Spirituality

By definition, we agree on the word. Spirituality is a person's appreciation of the mystery of life in spiritual god or self. More than any word, it defies definition, thereby being open to interpretation. God has that singular quality, although by many is misunderstood as religion. Many people will argue that every interpretation is wrong, according to a need to have the exact understanding, and as well, historical definitions are asserted right because the meaning is an institution or passed upon by a pre-emptive authority, such as the Pope, or a leader of a belief system, or even Wikipedia.

Spirituality then means everything you have learned it means, for example, far eastern religions have a neat college religion course feel to them, yes that's it. People become spiritual, as a practitioner of buddhism for example, thinking American preeminence after WWII and the Cold War precipitate enough fear to renounce the strength of our roots, European Protestantism. But even that source acknowledges spirituality as something without a dogma, an awe of being, outside the church, the community. Native American spirituality is another example of a confusion of terms, even to the tribes converted to catholicism, a conversion of spirituality to dogma, the confusion reigns over a core need, but not a recognition of core being.

In the context of The American Spirituality Party (here) the word American refers to a transformative period where a settling of people were cut-off from the church, nationalistic adherence, and territorial proximity (to Europe), and formed through self-reliance a new world view. In this process, beginning in the 17th century, people formed communities for security and social reasons, and while tending to the work of survival, were gradually brought to an new evolving creativity. Gathered by assertions of commercialism, productivity and military might to 1950's onward, when mass systems of technology and education and information brought the world's people forward. The flowering broke forth.

Spirituality is the power of expression. Power, but not in military power, rather a concert of voices all gathered, all creating, and more meaningful than nationalism, religion, because as the layers of communities multiply, many different voices sing a harmony of being, a story untold is unfolding.

Since before Homer the lyricism was profound to many, given to the people as their sound of knowledge, and with it story. Now it is the same only it comes not from one, or from on high, but from the body of All People everywhere. Listen. If you cannot hear it, you are blind.

Individually we create ourselves, within the milieu of family and locale and will. We ascribe our being to values given and reasoned. The learning now is the teaching, and teaching we learn. If we accept the learning given by the system, we cannot teach more than the system. By giving your knowledge, you teach others, and no community can be unless that is the case. By transferring your knowledge through video, others see what you see, and learn to dialogue with themselves. Recording and creating video is a step, it is a compendium of your choices and vision. A picture seen is not nearly enough, -without words the information is limited to interpretation.

We are the priests, ministers, rabbis, ceo, president, et cetera of our being. What we know truthfully in our self is what we can teach, and others will learn from what we teach. As they see to what depth we have made the change in our world, they learn to teach. That has been the mission of artists, poets, writers, filmmakers, and those who create the greater worlds, expressly for others. All People have this potential, but are sore on the butt from entertainment, sports, and activities of watching and listening, not speaking (forming thought and expression). Politics has shown people their fears, because politicians speak to those fears with their ally, the news media. We can persist to accept this relationship, knowing we are weak, or we can go around and create the world of being.

Creativity is electric and it lifts you off the seat.

Work with yourself as a video, then with your communities, teaching others how to create videos that others may learn what it is to be in a community, for we are many many overlapping communities in America. The pool of spreading communities, as rings in a puddle, as raindrops combine, is our power sublime.

The core of this dogma is the understanding that being (alive) is the creativity of being instruction (teaching/learning through doing). Everybody is given certain human traits that are automatically fulfilled, such as breathing, then, as we define the physics of life by grasping our understanding into that existence, every object and sound and taste and the emotional jungle of human environment, we begin to discern that we are being instructed. At this point, we can follow the course into our adulthood and future past, by citing the knowledge by rote, that is, we are able to recite what it is that we have been told, as we can quote other sources, as to what substantiates our thought. Or, we can go the other way, and embark upon the testing of grounds within our self, in relationship to what we are told is right, and that is the creativity of being instruction, finding that which comes from you whether right or wrong, it is the found self, our highest sense of being.

In the freedom of inalienable rights, it is that creativity which propels us on to the the new day, the future of now. For example, the freedom of the press is not the right to blab or politicize, but the essential need to find our evolving place in the stream of variables which are the concern of life on earth. To politicize is to garner votes for the power to take from other communities, to grab at the wealth apparent. To learn to teach, and teach to learn, is to transmit understanding on an individual interpretive level. Passing on knowledge is discovering the self. In a YOUTUBE culture, it is in the medium of flexvideo, the contemporeality is discovered. (here) When you use a search engine to define a concept, and the answer is a video, you begin to understand we are watching, as well as reading definition (of the mystery).

What you may not understand about pictures, still pictures, is that we take pictures of what we know, both inside us and from what we've seen. Harold Bloom wrote a book on poets, that the poet cannot write without a precursor, another poet whom the poet emulates both in content and verse. The same for the average person, they photograph what they love, family and nature, or they photograph in ways they've been taught, or emulate from mass media. If you are educated, that is, have a body of design knowledge, art history, and a sensuous appreciation for what comes before you (historically), and then take a picture, you are either emulating acceptable imagery, or recognizing a need within you to mark that image as New Territory. That image is beauty within, and some photographers recognize that as evidence of a spiritual reflection. What else could it be for anybody using the camera as a tool of perception? You are recognizing, by taking yourself. The world is an illusion, for we are only conduits of energy, but spirituality is evident.

Why else take pictures? As an inquiry to the vast world, we take pictures of what we don't know. The act can be a bridge to understanding relations, sizes and shapes and color, but more over, what it is, is us. We seek what we want, and dispose or avoid what we don't want. Few answers are rarely found other than us, that which is ours to recognize.

Comments can form Expression by Assertion

The dramatist and critic critic George Bernard Shaw asserted his right to mount a cart and speak his mind, particularly in regard to the popular drama which, as a professional critic, was killing him. He was reviewing drama in London but found it successively appealed to baser instincts. As a self-professed mountebank, he opined the tragedy of self-absorption in feelings that was compromising good theatre. The romantic view of the world, using sensuousness and diluting expression to sicky sweet, was all about selling theater tickets. It was in effect, music hall entertainment. A theater of constructive thought and expression was the victim.

Today, in th same way, we do have serious theatre, such as Sam Shepard, and others, but an on-going theater of expression is ups for grabs. The need for money compromises everything, and the question is, how far a successful product can really go.

What is at risk is the loss of storytelling. Look at the evolution 100 years later, as Walt Disney and Pixar make animated movies, such as Wall-E, where a trash compactor with a heart saves mankind, AND has a love affair with a "girl" robot. As such, it was when I read Shaw's comment about inserting a love affair in a plot as a mechanism for selling books, tickets, just about anything to the public. By ticket sales/votes, the market takes only ideas that can be sweet, not threatening, romantic, and the drama is twisted to that taste. Creativity, the investigation of response to enlightment, essentially core Art, is lost.

American culture is teaching the world, at least we can say leading them on in a mad flurry for appetite. By packaging the mass appeal products based on our need for romantic drivel, only further and more powerfully than 19th century London because the industry spans and affects the world by mass media interests, we intrude on other's sanctity. Al Quaida have any thoughts as to why? Mass media has virtually free rein to exploit anything, and at the same, through international copyright police, restrict the use of their material. (search Lessig, copyright commons)

Contemporary movies aside, how about the NET? The most powerful presentation by Sir Ken Robinson on www.ted.com is a perfect example of the contemporary hunger for knowledge, presented by an entertaining guy, speaking of "creativity". The content of his talk is 'how society kills creativity by education' is very appealing blame concept. Nothing could be more attractive topeple who do little to change it. Yet, Sir Ken is only entertaining, a great after dinner speaker with an English wit. He is lauded with kudos because, he says everything we know and want to hear. Little is offered to us to change the world.

When the business of comment is merely to point out that a statement is wrong or right, it always answers what is nowadays material from a highly opinionated, dark-sided news industry. The NET has liberated opinion but still devolves into negativity with massive authoritarian publications with questionable viewpoints and political tactics. Information, mini-information is the sea of our nature. We believe what we want or need to believe. It can be quackery, all of it, but IT IS IMPORTANT to speak-out, your identity of intent deserves that much. My candidacy for President (see previous posts, or American Spirituality Party offers my steps to change the world, comments being a lost art of self, the Art of Life about Wyeth, Thoreau, Emerson, Buckminster Fuller and others, show a way we can become the agents of change, a balance ignored in this commercial society. It is better to be entertained, after all, isn't that why we join communities or the church, or vote, or watch sports? Ultimately, that is why we as All Peoples are God.

In this comment, I made to an opinion in NYTimes.com, was really lost on the Americans who reject any view which does not speak to their needs. America suffers from expensive gas, or, because Americans have an over-inflated view of their place on earth, they are lost in their self-cramming appetite of consumerism. Such self-absorption is incredible, and is seen so discouragingly in the Democratic nominating elections, that rather than fulfilling a view of bringing all people into the fold of mother earth, we hold-out for status quo.

Some think we should be fat from the plenty, others think we should be generous to share the plenty, and others, by bringing the goodness of our freedoms and thought to all everywhere, we can begin to justify ourselves. Disney/Pixar are creating the message, maybe we need to build our content, our storytelling, and think about how we can change these Hollywood interests to build and change our world, NOT entertain for the many but by higher planes of vision, engage our future by creative community building on a worldwide level.

Georg Bernard Shaw saw the Puritan in our storytelling. Can we stand it?

Comment 55. July 7th, 2008 12:01 pm
Gas prices are gas prices. Something to beef about. The entire train of thought is well-versed negativity. Nothing is nobodies fault, or manipulation, except for those who view the world in that context. Clear choices are to be made, but ok, so it has always been. Crying about how it isn’t the way you think it ought to be, is pure indulgence. This zeppelin called America is about to float up as conscious grasp of productivity and exchange values build all around the earth. Oil is not an issue. It is one part of the means to productivity, and the biggest part is positive attitude. Why does NYTimes pump negativity up all the time? Because people like to shoot themselves in the foot.
— Posted by ww
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/pumped-up/index.html
Pumped Up By RON KLAIN