Morality vs. Spirituality!

Many believe that morality suffices as a guiding light for the world. But does it? Or is there something far more profound?

You are a good person. You obey the law. You fit into your society. You go to church. You proudly fly the flag. You try to be “good” and “nice.” You don’t hate anyone. You don’t wish to harm anyone? To each his own, right? This, makes you a “moral” person.

Agree? Most people probably would.

Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust and then spent the rest of his life espousing the need to never lose hope or your own soul even when thrown into the most horrible of situations, claimed that “In everything we do, the only conceivable answer is the moral answer.”

Sounds good. But is it true?

Upon closer consideration, not.

The “moral answer” — morality itself — is what any particular individual or culture says it is. “Morality” is easily distorted, contorted, twisted into all manner of belief and behavior. Morality can be selfish, even vicious. For thousands of years, slavery was considered “moral” because those poor souls were too ignorant to care for themselves. Anglo-American settlers rampaged across the continent believing they were the “moral” force in contrast to the “savages,” to whom they were bringing civilization… and Jesus. Conservatives believe they are the “moral” ones, the “real” Americans, and “real” Christians, even as they despise the vast bulk of humanity and are eager to conserve their own advantage, privilege and power.

“Morality” condones the Death Penalty! “Morality” allows for the “unintended consequences” of war! “Morality” goes along with an “acceptable death rate” from traffic accidents, drugs (legal and illegal), guns and bad diets. “Morality” condones the slaughter of over a TRILLION animals per year!

Anyone can believe themselves “moral” if they do not harm, but merely tolerate other people. Doesn’t mean they really like those people, much less love them.

Yet, what did Jesus say? Love your ENEMY! I would wager that few people believe that “morality” by any stretch requires all that!

In recognizing the importance of love (not “morality”), Jesus was on the right track, but even he was still taking baby steps into higher spirituality. Consider that he — and the vast majority of those considering themselves “moral” have been fully, eagerly, often voraciously, engaged in the pillage, rape, torture and murder of nature, most pointedly in the devastation of the biosphere… with hardly the faintest passing thought of its utter DEPRAVITY…. which, actually, is the precise opposite of morality. “Don’t speak of peace and love when you’re chewing on the dove!”

A friend of mine recently said, “I find morality to be easier than spirituality!”

Well, of course. Morality IS easier than spirituality…. Because morality is so much weaker, so much more malleable, far more twistable into whatever we want it to be. Unless you are an impulsive or professional criminal, morality doesn’t challenge us. We can set our own “morality” and not have to change anything else about ourselves. With their “codes of conduct,” even gangsters can believe themselves “moral.”

The currency of morality is individual and cultural bias. The currency of spirituality is love. Real Love. Expansive Love. Universal Love. Real Love is not up for dilution or distortion. It simply is, or it is not.

One can be thoroughly “moral” and still be miserable. By stark contrast, you cannot be miserable when you are feeling real love, expansive love, universal love. These facts highlight the vast difference between “morality” and real “spirituality.” The latter, properly applied, is a state of deep joy, a sense of belonging, well-being and fulfillment. All troubles and negativity are swept away in this state. True, it’s hard to stay in this state for very long… but if we practice, we can seek or summon it whenever we feel we need it, especially when being dragged down into dangerous whorls of the Emotional Wheel.

Indeed, those peak “love” experiences enable to us to carry forth our loving sense and sensibilities to apply to all of the things going on in the “real world.” We should not turn away from the suffering of the world…. Rather, from a place of love, we are far better able to affect change in the love direction. And even if are not able to change much, if anything, in society…. we have spent our lives upon the highest possible “pursuit of happiness….” running ecstatically through the fields of Universal Love. What could be more profound than that? Absolutely nothing.

True spirituality gifts a base-line of happiness, even amidst all the suffering in the world. Because you love it, your heart aches for whatever is hurting or being oppressed, and prompts you to seek to mitigate the situation, or at the very least not contribute to it. But your awareness of the beauty, the meaning and goodness of the world will not allow you to sink into despair or disillusion.

By contrast, the quickest way to happiness, we are told by our society, is to buy stuff. Advertisements, entertainment and pretty much all of culture-at-large assure us we only need this, or that, to be young, beautiful, cool, healthy and happy. Morality does not argue against these notions. You can be perfectly “moral” while driving a Ferrari and dripping with bling.

That won’t work, Buddha told us. He said, “Desire and attachment are the cause of suffering.” Socrates lectured, “He is richest who is content with the least.” Daoism teaches, “The happiest man needs the least to be happy.” These are not exactly new concepts.

Mostly our “stuff” will lose its allure and become not an asset but a drag on our psyche. Especially as we grow older, the accumulating stuff, as well as accumulating memories, tempt us into sentimental, often melancholic, wistful reflection, remembrance and, not seldomly, regret. Even as you think these thoughts are making you happy, on a subconscious level (if no other), they are actually making you sad. Your stuff is no longer new and shiny, but faded and torn. The old world is disappearing, likewise your family and friends. All of this has a singular commonality. Can you guess what that is? It’s all about the human world!

The human world is overflowing with pessimism, pain, anxiety, unhealth, angst, worry, hypertension, depression, disenchantment, hopelessness, restlessness, sleeplessness, not to mention poverty, hunger, exploitation, oppression, war.

Morality is helpless with this conundrum… because it, too, is all about the humans. It’s central concern and target is “fairness…” but parties often cannot agree on what that “fairness” actually entails.

There is something that does address all of these problems. True spirituality. Spirituality, because it is based not upon fairness, but upon love. Spirituality, because it is not all about the humans. Spirituality, because it is always moral and fair in the right and proper sense, while morality barely scratches the surface of spirituality, if at all.

The essential amazing fact about so many great minds and hearts of history, including the founding spiritual teachers, is that so often they had their epiphanies…. ALONE…. IN NATURE.

They were outside and beyond the human realm when they achieved their great enlightenment. They were on the banks of a river, under a tree, in the desert, in a cave, in the woods, on the ocean, up a mountain… NOT with family, friends, social or religious community or human-made structure. This is another key to the chasm between morality and spirituality. Unlike morality (and religion), spirituality is concerned more with our relationship with the Universe than with other humans. It simply has to be.

And yet… no religion encourages the “path of the masters,” a solo journey into nature and the Eye of Love. Love not just for humans (as hard as that can certainly be)… but perhaps more importantly love for all things not human! Indeed ALL things in this world and throughout the wild Universe. Instead of trying to love from the top down, what would happen if we loved from the bottom up?

We are not being hubristic when we think of humans as special. We are special… just by virtue of our magnificent brains. So far the most complex thing we have discovered in the Universe is… US! Yet this masterpiece of evolution does not preclude our being horrible individuals and cultures. Nor does it preclude — indeed it beckons — -some of us — and perhaps, someday, all of us — rising ever upward in consciousness and the realization that our highest possible endeavor, our greatest potential as a shard of the Universe, is simply to fall deeply in love with the Whole Shebang!

Humans, and their shape-shifting notions of “morality,” can and will disappoint you. If they don’t, you probably haven’t lived very long. But nature never will. Even if it is easily capable of killing you; it gave you life, it sustains your life… and it is the (literal) rock-solid world we can always count on through all our days. Nature is never “out to get you,” but you may find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, perhaps because you disrespected it. It is the there-then and here-now and there-tomorrow reality that we can always turn to for beauty, meaning, inspiration, happiness… and beyond all of those positives, the portal into the sweetest fruit of the most complex thing in the world: Universal Love.

We need more than morality in our thinking and being. We need Real Love. And the pathway to that is not religion, not morality, not consumption, not conformity, it is true spirituality… most effectively realized alone, and out in nature. It is waiting for you… whenever you choose to take the journey.