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Being this - potentially classic. Saying it - dud.
If it were phrased as, "I recognize in myself an innate need for belief in something intangible that makes the world meaningful to me and helps me keep my fear of death at bay, but I refuse to connect that to any organized religion," I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. The "I'm not religious but I am spiritual" line is a dud because it's a.) cliched and b.) permanently associated with white people co-opting indigenous cultural traditions.
― Lily Dale, Friday, 8 January 2021 01:27 (three years ago) link
this is white problem in general but it comes through a lot in the spiritual stuff. probably it's still perceived as a kind of frontier, maybe also as a potential source of some kind of moral absolution or existential justification in the colonial context idk
― as#d,.F:ddz;,c#,;;,;,;,sdf' (Left), Friday, 8 January 2021 01:48 (three years ago) link
Feeling feverish atm and self-isolating, sorry if this is incoherent
Dud because it's ambiguously critical of religious observance without making clear any distinction in name or (imo) in practice a lot of the time. "Spirituality" could mean asceticism. Or it could mean superstition, or animism, or universality or religious mysticism, or any combination of these things and others which are very often properties of "religion" as well. Since there are names for these things, we might as well use them imo instead of drawing distinctions where perhaps there are none and creating false dichotomy.
It's easy enough to say that you're a solitary practitioner, or have indeterminate supernatural beliefs, or dabble in the practices of one or more religions without observing any of them stringently.
Re: white people co-opting indigenous and nonwestern modalities- It irks me, for example, when "seekers" refer to religious traditions like Buddhism or Daoism as "philosophy". Like, maybe to you? Western Yijing studies for example have been plagued by a Sinophobic attitude that the Chinese are unfit custodians of their own heritage imo.
― Adoration of the Mogwai (Deflatormouse), Saturday, 9 January 2021 03:17 (three years ago) link