It is difficult to describe what we mean by "spirituality." Defining spirituality is as difficult as grabbing and holding a greased pig. Drawing together the diverse elements that make up spirituality is almost impossible, and, when it is attempted, the resulting definition reflects the individuality of its author.

A Shorthand Definition

While there is no universally accepted definition of spirituality, I have found it helpful to describe spirituality as the lived essence of our human personhood, an essence that is continually in process of formation.

The Body/Self

At the centre of this process of becoming is the body/self.

Classic Greek philosophy suggested that body and mind were separate and that the mind, soul or spirit was superior to the body. The latter was evil, because it was part of the material world. This view found extreme expression in New Testament times in Docetism and Gnosticism.

This dualistic view of our humanity is inconsistent with biblical anthropology, which emphasizes the unity of our personhood. A growing body of research has corroborated this Judaic-Christian insight. We have discovered that mind is not wholly located in the cranial brain, but is distributed throughout the body. To speak of our minds as apart from our bodies, as if the two were wholly separate entities, is inappropriate in the light of what we now know. We are body/minds.

Because we, in the West, have dissociated ourselves from our bodies, we need to begin re-owning and reclaiming them. We need to learn how to listen to them and how to nurture them. Our bodies, which are burdened with repressed emotions, have much to say to us. They are painfully eloquent.

Feelings

This renewed embodiment also involves us becoming re-acquainted with our feelings. Men will not find this easy as they have been taught to repress their feelings, to project the "irrationality" associated with them onto women and then to criticise in women what they could not tolerate in themselves. [1]

Sexuality

The rejection of the body, under the influence of Neoplatonism and Stoicism, involved, more than anything else, a repression of sexuality. If feelings disrupted the equanimity achieved through calm, rational deliberation, and, for this reason, were repressed, sexuality, which could be even more powerful than unrestrained emotion, was considered almost demonic and was vigorously repressed.

Repression, however, does not rid a person of that aspect of themselves that is repressed. It merely consigns it to that part of their being that lies below the threshold of awareness, where it finds perverse expression, gasses out, erupts or is projected. Repressed sexuality has manifest in voyeurism, witch hunts and the labelling of women as temptresses with voracious sexual appetites. It has also expressed itself in homophobia, in dissociative disorders, in sexual abuse and in Satanism.

We must reclaim our sexuality and demystify it so that it loses its neurotic appeal. We need to recognize that we are deeply sexual beings and that we encounter each other, not as disembodied spirits, but in our bodies. Furthermore, we relate to each other and to God as sexual beings.

In our neuroticism we have genitalized sexuality and failed to see that, at its heart, it has to do with a rich sensuality and with our relating to each other as men and women. It also involves an engagement of feelings, reciprocity, playfulness and a pleasurable, but responsible, intimacy.

Sexuality and spirituality are closely related, so closely associated that, if we trace our sexuality to its origin, deep in the inner self, we will recognize that the territory we are exploring also sources our spirituality.

Brain-Sexing

Men and women experience themselves, and their sexuality, differently. An increasing body of evidence suggests that brain sexing, which occurs in utero, results in different neural circuitry in men and women. The patterns are identifiable, in spite of our individuality.

The process begins six weeks into conception, with the formation of gonads. These produce gender-specific hormonal cocktails, which, in those who will be born male, are strong enough to transform a female into a male foetus. These same hormones play a significant role in the development of the hypothalamus, which, it is suggested, regulates sexual preference, and later, in the laying down of the circuitry of the neo-cortex. This initial brain-sexing, together with later hormonal development, will significantly influence the way we perceive, value and relate to our inner reality and the world beyond us, that is, it will impact upon the expression of our spirituality. [2]

The Unconscious

It would be a mistake to assume that part of us that we are directly conscious of represents our entirety. There is a part of us, of which we are not immediately aware, which deeply influences our behaviour. Inner personalities, constellated out of repressed aspects of the body/self and out of painful memories which the conscious self cannot tolerate, have a more subtle, and, therefore, more powerful influence on our motivations and behaviour than do our conscious deliberations. It would be foolish to explore human spirituality without taking the unconscious aspects of the self into account.

Systemic Interconnectedness

It is also important to recognize that we do not exist in isolation from each other. Systems theory argues that we are enmeshed in a bewildering range of human systems, familial, communal, occupational, economic, political, institutional, cultural and global, all of which situate us in positions of influence, vulnerability and co-dependency. If who we sense ourselves to be, if who we are in our identity, is largely a function of the systems that envelop us, where our self-constitution is enhanced or curtailed by these systems, then we cannot define "personhood," or "spirituality", without taking their influence into account.

Psychic Interconnectedness

Our inter-connectedness, however, goes much deeper than systems theory suggests. There is a psychic inter-connectedness that is intuitively discerned.

This inter-connectedness was evident in the Australian aborigines' practice of "pointing the bone." In Aboriginal society the footprints of someone who had committed a major offence, which was worthy of death, would be discerned in the dust. The footprint enabled the person designated to point the bone to connect with the victim, who could be twenty miles away. That person, aware that the bone was being pointed at them, that they were being willed to death, would involuntarily force themselves into a self-hypnotic trance, from which they may not be able to recover, even with the assistance of Western medical interventions.

There is a sense in which we are all possessed of psychic abilities, which have atrophied due to disuse. This disuse is largely a consequence of our hyper-rationality and scientific materialism. Renewed awareness of the range of these psychic capacities would help us appreciate the intimate nature of our inter-connectedness. We are connected, however, not only with each other, but also with the flora, the fauna, and with that which we have hitherto labelled inanimate matter, indeed, with the entire ecosystem. The mystics have always known [3] this. Their message was that everything is connected to everything else and that God is in all things as their constitutive essence and the source of their unity.

The Implicate Order

This perspective is being increasingly confirmed by the New Physics. Quantum mechanics suggests that everything within the universe is connected to everything else and that we, as observers, help create what we perceive. The subject/object dichotomy is an illusion. David Bohm, a British physicist, who collaborated with Einstein, argues that we live in a holographic universe in which an implicate order of unity is enfolded within the more readily discernible explicate order of diversity. While I am, at one level, separate from my home, the chair I am sitting on, the trees in my garden, the car in my garage, at a deeper level, the wave functions that underlie the packets of matter that make up these separate entities are enmeshed in a giant web of interconnectedness.

God

According to Eastern and Western mystical traditions, and some physicists, the source and essence of this interconnectedness, this unity is God, sometimes described by physicists as a non-local, non-temporal universal Mind.

There is also a growing consensus among those involved with the New Physics that this constitutive Consciousness is loving. This perception is consistent with the verdict of the mystics and the comment of Carl Jung that we are the victims and the instruments of a cosmogonic love.¹ Christological hymns in Colossians² and Hebrews³ and the Prologue to the Gospel of John⁴ identify Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnation of this integrative, loving, cosmic Consciousness.

If it is in this Christic Consciousness that our existence is grounded, then we cannot talk of our personhood, or our spirituality, without taking this all-pervasive constitutive Self into account.

Two Functions

It could be argued that there are two principal functions of the body/mind, of the human spirit, the embodied totality that is us.

Meaning-Making

The first of these is meaning-making. Making sense of the world, wrestling with issues of contingency and temporality, reworking our destiny, confronting the persisting threat of meaninglessness and continuing the [4] unrelenting process of re-mapping reality is central to the expression of our spirituality.

Communication

The second function is communication. As Martin Buber argued, we are dialogical beings.⁵ We dialogue with ourselves. We accuse and excuse ourselves and are in constant dialogue, whether or not we are aware of it, with the shadow personalities in our unconscious. We also dialogue with others and with God. This dialogue involves, not only our thinking, but also our feelings, our senses, our intuition, our imagination and our bodies.

In distinguishing between meaning-making and communication, I am not suggesting that these functions are separate from each other. Each is connected with and influences the other. Dialogue helps us make sense of the world. Meaning-making, by structuring the world we encounter, provides us with a map of reality, without which we would not be able to converse intelligently.

Self-Transcendence

Meaning-making is a process of increasing cognitive complexity that leads to paradox and a mature simplicity, which Paul Ricoeur described as a "second naivete". As this process proceeds, and as our capacity for communication increases, we develop an enhanced capacity for self-transcendence. We are able to take up a position outside of ourselves and outside of our circumstances, which affords us a unique perspective from which to observe, critique, and, in a more informed way, intentionally participate in the business of living.

While it is difficult to define "spirituality", the attempt must be made.

In this chapter I have defined spirituality as the lived essence of our human personhood and I have argued that

1. we are body/minds, body/selves,
2. that spirituality and sexuality are entwined,
3. that brain-sex implies gender differences in the expression of our spirituality,
4. that we are enmeshed in a diverse range of systems,
5. that we are inter-connected with each other, and with the entire eco-system at a subliminal, psychic level,
6. that we are constituted by an embracing, loving cosmic Consciousness
7. and that we are unceasingly involved in meaning-making and communication that manifest in increasing levels of self-transcendence. [5]

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