“You can’t talk your way out of what you’ve behaved yourself into.” - Stephen R Covey
I have over the last few months found myself feeling disconnected and more “spiritually apathetic” than ever before. I used to thrive on spiritually by writing, and most of my writing tended to concentrate on balance - now, I’m not so sure. I’m off kilter.
I still have a great desire to write but it feels as though I have lost some of my objectivity, and I have lost the spark of what made me embark on this phase of my spiritual journey.
The irony is that my objectivity has been thrown off balance by a totally unexpected factor, tolerance - and no, not the lack of tolerance towards other religions, but the inane level of tolerance within the Pagan community itself. I may have become intolerant of tolerance - my biggest fear, however, is that I may become tolerant of intolerance.
What is happening?
In essence we become intolerant when we feel threatened by other people’s opinions - then we become defensive, our minds cannot operate at full capacity, and our ability to think rationally is diminished. And diminished rationality leads to questions such as: Should anyone tolerate too much tolerance? Isn’t too much tolerance a sign of weakness? Isn’t it a sign of timidity, perhaps so much so that for the sake of tolerance one sacrifices personal freedom of expression - all of that in the name of pluralism and diversity, which in turn may lead to a convolution of personal values.
On the other hand, can spiritual development be true if certain doors are shut to it due to personal perception (aka opinion), disguised as tolerance/intolerance?
We all tend to walk a thin line between opinion and judgment, and both are formed by personal perception. Why is it that especially in religious debates we are so quick to call out others as being “judgmental” the instant our own beliefs or opinions are being challenged. Just because people perceive others in a certain way does not mean that they are hastily judging them, and neither does it mean that they are correct on their assumptions.
The only difference between a judgment and an opinion is that opinions usually leave room for error and thus debate. Sometimes, when writing, it is as easy as adding words such as “might”, “I think”, “probably”, “I believe”, etc. And these words do not necessarily denote uncertainty; they merely help a writer express certain emotions.
So, the line between opinion and judgment is when we use an aggressive, absolute tone while expressing thoughts. Too often we all fail to understand that judgments are merely opinions expressed as personal facts.
An opinion is made up of one’s own life experiences, knowledge, and environmental influence. Judgement, however, is far less flexible and is not often open to either opinion or debate. An opinion also allows space for doubt, and this is a good thing for doubt is ultimately what so often pushes us to explore the realm of spirituality.
Individual differences between “spiritual truth” and “spiritual opinion” vary according to the ways that one engenders one’s own variation of truth. It is important to realise that there are differences between “individually understood truths” and “individually understood facts”, and “universally understood truths” and “universally understood facts” - and it is often these vague lines that separate people for we tend to forget that truth in most forms is more of a philosophical concept, and differs as much as how each of us differentiate between shades of colour.
Fact tends to be a rather indisputable concept related to empirical subjects, and is firmly rooted and something that is measurable, while a truth is a fluid concept of relative opinion and can rarely be measured.
The spiritual is a lot like truth in that it is not measurable, it remains a personal interpretation of beliefs and is always subjective, but the spiritual allows us to experience our individual personal truths and as such should always allow new concepts and thoughts to filter through.
We live in a pluralistic society with many views, cultures and ways of life. The scale of philosophical and religious thought is long. Although the intensity and variety of religions have increased I still believe that everyone has an inalienable right to believe what they want. That, however, does not mean that since we have the right to believe whatever we desire that those beliefs are all equal and should be indirectly or directly forced onto others.
Getting back to “too much” tolerance.
The Pagan community has fought, and is fighting, for some form of recognition and legitimacy alongside the “big religions” of the world, and while Paganism has made at lot of progress, we seem at the same time to stunt ourselves by an inability to find out where the boundaries of our own religion and spirituality are.
It is time we address the invasion of “New Age pseudo-spirituality” into our religion. One of the main criticisms against New Age religions has always been that it is a place for those who want to escape reality, and we as Pagans may just be doing that ourselves.
Of course we want and encourage the involvement of a wide variety of people, but is Paganism, for example, about communing on the astral plane with dragons, fairies, extraterrestrials, unnamed demons or angels, vampires, and, yes, even sometimes fictitious entities. If we teach our children and newcomers to Paganism that everything is real on “some” ill-defined “plane of existence”, we may be setting them up for failure, disappointment and ridicule in the future.
Perhaps unabated tolerance is not a virtue - at times it may be necessary and time to shout “enough”, even if this leads to unhappiness and even some discord for within discord we may rediscover harmony. If we do not debate and at times disagree, how can we learn from each other, and from ourselves? We tend to disagree about things we feel passionate about.
So let's be passionate without being intolerant, but let's guard against complacency. It is not fun been off-kilter.
