How do you cope with lack of spirituality around you

[FallingStar21]

I am a spiritual person, not religious per se, but my beliefs are quite close to the Buddhist teachings. I also respect and believe there's truth and wisdom in every religion.
My "issue" is that I struggle with the lack of spirituality around me. I mean mostly at work or random every day places where you need to talk to people etc
I never start a conversation of that sort (in fact I shy away from disclosing anything about my personal faith). But as people love to discuss all kinds of things and share their opinions, I have realised that the majority are very much in the material so their interests and priorities are very different. They can often be very sceptical, if not dismissive, of anything that's not part of it and that's another reason I don't say much on such topics.
Of course everyone has a right to believe or not believe whatever they like, but ithe lack of spiritual awareness and mindfulness is really bringing me down. Anyone else feels that way?

@ohmeoh there are a lot of jobs where you go have to keep your opinions to yourself. Teaching, the police, customer service, medicine, therapy-I could go on!

@OMG12 "Do people generally get so upset and angry about comments made by strangers that aren’t specifically aimed at them it must be very tiring searching the world looking for opportunities to be insulted by strangers"

It really is very tedious of you to pretend not to understand. This is a thread which has become a discussion between people who describe themselves as spiritual people and people who don't. There have been at least three specific insults targeted at the non spiritual group. Generalised and applying to all of them. How about not doing it? Then we can chat better.

Funnily enough when you insult a whole group of people you also insult each person in that group,

So you don't think most people are completely fine with being insulted?

But sure, keep going around lobbing insults as strangers and act like they're in the wrong for being insulted. I'm sure it'll get you far in life.

I've only got to the bottom of page 1 so far, but mumsnet seems to be especially combative at the moment! Noticing it on a few threads.

Fwiw I get the op's point about the dismissive/condescending attitude of some non-belief holding people to any form if faith or spiritual belief. I call it atheist-bigotry and its a great example of how bigotry is not defined by religion, faith or anything else. People are always it's driving force.

@FallingStar21 I'd really like to explore my spiritual leanings more so if you want an ongoing thread here then be completely up for that

"@ohmeoh there are a lot of jobs where you go have to keep your opinions to yourself. Teaching, the police, customer service, medicine, therapy-I could go on!"

I wasn't so much thinking in terms of being able to share opinions at will during the working day, I was more thinking about how we are inevitably affected by our own unique perspectives and life experiences. Our own history, our different and diverse cultures shape us. We all have biases. To not let these aspects of ourselves inform our decision making process, at all, to me seems a) an impossibility and b) hypocritical. We would have to not let how we think affect how we act.

And the roles you mentioned, I have been in a couple of those roles mentioned myself, can and do benefit from an individual's own experiences and particular expertise.

@StBrides "Fwiw I get the op's point about the dismissive/condescending attitude of some non-belief holding people to any form if faith or spiritual belief."
Yes, that happens. I wish it didn't. Sadly, on this thread it is entirely the other way round. ANC with added insults!

Sorry, last post, was for @CurlewKate.

Well no matter how “tedious” you find it, I genuinely don’t understand how people take offence at a stranger’s personal opinions about a generic group they share some similarities with.

if someone came on here and said “Blondes are pretty, brunettes are not attractive” I would just think. Well thats their personal opinion. It has zero effect on me. If it was something I found intellectually stimulating I might enter into a debate.

At the end the end of the day, your response to something is only under your control. If you want to chat, just move on from clinging to a state of feeling insulted. Job done!

Fwiw I get the op's point about the dismissive/condescending attitude of some non-belief holding people to any form if faith or spiritual belief. I call it atheist-bigotry and its a great example of how bigotry is not defined by religion, faith or anything else. People are always it's driving force.

Really? Because it's not the atheists on this thread calling people boring and empty and unfulfilled and even unhealthy.

At the end the end of the day, your response to something is only under your control. If you want to chat, just move on from clinging to a state of feeling insulted. Job done!

Perhaps you should apply the same logic when people talk about sky fairies.

And if someone said "black people are criminals" or "gay people are deviants" then that's just their opinion. Any one who doesn't like that is just clinging to a state of feeling insulted. Right? How about "police officers are racist and sexist", I'm sure you'd shrug that off.

Well as I stated, I said that I find non-spiritual people boring (case in point here). I didn’t say spiritual people are boring. I don’t understand how you cannot get the difference. One is a personal opinion or prefers the other is a generalised statement of purported fact. I find dark haired men attractive, I find blonde haired men less attractive, I therefore only date men with dark hair. Would I expect blonde haired men to flip out and moan on and on for pages? No because it would be a complete overreaction to something stated as a personal opinion.

Its probably time to move on.

It is a bit like a conversation with a 6 year old. "I didn't say you were a poopoo head! I said I can SEE a poopoo head in the room!"

Saying "I find you boring" is the same as saying "you are boring". You can pretend it isn't if it makes you feel better about insulting people.

I think I said “what stops debate is shit like ‘sky fairies’”

it doesn’t offend me, I just assume that I won’t get a decent discussion from someone who comes out with crap like that.

I was thinking, as someone who does consider myself spiritual, I think I consider everyone and everything living as spiritual/ as having a spiritual aspect. Just not necessarily of the same spirit as myself. But then, also everyone and everything living has also the potential to change.

So IMO there are no 'non spiritual' living people. Although there might be people who don't think much in terms of spirit or recognise it or talk about related topics. But then, as someone who does contemplate the spiritual aspect to life I see it manifest in the physical...but as soon as it is, manifest, it is physical/ material.

It isn’t the same at all. Can you not tell the difference between someone stating their viewpoint and expressing it as such and someone making a statement which they claim to be universally true of the group in question. I’m not sure how many times you want me to keep pointing out the difference!

I think that’s an interesting point. Maybe the term non- spiritual in this context is a short hand for people who don’t see the world in spiritual terms, of course, from a spiritual perspective most would see everything as having as spiritual essence, whether in terms of a soul, a divine spark, an inner divinity or as an emanation of the divine (or similar types of contexts).

I think you'll see in the same post I also wrote:

"I've only got to the bottom of page 1 so far"

And:

"bigotry is not defined by religion, faith or anything else. People are always it's driving force"

Maybe let's all just simmer down a bit.

So there's a difference between "all black people are criminals" and "in my opinion, all black people are criminals?" And the latter is completely fine and anyone who gets offended is clinging to a state of feeling insulted?

Fine then. In my opinion, you’re an arrogant hypocritical shit. That's not an insult, it's just my opinion.

"I think that’s an interesting point. Maybe the term non- spiritual in this context is a short hand for people who don’t see the world in spiritual terms, of course, from a spiritual perspective most would see everything as having as spiritual essence, whether in terms of a soul, a divine spark, an inner divinity or as an emanation of the divine (or similar types of contexts)."

You see, @OMG12, I see that kind of total unawareness or denial of the spiritual aspect in life as curious. It makes me want to see how deeply it affects someone's perspectives. What is the root of it. And how this can be seen to affect societies at large. What is simply cultural and what is truth/ real. It's a somewhat morbid curiosity of mine but it's there all the same,

And one to which you’re perfectly entitled to.

Now you finally have that out of your system I hope you feel better.

Now let’s move on.

So not going to answer my question then?

It is an interesting question. If “God is dead and we have killed him” what effect does this have on society? Does it improve it or make it worse? Do we simply replace one god with another, one form of religious zealotry with another?

I think it’s difficult to disentangle culture and spirituality and Religion. Which came first? They all appear very interdependent throughout history.

I guess “what is truth/real” is a very wide question. What do you think is reality? How do we decide what is real/truth at all?

I think spiritual can be hard to place. If someone says they are a member of a religion most people will have a vague idea of what that means. What does spiritual actually mean? Tbh I generally find other peoples beliefs interesting, I’m an atheist and I do like hearing about it, always fascinating as a non believer.