Cultural and Spiritual Well-being
Cultural and Spiritual Well-Being is one of the units I am taking in my Batchelor of Arts degree that I have started this year. The Indigenous College of Southern Cross University in Lismore offers this unit. As an assessment requirement for this unit I have to keep a journal of my feelings and reactions/responses to the experiences of this course.
Wow…..I said “he” in reference to god. mmmmm this hit me the night after our tutorial and made me really recognise my cultural programming and how deep it actually runs through me. Sometimes I feel as if the fact that I was brought up roman catholic is something that I shouldn’t let people know about me. It is interesting the backlash against religion, especially roman catholic, that I find when I mention that I was brought up roman catholic. In both the lecture and the tutorial there were opinions expressed which denigrated religion. I felt in agreement with some of these opinions but something that I seem to be able to realise is that there is a religion and also with that religion there is a church, the institution that dolls out the supposed teaching of the religion. I seem to be able to see the spiritual teaching of a religion as separate to the church.
Ok…. here’s a reaction to the lecture. It’s a body/sense reaction but during the lecture, towards the end, I started to see energy fields (fields as in something that I don’t have a better word for) rising off the top of the speakers and the lecturers’ head. I have seen these things before and I can recognise the feeling inside me when it happens. It is very subtle. I like the feeling. I don’t suppose what this is.
Synchronicity and cross subject similarities are showing themselves to me at present. The definitions of religion and spirituality connected to definitions in another unit that I am studying at the moment. “The map is not the territory” concept as applied to the definition of religion by Martin Buber as “Religion masks the face of God.”.