- B.F. Skinner
Spiritual Technology
There are many technological inventions that make our bodies mobile such as the cart, wagon, bicycle, automobile, train, airplane, rocket, etc. Our ingenuity has created many devices for transcending our physical body's limitations, and this same ingenuity has created methods and processes for furthering our spiritual growth.
Some of these add-ons are like vehicles in their own right, and there have been religions formed in the past based upon using such devices, while some are just inspiring thoughts to guide us. Some have become ritualized. Whatever their level of complexity they are all devices that optimize the mobility of our unified human vehicle, our Personality, in the mastery of our destiny, our selves, and our environment. Basically, this is "spiritual technology".
The most important thing necessary in order to get our vehicle moving in the right direction is the ability to follow the spirit's leadings. Although the body and the mind are equal partners in this adventure, they have their jobs as does the spirit. The body's job is to stay alive and be healthy, to be the material platform for the mind and soul. The spirit's job is to lead, to give us direction in the course of our lives. The mind's job is to make decisions, to follow the directions of the spirit and at the same time to keep the body healthy and happy, but sometimes the body and the spirit have conflicting desires, they want to go in two separate directions, and sometimes there is garbled reception of the leadings of the spirit. There can be many problems associated with running the human vehicle efficiently and purposefully and there have been many techniques created on how to reconcile these difficulties. These techniques are your custom upgrades. For your human vehicle comes with standard components that are essential to everyone, but it is often desirable to add a few additional devices to suit your own needs.
Because of the ritualization of some techniques for mobilizing our human vehicle, there are age old methods that have become burdened and encumbered with unnecessary baggage and stifling practices. So first, a word on rituals.
Hate Rituals?
In the early days of mankind's history when we use to be foragers, the whole tribe would travel in search of food. When the tribe got lucky they would find a stand of wild grain or a flock of wild chicken and they would settle down for a time until all the food was eaten. Then they would move on. One day someone thought of planting seeds to grow their own food and raising animals on their own. This enabled the tribe to settle down permanently in one place and start a civilization.
The same goes for spiritual food, that is, spiritual experience. We could live our lives hoping that we would come across spiritual experiences, or we could be proactive and create situations that lead us directly to them. People have been doing this for ages.
A creative individual would have an enlightening experience seeing an inspiring sunrise and would try to duplicate it by having a bonfire lit on top of a hill at all times. Once a day the people would go to the hill to pray and worship. This worked great for a while until the novelty wore off and it became a meaningless ritual, but the people found it difficult to abandon the practice when it became a superstition. They feared that ceasing to honor the ritual would bring them bad luck. Consequently, they still keep practicing the senseless ritual to this day, empty of all meaning and value.
The moral of this story is that rituals can be an effective and beautiful way to remind ourselves that we are in the presence of God at all times, by utilizing it to open our minds to a fresh realization of God's love for us and each other, but when the original meaning is lost, there is no value to it and should be discarded. Then, new meaningful rituals can be created which will give us new ways of having a spiritual experience.
Techniques to further our spiritual explorations have been around a long time, unfortunately, much of them has devolved into meaningless rituals awkwardly supported by dogma and tradition. Some of them are effective to a degree but there is so much baggage attached to them that they do not charm or attract those who seek to get away from the rigid doctrines and limiting creeds that surround those traditions. All rituals will eventually fade and disappear, but we must take care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We must keep the drive to seek
