I am late to day, because I was awake some time last night entertaining and defining two ideas that awoke me. The first was that I should use blank with the blue Spruce colour for my mandala colouring. This non-colour would then reflect the missing leaves in the winter time.
The second idea that was causing my waking spell, was about defining the human spiritual experience . This is a much more complex affair and needs some introduction.
The Human Experience of the Spiritual.
Up until recently, my definition of ‘the spiritual experience’ was based on a combination of my own experience, descriptions given by friends and those found in literature. This lead me to the following description: ‘When a human being experiences something unusual, we name such an experience to be spiritual’.
When a human being experiences something unusual, we name such an experience to be spiritual
All cases refer to the experience of something new or rare, such as a feeling of peace when being in nature or being enthralled by an image, view or art work. The encounter of an albino Grizzly is experienced as the sighting of a spirit bear or moose even, whose shooting was in the news in the last view weeks.
The spirit bear was reported in the Globe and Mail travel section T1 and T4 of 2013-02-16. The article reports the existence of about 100 to 500 such bears. So, they are not unique and we can also ask why a Polar bear is not considered a spirit bear as well.
Such bears are not unique or rare, and do not imbue us with this special experience that alters our - pre-conceived - experience. A black Polar bear, that would be something, but a white one? Not the kind of experience that alters one’s perceptions, and this is where I always felt the point of leverage lies.
The experience of what I label as spiritual, is something that alters the way I am aware. Much further than this description I never came until my early this morning, awaking with an awareness of an other possible definition.
This definition surfaced like loose pieces of an unassembled puzzle, belonging together and with new pieces emerging upon examination of the part assembly. A collection still requiring fitting and matching for the pattern to emerge in a fully formed definition or description.
Here are some of the pieces: emergence, edge of knowing, limit of understanding, spirituality, new knowing. Slowly I put a coherent formulation together, testing it for the inclusiveness of concepts I felt were needed from past experience.
Here is one formulation:
The spiritual experience for the human occurs, when a knowing emerges into conscious awareness at the edge of the understood.
The spiritual experience for the human occurs, when a knowing emerges into conscious awareness at the edge of the understood.
The essence for me it that we experience an enlargement or increase in our conscious awareness, but in a way that cannot be ascribed to a cause and effect relation. This is why I use the word and concept of ‘emergence’ as that is defined in ‘Mind & Emergence’ by Ph. Clayton.
Break 11:20 to 11:37am.
During the break the concept of ‘transcendental function’ surfaced, as did ‘Existence Divine’, both of which I use in my structuring exercises as applied to the world of human experience.
The transcendental function is one that Jung used to define the way the conscious and unconscious interact in the human; human-psyche as Jung would call it. Definitions for this function and the four comprised of thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting can all be found in “Jung Lexicon” by D. Sharp, (1991).
Existence Divine is described in my various writings and specifically in my essay and talk titled: See my web site under Talks and Topicals.
TALKS and
Essay: Existence Divine
To be added the definitions for: Emergence, transcendental and Existence Divine for easy reference.
11:58am~
