Essay on the topic “Spirituality”
Spirituality is the awakening of the inner reality of our being - our soul; the inner desire to know, feel and identify with it; to be in connection with her, to unite with her and, as a result of this contact, to transform our entire being, turning it into a new personality, into a new nature.
For me, psychic energy is synonymous with the word “spirituality.” Unfortunately, now by this concept - spirituality - many mean observing rituals, going to church on Sundays or reading the Bible. All this, of course, is good, but it is only preparation for real spiritual development, that is, for self-awareness, the disclosure of one’s potentials and capabilities for the benefit of evolution and the benefit of all humanity.
I have tried to list some significant signs of spirituality:
– spirituality is not characterized by upbringing, origin, education, external beauty, or era. Spirituality lies deep within.
– external shine covers the internal emptiness. The more spiritual, the simpler.
– devotion, simplicity, altruism, innate wisdom are obligatory phenomena of spirituality.
Throughout the history of Russia there have been spiritual ascetics who motivated people to self-improvement. However, no one has achieved perfection, even those people whom we call spiritual ascetics. Their exact list will never be complete and accurate, since each spiritual ascetic has his own, but Orthodox saints can be considered generally accepted. Also, artists, writers, philosophers, musicians and even physicists, for example, are a powerful incentive for the self-development of many. Without them, any country would be a huge moral “monster.”
For me, the Russian philosopher and writer Elena Ivanovna Roerich is a spiritual ascetic. Her works, written in the first half of the 20th century, entered the spiritual and cultural life of Russia relatively recently, but aroused the interest of many people, not excluding me.
Elena Ivanovna Roerich was born on February 12, 1879 in St. Petersburg in the family of the architect-academician Ivan Ivanovich Shaposhnikov and his wife Ekaterina Vasilievna, grandniece of the great Field Marshal M.I. Kutuzova. On her mother's side, Elena Ivanovna was a distant relative of the outstanding Russian composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky.
From childhood, the girl showed a deep interest in literature and languages; by the age of seven she could write and read in three languages. After graduating from the Mariinsky Gymnasium and receiving a music diploma, she could have made a brilliant career as a pianist, but life had other plans.
In 1899, on her aunt’s estate, Elena Ivanovna met her future husband, Nicholas Roerich. Then he was still a young and unknown artist, but later Elena Ivanovna became his muse. They not only loved each other, they were connected not only by marriage, but also by common interests and spiritual closeness.
In August 1902, their son Yuri, a future orientalist with a worldwide reputation, was born, and in October 1904, Svyatoslav, a future artist, thinker, and public figure, was born.
Elena Ivanovna Roerich was the mentor of the entire family, inspiring everyone with spiritual conversations confirming eternal truths. But still, this woman was unusually modest; having entered the life of the great artist, she always remained in the shadows.
In 1916, the family moved from St. Petersburg to Sortavala (Finland) due to N.K. Roerich’s illness, and in 1920 to London, where Elena Ivanovna began work on the books “Living Ethics,” which is a new concept of a philosophical system. These works were created in close collaboration with a group of anonymous philosophers.
In the fall of 1920, together with her husband and children, E.I. Roerich travels to New York, where Nikolai Konstantinovich planned exhibitions in US cities.
In America, under the leadership of the amazing Roerich couple, a small group of their associates launched extensive cultural and educational activities. Its results are amazing: Nicholas Roerich Museum, Master-Institute of United Arts, International Art. These institutions are major cultural centers whose influence has spread beyond the country's borders, becoming international. Numerous societies, creative clubs and educational institutions were created not only for artists, but also for people who wanted to embody humanistic ideals. Elena Ivanovna wrote: “It is joyful to see how, in the days of destruction, bright souls gather in the name of Culture, trying to keep the fire alive and give the joy of creative creation and expansion of consciousness to those seeking a way out of the created mental impasse, which leads to material disaster.” From 1924 to 1928, Elena Ivanovna participated in an expedition organized by her husband to inaccessible and little-explored areas of Central Asia. In 1926, her manuscript “Fundamentals of Buddhism” was published in Mongolia.
In the same year, one of the books of Living Ethics, “Community,” was published.
In 1928, upon returning from the Central Asian expedition, the Roerichs settled in the ancient picturesque Kullu valley in the Western Himalayas. Here they founded the Institute of Himalayan Studies “Urusvati” - “Morning Star”. E.I. Roerich is elected honorary vice-president of this unique scientific institution and takes an active part in organizing its work, but still devotes himself to working on the main work of his life - the books of Living Ethics - and continues to carry out this work until the end of his life. Being a philosophy of cosmic reality, Living Ethics contains a unique system of knowledge based on the general and particular laws of the Cosmos, of which the Earth and humanity are an integral part. This system of knowledge of Living Ethics corresponds to a new evolutionary round of human development, when scientific thinking is replaced by a cosmic worldview. The name of the philosophy itself - Living Ethics - connects man and the Cosmos into a single spiritualized system.
In January 1948, shortly after the death of her husband, Elena Ivanovna, together with Yuri Nikolaevich Roerich, left the Kullu Valley and, after a short stay in Delhi and Khandala, settled in the small town of Kalimpong on the slopes of the Eastern Himalayas.
E.I. Roerich always wanted to return to Russia. Her requests to return to her homeland, submitted to the Soviet embassy, remained unanswered. The same fate befell letters and petitions addressed to the government. The Academy of Arts did not help either. But, despite all the refusals, Elena Ivanovna hoped to return, bring all the treasures she had collected and work for at least a few years for the Best Country - that’s what she called Russia. The hope of seeing Russia did not leave her until her very last days: “It’s impossible that I wouldn’t come. I have to come!” – she repeated before she left. But this return never took place. On October 5, 1955, Elena Ivanovna Roerich passed away.
The more time passes and the deeper we penetrate into the spiritual and philosophical heritage of the outstanding Russian philosopher Elena Ivanovna Roerich, the clearer becomes the greatness of what she did for the evolution of the planet and all humanity.
For me, self-development is, first of all, cultivating a culture of feelings. I believe that this concept includes, of course, God's commandments, as well as Ethics. If every person was culturally educated, then we would not hear about murder, theft, violence, betrayal, etc. In this case, the country did not need the police or the judicial system, which means that the state would allocate more money, for example, to the educational system. Thus, society would develop endlessly, we would live in love and harmony. But this idea may seem utopian.
So why do we need spiritual ascetics if there is no point in self-improvement? What if we never achieve an ideal society? I believe that complex relationships in society make some people commit crimes or simply become angry at the world around them. But it forces others - smart and sensible people - to change themselves, to change the world. This is what spiritual ascetics have done throughout the history of the planet.
In my opinion, every teacher is also, in some way, a spiritual ascetic. Teachers guide their students on the true path, telling the young, inexperienced generation in which direction they need to move in order to be a respected person, a necessary unit of society, and not a useless burden of society.
But the endless pursuit of perfection is not for everyone. This is for strong, persistent, patient and persistent people. For those who never give up. And, unfortunately, there are not many of them. They are the engine of the process - the ones that keep society afloat, closing its path to degradation.
Humanity has forgotten its evolutionary role as a transformer. Most of modern society lives according to the “here and now” rule, without thinking about future generations and the future fate of the planet. I would say that society is in a state of spiritual starvation, which is why it suffers. I believe that we need to return to the teachings of spiritual ascetics who dedicated their lives to saving society in order to change the situation.
Semenova Anastasia, anthem. No. 446
Spirituality is the basis of a harmonious life
Surrounded by each of us, there is probably a person who always radiates positivity. You know, there are such people: they are like the rays of the sun, in the light of their radiance everything seems to bloom. They are always positive. They never get angry, don’t judge anyone, don’t blame others for their problems, and most importantly, they see only the positive in everything, even where it can sometimes be very difficult to find it. Sometimes such people are even considered a little strange, and in modern society this is probably exactly what it looks like - strange.
When in the morning on a working day, in a crowd of gloomy, gloomy people tired of life, you see a person who, it would seem, is happy simply because the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and he himself receives pleasure only from the fact that he can breathe, walk, hear and to see, in fact, there is a feeling that this person is not himself. But when such a person is in your environment, a feeling of harmony arises, and with this feeling such a person infects everyone around him. In essence, this is spirituality.
Spirituality is not rituals, not commandments, not the desire to put someone into some kind of framework, to declare someone righteous, someone a sinner, someone’s faith correct, someone’s wrong, and so on. This is, rather, speculation on spirituality. It is important to separate these concepts. A spiritual person, a truly spiritual person, makes the world around him better and more harmonious. And if a person’s spirituality only leads to quarrels with loved ones, to labeling others, to condemning people, then this is pseudo-spirituality. A truly spiritual person knows the simple law by which this world lives. He knows that everything that happens in his life happens because of him and thanks to himself, and therefore judging someone is simply stupid. If we see someone's imperfection, then this imperfection originates in ourselves. This is important to understand.
A truly spiritual person will never judge or label anyone, because he knows that everything arises due to causes and conditions. And the external world only reflects the state of the internal world. If a person’s spiritual development leads to him becoming a religious fanatic and dogmatist and condemning everyone who lives differently from what is written in some clever book, this is not spirituality, but rather an attempt to hide some of his complexes behind a mask of morality, spirituality, religion and so on.
Today we can see a lot of examples of pseudo-spirituality. Starting from harmless grandmothers in the church, whose spiritual development lies in the fact that they condemn everyone who, in their understanding, acts immorally, to aggressive religious movements that do not even disdain violence and terrorist attacks. Such spirituality always has some kind of rottenness under the top layer of piety and morality. And if a person’s spirituality leads to someone suffering because of his actions, then such spirituality should be viewed with great doubt.
The meaning of the word "spirituality"
If you look up the meaning of the word “spirituality” in several dictionaries, the general meaning will be somewhere between religion and moral and ethical generally accepted norms. That is, spirituality can be both with an emphasis on religious rituals and some purely religious goals, and “secular”, that is, social spirituality, is when some generally accepted norms are promoted and cultivated. And here, too, everything will be quite conditional, since within the framework of a particular country, people, nation, tradition and, again, religion, spirituality will have certain shades. How, then, in such incredible diversity, can one grasp the essence? And in order to understand the deep essence of spirituality, you should pay attention to what unites, at first glance, different concepts, religions and movements?
And in most religions and philosophies you will come across such a concept as “compassion”. It can be expressed in other words or served, as they say, “under different sauces,” but the essence of most adequate ones (we do not take into account any shamanic teachings and peculiar rituals) is to cultivate compassion for others and strive for harmony with the outside world. In fact, all world religions teach this. Except, of course, in cases where religion is put at the service of someone's political or financial interests. And cases where, under the guise of spirituality, enterprising puppeteers carried out their business, unfortunately, are not uncommon.
What is spirituality for a person
What is spirituality and how can it be explained in simple words? Considering each religion where we are talking about the spiritual state of a person, we can notice that many understandings may differ from each other, and in some cases even contradict their “competitive communities”. Here, moral principles or other qualities that are considered to be the rule in a particular country or religion may differ.
It is necessary to do a lot of work on oneself so that a person’s spiritual world is strong and strong throughout his entire conscious life.
But, as mentioned above, it is necessary to select the best of all teachings and interpretations. It must be taken into account that our world is so diverse that the understanding of good and evil is relative.
All religions are determined to curb the negative feelings of humanity. Everywhere there is talk about humility and submission. But this will not make a person stronger or smarter. The fundamental canons and commandments of all religions are also aimed at ensuring that everyone can choose for themselves those basic principles and patterns that can lead us to an understanding of the higher mind.
This is not connected with material values or the benefits of peoples, but with the simplest instinctive impulses that lead every person living on earth to a state of peace and bliss.
Their main task is to make this world as kind and fair as possible, so that all living beings live in harmony with each other and interact with all natural processes.
Definition of spirituality
Well, there is no single definition of spirituality. It means something different to each person.
Spirituality is part of who a person truly is. This is what a person feels.
The road to it usually begins with curiosity. And this is only possible when a person begins to think about his existence.
And ask yourself the right questions. There is no right or wrong way to achieve spirituality. The most important thing is to understand that the very path to achieving it is a reward, a value in itself.
