Secular Spirituality
My working definition of spirituality is non-theistic and functional. I am not approaching spirituality primarily as doctrine, religious belief, or institutional belonging. I am interested in what spirituality does: how it shapes meaning, connection, experience, conduct and transformation.
A working definition I have developed is:
“Spirituality begins when connection and extraordinary experience are intentionally interpreted or cultivated as pointing beyond the ordinary ego-bound self.”
This allows spirituality to be understood in secular, post-religious societies without reducing it to vague wellbeing, self-help or supernatural belief. It also distinguishes spirituality from simple aesthetic pleasure, emotional intensity or lifestyle identity.
The five dimensions or pillars I use to study spirituality are:
Affiliation / Identity — how someone situates themselves in relation to religion and spirituality:religious, spiritual, both, neither, SBNR, atheist, agnostic, seeker, culturally religious, etc.
Belief — what they believe or do not believe about God, spirit, consciousness, energy, nature,death, transcendence, the sacred or the unknown.
Practices — what they do: meditation, prayer, ritual, yoga, art, nature, pilgrimage, embodiedpractices, journaling, therapy, contemplation or other intentional practices.
Experiences — extraordinary, transformative, mystical, aesthetic, anomalous, sacred ormeaning-making experiences.
Ethics — how spirituality affects how one lives: values, responsibility, compassion, ecologicalconcern, truthfulness, care, service, moral orientation and relationship to others.
This framework allows spirituality to be studied empirically and culturally, rather than assumed. It alsokeeps spirituality anchored in life: not only what people believe or experience, but how those beliefsand experiences change their conduct.This framework allows spirituality to be studied empirically and culturally, rather than assumed.
Art as Spiritual Technology
The phrase “art as spiritual technology” remains one of the central intellectual contributions of my work.
By this I mean that art can function as a technology of transformation. Artistic practices, images, performances, rituals, music, theatre, film and embodied aesthetic experiences can alter attention, regulate affect, create connection, reorganise perception, produce meaning, and open experiences that exceed ordinary ego-bound consciousness.
This does not require supernatural belief.
Art can act as a secular spiritual technology because it can do some of the work historically performed by ritual and religion: it can hold grief, awe, rupture, beauty, fear, longing, transformation and the search for meaning.
This idea connects my work in anthropology of religion, material religion, affect theory, neuropsychology, ritual studies, artistic practice and contemporary art.