Spirit and Story Archive

Welcome to Spirit and Story, where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the contours of our contemporary spiritual journeys. Every other week you will find something new and (hopefully) engaging here!

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The Episodic Nature of Contemporary American Spirituality

By Tsvi Blanchard

Many contemporary Americans are on a spiritual journey, but I wonder – are they day-trippers or in it for the long haul?

Those of us who are more traditional in our daily practice of religion are aware of what contemporary spiritual seekers do not want. They are not particularly interested in mainline religious institutions and their rituals or in a traditional theology or path of religious discipline. Contemporary spiritual seekers prefer to borrow religious symbols and rituals only if they can pick them up and put them down as they wish. Finally, while many Americans now think in psychological terms, they do not think that psychology alone is spirituality.

What is it then that interests contemporary seekers after spirituality? In my experience, it is spiritual moments. A spiritual moment is an experience or state of consciousness with an integrity and wholeness all its own. For a moment and only for a moment, a single gestalt focuses and unites the scattered parts of life. We complex beings find that our thoughts, feelings, impulses and sensations work together instead of being at odds. In spiritual moments, we feel deeply in sync with ourselves, other people, our environment, and indeed with the entire cosmos. But only for that moment.

Critics of contemporary spirituality wonder if there is any more to such spiritual moments than mere occasions of personal synthesis. I think so. Contemporary spirituality is also part of the traditional human struggle to get past the limits of our individual, self-interested selves and connect to something greater. It is worth remembering that in the contemporary spiritual search, many people will sing and dance until they lose themselves in the congregation. What is experienced as spiritual in being present at a birth, a storm or a sunrise is its power to help us forget about our far too little selves. In the best of our spiritual moments, we connect to what is better, larger, finer than the limited beings that we are. But surely this is a traditional paradox of human spirituality: to find our “big Self” we must lose the “small self” of ego and self-interest.

To many on traditional spiritual paths, these spiritual moments seem far from traditional—they smack of being hopelessly narcissistic. There seems to be nothing more here than brief instants of strong feeling that at best delight and then dissipate. The episodic character of spiritual moments does not make for the valuable achievements that come from profound religious creeds, ongoing spiritual discipline or sophisticated ritual practices. Moreover, although these spiritual moments tend to support deeper values, they are not justified by that support. To those who seek it, spiritual experience, like good music, art, drama or poetry, seems of intrinsic worth.

Can we make sense of all of this? I think so. First, our contemporary culture supports the episodic character of spiritual moments. And episodic moments do not make for creeds, spiritual discipline or ongoing ritual practice. In addition, we are increasingly aware of the self-interest that lies behind institutions, even those that represent mainline religious life. As a result, those institutions have a hard time building support for their grand narratives or theological creeds. What basis, then, is there for accepting the often exhausting long-term demands of traditional spiritual disciplines? Ours is a culture that experiences moral obligations and commitments as growing out of the concrete experiences of personal relationships. Therefore, it makes sense that we should also ground spirituality in experience rather than in theory or inherited tradition.

As disciplined ongoing spiritual practice declines, we do lose something of great value. But I think that we should value spiritual moments independent of their role in a sustained spiritual path. If Maslow’s research on “peak moments” was correct, that would suggest that spiritual moments are within the reach of a majority of people. If Philip Wexler -- the author of Mystical Society (Westview, 2000) -- is correct in thinking that the cultural importance of such spiritual moments is now expanding, then we should expect that more people will begin to feel that their individual spiritual experience, however limited, is valid.

That actually is good news for anyone concerned with the sustainability of traditional religious discipline. The more that the spirituality ethos permeates the culture at large, the more interest is generated about the originators of rituals and practices. As a collective, spiritual seekers may not establish a house of worship, but they may find new ways to preserve the actions and behaviors that were once developed in the sanctuary.

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