Episode 179 – Religiosity

It can be easy to fall into religiosity as we pursue a spiritual path  •  contemplative traditions designed to cut through pretense and nurture humility can do just the opposite  •  we grow up with all sorts of ideas of what a spiritual person is, and we may try to model ourselves into some kind of preset image, trying to be and act “spiritual,” trying to do everything spiritually  •  this can create a feeling or the sense that we’re being super religious, super good  •  this quality of religiosity often carries the atmosphere of everything being serious and solemn  •  we may benefit from a certain level of earnestness and religiosity, but at some point it is so important to lighten up  •  I have found that those that are most deeply committed, the most reverent, are those that are at ease expressing the most irreverent ideas  •  there is something truly powerful in the combination of the profound and the humorous, seeing the profundity within the lightness, and the lightness in even the most profound and challenging teachings  •  on a simple, ordinary level, we can explore our own concepts of what it means to be a spiritual person, and how that might differ from being religious  •  we can look into the difference between a kind of positive irreverence and frivolousness  •  we can explore whether it’s possible to have true reverence without falling into self-conscious religiosity, without losing the light touch of irreverence.