Nick the Pilot
Well-Known Member
“You have to go on a journey”: How one man traveled to the end of the Earth in search of spirituality - Salon.com
Here is an interesting article on religion vs. spirituality, and the need to go on a pilgrimage if a person really wants (or needs) spirituality. Here are important points from the article:
The author talks to people and hears people saying, "I’m not religious, I’m spiritual. I’m on a journey of some kind."
(Religion is) "…go to a building at the time of the building’s choosing and sit in a pew while someone stands up on a high platform like a mountain and tells you what to think and believe from a text that has been closed for hundreds or thousands of years…" (The author is saying pew-sitting and preacher-listening is not what most people are looking for, instead, they are looking for something more spiritual.)
The author sees the highest form of being spiritual as going on a pilgrimage.
"…people are breaking away from the institution but they are still asking the big questions, and that’s exactly where pilgrimage fits in. Because a pilgrimage is at its core a gesture, or an action. It’s saying that I’m going to take a step. I’m going to figure out what I really believe and I’m going to determine for myself how I want to live my life. Whereas traditional religion is much more passive, going on a sacred journey is much more active. That’s why pilgrimage is so popular today."
"…a third of all tourists around the world every year are pilgrims. That’s 330 million people a year."
"…50 percent of Americans will change faith in the course of their lives, four in 10 Americans are in an interfaith marriage, so there is just a lot more fluidity. We no longer just accept the religion that our parents gave us. We each have the opportunity and, in effect, the obligation to decide what we believe for ourselves."
Typical pilgrims are typically people in a painful transition. (Many of the pilgrims the author met were) "…people who were coming over alcoholism, who were getting over the death of a parent, who had just lost a job…" "…they are people who just retired, people who just graduated from school and are trying to determine what kind of life they want to live, couples who are just married who are about to have children... So it tends to be people who are in moments of transition.
"Another similarity is these pilgrimages are very difficult. The travel is hard, the food is not great, the accommodations are not wonderful and yet somehow the idea of persevering and prevailing over those difficulties becomes one of the most satisfying parts of the whole experience. It just reinforces this idea, which is inherent to all religions, of resilience; of, when it gets dark, we can help you find the light. That’s in some ways where religion really thrives."
"…key to the idea of pilgrimage [is] You can’t just press a button, download an app, send out a tweet and get through a particularly dark moment in your life. You have to go on a journey. You have to go through the suffering, you have to endure the bad food, you have to get over the bad accommodations. You can’t get to the destination that you’re looking for without going through the journey. To me, that is the nugget. When it gets difficult, put one foot in front of the other. Get off the sofa, set out on that journey, and you’ll get somewhere. It probably won’t be where you thought you were going to get, but ultimately you will get to a new place."
~~~
The videos can be watched at
Sacred Journeys
Here is an interesting article on religion vs. spirituality, and the need to go on a pilgrimage if a person really wants (or needs) spirituality. Here are important points from the article:
The author talks to people and hears people saying, "I’m not religious, I’m spiritual. I’m on a journey of some kind."
(Religion is) "…go to a building at the time of the building’s choosing and sit in a pew while someone stands up on a high platform like a mountain and tells you what to think and believe from a text that has been closed for hundreds or thousands of years…" (The author is saying pew-sitting and preacher-listening is not what most people are looking for, instead, they are looking for something more spiritual.)
The author sees the highest form of being spiritual as going on a pilgrimage.
"…people are breaking away from the institution but they are still asking the big questions, and that’s exactly where pilgrimage fits in. Because a pilgrimage is at its core a gesture, or an action. It’s saying that I’m going to take a step. I’m going to figure out what I really believe and I’m going to determine for myself how I want to live my life. Whereas traditional religion is much more passive, going on a sacred journey is much more active. That’s why pilgrimage is so popular today."
"…a third of all tourists around the world every year are pilgrims. That’s 330 million people a year."
"…50 percent of Americans will change faith in the course of their lives, four in 10 Americans are in an interfaith marriage, so there is just a lot more fluidity. We no longer just accept the religion that our parents gave us. We each have the opportunity and, in effect, the obligation to decide what we believe for ourselves."
Typical pilgrims are typically people in a painful transition. (Many of the pilgrims the author met were) "…people who were coming over alcoholism, who were getting over the death of a parent, who had just lost a job…" "…they are people who just retired, people who just graduated from school and are trying to determine what kind of life they want to live, couples who are just married who are about to have children... So it tends to be people who are in moments of transition.
"Another similarity is these pilgrimages are very difficult. The travel is hard, the food is not great, the accommodations are not wonderful and yet somehow the idea of persevering and prevailing over those difficulties becomes one of the most satisfying parts of the whole experience. It just reinforces this idea, which is inherent to all religions, of resilience; of, when it gets dark, we can help you find the light. That’s in some ways where religion really thrives."
"…key to the idea of pilgrimage [is] You can’t just press a button, download an app, send out a tweet and get through a particularly dark moment in your life. You have to go on a journey. You have to go through the suffering, you have to endure the bad food, you have to get over the bad accommodations. You can’t get to the destination that you’re looking for without going through the journey. To me, that is the nugget. When it gets difficult, put one foot in front of the other. Get off the sofa, set out on that journey, and you’ll get somewhere. It probably won’t be where you thought you were going to get, but ultimately you will get to a new place."
~~~
The videos can be watched at
Sacred Journeys
