One day, I realized that by designating one thing spiritual and another not, I have undermined the core premise of God; if there is a God that comprises/forms everything with his/her infinite benevolence/omnipotence, then by default, everything is equally spiritual.
A better qualifier of value is whether something is functional or not. And that means that over time, it must produce a useful result.
In my opinion, when you give spirituality a function, and define its purpose, it becomes organized religion. If its reason for being is to save souls, how do you measure its success? If its purpose is popularity, power, or wealth. It is easier to see how useful it is.
I’d say just focus on solving problems that propagate harmony. As said in the musing, everything is spiritual by default if we accept the core mystical premise that divinity comprises all of existence.
Gotcha. I was just offering my more specific interpretation, and I get where you’re coming from (I think). Determining usefulness over time requires knowing oneself and one’s true intention, which, while simple, is often anything but, because it’s pretty common that we hide our intentions from ourselves (a premise in modern day psychology). So it means tracking behavior and responses to it, in case what we “feel” is intuitive in regards to ourselves is out of line with reality, then putting together our model of what we want from these evidence-based conclusions. After that’s done, we can determine what we truly think is useful and what is not. The classic example would be a philanthropist who claims to want to help people, but secretly prizes self-validation more than actually helping people, so they only help people in situations where they get recognized. If they were honest about their need for self-validation, perhaps they’d seek some other avenue to quench that need, and not allow it to interfere with the most efficacious way of helping others. Not saying it has to be one or the other, but clarity enhances function over time, in my opinion.
In Judaism, even eating has a spiritual purpose, since we need to eat to have the strength to serve the Almighty.
If there is such a thing as an Almighty, I subscribe to the mystic’s view that it isn’t truly a separate thing we need to serve, eliminating the need for “spiritual” and “nonspiritual” unless we want to play that game for our own amusement. I’d rather just focus on the problems presented before me, with the long-term intention of helping the collective, or positioning myself so that I can do so when called upon.
I think that’s a context-driven case. Obviously, belief in God has created some truly horrible outcomes. But it’s also created good ones as well. I think the main determinant of useful results is knowing oneself, what one really wants to accomplish in the long run, and employing good strategy. Belief in god is subordinate to that.
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Kent Wayne 
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