Morals, Identity, Spirituality, And Religion.

Morals, Identity and Spirituality.

In life, we are often confronted with moral and ethical dilemmas. We make choices, thus deciding what path we take onward on the remaining journey in front of us.


Morals.
By moral dilemma I mean a predicament testing our conscience. We have to decide what we hold as right, what as wrong. Our values are tested, and in the process, reinforced or changed. But always strengthened. Facing problems makes a better man, though it always does not seem so at the time.

The question of morality is of paramount importance, because one’s morals define one’s identity and one’s perspective on life. Often we are born into a set of values, given to us by our parents, our peers, and our community. We accept this value-system, taking it as Holy Writ; immutable. If we do not strive to continuously reevaluate these morals, we may not become fundamentalist in our beliefs, but they remain static.

You cannot appreciate the qualities of a prism looking at the world through a blue-colored glass. Roses and thorns will seem to be of the same color. A rainbow will simply be a band of lines shading from black to blue and back to black.

And so it is that one cannot appreciate fully the commonest group of morals found in almost every subset, and believed in by the largest part of humanity by refusing to experiment and change one’s perspective.


Missionaries and Tribals.
To the Christian missionary, he is doing a great service converting the “pagan” heathen by making him hear the Word of the Lord. To the keepers of that “pagan” religion, the philosophers carrying on the ancient traditions evolved over time by their own thinkers, the missionary is doing a great disservice by pulling wool over the convert’s eyes, deluding him away from the righteous path of life.

Both the missionary and the native religious leaders are good according to their own morals, yet subversive, if not entirely evil according to the other’s morals.
Yet when you are reading this paragraph, you have the unique vantage of having this situation sketched out to you in an impartial manner. The situation could have been presented thus:



“These poor people. They know not the Word of the Lord. They are ignorant. And their ignorance is the root of their sin. Forgive them, my Lord. Give me strength to help me show them your Path. In nomine patrius…” – thoughts of the missionary.

“That outsider has been trying to lure our people into renouncing the religion of our forefathers, claiming that the wisdom our people have put together over centuries is worthless, and that this is the road to evil.”

“Did we invite him? We are not evil. By saying so he insults our very goodness. He is the one sowing seeds of discord in our community. We were getting along just fine before he came about with his funny ideas.”

“This is not good. Anything that disturbs the peaceful existence of our people as ordained by the spirits of our ancestors who watch over us is not good. That missionary is not good.”

“We shall have to perform a ritual to ask for guidance and strength for saving our people from this apostasy…”

- Discussion in tribal leaders’ camp.

Taken individually, each perspective is wholly understandable, if a bit simplified for the sake of argument.

But go back and read the impartial discussion of the situation. This can be attained only after reading both these subjective views, understanding them, and collating them to form a cohesive view of what the situation would be like, if one were to see it without any emotional attachments, dispassionately, objectively.


Objectivity and Subjectivity.
Objectivity rises only through rising above subjectivity. But one has to experience subjectivity first.

One has to see from all the differently biased viewpoints to ascertain that there are limits to subjectivity, as a point has to move to all the different quadrants within a circle to find out that there is a definite circumference beyond which the circle ends.
Thus only will the point start looking out of the plane, having experienced and exhausted the possibilities in that enclosed space.


Conscience and Identity.
Our experiences often define our conscience. By experiences one need not mean personal experiences, but even the community’s attitude towards issues.

A young boy born into a household where the head of the family was a prominent member of the Ku Klux Klan would not find the theory of white supremacy absurd.
He would see no harm in lynching African-Americans simply for the color of their skin.
For his father, the person who would define his morals for the greater part of his formative years, it would be the most natural thing in the world to pass on his beliefs to his son. His son would therefore associate with his father’s KKK friends, and be exposed to racism in a very different way than an African-American child, for example.

Is the KKK-initiate evil? Not according to his morals. He hasn’t reconsidered his rights and wrongs, simply accepting what was given to him. His fault lies in not thinking and trying to define his own viewpoint, not in being evil.

A tribal woman who teaches her daughter to obey her husband no matter how much he abuses her, no matter how much undeserving of respect the husband may be, is passing on a value-system to another individual who will be very reluctant to question this system and break out of it to find her own morals.

A teenager who tries smoking or other substances does so mostly under “peer pressure”. Peer pressure is not really pressure, nor merely pressure. It is imposition of a communal group of values onto an individual, in this case during a critical formative part of the individual’s conscience and psyche.
He knows it is wrong before he tries it. But afterwards he continues doing it, getting addicted, and his conscience often conveniently overlooks this drastic change in morals.

The tribal woman’s daughter, the puffing teenager, and the KKK scion all are guilty of having their identity defined by others. There are circumstances where one cannot go against the tide, no matter how much one tries, yet the forming of one’s conscience is firmly in one’s grasp.

Revaluating Morals.
We must understand how crucial morals are to a person’s life. They are the base of life. Not just of interactions with other people, but also of how one sees the world and one’s place in it.
And so we must understand how difficult it is to step out of the value-set we are given and look for another - searching, experimenting, thinking, rejecting, but always persevering till the inner mind is at rest.

Therefore, we must appreciate the ones who are able to do this - to reject the code of life imposed on them by heredity, and search for their own. They may find that their original value-system was what they were searching for. But the goal is not important; the search is; the breaking-out is.

Yet we must realize just how crucial this search is. It is difficult, this renouncement of everything we know, for one is left with a sense of loss, often grief, loneliness, and fear for being without an ethical support system.

One who renounces in such a way is initially afraid because he no longer knows what really is right, and if there is an absolute right. It is frightening to not know right and wrong when you have known for such a long time. It is frightening to not know.

And this search defines our identity.


Identity.
Identity is very important - ask anyone. If we do not know who we are, we do not know what we have to do, if we have to do anything at all. We are afraid of not having an identity. Sometimes this instinctive desire for identity manifests itself as the desire to belong to a community, a society, thus ensuring an identity for oneself by belong to a larger group. At other times a person wants to shun this social identity and search for one of his/her own. Both collectivism and individualism are simply different manifestation of the desire for identity.

What we are defines how we think. What we are is the sum of our experiences, and our experiences indicate the choices we will make in future situations, thus defining the direction our future identity will take. It is a cycle.

As our morals define our identity, so our identity defines how we perceive life and the world around us. When we try to understand the world around us, inevitably, in one form or the other, we come to spirituality.


Spirituality & Religion.
As our morals define our identity, so our identity defines our spirituality. Our sense of being defines how we perceive our place in this universe. Our notions of nature, of God, of good, of evil, of duty, of love, of laws, of the relevance of laws… thus, in a way our identity defines our identity itself.

But identity also defines spirituality. We try to understand the world and we are faced with questions measured in the dimensions of the infinite. We human beings, possessing finite biological information processing capabilities, try to understand all of creation. We try to understand infinity. And we fail.

We fail because we see our bodies as finite, which they are. But we do not see the soul within, which is not finite. The soul is a small part of infinity, infinite in itself. When we realize infinity cannot be explained with the brain, we turn to the mind.

And so we define how we see the concept of God. God is Allah to some, Ram to others, the Father to yet others… the list goes on.

To atheist scientists God is the infinite sum total of energy in the universe.
To Agnostics God is irrelevant, for he interferes not in man’s affairs, and being perfect, is unattainable to an inherently imperfect human species.

Yet all agree God is perfect, whether real or not. How we see that perfection, how we choose to define our ultimate pinnacle of achievement, forever unattainable in effort, yet always the only goal, is our interpretation of God.

Religion and Rituals vs. Spirituality.
Speaking frankly, very few religious people know why they are religious. Very few Hindus know why yagnas are conducted in the precise manner they follow or what significance the time of the day has on the desired effects of the ritual. Very few devotees know why the prayer they are singing is in the form it is, and being sung in the tone it is. There might be reasons behind every ritual, or it might have resulted from a long time of following tradition, obscuring the real purpose behind the ritual. Religion often overshadows spirituality.

Religion is not bad. It is in no way less than spirituality. In fact, it is built up upon spirituality, as a means to implement the faith system of a spiritual philosophy and relate it to a practice in real life, so ensuring that the idea remains fixedly in our minds, not allowing us to forget.

By being devoutly religious we have a chance to be sublimely spiritual, if we examine the reasons behind why our religion is the way it is – the customs, the rituals, the social practices etc.


The Cycle
Having defined how identity gives birth to spirituality, we must also see that spirituality in turn also defines our morals and our willingness to constantly re-examine them.

If we believe in our version of God strongly enough, unshakable in the faith that He guides us always onto the right path if our intentions are pure and efforts diligent, then only we will be willing to let go of our system of morals, having faith that we will not go astray; that we will always have someone watching over us while we search for the right path this time and every other time.

Only then will the mind even consider reconsidering itself.

Thus spirituality leads to the ability to re-look at our morals.

An important point to be made here is that this cycle is not automatic. At every transition there has to be will and faith in one’s innate goodness. Willingness is very important, the only and all empowering catalyst. Where there is a will, there is a way, true, but without a will, there is no way.


Thus morals, identity, spirituality and religion are so wonderfully interlinked. One has to read a lot, experiment with one’s conceptions more, and meditate upon oneself and the ultimate goodness of the soul even more to have any chance at all at succeeding.