We're not "spiritual" because it is a handy habit that improves our health and ability to cope with the demands and difficulties of this existence. We practice spirituality because the very existence of this world relies on ongoing access to a reality that subsumes a greater reality beyond which the foundation and subsistence of Being-Itself becomes a presentiment of what-is-to-be, an intuitive becoming of what-is-emerging, as it emerges, with an admixture of participation and subtle influence.
In other words: Is spirituality that way of being which embodies the future by embodying the present as it embodies the origin/past in its real and current manifestation?
...spirituality is not simply a matter of individual choice, individual beliefs, or individual actions. Rather, spirituality is a force that we encounter in the world itself, one that conditions the
intuitive engagements that individual subjects have with the world and that also shapes the very material make-up of the world itself. Both subjects and objects are affected by—and, in a certain sense, affect—spirituality, even if this affection happens pre-consciously, pre-theoretically: intuitively.
Spirituality, therefore, is a dynamic, vital force that shapes our pre-theo-
retical horizons—not just intra-subjectively, but supra-subjectively, includ-
ing the very material make-up of our world—in a way that is necessary for
experience itself but of which we may not be consciously aware, even as
we are being guided by it.
(--p.56, in Phenomenological Spirituality and its Relationship to Religion, by Neal DeRoo)
Looking into one's interior horizon, one looks into the inner horizon of that wherein we reside. The inner looking into the inner. The particular interior gaze reciprocated by the greater interior gaze. Like the psalm -- deep is calling upon deep.
Why bother?
The external world is one of flux and flight, barriers and fight, constraints and deadends. Witness the shenanigans and posturing in the world of politics and dualistic ideologies. It is a push-me pull-you of arrogance and ego seeking to impose personal will for purposes of acclamation, reward, and external satisfaction.
What if . . .
What if all that exterior and external aggregation is actually sliding illusion forming and reforming the unnecessaries of existence (that which stands out and away from, the partial) -- away from that which is core and constancy of immoveable and unchanging wholeness -- the authentic diversity of what is most real versus the pretend accomplishment of fabricated things and stuff that take as their essence that which is corruptible and transient.
Is there an incorruptible realm that is opposite the corruptible realm of human enterprise and transaction?
Perhaps the reason to bother considering the descent into the interior spirit of reality is to discover the intransigent and incorruptible. That realm where the essential is invisible to the eye. That intuitive atmosphere where what we see is what is there. What we feel is that which is truly being, felt. That which we think is what is being, thought.
I do not know what this submersion into the depths of Being would consist of. I do know that the incursion into that realm has been the jarring stuff of mystics and saints, arhats and masters, mahatmas and gurus who've transcended, if only for a brief spell, the surface of perception for the dizzying boundless immersion into, (what can we call it), What-Is-Truly-Here, What-Is Truly-There, What-Is-Wholly-Nowhere.
Not everyone is interested in such a quest.
Perhaps, not many should be so interested.
Such a "not just intra-subjectively, but supra-subjectively" would be dizzying and disorienting.
Perhaps such caution is reflected in the warning in scripture that no one can see the face of God and live.
There be dragons in that terra incognita, in that unexplored terrain that drops through, into, below, and beyond what is known.
I understand the hesitancy and the caution.
Never go anywhere you're not called.
Still, we listen.
Deep in the night and deep in the day, we listen.
But, I suspect, any sound is filtered through our fear. We're mired in duality. We fear what is good is also what is evil. So we stay put, warn others off, and stand our ground against perceived enemies and potential wrong turns.
Is it something that looks like fear?
https://youtu.be/zsl8jEIddJc?si=_LUIqHPfYgnr1a-H
https://www.bluegrasslyrics.com/song/whos-that-knocking-at-my-door/
Or, something that looks like love?
https://slimmersion-france.com/resources/culture/lyrics/ne-me-quitte-pass-jacques-brel/
Our task seems to be the question of fear or love.
No hurry.
No worry.
There's no place to go but here.
Right where you are, be the right you are.