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Furthermore, it is an essential aspect of spirituality that the material world in all its complexity can only properly be understood through its agency. In other words, spirituality is the organ of meaning in the psyche.</p> There are several indispensable consequences to spirituality in the lived life, in either an introverted or an extraverted manner. Prayer, contemplation and meditation are some manifestations of the introverted way. Ritual practice, and the participation in groups with a shared spirituality manifest the extraverted. It is the continuing incarnation of spirituality in life that affirms meaning.
A second consequence of spirituality is the central experience of relationship. In the first place, this is towards whatever is felt to be the source of meaning. However, implied in this connection is that of a relationship to the cosmos as a whole, and to all humanity in its collective and individual aspects.
A third inescapable consequence of the spiritual attitude, deriving from the issues of meaning and relationship, is that of the ethical or moral dimension of life. The experience of meaning in a transpersonal manner not only presumes an I-Thou relationship, it also involves of necessity an effort to create meaning. It is only the truly ethical or moral behaviour that can create meaning commensurate with the central experience of spirituality.
Specific to spirituality in the context of GAPS is that Jungian analytical psychology very particularly affirms the essential spiritual nature of the psyche. It provides a fundamental psychological structure that clarifies the centrality of spirituality in the life process, in developmental issues, and in the healing of psychic disturbances.
J FITZGERALD
25.03.2002 |
