Holistic Spirituality

When I say the word “spiritual,” what do you think about?

 

For most of us, “spiritual” has something to do with internal, ethereal, or existential…which is true…it’s just not quite the whole picture.

 

An old Hebrew word calls a soul simply a “nephesh” or “a breathing one.” 

 

This is what “spiritual” is to us at The Spiritual Commute. "Spiritual" is all of who we are…all of which has breath in us is spiritual. So, the physical, mental, emotional, and/or the soul of us can be the spiritual part that is on a commute.

 

Yet, there is a more definitive and perhaps more practical way of speaking about the spiritual.

 

Kingdoms.

 

In old Christian spirituality, there is a way of speaking about the spaces we engage in our spiritual journey as kingdoms.

 

If you are engaging in a space of religion, ideals, morals, and meta-narratives, then you are said to be wrestling with the kingdom of heaven.

 

If you are engaging in a space of laws, competition, demands, and responsibilities, then you are said to be wrestling with the kingdom of the world.

 

If you are engaging in a space of fear, depression, isolation, and bitterness, then you are said to be wrestling with the kingdom of darkness.

 

All three of these kingdoms engage our lives, and thus they all three have a spiritual component to them.

 

So, as you speak about your own Spiritual Commute, this provides another layer of language to be accessed as you share your journey.

 

Yet, please understand these kingdoms aren’t separated in our lives. While they are distinctive in our lives they form an overlap or a "Venn diagram" experience.

 

This means there’s no avoiding any of these kingdoms, no matter what name you give them. All of us will experience the divine next to the mundane next to the depraved. The only choice we have is how vulnerable we are willing to be in talking about those experiences, and which kingdom do we want to have the greatest influence over our journeys.

 

For our tradition here at The Spiritual Commute, we have seen the kingdom of heaven as the space of grace and forgiveness and compassion. We struggle naturally with this space, but only because we don’t understand it and seem not be able to stay in the space. The kingdom of the world we find the most natural place to be, and are most often struggling to “move forward” or “get ahead” in life because of this residence. The kingdom of darkness, however, holds as the only kingdom we wish to reject fully. We wish not to reject those that suffer in such a kingdom, but all the hatred, evil, and violence that flow from it we desire to have no part in our world.