Description and interpretation of the empirical reality in the key of deep ecology and lay spirituality
The ability, or perhaps the limitation, of the intellect to describe reality, the perceptible one and that of thought, in a consequential and logical way, is a great advantage when you want to express a linear path. Its use, on the other hand, is of little use since we have to face a "holistic" discourse - such as that of deep ecology and lay spirituality.
Of course we can get closer, through a careful selection of "words and meanings", of concepts and images. This is why I find that the message of Chinese pictograms - ideograms is much closer to what is asked of the semantics of language. There is an attempt to transmit the "vision" also the image, in addition to the thought ....
Remaining to us ... if we analyze the details of the vital path we must necessarily divide them into segments and study them and describe them in their typical functioning, outside the general context, as understood in the specific way of the observer .... This is the dictate of the logic and this is the operating mode of our language, composed of sounds and speeches, which is the expression of logic. In fact, language is a useful mathematical gear, up to a certain point, to describe the procedures of both sensory perception and emotional "fantasy". But what is thus transmitted, unfortunately, lacks the freshness and immediacy of the experience, what you rightly define "presence". In fact, language draws only on memory, it cannot tell and convince the ineffable moment lived ... as a “presence”!
Fortunately for us, through the analogical capacity of our mind, we are also able to intuit and launch small signals inherent to the "spiritual" sensitivity that does not reside and cannot be described with the mechanisms of the dual mind.
The One escapes any description ... and if a description is attempted it is certainly partial and limited to the forms of language and thought.
To understand a fish you have to be a fish, to feel a tree you have to be a tree, etc. This is very true and is easily acceptable to the human mind as well. The fact that if you feel like a fish you are limited to the feeling of the fish, as well as if you feel a man you are limited to the feeling of man further demonstrates your affirmations on the impossibility of sharing the spiritual "concept" among living beings. of different species. And so far we agree ...
On the other hand, what is meant in secular spirituality? That by stripping oneself of the identifying covering in a particular "feeling", or obliterating one's egoic identity, which is nothing other than the crystallization of recognizing oneself in thoughts, desires, actions, carried out by the "object" that acts as an observer (the name specific form and the individual mind), immediately - free from identifying assumptions - we are able to fully share, feeling it as our own, the experience of the fish or the tree. That this ability is not only possible but even feasible is proven by the other states reached during deep meditation or by means of strong psychic manipulations (trance, swoon, drugs, etc.).
Obviously the sporadic and intermittent non-dual experience is only a "taste" of the natural condition in which man and every other being fully shares - and therefore manifests - the All, the ONE. The purpose of secular spirituality is to achieve - by means of a repeated and continuous attention to the perceiver, that state of unity that totally transcends the individual self and allows the proper and definitive spiritual experience of life in its entirety.
When, with empirical philosophical terms, the profound ecologists describe the unity of life, and the interconnectedness of every aspect, in every relation, they do nothing but evoke that state of consciousness, that intimate and profound Awareness, which distinguishes every psychic entity and every material element (in latent form). And which I like to call "spirit" (intelligence and conscience).
Spirituality is usually an attribution of a human character, since, as far as we know, only man is capable of experiencing self-awareness and discriminative and rational intelligence. We can also define this ability as "spirit" ...
At the same time, since there is no thing on this earth and in the universe that can be said to be separate - as the whole contributes to manifesting the qualities of the "whole" - and life itself is inseparable in its various manifestations, manifesting common roots in all its forms, of any kind and nature, we can guess that the characteristic of "consciousness-intelligence" is present in every living element, which demonstrates birth, growth and death, albeit in different gradients.
Let us take the example of man's growth in "intelligence and conscience". Starting from its formation as a union of sperm and egg, passing through its embryonic stage, to the complete formation of the organs, to the exit from the womb, to the beginning of its capacity for learning and discernment ... through various evolutionary moments that -pur apparently different in quality - still represent a growth of the same subject. If this happens in man, why not hypothesize that it can happen in any other vital form, albeit on a differentiated and limited scale? If we accept this premise as a presupposition of sharing the same quality of "consciousness and intelligence", suddenly we can recognize the "spiritual" quality in everything that is alive. But of course not in a religious sense ... that is an assumption that does not belong to us lay people and ecologists. No, we recognize "spirit" as the ability of life to express itself in subtle energy forms, and here we can stop.
Then, from a poetic and emotional point of view, why not describe the life of a tree as a spiritual expression of nature? What's wrong ... Undeniably the tree is alive and expresses itself through its biological functions and manifests desires and repulsions, like us humans, in different measures ...
Of course we can get closer, through a careful selection of "words and meanings", of concepts and images. This is why I find that the message of Chinese pictograms - ideograms is much closer to what is asked of the semantics of language. There is an attempt to transmit the "vision" also the image, in addition to the thought ....
Remaining to us ... if we analyze the details of the vital path we must necessarily divide them into segments and study them and describe them in their typical functioning, outside the general context, as understood in the specific way of the observer .... This is the dictate of the logic and this is the operating mode of our language, composed of sounds and speeches, which is the expression of logic. In fact, language is a useful mathematical gear, up to a certain point, to describe the procedures of both sensory perception and emotional "fantasy". But what is thus transmitted, unfortunately, lacks the freshness and immediacy of the experience, what you rightly define "presence". In fact, language draws only on memory, it cannot tell and convince the ineffable moment lived ... as a “presence”!
Fortunately for us, through the analogical capacity of our mind, we are also able to intuit and launch small signals inherent to the "spiritual" sensitivity that does not reside and cannot be described with the mechanisms of the dual mind.
The One escapes any description ... and if a description is attempted it is certainly partial and limited to the forms of language and thought.
To understand a fish you have to be a fish, to feel a tree you have to be a tree, etc. This is very true and is easily acceptable to the human mind as well. The fact that if you feel like a fish you are limited to the feeling of the fish, as well as if you feel a man you are limited to the feeling of man further demonstrates your affirmations on the impossibility of sharing the spiritual "concept" among living beings. of different species. And so far we agree ...
On the other hand, what is meant in secular spirituality? That by stripping oneself of the identifying covering in a particular "feeling", or obliterating one's egoic identity, which is nothing other than the crystallization of recognizing oneself in thoughts, desires, actions, carried out by the "object" that acts as an observer (the name specific form and the individual mind), immediately - free from identifying assumptions - we are able to fully share, feeling it as our own, the experience of the fish or the tree. That this ability is not only possible but even feasible is proven by the other states reached during deep meditation or by means of strong psychic manipulations (trance, swoon, drugs, etc.).
Obviously the sporadic and intermittent non-dual experience is only a "taste" of the natural condition in which man and every other being fully shares - and therefore manifests - the All, the ONE. The purpose of secular spirituality is to achieve - by means of a repeated and continuous attention to the perceiver, that state of unity that totally transcends the individual self and allows the proper and definitive spiritual experience of life in its entirety.
When, with empirical philosophical terms, the profound ecologists describe the unity of life, and the interconnectedness of every aspect, in every relation, they do nothing but evoke that state of consciousness, that intimate and profound Awareness, which distinguishes every psychic entity and every material element (in latent form). And which I like to call "spirit" (intelligence and conscience).
Spirituality is usually an attribution of a human character, since, as far as we know, only man is capable of experiencing self-awareness and discriminative and rational intelligence. We can also define this ability as "spirit" ...
At the same time, since there is no thing on this earth and in the universe that can be said to be separate - as the whole contributes to manifesting the qualities of the "whole" - and life itself is inseparable in its various manifestations, manifesting common roots in all its forms, of any kind and nature, we can guess that the characteristic of "consciousness-intelligence" is present in every living element, which demonstrates birth, growth and death, albeit in different gradients.
Let us take the example of man's growth in "intelligence and conscience". Starting from its formation as a union of sperm and egg, passing through its embryonic stage, to the complete formation of the organs, to the exit from the womb, to the beginning of its capacity for learning and discernment ... through various evolutionary moments that -pur apparently different in quality - still represent a growth of the same subject. If this happens in man, why not hypothesize that it can happen in any other vital form, albeit on a differentiated and limited scale? If we accept this premise as a presupposition of sharing the same quality of "consciousness and intelligence", suddenly we can recognize the "spiritual" quality in everything that is alive. But of course not in a religious sense ... that is an assumption that does not belong to us lay people and ecologists. No, we recognize "spirit" as the ability of life to express itself in subtle energy forms, and here we can stop.
Then, from a poetic and emotional point of view, why not describe the life of a tree as a spiritual expression of nature? What's wrong ... Undeniably the tree is alive and expresses itself through its biological functions and manifests desires and repulsions, like us humans, in different measures ...