'Spirituality'

     I've never had trouble talking about my views on 'spirituality' so this might be the easiest blog post for me over the course of this entire class.  I'm afraid my descriptions won't provide much substance for discussion though.  Any time I open my mouth on this subject it tends to bring people down.  I cannot elaborate on my views without asserting that most other human beings, plainly put, have the wrong idea about the whole concept of spirituality or an religion that they are associated with.  I assure you that I do not wish to offend anyone, just express myself.
     The best way to do this in this blog would be for me to use the concept of the medicine wheel from the book we've been reading.  The Sacred Tree has the medicine wheel divided into four sections that are supposed to represent the various categories that everything in a person's life falls into.  There's the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual.  Now I absolutely hate to do this to the medicine wheel since four is my favorite number, but when it comes to my life (and again plainly, everyone else's life whether they accept it or not) I have to remove a piece of the wheel.  Well, not so much remove it as collapse it into one of the other sections.
     I'm an atheist.  By atheist, I mean the form of agnosticism put forth by one of my favorite scholars Richard Dawkins.  While I cannot prove that god doesn't exist, I find no reason to even entertain the idea of his existence in the same way that I cannot disprove fairies but still live my life as if they aren't there.  While I believe the human imagination to be our second greatest faculty behind compassion and pay tremendous respect to several forms of fiction, I find it disrespectful of the world to put stock into false or untestable ideas that aren't admitted to be such.
     This makes me object to the term 'spirituality' in several ways.  First of all, it's too broad a term.  It is often cast in very separate lights without anyone bothering to make note of it.  For example, an atheist or agnostic can look at the grandeur of some natural landmark or Hubble telescope picture and say that it makes them feel spiritual when what they really mean to point out is a sense of awe or wonder or perspective.  Meanwhile, a christian can go to church and talk about how praying makes them feel spiritual when what they really mean is that they think they are talking to the creator of the universe.  There's something very different about these two interpretations.
     My second objection to the word 'spiritual' comes from the first definition I offered.  I feel it has no place in the vocabulary of an atheist because it implies something otherworldly, something that either cannot be understood by people or never will be.  This first definition is the reason I wish to remove the category spirituality and let its slot be filled in by the 'emotional' section.  For as an atheist who has felt small before the vastness of the universe and gigantic against the stretches of the microcosm, I know my reactions are nothing but emotions.  They are powerful, sometimes frightening, and sometimes rewarding emotions but there's nothing 'transcendent' about them.  There's nothing there that is beyond explanation.
     Many people have asked me how I manage to not feel hollow in the face of such ideas.  They ask things like 'Well then what's the point of being alive?' or 'How can you be happy without god's love?'
     These are the most offensive questions imaginable.  it is my personal opinion that life's value is the most obvious thing in reality.  I can't even begin to answer the questions because the list is so long.  To give you an idea though here are several reasons to be alive, each one on its own probably enough to prop up an existence.  Love. Fun. Food. Entertainment. Awe. Contemplation. Sleep. Each one of these (and others I'm not bothering to list) can be broken down into innumerable configurations, sizes, colors, and intensities that make life worth preserving.
     Even in the face of this answer people have asked me if I don't feel limited by the boundaries of reality.  Of course I do.  That is why I seek out stories.  I love to hear of places that will never exist, of people too decent to be found, of objects currently beyond our cleverness.  It's harmful to let those ideas to bleed into my perception of reality though.  After all... is there anything smaller than a creation story compared to the science of human genesis?  A creation story, like one of the trickster tales or the beginning of the bible, is a story that explains everything while explaining nothing.  Supreme being existed forever, eventually decided to make the universe, then the planets, then some beings out of mud.  For these stories to be taken seriously is to deny our world its dignity.  Things are infinitely more complex than a godly touch turning dirt into humans. The big bang.  The exceedingly long life cycle of stars.  The precious water in our cells.  The blind but moving process of natural selection.  These are the ideas that truly contain the beauty of existence because they reflect it.  To be spiritual in any supernatural or metaphysical sense is to punch the mirror of the universe and then insist that the cracks are the most important part.  That is the small idea.  That is the selfish view that limits us.
     To answer the question of god's love... all I can say is that everyone else lives without it too.  So perhaps now you can see why I feel so left out when I see a diagram that tells me that a quarter of my humanity is missing.
     I am not a spiritual being.  I'm an emotional, physical, and mental one.