Religion versus Spirituality?

As a part of our Practitioner training we were assigned a task to read 'Return to the One' by Brian Hines. This interpretation of Plotinus' Enneads is far from being a light read, but I have to confess that I am delighted at having this mini-project through the summer. As a book that challenges you to consider one's philosophy it is already becoming a source of daily contemplation.

A passage caught my attention yesterday. Hines suggests that, we can push away mysteries prematurely when we accept beliefs and concepts about the true nature of life's mysteries too quickly, rather than as hypotheses to be confirmed or denied by personal experience. This struck me as a common theme I am seeing that emphasizes the difference between spirituality and religion.

It strikes me that a failure to directly experience something for ourselves leads us to the trap of not knowing what we do not know. Acccepting our 'unknowing' with humility in the face of life's mysteries affords us the opportunity to directly experience, and so confirm or deny a hypothesis for ourself. This personal experience can lead to a deeper understanding. And more importantly, the more we come to appreciate that what we know against the enormity of the Infinite Mysteries the more we realize that what we actually 'know' is insignificant.

Perhaps it is worth taking a step back. The other day when discussing the finer points of the Bible with two Jehovah's Witnesses it occurred to me that I was being asked by my visitors to accept the Bible at face value. In short, their religious claim was self-validating - as a listener I was referred to this scripture making the claim for proof of this claim.

It should be made clear that I am not attempting to discredit such an approach as the sum total of conversion to religion. But it does occur to me that if we engage in a religion by accepting a self-validating claim as proof (which calls upon me to make a leap of faith) then how is such a faith based on direct experience? The challenge then becomes if we make that leap of faith, and invest in it, would subsequent enquiries not be biased by the investment we had now made.

Or to put it more simply, would we not want to be right?

Perhaps the suspicion central to this entry is that unless we take a leap of faith following a direct experience is there not a danger that we will in fact argue for that which we believe to be true as opposed to knowing it is true? And in turn, if we base our arguments upon a self-validating scripture could we limit ourselves to being open to those things which are validated yet run contrary to the very self-validating scripture that we base our belief system upon?

So many questions. I shall finish by saying that this summer of reading is already turning into a great experience for me. The more I journey upon this life the more I am coming to love the seeking of wisdom.