“We don’t need to raise hell to change the world. We just need to lower Heaven.”
Neal Rogin
It’s a common assumption that spirituality is all about transcendence. Meditation, detachment, and “higher” consciousness are the goal. The more “above” the world we become, the more spiritual we’re assumed to be. Enlightenment is directly proportional to the number of hours we meditate.
In this view, dissolving into the infinite is more valuable than descending into the world and transforming it. Detachment and objectivity are seen as superior to passion and the messy process of creation.
Not that I don’t see immense value in the practice of meditation – I’ve been a regular meditator for over 50 years and find it as indispensable as taking a shower. It cleanses my mind and prepares me for meeting my day.
It’s just that I don’t want to spend my life in the shower.
At some point we have to get dressed and engage with the world.
Let’s explore this further.
What do we really mean by spirit, the root of spirituality? To me, spirit is a combination of vast intelligence and infinite energy, expressed through astonishing diversity, exquisite beauty, and a creativity that surpasses all imagination.
But neither intelligence nor energy alone is enough.
For example, AI is intelligent. It can figure things out in a fraction of the time it takes us mere mortals. But is AI spiritual? It may reflect a digestion of spiritual texts, but somehow that isn’t quite the same as the agency and awareness that humans possess.
What about energy? There is tremendous energy in a power plant or in batteries large enough to run a car. But is that spirit? Again, I think not, because it isn’t coupled with an evolving, living intelligence.
But even the combination of intelligence and energy isn’t quite enough to define spirituality. It doesn’t speak of the profound nature of the world we live in. In fact, it often dismisses that world as illusion.
In my view, spirituality is found in connection. And not just to connect, but to enter into sacred relationship, imbued with reverence for the vast mystery from which our miraculous lives have found their manifestation.
To experience as much of this mystery as possible – to engage with it, struggle with it, to grapple with its lessons, is not a journey into maya, but a soul-enhancing dance of mutual evolution, an incarnational romp with the teachings of sorrow and joy, an immersion that creates the capacity for compassion and celebration.
Our purpose is not to get off the wheel and end the dance of incarnation, but to ride that wheel into its highest expression.
Religion tends to homogenize spirituality. It codifies the spiritual experience into dogma, beliefs, and practices. It attempts to explain the world – this happened because of a particular god, or because you were obedient to certain principles or practices.
Such explanations can be uplifting or constricting. They can guide us to exaltation or inhibit our direct experience of the sacred. But they are too rarely questioned.
Many mistake religion for spirituality. They believe adhering to a dogma makes them more spiritual, more holy, closer to the divine.
My own view is that spirituality is a dance of aliveness. Not an isolated aliveness, alone on our cushion, but one that is deeply connected to everything around us. An aliveness that is profoundly sacred, if only because its realization is one of continued astonishment at the depth and breadth of the miracle around us.
Transcendence and Immanence
Transcendence certainly has its place. It’s as crucial to consciousness as rest is to the body. Cultivating empty presence makes room to harmonize the chaotic fluctuations of the soul. Practice teaches us to attune. But we are not here to sing solos. We are here to add our voice to the chorus of life.
Seeing the Divine as “out there” neglects a fundamentally important aspect of spirituality – that of immanence – experiencing the Divine within everything, including ourselves.
That is the true meaning of Namaste: The Divine within me recognizes and honors the Divine within you and within all things.
Immanence is celebratory and creative, both permanent and transitory. It expresses itself through beauty, passion, and profound love. Immanence sees each life as the spark of the Divine, worthy of respect, from the grasses to the forest to the earth and the stars.
Immanence can also have its drawbacks. One can become so “drunk with the Divine” that we become ego-inflated with an “I” that has lost its humility. Immanence can be so focused on the particular, it loses sight of the infinite, so immediate that it loses perspective.
Immanence and transcendence are actually partners in an eternal dance. Each balances the other.
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth
Spirituality that rises above it all, reaching toward the heavens and away from Earth, brings us into separation. Heaven is right here. Earth is infused with it, a perfection we have yet to emulate.
We were not born to escape this world, but to sanctify it. Every act of kindness, every work of beauty, every courageous truth spoken into darkness is a spiritual practice.
If we are to heal our relationship to this world and create a society of Heaven on Earth, we need to let Heaven thunder through our hands and hearts, burn through our fiery courage, and ignite our willingness to become fully engaged players in the act of co-creating Heaven on Earth.
It’s time to see spirituality as embodied and joyous, ecstatic and beautiful, creative and alive, as a shared experience of wonder. It’s time to see holiness not just in our practices, but in our actions, in how we treat each other, in the difference we make in the world.
It’s time to see our embeddedness in this world as an invitation to co-create with the Divine. Not as children of God, but as adults of God, recognizing our own divinity, but in reverence and harmony with the divinity all around us.
So meditate. Pray. Rest in stillness.
Then get out of the shower and put your dance clothes on.
The world is waiting for you.