Children around the world are growing up in a spiritual vacuum. The belief systems of the past have eroded beyond repair, replaced by secularized mindfulness and a ubiquitous wellness industry.
Educators acknowledge the calamity but they are proposing grafting spiritual education onto a knowledge-based educational system.
A recent article in a progressive newspaper exemplifies the contradictions and conundrum. With the heading, “Teaching identity and belonging,” the piece begins by correctly stating, “Young people need experiences of awe, sacredness and moral elevation to thrive.”
In the very next sentence however, the writer contradicts her premise by conflating “belonging to family and community” with “a spiritual reality that transcends the self.”
Transcending the self has been the essence of belief systems for thousands of years. Not in order to “loosen the grip of the epidemic of loneliness,” but to constrain the human ego and give coherence to communities of people. That’s finished.
Currently, very different things are taken as givens without question or definition. For example, do identity and belonging have anything to do with transcending the self? Or, in the digital age, is transcending the self a matter of ending the need to identify and belong to particular groups?
And why are so many children and young people experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, which has reached acute proportions in the west?
Complicating, rather, things even further, the recent fashion of seeking remedies to western alienation and anomie through “indigenous wisdom” is being layered onto the hollow system of western education.
Indigenous people can point to where life-giving waters are through our relationship with the earth, but in spiritual deserts like America, we have to dig our own spiritual wells.
So why can’t our belief systems be enriched and expanded? For one thing, belief systems, by their very nature, are more or less closed systems of thinking. They have boundaries, or they aren’t belief systems.
Even disregarding their erosion through the mixing of peoples and cultures, expanding them leads to their dilution, giving rise to reactionaries like Christian nationalists.
It’s true that “a void seems to sit beneath the surface, and that we have cultivated the intellect but neglected the soul.” But parents, teachers and educators have to delve deeper than tacking “spiritual education” onto educational systems geared to producing “productive” workers and consumers.
The premise that “every child is a noble soul with spiritual faculties that should be developed” is true, but it has a New Age ring at a moment when young people are keenly aware of the climate-nature emergency tipping toward collapse.
Not to mention a very uncertain economic future due to AI and many other factors, and a geopolitical situation that is going from dark to stygian.
No wonder there’s high levels of bullying and anxiety among young people, as well as depression, school avoidance and isolation.
It’s absurd to maintain that the rapacious politico-economic system that children are being educated to fit into was designed by a few white men, and imposed on the rest of humankind.
It’s true as far as it goes that greed lies at the root of man’s rapaciousness, but greed emanates from the self, and the self is a construct of thought.
Children can no longer be socialized by moral systems not to be greedy. Besides, greed, like egoism, takes innumerable forms and cannot be suppressed.
Self-knowing, which is a completely different thing than knowledge of the self, is the remedy to self-centered activity and greed. Systems must be radically changed, but externalizing the crisis perpetuates it.
So can self-knowing be taught in schools as part of a program of “spiritual education?”
No, since children learn self-knowing by growing up with parents and teachers who are themselves self-knowing. As things stand, few adults are.
So what is self-knowing? The moment-to-to moment awareness of one’s thoughts and emotions, moods and physical states, without choice is self-knowing. That’s a much deeper meaning to mindfulness.
The foundation of self-knowing is humility — the realization that we are strangers to ourselves. Humility is never saying or thinking, ‘I know myself,’ which permits non-accumulative learning one’s entire life.
Education as we know it is accumulative. Children are taught to accumulate knowledge in different fields, and then to specialize in various fields and skill sets.
That’s necessary to earn a living and function in society, but the cumulative approach is antithetical to spiritual growth.
One grows in freedom to the degree that one understands and negates one’s conditioning. So the expansion of knowledge, including knowledge of the self, has nothing to do with spiritual development.
The idea that children must be conditioned before they can uncondition themselves as adults is as unworkable and illogical as the idea that we must have beliefs before we can rise above belief systems.
Unfortunately, the brutal notion that children must be “shaped” still rules. Taking a laissez faire attitude is even worse. Awareness and attention flowing from self-knowing positively affects a child’s spiritual development.
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Martin, interesting article. It seems a bit nostalgic to me, but it is thought provoking.
With that said, some of your statements confuse me. Are you willing to help me out of my confusion?
The first of your confusing statements is, ” With the heading, Teaching identity and belonging, the piece begins by correctly stating, “Young people need experiences of awe, sacredness and moral elevation to thrive.”
I can understand awe. That can be both secular and spiritual. But why do young people need sacredness to thrive?
Moral elevation is so incredibly context dependent … for example what is moral for a non-practicing Episcopalian WASP is very different from what is moral for a devout Hasidic Jew. When couples get together from different cultures, as my son did when he married the love of his life who is Thai, how do you propose they decide what morals get elevated and what morals get demoted?
The second statement of yours that has me scratching my head is, “Transcending the self has been the essence of belief systems for thousands of years.”
I’m 78 years old, and for almost 60 of those years I have believed that providing answers to unanswerable questions has been the essence of belief systems ever since human beings moved from bands of hunter gatherers into tribes with hierarchical structures … often chiefdoms.
What the last 200 or so years has done is steadily reduce the number of unanswerable questions to a rather meaningless few. With no unanswerable questions to answer, belief systems have lost their spiritual function and become little more than social clubs.
Thoughts?
:Thoughts?”
My Dad used to say that he believed in life before death.
Seems to me that (and perhaps even in Buddhism) that’s the only thing that matters. This very minute – not the past, and not the future.
This minute is the only thing we have (and it’s already gone as I type this).
As usual, my cat seems to understand this better than I do. Pretty sure that the cat isn’t obsessing over nonsense, unlike me (and my “highly developed brain”).
Your Dad and I think very differently. I’m a firm believer that our current existence is only the current “chapter” of an infinitely long book (stream of energy) that stretches forever into the past and forever into the future. When one chapter comes to an end, the next chapter commences. All our “energy” is conserved … none is lost … when we transition from one chapter to the next. As such, this moment, so important to your Dad, is no more meaningful than the infinite number of moments that have already occurred or the infinite number of moments that are to come.
Well, my Dad never was able to confirm any of that, after he died.
You’d think that at least one of these mofos (dead organisms) would make some kind of effort to communicate with the living, from beyond the grave – to confirm one way or another what lies beyond (other than being worm food).
In any case, I’ll try to make an effort when my time comes. I feel like it’s my duty to humanity to let them know.
But that point regarding “this minute” being the only one that matters is from Buddhism, in regard to what I understand about that at least. Buddhism seems to be more of a philosophy, than a religion.
Matt,
Thanks for your shared inquiry. Though I’m a bit flummoxed as to why my piece on spiritual development in children strikes you as nostalgic when it’s the most relevant and forward-looking piece I’ve written for the Vanguard. Let’s set that aside, as well as the photo of the little girl at her first communion in the Catholic church, which represents the antithesis of the insights I’m attempting to convey.
Your first question gets to the heart of the matter: “Why do young people need sacredness to thrive?” There are many reasons, but to name two: First, because despite attempts by modern hard-core atheists to deny and disparage it, as well as the ancient conditioning by organized religions to exploit and distort it, the yearning for transcendence is in our best nature as human beings. It’s evidenced by the questions most young children ask.
Second, because the growing darkness of the world and human consciousness is suffocating the spirits of children at a younger and younger age. They need a feeling for inviolability that belief systems can no longer give in even a limited way, and which secularism cannot, by definition, provide.
Of course all kinds of things are called sacred, eg the American Constitution. The question is: Is there something completely beyond the human mind, its products and projections, that’s sacred? I feel there is, but the mind must be completely, attentively still to have even an intimation of it.
Regarding awe, an overly secularized dimension, mainly through venerating science and a priestly class of experts, has greatly reduced our capacity for awe and increased egotism. Scientific knowledge has an important place obviously, but when it is given primacy, science assumes the role of a religion, and is destructive to spiritual development. The non-sectarian religious mind and the non-nihilistic scientific mind can harmoniously coexist in the same human being.
Your examples of an Episcopalian WASP and a Hasidic Jew, as well as your son and Thai wife, exemplify an insight I’m attempting to convey in the piece.
Morality is a socially and religiously imposed set of strictures meant to keep children in line and adults conforming. The assumption has long been that people cannot see what’s true and what’s false for themselves, but must have a moral system and intermediaries to define truth and provide access to God and the sacred.
Now we’re being taught and told that we must have scientific experts to establish truth, and without them it’s “my truth vs. your truth.” Both are false ideas stemming from unexamined worldviews, especially with regard to human nature.
You’re right, with the erosion of moral codes and belief systems religions have become “little more than social clubs.” But the answers that former belief systems provided never afforded direct contact with immanence and inviolability.
You’re also correct that my saying “transcending the self has been the essence of belief systems for thousands of years” is confusing. It’s misstated. I meant to say constraining self-centeredness has been the essence of belief systems.
Your son and daughter-in-law don’t need to choose which morals to elevate. Trying to choose between two different traditions, much less a decaying smorgasbord of moral systems, only confuses a child.
They can instead bring their own ongoing inquiry, alone and together into their traditions, and nurture curiosity and discernment, as well as the innate potential in their children to see what’s true and what’s false for themselves. (Which doesn’t mean making truth a matter of personal whim and choice).
Ongoing self-knowing leads us to an immanence that’s completely beyond words or ideas about it.
Martin, thank you for your response. I’m afraid it begs as many questions as it answers. I’ll try and express them individually so we can keep our dialogue somewhat focused. The first head scratcher for me is your statement, “ the yearning for transcendence is in our best nature as human beings” I’m not familiar with the term “yearning for transcendence”. What does that mean?
With that asked, your follow on comment “It’s evidenced by the questions most young children ask” may be illuminate of what you are thinking. For me, children are tabula rasas whose accumulation of knowledge is in an infancy quite parallel to their own chronological age. They ask questions that their innocence makes unanswerable from within, so they seek answers from sources external to themselves. For the most part … dare I say the vast most part … those questions have logical factual answers, and in their innocence they are not sophisticated enough to ask the kind of existential questions they will ask when they reach secondary school and college. Having raised my son as a 24-7-365 single parent I’ve had a lot of experience with questions that arise from a child’s inexperience, for which the answers, when provided, provide comfort and enlightenment.
That personal life experience brings me full circle to the question “What does yearning for transcendence mean?”
Regarding your statement, “Regarding awe, an overly secularized dimension, mainly through venerating science and a priestly class of experts, has greatly reduced our capacity for awe and increased egotism.” I have a total of five words that totally debunk that perspective. The first is “Utah.” The next two are “Longwood Gardens.” And the last two are “Camp Allash.” Awe is there in abundance. You just have to be open to it.
“First, because despite attempts by modern hard-core atheists to deny and disparage it, as well as the ancient conditioning by organized religions to exploit and distort it, the yearning for transcendence is in our best nature as human beings. It’s evidenced by the questions most young children ask.”
Honestly, if one were to ask this – how about animals/insects? Do they not have “souls”?
Also, there is a tendency to disparage atheists as “extreme”, when to my understanding at least – they simply deny any evidence of the nonsense that comprises all religion (which has absolutely no basis for belief in the first place).
As such, who, exactly is the “extremist” in that case?
George Carlin worshipped the sun, partly because he could see it. As he said, “I’m big on that. I dunno – kinda helps the credibility along”.
You say, “The question is: Is there something completely beyond the human mind, its products and projections, that’s sacred? I feel there is, but the mind must be completely, attentively still to have even an intimation of it.”
My belief is the antithesis of that. I believe one’s mind needs to be fully engaged to achieve what you believe stillness can achieve. Mother Nature provides us with all the sacredness any of us need if we open our minds rather than close them. If sacredness is something of our own making, as you appear to be arguing for in advocating for making ourselves still, the resultant sacredness can’t help but be ephemeral. If the sacredness is rather made by the larger world we exist in, it is timeless … although often that timelessness is both episodic and cyclical for Life has its seasons.
We are pretty much on the same page when you say, “Morality is a socially and religiously imposed set of strictures meant to keep children in line and adults conforming. The assumption has long been that people cannot see what’s true and what’s false for themselves, but must have a moral system and intermediaries to define truth and provide access to God and the sacred.”
I would be surprised if you haven’t read “What electric eels tell us about the evolution of religion” but if you haven’t I think you would enjoy it.
Where do you see the the word “extremist“ anywhere in my peace or response?
Hard-core atheists aren’t “extremists,“ they simply are as dogmatic as strong believers.
Can we dispense with the “souls of insects“ silliness? The human brain, as the most complex organ on earth, is the pinnacle of evolution. We mistakenly equate it with cognition and use it very unwisely, plundering the planet to the point of collapse.
Matt, you’re missing the insight – – when the mind is fully engaged, it is the movement of cognition and its contents — rational knowledge or irrational content. When the content is actively engaged, any “sacredness” is unavoidably projection.
I’m certainly not arguing for “closing our minds.“ Rather, for observing the movement of thought/emotion without the infinite regress of the separate observer/self.
“The human brain, as the most complex organ on earth, is the pinnacle of evolution.”
So? (Perhaps so far, at least.) Does that make us different than other life forms (more so than they are different from each other)?
Humans on the “evolved” side (with souls), vs. apes, porpoises and cockroaches (all on the same soul-less team) on the other side?
Regarding “extreme”, you mentioned “hard-core atheists”. What does that mean?
Atheism (from AI – our new “god”):
“Atheism is the absence of belief in any gods, ranging from a passive lack of belief to an active conviction that deities do not exist. Core viewpoints often emphasize rationalism, secular ethics, and scientific understanding over religious dogma. Key types include positive/strong atheism (asserting gods do not exist) and negative/weak atheism (lacking belief without asserting non-existence).”
I guess I’m an atheist – perhaps even a “hard core” one. I’m willing to “assert” that gods do not exist (even if they take their wrath out on me later, if I’m wrong). I figure an apology might suffice at that point, if they’re of the forgiving variety of imaginary figures. And if they’re not willing to forgive my lack of belief, I’d like to see an audit of “who”, exactly, he/she is allowing into heaven in the first place. If I see even one or two souls in there whom I might recognize (beyond the gate keeping me out), I might initiate a complaint to the heavenly attorney general.
I’m not missing the insight. I’m rejecting it, because your model is giving us, in your role of separate observer, more importance than the natural world of which we are simply a part. That appears to me to be the height of hubris.
My “role of separate observer?“ Pure projection.
That’s also fine bit of arrogant casuistry: Refusing to see the ancient human habit of psychological separation, and trying to scapegoat me for pointing it out. Then saying I’m trying to give “us more importance in the natural world of which we are simply a part.“ I’m not saying anything of the kind.
See the difference between the way humans operate and the rest of nature operates. Egad man, look at what we humans are doing to the Earth and humanity before trying the old trick of blurring the lines between man and nature, and blaming another for drawing attention to our fragmentation and it’s remedy.
“ separate observer/self” were your words, not mine. No projection at all. You’ve even doubled down on that concept with “psychological separation” in this most recent comment of yours.
When it comes to projection, you need to look in the mirror. I have not complained at all about your drawing attention to “our fragmentation.” If I had any such objection I wouldn’t have wasted yours and my time by commenting in the first place. However, either way that said, I haven’t seen or heard a rational explanation of a remedy from you in your article or subsequent comments. If you go back and read my initial comments again, I presented a straightforward explanation of where you were using terms without any explanation of why those terms had resonant meaning for you, as well as why what you were trying to describe was a remedy. It comes across ( to me at least) as a retreat from reality.
It bears repeating, if I objected to your sharing your thinking, I simply wouldn’t comment, but what you have described is elusive in how it describes a path forward.
When someone willfully misunderstands what one is writing, rather than give it a fair and sympathetic hearing, no amount of defining and explaining will open their mind. For example, insisting that I’m referring to my “role of separate observer,“ when i’m saying, ‘observing the movement of thought/emotion Without the infinite regress of the separate observer/self.’ E.g., insisting I am “giving us more importance than the natural world of which we are simply a part,” when I wrote the opposite, that we have been using the brain to plunder the planet to the point of collapse. Or in reaction to a call for attentiveness and stillness, you mind-bogglingly write, “we need to open our minds rather than close them.“ The things I’m pointing out and attempting to explore will therefore remain elusive to you.
Despite the innuendo, as far as “retreat from reality,“ guilty as charged, if by retreat, you mean ‘regularly withdraw to renew’ rather than escape.
It is hard to give something sympathy, when the underlying cause for why that something is believed is not provided.
You are confusing bewilderment with willful misunderstanding.
Perhaps instead of describing how you believe the second and third floors of your structure are constructed, you might want to start with a description of the foundation and describe the building of your house from that basic point. I tried to do that very thing in my response to your today’s article.
Please read and reflect on my column today before replying again. It may make things clearer.
If you read your today’s column you will see that I both read and commented on it, posing questions as I went. Looking forward to your responses.
I can answer these intellectual questions at the intellectual level to some degree, but it would be futile to do so, since the whole point is to transcend the intellect. That said, I’ll look for one I can respond to in the spirit of mutual inquiry.
They aren’t intellectual questions. They are Critical Thinking questions whose focus/purpose is to get to root causes. One of my favorite tools for “peeling back the onion” is the Why Tree (see https://online.visual-paradigm.com/knowledge/root-cause-analysis/how-to-use-five-whys-tree-diagram/). It is a very powerful tool tool for getting people conversing on the same level.
With that said, your comment above appears to assume certain “truths” as a baseline … without being sure both parties of the conversation agree on those truths, or even whether they are truths at all.
For time immemorial Man has formed an image of God in Man’s image … often specifically an elderly white male with a beard.
A simple question is, “are they intellectual questions or philosophical questions?”
“I’m not missing the insight. I’m rejecting it, because your model is giving us, in your role of separate observer, more importance than the natural world of which we are simply a part. That appears to me to be the height of hubris.”
We cannot meet at the same level. You haven’t even acknowledged this egregious misinterpretation, which deliberately twists the insights I’m proposing. So much for “Critical Thinking.” This is going nowhere.
Martin, I thought I began this dialogue with just such an acknowledgement, which was in the conversational form with which I have been quoting your own words back to you … using a clear explicit statement that what you have said is causing me confusion, with a request for you to help me out of my confusion.
“With that said, some of your statements confuse me. Are you willing to help me out of my confusion?”
“The second statement of yours that has me scratching my head is …”
“Martin, thank you for your response. I’m afraid it begs as many questions as it answers. I’ll try and express them individually so we can keep our dialogue somewhat focused.”
With all the above recounted, since I clearly have misinterpreted what you are saying with your words, I’m certainly not arguing for “closing our minds.“ Rather, for observing the movement of thought/emotion without the infinite regress of the separate observer/self.. Please give your explanation of what you mean by that in terms that I can interpret correctly.
One of my literary mentors has taught me four key phrases that guide me in general. All four of them have applied throughout this conversation.
Those four are:
“I don’t know,”
“I need help,”
“I’m sorry,” and
“I was wrong.”