regular guy who is willing to acknowledge that there are worldviews wider and deeper than his own. But, as my interlocutors are usually quick to reiterate at this juncture; why do we need these deeper ways of seeing the world? Why do we need spirituality? My answer is simple; because the transformation of the self and the world are inseparable activities.

When we transform ourselves we inevitably transform the world we live in. Likewise, when we transform the world, whether socially, culturally, economically, technologically, or environmentally, these changes naturally affect the individual. The feedback loop between social transformation, or globalization, and personal transformation, or spirituality, is powerful, but rarely recognized in mainstream circles where the emphasis falls almost entirely upon globalization and spirituality is mentioned only in passing if ever. To understand this it will help to have a clearer definition of globalization.

Globalization is a catchall word describing the transformative effects of various aspects of the world becoming more interconnected. It is often used to refer to the way liquidity of capital and the erasure of trade barriers has changed the nature of the world economy. It also refers to how these economic changes are driven by advances in technologies such as computers, the Internet, biotechnology, and manufacturing. It can be used to describe the cultural effects of worldwide mass media dominated by a handful of corporations, or used in talking about the shifts and adjustments in governments and social structures caused by changes in the world economy and technology. "Accordingly," as David Held and Anthony McGrew write in The Global Transformations Reader, "globalization can be thought of as; a process (or set of processes -- which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions-assessed in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity and impact-generating transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction, and the exercises of power." Popular journalist Thomas Freidman describes it more simply in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree when he writes that globalization is "… the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before-in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is enabling the world to reach into individuals, corporations, and nation-states farther, faster, cheaper than ever before." Although there are a large number of individual aspects to globalization, it implies a singularity of connection. We are living in Marshall McLuhan's Global Village, and like any village, we are getting to know each other better, while at the same time we are affecting each other's lives more deeply.

Because of this, the time when we could hope to understand the world simply by watching the evening news is long, long past, if it ever existed. What has really changed about the world is not so much that we can't understand it with minimal effort, because we never could, but that now a minimal understanding of the world is actively dangerous. If we do not understand the economics of globalization, how can we hope to have a say in its implementation? If we do not understand the social, cultural, and political causes of terrorism, how can we hope to defend ourselves from it? If we don't understand the science behind genetic engineering, how can we hope to understand the ethical considerations of cloning or stem cell research? If there was ever a time when we could blindly lead our lives oblivious to the world at large and simply hope that everything would work out for the best, it is long gone. This is all the more apparent in the wake of the hideous terrorist attacks of September 11th and the subsequent events that have followed, from a war in Afghanistan to a figurative War on Terrorism hastily copied after the framework of the Cold War and the Drug War. If we are to have any hope of a future that provides a safe and sustainable world for our great grandchildren, then we must actively engage the world we live in now.

Most importantly, we cannot engage in either social or personal transformation separately, we must pursue them hand in hand. Spirituality alone might be able to create a better world by slowly transforming each human to create a more divine civilization, but such a path is likely to take millennia. Likewise, the transformation of the world, socially, culturally, environmentally, and otherwise, by the forces of globalization, will never create a more just world, much less one that reflects the divinity of the universe, without the direction of a worldview that is intimately acquainted with that divinity. Globalization is in desperate need of guidance and spirituality is the single most powerful tool for shaping that transformation. Guided by spirituality, globalization can benefit all of humanity, allowing everyone to share in the bounty of the Earth. Left to the management of the modern perspective, globalization will continue on its present course, despoiling the environment and creating a world of haves and have-nots, granting nearly unlimited power though new technologies to the former, and relegating the later to the slums and shanty towns that have become the calling card of the development paradigm around the world.

At this stage in attempting to describe the purpose of my book I have either bored the listener into submission, offended their sense of the role of metaphysics in world affairs, or I have found someone interested in learning more about how to transform themselves and the world simultaneously. As this essay is little more than a one way conversation, I hope the reader has found himself or herself firmly in the latter camp, or at least curious enough to begin their own investigation into the relationship between spirituality and globalization. They are the Reese's Pieces for the new millennium: Two great tastes that taste great together.

Portions of this essay have been adapted from the book The Chrysalis Age: A Handbook for Spiritual and Global Transformation in the New Millennium