There’s this kind of spirituality that seeks attention, that is always looking for its benefit whether money, good health, luck. This spirituality pays huge importance to what other people say, to following the rules, to punishing the sinners, to being right. It will not stop until it converts the entire world. It is amazed by things magical: concoctions, objects, and words,
Then there’s this quiet, subsistent spirituality that doesn’t ask for anything other than itself, and because it is small and almost always hidden, it stays here for eternity.
Since I am minimalist in my beliefs, I don’t think I am in too much danger of creating harm to other because of duplicity. If I have a complex worldview that involves the supernatural and the postmodern then I should be more wary. But since I don’t have this, I might have more freedom to let go of metaphysics and epistemology at least for now.
Quotes
”In between [bold assertions and great skepticism] there is room for an affirmation of a minimal degree of transcendence. If a strong assertion is hard to defend, then perhaps a more cautious and more restrained model will be better able to answer the doubts of our age while providing the support and prophetic criticism which the [generally monotheistic] traditions have offered. Perhaps a minimal model of transcendence can provide a genuine alternative to the choice between a doubtful maximal model and total secular humanism. If belief in God is abandoned, we are not, as Nietzsche claimed, that if the absence of God is recognised we would be as if unhooked from our sun, condemned to plunge aimlessly in a meaningless universe” (“The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence: A Naturalist Philosophy of Religion” (SUNY Press, 1992 p. 10).