Identifying spirituality as an aspect of everyday human experience-- just like physical, social and subjective experience-- is astoundingly simple. Once it is pointed out most people have little difficulty understanding it. It has to do with our awareness of what I, following Adrian van Kaam, call mystery. (We could also call it transcendent, or the parts of reality that are always beyond our perception or comprehension. It is simply the fact that reality is more than us.)
This awareness of mystery appears or is indicated through our everyday bio-psycho-social experiences. We can picture this using a Field Model.
For instance, you can be married for years, talking and sharing all the time, but you will never fully know the other person completely. You encounter or become aware of mystery by means of social experience. Likewise, you can spend years in self reflection, introspection, counseling and analysis. You will never find the "I." You encounter or become aware of the mystery of reality by means of subjective experience. We also come up against mystery when we seek to apply our powers of reason and understanding to the physical world such as during scientific research. Mystery is the primordial human experience and underlies all specific experiences.
Thus, some write that "Mystery is the best name for Reality. It indicates not an absence, but an overabundance."
We experience reality as a mystery (if we foster the awareness) because reality presents us with an over-abundance of information. The complexity of reality-- the reason we utilize a Field Model of the human-- goes beyond our abilities to comprehend. Thus, by "mystery" we are indicating not an absence, but an over-abundance. Reality is just too much!
We can now define spirit and spirituality:
The human spirit is that capacity to be aware of, and respond to reality-as-mystery.
Human spirituality is the practice of, and application of skills that increase awareness of reality-as-mystery, and improves response to that awareness such that positive consequences are observed physically, subjectively and socially.
Spirituality is distinct from psychology or sociology
The mystery in and of itself is not something that is known. That is, it is totally transcendent. As a physicist does not conceptualize atoms as little "things" or particles, so too when we discuss the mystery we are not talking about a "thing." Atoms are understood as mathematical probabilities. The mystery is understood as what "lies behind," or is implied by actual events: physical, social and subjective.
People always interpret the awareness of mystery-- try to say what it is. This is what gives rise to religious traditions.
There are but a few combinations of interpretations of what the mystery actually is. The mystery is interpreted as benevolent, hostile, or indifferent; personal or impersonal, in relation to human life and its quest for fulfillment. In general, regardless of what we say we believe, we tend to act out of a combination of these interpretations-- called a "hermeneutic of the mystery."
No matter how much we learn, how great our understanding, we are always and forever surrounded by mystery. When the scientist says something to the effect that for every new answer there are numerous new questions he is indicating the pervasiveness of the mystery. Exactly what constitutes a boundary or limit for our understanding may change and fluctuate. What is indicated by the presence of boundaries and limits in human experience--the mystery--does not. With our awareness focused on this aspect of human experience we are enabled to understand religious language.
Do you grasp the enormous consequences of this? That we never really know anything? That we only have our interpretations? That our basic, primal, foundational experience is of a bald, naked mystery? How do you justify everything you do, how you react to what others do and how you live your life? What real, true reasons can you really give? Think of "mystery". It is a not knowing. It can elicit a lot of anxiety, anticipation, suspense. You experience mystery when a loved one is late coming home. When you wait for that important decision that's in the mail. You feel it when they draw the daily number. What about the mystery of evil? Is it evil, or just how we interpret it?? This is our reality. How are you going to deal with it? How you deal with it is your religion.
Now, for real, can't you relate to everything up to this point? It really makes sense to me. I can see it in my own life as it is actually lived. Cause you see, this reality and how we deal with it is what spirituality is all about. Ready? Here goes.
1) We are dasein. We are the combination of real events in the world with their meaningful interpretation. This distinguishes us from the other animals.
2) We always interpret through the filter of a paradigm. Paradigms and interpretations change. We do not have knowledge of things, others or ourselves in the strict sense--only interpretations of how they appear to us.
3) Because we only have interpretations we are able to see that our essential experience of life and of reality is an experience of overwhelming mystery. "Mystery is the best name for reality."
4) Mystery is always something profoundly unknown. However, because we are dasein we must interpret. This means we can never experience mystery as mystery. We can only experience our interpretations of it. The mystery always represents something that is beyond me.
The human spirit is that ability to be aware of this mystery as something always beyond me, recognizing it as Reality, and responding to it. Our reality is not just the natural search for food and shelter. It is not just the subjective search for fulfillment. It is not just our social search for community. It is also the search to not have life be a mystery. It is the spiritual search to go beyond the insecurity of interpretations into knowing. It is our spirit that wants to eat from the tree of knowledge--to know good and evil. The human spirit is that part of ourselves that primarily deals with this mystery that is reality. How well or how poorly we deal with it is the function of spirituality. Spirituality is the degree of ease with which I reinterpret events such that I become increasingly healthy and able in all four areas of life.
We can observe the functioning of the human spirit in a disciplined way. Spirituality is a skill and an art that can be developed. Just like we all have and use muscles, but some of us go to the gym to pump them up. So, too, we all have and use our spirituality, but we can strengthen it.
Why bother you say? Hey! Don't you say people should "deal with reality"? How about those who choose to "escape" from reality? If you aren't in touch with reality isn't that saying you are crazy? Get real! Spirituality is important!