Abstract

Spirituality underlies the search for meaning in religious experience, 12-Step recovery programs, holistic medicine and the arts. Spirituality is an innate search for ultimate meaning. It leads to participation in values in a way that reflects the best and worst of the human condition. The spiritual tendency can function as a source of good as well as a source of evil in which we empower or disempower other persons, the environment, and the self. While we usually associate spirituality with the desire to do good things through participation in religion, God, family, and humanism, misdirected spiritual energies can be recovered through religious devotion, holistic medicine, and programs designed to promote recovery such as the 12-Step movement. The beauty of the arts is also seen to play a constructive role in directing spirituality towards positive outcomes. Spirituality as a tendency towards the higher good is factual and dynamic rather than normative and static.

Highlights

  • IntroductionThat search is misdirected whenever spiritual energies move us to substitute the secular for the sacred

  • While spirituality fuses with religion to discover the ultimate meaning of life, the 12-Step movement, holistic medicine, and the arts are primarily therapeutic interventions as they seek to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of personal happiness

  • This suggests that spirituality can serve as a force for good as well as a force for destruction

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Summary

Introduction

That search is misdirected whenever spiritual energies move us to substitute the secular for the sacred This is because the spiritual tendency is factual rather than normative as we frame the meaning of life in a way that reflects the best and worst of the human condition. The person-making process and spirituality in action model provides a foundational perspective for the application of spirituality to various areas of human activity such as religion, medicine, the 12Step movement, and the visual arts to name a few. The spiritual drive generates our existential thirst for meaning in those areas of human relationships while the specificity of religion, medicine, and the 12Step recovery movements provide instances of spirituality at the operational level of discovering meaning.

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