The "Big Bigness" gets at the importance of searching for something more than the best of human wisdom. What strikes me about your post is the longing for spirituality to be grounded in something more than the "true self." As beautiful and healing the search for the self can be, I believe we find what we long for when we encounter a presence larger than ourselves. Too often in my own Christian tradition, we have turned the word God into just another idea, a set of rules, or an ideology to follow. If you accept the ideas you are "in," or "saved," if you don't believe them you are "out." Beyond the ideas is an encounter with the Big Bigness. Paul Tillich called it the Ground of Being. And just to throw in a little twist, could that encounter also be the Small, Smallness? We find that we are deeply connected the Ground of Being seeing the beauty of ice crystals on our window, or the first little green shoot of Spring. Beyond the small beauty we encounter a presence, and we are not alone but deeply connected.
Hello Kate! You’re right that the word spirituality is understood very differently by different people. But that’s okay. So is the word love. Or “God.” Or lots of big concepts that have many years of humanity feeding them. There’s some built in understanding that these words are understood differently--so that gives each person some room to use the words how they want. My vocabulary would be much poorer if I refused to use words like “liberty” and “freedom” because I know many people where I live (USA) mean them differently than I do. But to each their own. No need to use spirituality if you don’t want to--it has all the problems you’ve identified, and more. As for something “beyond myself”--I used to use this definition. Then I recognized I didn’t know what I meant by “myself.” Which messed up my sense of the meaning of “beyond myself.” I thought “myself” was clear and didn’t require any further inquiry. I was wrong. Now “beyond myself” doesn’t work for me. This has been part of my journey. Yours may be completely different. Who knows? Thanks for sharing this part of your journey.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here, Kate. I feel a little silly answering what the Bigness means to me because I think we both know that it’s God. The rigour is a lot some days. And when I was younger, I certainly didn’t always appreciate it. But it’s been so instrumental in my sanity and mental health as I’ve grown up - on top of feeling that it is my duty and my responsibility to give God his due as a being he created, I also just get a lot of benefit out of it on a personal level.
Hi Kate, I loved this piece and have struggled with that term myself, even though I am decidedly an unserious kind of person. Like the word "creativity," there's a marketing side to "spirituality" which makes me a little nervous. And I think spirituality implies a lack of groundedness or perhaps a kind of otherworldly interest, when really I find the Big Bigness in the sensory, physical world.
My favorite alternative word for spirituality is "the numinous." It seems to be a word than even my most vocally atheist friends support, and in some ways, I'm more interested in finding common ground with them than other spiritual people.
Thanks for sharing this piece and airing out this (probably?) very common trepidation!
Great post Kate. I love the big questions you’re asking of the bigness!
For me, my spiritual life is a search for meaning, connectedness, my place within the bigness. I seek a sense of orientation, a feeling of belonging, of being at home in myself and in the world.
My spiritual practices are many: meditation, dance, writing, reading, walking, being in nature, being in the sea, how I pay attention to the world around me.
In the comments, Eliza named it “the ping”. I love that. For me, my “ping” is a momentary feeling of alignment between little me and the big bigness, like I’ve slotted into my place in the big jigsaw and then the table gets knocked and the pieces fly everywhere and I’m a scattered jigsaw piece again, seeking my place in the big picture.
Bravo Kate. Just be open - let go and let God. As far as religion goes I feel the secular modern world threw out the baby with the bath water. Frank McCourt - Irish immigrant to USA and NYC public School teacher for 40 years, whose autobiographical book about growing up poor in Ireland - Angela's Ashes, which won the Pulitzer and was made into a popular film - said something funny yet pithy statement about religion at a New England college commencement ceremony many moons ago - Religion is like a buffet, I take what I like and leave the rest. As far as writers who channel God - I love Emily Dickinson the greatest poet of all time and Rumi the great Poet and teacher from the 13th century who help create Sufism branch of Muslim faith. And if you are more into 19th century European man-splaining - Kierkegaard - one of the first out of closet atheists philosophers - only to find his way back to God again as in taking the leap of faith - is great reading on why he did so.
It’s a tricky word for me too. Being raised in a high demand, religion that I eventually woke up and escaped from has left the terms, God and spirituality and faith, and certainly religion almost unusable for me. At the same time while being grounded in science and rationality, I also acknowledge that there are vast mysteries to the universe, and while I have no inclination to call this God or anything like it, what it might be could be fantastical beyond my imagination. So whatever that means, spirituality to me, means finding equanimity with myself, and the universe, which are one in some incredible way.
Love it, Kate. Thanks for pointing me here, Don. I sympathize with a lot of this, as someone who was raised atheist, and raised to have a knee-jerk reaction against anything remotely resembling "woo." But in the past many years, through parenting, meditation, poetry, gardening, simple aging, and yes, an interest in what psychedelics can teach us, I have a different viewpoint about it all. The fact that we don't even have a potential idea for how to map biochemistry to consciousness, let alone an actual candidate theory, speaks volumes. Whatever we are, we really don't seem to be the accidental jittering of billiard balls that a very stiff interpretation of the Big Bang would perhaps lead you to believe. Or we are exactly that...so much of it is just up to semantics, and whether you want to CHOOSE to see the universe as a place of beauty or a place of random chaos. Anyway, I applaud your courage for speaking out in this way.
What I like about that idea of the Big Bigness is that it's both within and without--it's that ping! I get when the borders between people or plants or animals or any conventionally understood separate form become permeable and I can feel a sort of electric pulse that wends through us and combines us somehow. It's a marvelous fleeting phenomenon that leaves me with the sense that I belong here and that everything is going to be all right--not necessarily all right from point of view of the particular form I inhabit, but seeing as if that form is somewhat illusory and connected to everything else, that's OK. These moments don't usually come when I want them to, but they often come when I need them too. They have come through the office of pine trees, the feeling of the sun on my skin, music, art. reading, writing, and my son, Felix, who was born 20 years ago and doesn't communicate through words or signs, but whose voice is very powerful. Its modulations, unhampered by words, go straight to the heart.
Hi Kate, for me the “big bigness” started out as a very known God supported by a particular scaffolding. Looking back, I realize that the scaffolding never really worked for me. I tried to make it work, but I banged around inside of it a lot. Eventually, the scaffolding began to come apart. I disassembled some of it. Some of it just broke, but one way or the other, it disappeared. Now I’m left in what I call the space of unknowing. I am constantly reminded of what I don’t know and what I won’t know. Filling the space (is it the space?) is something that’s runs through everything, connecting, creating, dissolving. I call it the “that” but there are really no words to describe it. It’s beyond, and also through and in words. That’s my answer to what I feel like is a very important and basically unanswerable but vital question. Thanks for asking it!
Loved this post, and it resonates so much to my own relationship with spirituality. For a long time, I refused to want/admit I had any sort of spirituality in me. Or that I needed it. Growing up catholic and had been forced into taking part of rituals that never made sense to *me*, I found myself associating anything spiritual to religion, only. And then, now, as an adult, I began to feel some sort of gap/emptiness/lacking of something in my life that is a Big Bignnes. I am yet to find what that is, but I no longer deny the need/wanting of spirituality. Despite still being unsure, I've been leaning towards being more connected with this thing we call nature, that includes (some) people - as in, those who I feel add something of Big Bigness to my life. And this is all part of an exploration, as you know, that also comes from experiencing psychedelics [i.e., slightly higher doses of mushroooms]. x
I either win the prize for discovering the hidden dimension of 'Not Exactly' or it is 'Kate! Look! A hidden dimension..!
Page Eighteen...
"But then Alfie put down EXPECTING,...." on the Scrabble board.
...'A hundred and thirty-seven!' he crowed. (Scrabble score).
"Of all the words! Obviously she didn't believe in signs from the universe, but say such things existed."
P.18 - 19 'Not Exactly What I had In Mind'
So...
Deep breath!
Richard Feynman ( famous US Physicist suggested that all scientists put the number '137' on their office doors to remind them how little they and we we know about the universe.
The "Big Bigness" gets at the importance of searching for something more than the best of human wisdom. What strikes me about your post is the longing for spirituality to be grounded in something more than the "true self." As beautiful and healing the search for the self can be, I believe we find what we long for when we encounter a presence larger than ourselves. Too often in my own Christian tradition, we have turned the word God into just another idea, a set of rules, or an ideology to follow. If you accept the ideas you are "in," or "saved," if you don't believe them you are "out." Beyond the ideas is an encounter with the Big Bigness. Paul Tillich called it the Ground of Being. And just to throw in a little twist, could that encounter also be the Small, Smallness? We find that we are deeply connected the Ground of Being seeing the beauty of ice crystals on our window, or the first little green shoot of Spring. Beyond the small beauty we encounter a presence, and we are not alone but deeply connected.
Hello Kate! You’re right that the word spirituality is understood very differently by different people. But that’s okay. So is the word love. Or “God.” Or lots of big concepts that have many years of humanity feeding them. There’s some built in understanding that these words are understood differently--so that gives each person some room to use the words how they want. My vocabulary would be much poorer if I refused to use words like “liberty” and “freedom” because I know many people where I live (USA) mean them differently than I do. But to each their own. No need to use spirituality if you don’t want to--it has all the problems you’ve identified, and more. As for something “beyond myself”--I used to use this definition. Then I recognized I didn’t know what I meant by “myself.” Which messed up my sense of the meaning of “beyond myself.” I thought “myself” was clear and didn’t require any further inquiry. I was wrong. Now “beyond myself” doesn’t work for me. This has been part of my journey. Yours may be completely different. Who knows? Thanks for sharing this part of your journey.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here, Kate. I feel a little silly answering what the Bigness means to me because I think we both know that it’s God. The rigour is a lot some days. And when I was younger, I certainly didn’t always appreciate it. But it’s been so instrumental in my sanity and mental health as I’ve grown up - on top of feeling that it is my duty and my responsibility to give God his due as a being he created, I also just get a lot of benefit out of it on a personal level.
Hi Kate, I loved this piece and have struggled with that term myself, even though I am decidedly an unserious kind of person. Like the word "creativity," there's a marketing side to "spirituality" which makes me a little nervous. And I think spirituality implies a lack of groundedness or perhaps a kind of otherworldly interest, when really I find the Big Bigness in the sensory, physical world.
My favorite alternative word for spirituality is "the numinous." It seems to be a word than even my most vocally atheist friends support, and in some ways, I'm more interested in finding common ground with them than other spiritual people.
Thanks for sharing this piece and airing out this (probably?) very common trepidation!
Great post Kate. I love the big questions you’re asking of the bigness!
For me, my spiritual life is a search for meaning, connectedness, my place within the bigness. I seek a sense of orientation, a feeling of belonging, of being at home in myself and in the world.
My spiritual practices are many: meditation, dance, writing, reading, walking, being in nature, being in the sea, how I pay attention to the world around me.
In the comments, Eliza named it “the ping”. I love that. For me, my “ping” is a momentary feeling of alignment between little me and the big bigness, like I’ve slotted into my place in the big jigsaw and then the table gets knocked and the pieces fly everywhere and I’m a scattered jigsaw piece again, seeking my place in the big picture.
Bravo Kate. Just be open - let go and let God. As far as religion goes I feel the secular modern world threw out the baby with the bath water. Frank McCourt - Irish immigrant to USA and NYC public School teacher for 40 years, whose autobiographical book about growing up poor in Ireland - Angela's Ashes, which won the Pulitzer and was made into a popular film - said something funny yet pithy statement about religion at a New England college commencement ceremony many moons ago - Religion is like a buffet, I take what I like and leave the rest. As far as writers who channel God - I love Emily Dickinson the greatest poet of all time and Rumi the great Poet and teacher from the 13th century who help create Sufism branch of Muslim faith. And if you are more into 19th century European man-splaining - Kierkegaard - one of the first out of closet atheists philosophers - only to find his way back to God again as in taking the leap of faith - is great reading on why he did so.
It’s a tricky word for me too. Being raised in a high demand, religion that I eventually woke up and escaped from has left the terms, God and spirituality and faith, and certainly religion almost unusable for me. At the same time while being grounded in science and rationality, I also acknowledge that there are vast mysteries to the universe, and while I have no inclination to call this God or anything like it, what it might be could be fantastical beyond my imagination. So whatever that means, spirituality to me, means finding equanimity with myself, and the universe, which are one in some incredible way.
Love it, Kate. Thanks for pointing me here, Don. I sympathize with a lot of this, as someone who was raised atheist, and raised to have a knee-jerk reaction against anything remotely resembling "woo." But in the past many years, through parenting, meditation, poetry, gardening, simple aging, and yes, an interest in what psychedelics can teach us, I have a different viewpoint about it all. The fact that we don't even have a potential idea for how to map biochemistry to consciousness, let alone an actual candidate theory, speaks volumes. Whatever we are, we really don't seem to be the accidental jittering of billiard balls that a very stiff interpretation of the Big Bang would perhaps lead you to believe. Or we are exactly that...so much of it is just up to semantics, and whether you want to CHOOSE to see the universe as a place of beauty or a place of random chaos. Anyway, I applaud your courage for speaking out in this way.
What I like about that idea of the Big Bigness is that it's both within and without--it's that ping! I get when the borders between people or plants or animals or any conventionally understood separate form become permeable and I can feel a sort of electric pulse that wends through us and combines us somehow. It's a marvelous fleeting phenomenon that leaves me with the sense that I belong here and that everything is going to be all right--not necessarily all right from point of view of the particular form I inhabit, but seeing as if that form is somewhat illusory and connected to everything else, that's OK. These moments don't usually come when I want them to, but they often come when I need them too. They have come through the office of pine trees, the feeling of the sun on my skin, music, art. reading, writing, and my son, Felix, who was born 20 years ago and doesn't communicate through words or signs, but whose voice is very powerful. Its modulations, unhampered by words, go straight to the heart.
Hi Kate, for me the “big bigness” started out as a very known God supported by a particular scaffolding. Looking back, I realize that the scaffolding never really worked for me. I tried to make it work, but I banged around inside of it a lot. Eventually, the scaffolding began to come apart. I disassembled some of it. Some of it just broke, but one way or the other, it disappeared. Now I’m left in what I call the space of unknowing. I am constantly reminded of what I don’t know and what I won’t know. Filling the space (is it the space?) is something that’s runs through everything, connecting, creating, dissolving. I call it the “that” but there are really no words to describe it. It’s beyond, and also through and in words. That’s my answer to what I feel like is a very important and basically unanswerable but vital question. Thanks for asking it!
Loved this post, and it resonates so much to my own relationship with spirituality. For a long time, I refused to want/admit I had any sort of spirituality in me. Or that I needed it. Growing up catholic and had been forced into taking part of rituals that never made sense to *me*, I found myself associating anything spiritual to religion, only. And then, now, as an adult, I began to feel some sort of gap/emptiness/lacking of something in my life that is a Big Bignnes. I am yet to find what that is, but I no longer deny the need/wanting of spirituality. Despite still being unsure, I've been leaning towards being more connected with this thing we call nature, that includes (some) people - as in, those who I feel add something of Big Bigness to my life. And this is all part of an exploration, as you know, that also comes from experiencing psychedelics [i.e., slightly higher doses of mushroooms]. x
Perhaps this?
https://stevenberger.substack.com/p/the-nature-of-reality
enjoyed this
https://quantumgravityresearch.org/portfolio/what-is-reality/
Hi
I either win the prize for discovering the hidden dimension of 'Not Exactly' or it is 'Kate! Look! A hidden dimension..!
Page Eighteen...
"But then Alfie put down EXPECTING,...." on the Scrabble board.
...'A hundred and thirty-seven!' he crowed. (Scrabble score).
"Of all the words! Obviously she didn't believe in signs from the universe, but say such things existed."
P.18 - 19 'Not Exactly What I had In Mind'
So...
Deep breath!
Richard Feynman ( famous US Physicist suggested that all scientists put the number '137' on their office doors to remind them how little they and we we know about the universe.
https://www.iflscience.com/the-most-important-number-its-137-this-is-why-64100
https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/physics-terms/why-is-137-most-magical-number.htm
I need to tell you that I had looked this up about three hours before reading it in NEWIHIM.
Deliberate number or not, Kate?
and if not...what is the universe trying to tell us.
xD