22. What are your spiritual values?
Each individual has different spiritual values because the meaning of spirituality differs for all. However, there are two major schools of spiritual discipline: one based on meditation and the other on contemplation. The former relates to the heart and the latter relates to the mind.
Spirituality of the heart is generally taken to mean the opposite of worldliness. It advocates only one way to preserve one’s spirituality, and that is to retire to a desolate place, leaving behind one’s homes representing material life and undertake meditation in an environment where there is no provocation. It is this viewpoint, which is presented in the well-known book titled The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.
I subscribe to the school of contemplative spirituality. Therefore, for me the biggest thing is intellectual development, whereas for those whose spirituality is based on heart, peace is the biggest thing. I want the process of thinking in my mind to continue non-stop and therefore I ignore all kinds of nuisance.
Man is an intellectual being. He is endowed with a mind, which is his greatest faculty. Real spirituality or contemplative spirituality is that which has the power to address our minds. Any kind of spirituality attained at a level lesser than that of our mind is not true spirituality.
According to me, true spirituality is based on contemplation or reflection or pondering, which has all to do with intellectual activity. The journey of spirituality begins with the urge to search for the truth. When a seeker discovers the truth and learns the creation plan of the Creator, his life enters a new phase, i.e. that of building of the human personality according to spiritual principles. This journey is entirely intellectual in nature. Its quest is two-fold, one is to solve the riddle of why, all men and women undergo negative experiences in this world and the other is to offer positive solutions. It addresses the paradox of human beings having been given the freedom to make their own moral choices, and their frequent misuse of this freedom – a course of action which causes them to repeatedly face situations in which people do each other harm; losses are incurred because of others’ injustice; severe provocations are suffered because of untoward experiences. At such times spirituality teaches us to convert negativity into positivity through the art of conversion.
True spirituality, an intellectual activity, is a science of inner development and material things indirectly contribute towards that development. In fact, material life is made more meaningful by the pro-active role played by spirituality in intellectual refinement and the consequent progress of humanity. Spirituality does not, as some may imagine, arrest the thinking process, but rather enhances intellectual activity in the complete sense of the word.
