Spirituality without Religion

Most people seek spirituality within the framework of a belief system or religion. This is the traditional approach.

I have a good friend who said to me that she wasn't religious, but she wanted to believe in something. She wanted an authentic experience of spirituality without having to believe in a supreme being.

There are millions of people like her. On forms that ask for "Religious Preference," they enter "none." At this point in human history, there's no tried-and-true system my friend can turn to to get what she wants.

I recommended that she read Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. His approach to spirituality is to silence the chatter of the mind to achieve a hear-and-now awareness of the present moment. Life is sacred, being alive is sacred, and he considers this pure, unfiltered experience of the self to be a central aspect of spirituality.

Also, Tolle chooses to see the universe as a kind of cosmic intelligence. He envisions a grand consciousness, something purposeful that is larger than ourselves. I don't relate to this concept, but I do like the way he coaches us to achieve an awareness of being alive. Being conscious of our existence, appreciating that we are alive, experiencing what we are - surely this is an important aspect of spirituality.

Beyond the self there are billions of other human beings, each one alive and sacred, though usually not aware of his or her spiritual nature. Being "in the moment" with another human being, appreciating another person's reality and sacredness, the special aliveness of another individual - this, it seems to me, expands our spirituality to another level - that of relationships.

And of course there are all the "non-human" beings we can relate to, which we often refer to as "creatures." Like Ernest and Baby Girl, the affectionate, intelligent cats that are a part of our family. We can achieve spiritual relationships with the rest of nature, by experiencing it for what it is without the chatter of human nonsense.

And beyond our relationships and communities, there is the larger natural world, including the universe beyond our planet-home, Earth. Can we achieve a spiritual relationship with the universe?

I believe so, but I think this is more challenging, because even though the universe beyond Earth is quite real, when we look up on a dark night, all we see are tiny points of light. Scientists say some of these points of light aren't stars, but massive clusters of stars. This is new knowledge. They found proof of other galaxies beyond our own Milky Way galaxy less than a century ago. Scientists tell us this, and we can see the photos of various galaxies taken by powerful telescopes. These are awesome and beautiful images, though it takes some effort to achieve the stirrings of spirituality staring at second-hand, two-dimensional pictures.

Let me tell you about a personal experience. I live in Texas, and my wife and some friends decided to visit the McDonald Observatory in the mountains of west Texas. It was a moonless night, and as we sat on benches outside, a guide gave us an orientation of the night sky. Afterward, several different telescopes were set up for visitor viewing. In one of the telescopes I saw a clear view of Saturn's rings. It was like being there, though Saturn is about 750 million miles from Earth - eight times the distance from the Earth to the sun. This was not a photo but a direct view of the planet as it existed in that moment. I let that sink in, and I felt a sense of awe at this reality and my relation to it.

As I peered through another, stronger telescope I saw something that swept me away. It was not a planet. It was not a star. It was the Andromeda galaxy. I saw its swirling shape and that it consisted of an untold number of stars. Not a photo. Not an animation. But the galaxy itself, far from Earth.

The Andromeda Galaxy

I learned that the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light years from Earth, which is a distance impossible for any human being to imagine, and that it contains a trillion stars, more than twice as many as our own Milky Way galaxy. Our guide also said that it was moving through space towards our galaxy and would merge with it three or four billion years from now. For me, this surge of awareness and knowledge and awe was unmistakably spiritual. This vision of Andromeda, seen through a looking glass, helped define me and my place in the universe.

It was humbling.

I've written this post partly for my friend, to affirm that you can, if you seek it, find authentic spirituality not only in yourself, but in relation to others and to the universe. It has to be a personal quest, not an easy journey, because this kind of spirituality isn't a packaged belief system as most religions are. But it's achievable.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2014. Building Personal Strength .

Why People Think Zombies Are Cool

Have you seen this funny AT&T commercial, featuring a zombie who, presumably because he's neither dead nor alive, is intrigued by the company's lifetime unlimited plan?



The first time I saw it, I thought it was pretty funny.

These days zombies, which used to be one of the scariest concepts in horror films, are considered fun and "cool." Today, the big bucks are in selling zombie costumes for Halloween. The movie "World War Z," starring Brad Pitt, was a thriller about a worldwide zombie pandemic. It grossed a half a billion dollars.



Have you seen it yet? Me neither, but I plan to catch it on Netflix.

Why the public identification with zombies - the "undead"? It can't be about what zombies are, because zombies don't exist. Only in fiction do dead people get up and walk around. Real dead people stay dead. The fascination has to be about what zombies represent.

Wikipedia describes a zombie as a "person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli."

Sound familiar?

I recently finished Eckhart Tolle's classic, The Power of Now. (I know, I know - Where have I been the last 15 years?) In it, he promotes a simple practice, the centerpiece of spiritual traditions for over 2,000 years, which is to quiet the mind's nonstop internal commentary about memories of the past and imaginings of the future, in order to focus conscious awareness on the present moment. According to Tolle, this is how anyone can achieve enlightenment. He may be right. Since the past no longer exists and the future is only something you imagine, the direct, unfiltered perception of right here, right now is the only authentic life experience a person can have. The rest is just the mind babbling away about the past and the future, making it impossible to be fully conscious of the reality of the present moment.

He says that for most people, the awareness of now is a rare, fleeting experience that happens when they are shocked into paying attention to the present moment.

In other words, for most people, most of the time, they are alive, but not truly alive to the reality around them.

Could this be why people are fascinated by zombies?

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2013. Building Personal Strength .

Performing 'In a Flow,' 'In the Zone' - A Form of Mindfulness

In another article, I referred to the work of Eckhart Tolle, who advocates that people make spending time "in the moment" their primary mode of being. It's a spiritual message, because the failure to do so means failing to live an authentic life.

I'm a big sports fan, and one of the big fascinations for me is how the top performers do what they do on the playing field. How does a football team fall behind 0 to 10 and end up winning 42 to 10? How does a basketball player attempt a clutch 3-point shot at the end of a close game, with three defenders trying to block him - and make the shot? How does a professional golfer hit a shot to the green 200 yards away, in 30 mph swirling and gusting wind, with trees blocking his view of the pin - and land the ball within 3 feet of the hole? And on and on. This kind of achievement fascinates me.

Watching this sort of thing makes me think of what Tolle and others say about mindfulness and living in the moment. Because it's impossible to perform in competition without making a horrible, costly mistake. It happens almost every time. But the top players don't dwell on what has happened. And they don't think much about what could happen in the future. Their discipline is to focus their attention on the experience of making the play that is right in front of them...in the present moment. Bad things happen, they react to them, and in only a few moments they stop thinking about it. In other words, they practice mindfulness in their sport.

You've heard people talk about "being in the zone," especially as it relates to sports. Broadcasters say this when a player is executing at the full capacity of his skill, making one outstanding play after another. What's really happening is that the athlete has turned off his mind and is executing automatically what he has programmed his brain to do. He may have thought about details of technique and how-to during thousands of hours or practice. But the purpose of practice is to wire the brain to execute the skill automatically. You can't do anything in an outstanding way if you have to think about how to do it while you're doing it. You have to just do it.

This "flow" is also a form of mindfulness. You have to be fully present, in the moment. You can't be thinking about anything in the past or about future consequences. These things have nothing to do with performing well in the present moment.

Things like overconfidence and loss of composure are related to failures to be present in the moment. They come from thinking too much about the future or the past.

Of course this applies to any human endeavor, not just to sports, whether playing music, speaking in public, dealing with people or writing a novel.

Do you remember a time when you were "in a flow" or "in the zone," performing at a high level? It's a wonderful thing. Top performers have learned to shift into that mode at will. If you're an ambitious, success-oriented person who wants to perform at your best, I encourage you to learn how to consciously execute that shift.

And how would you learn to do this? Why, how you get good at doing anything...by doing it more often, doing it a lot, until the doing becomes second nature and you can do it without thinking about it.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use image purchased from fotolia.com)

Eckhart Tolle and More - Being in the Moment

I recently watched a DVD called "Eckhart Tolle: Finding Your Life's Purpose." I don't usually watch videos made by gurus. Many years ago I got the feeling that I was hearing the same thing over and over, and I had already done the heavy lifting to build a firm spiritual foundation for myself. But the Netflix feedback-based rating system highly recommended this one, and the summary intrigued me.

I watched it all the way through. I found myself agreeing with him, and he has a clear, straightforward way of speaking about things that are hard to speak about. He gets right to the point. Plus, I had never heard of him before.

His message is that our minds are constantly talking to us, what Carlos Castaneda called "the internal dialogue." Our minds define who we are, what Tolle refers to as your "story." The story, which is constructed by your mind, is mostly related to the past and the future, neither of which exist except as mental concepts. The mind and all it's commentary are not who you really are. Who you really are is your consciousness, and reality exists only in the present moment. Sometimes a shocking event can cause us to shift into an awareness of the present moment, or it can be achieved through meditation. Tolle encourages people to shift from the mentally constructed self to the authentic conscious self, a spiritual step.

I first became aware of this perspective by mining the novels of Carlos Castaneda, an arduous process. You can get the same wisdom directly from Tolle, for which he deserves our gratitude. If you're interested in learning more, you can order the video on Netflix or go to his website and buy his books. This YouTube clip is a good introduction...



Also, you may enjoy this lovely clip from TED, recommended to me by my old friend Bob. If anyone knows about living in the moment and gratitude, it's Bob.



Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .