Nth Century Spirituality

There's been a small debate going on over at Julian's  Zaadz  blog on "new age-ism" - typified in Julian's thinking by The Secret and What the !@#$%^ Do We Know, appropriate (critically reasoned, "21st Century") spirituality, intentionality, and general fuzzy-thought misconceptions of creating a beautiful life/world by thinking good. Julian is arguing earnestly for a serious approach to things, and for pursuing intellectual development as a key aspect of the spiritual path.

In his brief post under the Vblog, Julian lists 5 points taken from The Secret he thinks exemplify unfocussed ideas about the creativity of the mind. The last two relate to war protesters feeding the war and how both the wealthy experience the effects of "the law of mind-action" in what manifests in their respective realities, the implication being that the rich know the "secret" of this law and so benefit thereby. This, of course, totally ignores the consideration that being able to create a wonderful dreamlife rarely corresponds with true happiness, which is the absence of so-called negative emotions, the ability to avoid that stickiness of egoic reaction and thinking.

In one of his comments, Julian asks:

"i leave you with one question:

describe to me a spiritual pathology that you feel is appropriate to define as such."

To which I will respond that there is no difference between spiritual pathology and a pathological relation to life itself. As Eckhart Tolle points out in A New Earth, pathology comes from the Greek "Pathos," or suffering. So, the pathology is precisely the lack of ability to let go of the sticky quality of the ego-identified feelings of anger, sadness, self-blame, judgement, apathy, fear, etc.
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Below I quote my own comment to Julian's blog thread 9 days after his post, and then I am going to post this entry unfinished 'cause I gots to go and I don't want to lose it, there being no way to save drafts as yet...:

"Hi Julian, great thread, and I enjoyed your vblog post. I will take this opportunity to put in my 2 cents worth, tho.

First, I am entirely in agreement with you that spirituality must be approached with dilligence and with rigorous intellectual clarity, much of which is gradually learning the limits of our minds. Along with opening our hearts, we enter onto the path of wisdom, paying attention and developing as acurate a map of the territory as is possible. Yet the mind is a very small part of all that is, comes out of it, and ultimately it becomes exceedingly clear that it is utterly incapable of comprehending that from which it arises. At some point, the quest to hone the mind reaches its logical conclusion, and we are forced to go beyond it or stagnate.

I think your focus on a “21st Century Spirituality” obscures what I think is an important consideration, that the situation we face is truly timeless, as the mystery that you state must be inquired into is beyond time. In asking what is true, we inevitably come to the question of what, exactly, is asking. This is the point at which it is finally necessary to allow what that is to awaken fully into our awareness. You quite correctly, IMO, see the futility of asserting that “everyone's opinion is equally valid,” and that there are some fundamental truths. If that's so, and if we are to be able to experience them, then we must somehow be innately able to do so. This truth must be deeply part of who we are.

The non-dual teachers uniformly say, and have said since the early Vedas and the time of the Buddha, etc., that when we make the inquiry you advocate fearlessly and with integrity, particularly into what we are, we will discover that there is absolutely no “me” at the center, and will encounter directly the alive, formless one life that was always there waiting for awareness to invite it in. Then we unequivocally discover what we don't know, that “our” thoughts and opinions pertain to an ENTIRELY IMAGINARY me. I now catch myself thinking something like “well, I believe (fill in the blank),” and I have to stop and say, whoa, just a minute, who is this “I?” The psychologizing has its place in that one comes to intimately understand the structural nature of the imaginary self, its tendencies to protect itself, to justify its necessity in our lives, to identify itself with half-baked opinions, etc. But in the end, this understanding basically serves as a notification that we have to get out of the opinions and the story, and turn our awareness to that which is already awake.

This is not “New Age-ism” or fantasy in least. Not that those things are “wrong” either - I think that nebulous, wishful quasi-spirituality is probably a step up from, say, “that old tyme religion. They have their place on a developmental spiral, but, ironically, the ego doesn't make itself any more real by refining its beliefs about the nature of reality or of the deep self. It can't get better by adding more concepts and experiences to it already voluminous baggage. The struggle of the imaginary self has to be seen through and through, and then what-is-not-imaginary shines forth, and is not subject to question and analysis by the mind. It is entirely self-authenticating. When we surrender to it there is no doubt."