Myriad;
That was an outstanding post. I fully agree with your description.
I also really enjoyed this:
Physicalism doesn't mean there is no ghost in the machine, it just means that any ghost in the machine is also of and by (and in the case of a being formed by evolution, also for) the machine.
As a physicalist, I couldn't have stated that better.
But your whole post is essentially everything that I spend a good amount of time attempting to articulate; you accomplished it far better than I.
I tend to get hung up on the details too much; explaining how all of what you stated physically works.
I really enjoyed reading your post.
Navigator;
I think if you read through Myriad's post; you'll essentially have the same expression articulated as what I was attempting to convey (more or less), but in more easily digested terms.
The the Tangent;
There's this talk circling around 'awe' as if it is 1:1 with 'spirituality'.
This isn't really the definition of spirituality; awe is a part of spiritual experiences many times, but it is not itself spirituality.
Spirituality is a categorical term of interactions.
In a way, it's a conceptual term similar to "relating".
We understand that "relating" to someone or something is not a thing in itself, but instead a concept of interactions which is full of many smaller constituents within the blanketed categorical label of "relating".
We also understand that there is no inherent standard for "relating", but that such is instead subjective to a wide range of interactions and outcomes.
Spirituality is quite similar to this.
It is a term for a set of actions of interaction that refer to a mixture of constituents.
I listed a sort of neurological 'bottom-line' definition for spirituality; one which seeks to answer the question by defining the absolute neurological requirement for the interaction to occur.
This, however, will not suffice as a description of the experience itself experientially; much as Myriad was pointing out in his post.
As such, when we hear people generally describing what spirituality is; we are hearing the explanation of the experience they have in interaction.
This is somewhat like asking everyone what 'marriage' is and understanding that the answers we receive will tell us more about what marriage is like for each person answering than it tells us anything about marriage as an empirical archetype.
The empirical definition of human interactions typically fails to encompass the experiential scope of such interactions, and as such, fails to capture the sensation in the definition; as my definition of spirituality fails to capture such.
As such, we can hardly stop at "awe" and call it a day.
Awe doesn't really cover the quantification of a spiritual experience.
In fact, I would propose that any definition itself will always fail to properly encompass the definition of spirituality accurately just as much as the same is the case with any human emotional experience of relation and expression.
Some things are better comprehended experientially, rather than definitively.
The best that I can offer is to use poetics and state that spirituality is an orchestra of deep emotions moved to an arrangement of sensual experiences in a dance of reverence and feeling, and from which alters the perception of the individual after the experience due to the emotional exchange with the event.
I believe one of the most important factors in this is that it is "
with the event", and not "
of the event".
Personalization is very strong in spiritual experiences.
