Hello everyone! Well it is Sunday morning, and I am lingering over a rare treat, COFFEE. :) I have been thinking recently about spirituality, and where I fit into the universe of spiritual callings. I have never thought about in as concrete a way before; I have always just internalized the awareness that I am a spiritual person. However, when you look at spirituality from a more academic lens, and realize that there are major labeled spiritual paths, it becomes an interesting interaction.
For our class, we are now reading about earth "religions", or worship of the earth. Such paths include "Gaia spirituality", and "Gaia Naturalism". However, similarly, there is also "Spiritual animism" and "natural animism". These are all basically slight variations on the same sentiment: that the earth is sacred and alive. (I never knew people could break it down into such sub-categories!) And I suppose, when talking across borders, these kinds of categorizations are at least helpful. And why not bring spirituality into the academic realm? It is true that until recently, it hasn't been considered appropriate to speak of personal spiritual experience in the world of academia. And yet, this is such an essential function of human life. It does feel a bit awkward trying to box my spiritual beliefs into such terminology, but it is a useful exercise. I am not actually aiming to define it, but it is helpful to exercise my brain in the pursuit of communicating my experiential wisdom in myriad settings.
So, I realized that I feel akin to this idea of Gaia spirituality, and so I bought the book The Secret Life of Plants. So far it is very interesting: plants and humans do communicate!
Other than that, I had a wonderful day on Friday. I helped in Anandi's kitchen all day to prepare for a big raw food buffet! We made raw soup, mashed cauliflower, salald, chocolate mousse, cheesecake, and a whole gala of other sorts for about 150 people. Then we went to serve it, and it was a flurry of marvelous activity! I can say that I was really in a kind of heaven- serving masses of yummy sacred raw food to so many people! And all my friends were there coming through the line. It was magnificent, and I snacked on raw chocolate mousse the entire time. (I could live on that stuff!) Somewhere in the process, though, I realized that for the first time really, I really received so much joy out of just giving my effort and time to help. There was no exchange of money in it for me; I just wanted to absorb myself into the act of giving my services. It was a really energetic experience! Especially since I have so much care for raw food, it was easy to give so much time and energy to just this simple task of giving.
It made me reflect on the value of volunteering though- to really put your agenda aside to give your time and energy to someone's cause is really rewarding for everyone involved. Good karma, as they would say here!
Here are a few pictures highlighting a couple of fun events in my life recently:
Volunteering is such a rewarding things for everyone!! Babe that picture of you with that pup is so adorable....bring it home sweetness!!
ReplyDeleteI've wondered too about the value of studying spirituality in an academic context; it's certainly valuable academically, but does it promote one's own spiritual evolution? Human attempts at categorizing what is really a super-human process can seem artificial and limiting, but giving a vocabulary to the process can serve to shine the light of consciousness to it, imbuing it with more awareness. You pegged it, I think, with "it is helpful to exercise my brain in the pursuit of communicating my experiential wisdom in myriad settings."
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful for you to experience the gift of giving to others. I need to learn that more myself. I love the cute little puppy pictures. Who's the tanned girl holding the little guy?! {^; "Doggie. Doggie."
Here's something that Albert Einstein said that you might resonate with, given your readings and discussions:
ReplyDelete"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe ... We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.
I appreciate the part where Einstein quotes, "living in an optical delusion of consciousness," my analogy; living in a bad hallucination, or psychotic state of being; disturbed sensory perception. Many of us are somnambulating (sleepwalking). We must 'wake up' and fully realize in order to self-actualize. Many choose to self-medicate rather than walk through the pain of our suffering, fearing that we won't come out on the other side.....
HIIIIIIII GUESS WHAT I GOT THE PICTURE AND ITS AWSOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IMMA HANG IT ABOVE MY BEAD!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteTHIS IS SOME HW I WRO DU U LIKKY???
Did you know that there are over seven hundred hieroglyphs but only twenty-three letters in the Egyptian alphabet? Hieroglyphs were very important because it allowed egyptologists to discover what Egypt was like. This topic interested me because it had a lot to learn about and because it unlocked so much about Egyptian history. There are multiple interesting things to learn about Egypt including How they made paper, what they used for pens and ink, and something else I haven’t figured out yet...Paper was important in Egypt because scribes needed a good
surface to write on and so that the writing would be preserved. To make paper, the Egyptians had a long process that took about three to four days to complete. They used papyrus, a common reed in Egypt, found growing by the Nile River. To make it, they would shave away the outside of the reed and cut the pith into long but thin rectangular pieces and soak the pieces in water for a few days. They would then take out the pieces and lay them vertically and horizontally on top of each other and put heavy weights on top to press it into one big sheet. Most young boys learning to be scribes couldn’t afford papyrus paper, so they had to practice on thin slates of rock, and they couldn't make their own paper because Egypt kept the process a secret. The word “paper” originally comes from the word “papyrus” which means “that which belongs to the house” (alias the bureaucracy of Egypt.) Also, the word “hieroglyph” means “holy writing.” “Hiero,” meaning holy and “glyph,” meaning writing. Pens and ink were obviously important because the Egyptians needed something to write with. Pens were made by cutting a reed (Juncus Maritimus) about ten inches long and sharpening one end to a slant. As for ink, the Egyptians mixed soot with gelatin, gum and bees wax. This made normal, black ink. To make red ink, another common color, they would do the same thing except replace the soot with ochre, naturally tinted clay.
im not finished yet but i think its COMING TOGETHER!!!! I EXITED HAVE FUN IN INDIA!!!