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qandr
November 2009 
What role does spirituality play in your life?
Posted on Nov 6th, 2009
by 
Ted
Ted
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for November 06, 2009:
I can truthfully answer that question in almost any way - it just depends what sort of a definition one gives to the term spirituality.
The term spirit originally meant breath. It then came to stand for the animating principle - the thing that left the body when the breathing stopped. Many people assumed that having left the body, that the principle (whatever it was) must go somewhere else.
I no longer believe in anything even remotely like that concept.
For me, life started with very simple replicators, and with minor errors in the replicating process leading to variants, and competition amongst the variants for survival, over vast time scales, and with many changes in orders of complexity, the vast panoply of life we experience has evolved.
It seems to me that even our self awareness is a very close analog to a piece of software running on a computer, except that the computer it is running on is vastly more complex than any electronic computer yet made, and has two very different sorts of processors running it, and many of each sort.
So what is spirituality?
For me, if the term retains any meaning at all, it is exploring the possibility space available for action, communication, relatedness, and creativity. It is bringing caring and compassion into relationship with others, while at the same time building ever more complex models of reality that work ever more powerfully, using the tools of science to reinterpret the experiences and lessons of classic spiritual traditions.
In this context, it has a huge role in my life, it is currently occupying about a third of my waking hours.
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Ted, although you and I have vastly different ideas about Spirituality, we both agree that there is great satisfaction in living a life of service to others and broadening the scope of understanding. If it can't stand close examination, why then, it simply can not stand! Thanks for a great post.
“For me, if the term retains any meaning at all, it is exploring the possibility space available for action, communication, relatedness, and creativity. It is bringing caring and compassion into relationship with others, while at the same time building ever more complex models of reality that work ever more powerfully, using the tools of science to reinterpret the experiences and lessons of classic spiritual traditions.”
Worth repeating.
The impersonal and personal realms of spirituality in a nutshell.
Nut cracker, anyone?