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Nobody's Perfect - Start Anyway!

Who doesn't have, or want, some kind of spiritual foundation? It seems completely human. Even the atheists among us have come to some kind of jumping off point. If they are sure there is no God, then they at least have the space to look for connections in nature, the universe, and other people.

Much has been, and is being said, about religion and its role in global conflicts throughout history. But this has nothing to do with spirituality. In fact, maybe it is the presence of religion combined with the absence of spirituality that is at the heart of the trouble. Systems of truth in the field of morals, ethics, and religious belief are not absolute - they vary by culture, and over time. We believe that all spirituality is "good". All attempts at spirituality are "on the right track." True spirituality supports the inherent worth of every person. People are worthy of respect, support, and caring simply because they are human.

Spirituality concerns itself with humankind's ultimate nature, often contrasting the temporal, with the material, or worldly. A sense of connection is usually the central, defining characteristic. It may be a connection to something greater than ourselves, or it may simply be a connection to nature, or each other. Most spiritual traditions share a common theme - finding the path to our true nature, and our relationship to the rest of existence.

Plato's allegory of the cave in Book VII of The Republic gives one of the best-known descriptions of the spiritual development process. In the allegory, prisoners are chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects. They see and hear only shadows and echoes. The prisoners mistake appearance for reality. They think the things they see on the wall are real - they know nothing of the real sources of the shadows. So when the prisoners talk, what are they talking about? If an object, for instance a tree casts a shadow on the wall, and a prisoner says, "I see a tree," what is he talking about?
He thinks he is talking about a tree, but he is really talking about a shadow. Plato’s point is that the prisoners can't see the truth. To see it, they would have to turn their heads around. Likewise, the "truths" that we "know" about our world and our existence are based on limited, possibly distorted, information. In order to really see the truth, we would have to turn our heads - thus, the beginning of the spiritual journey.

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