Week 9 - Future of Spirit Realm Studies - Calvin Huang, Ricardo Romero, Ryan Tong

In the article by Eric J. Ritskes, spiritualism is defined in the sense of our current world, namely the western section.The author believes that spiritualism is not just composed of just a single individual, but rather it is supposed to encompass a community.  Without these connections, “spirituality falls prey to individualism and relativism”.(1).  Ritskes then relates that to the possession of knowledge.  He believes that knowledge is made from multiple, localized lived realities which avoids the postmodern tendency to over objectify individual voices or experiences.  This knowledge is passed down from institutions that “have been used to silence the voices and knowledges of indigenous people, divorcing them from their histories” (4).

And this impacts not just our topic, “Future of Spirit Realm Studies”, but all of the classes available in our academic institution.  These academies have the potential to define, to manipulate our knowledge to the extent of brainwashing us.  Who knows if they haven’t done do already.  Take for example Dr. Hamamoto’s recent departure from campus.  He was not violating any rules in the campus, yet he was outed on some “basis” that his class was not appropriate for the college.  Yet students wanted to take his class, it was not forced upon anyone so why did the school ban him?  It was to preserve their hold on the student population.  Dr. Hamamoto was telling the students too much about the system of domination in our campus, so the campus decided to remove the professor.  The institution silenced both the voice and the knowledge of the professor, giving us a glimpse of how the system operates.  To take a break from the system, let’s talk about how spiritualism is defined.  The word is not easily defined, as many people view it in their own way.  However, it is mostly dependent on one’s ability to discover the ‘authentic’ self, but there is something wrong with this.  The author argues that by viewing spiritualism as authentic or inauthentic, it marginalizes the topic.  Secondly, by looking into the pure and innocence in us, we often forget or trivialize many factors that have shaped us into who we are.  Finally, Ritskes believes that we need to view the core of spirituality as fluid and dynamic, so we can learn from the past.

In addition to connection of a community, Ritskes talks about our connection to our history, connection to higher beings, and our connection to one’s whole self. These definitions are loosely defined by design and allow people to understand spirituality without setting tight bounds.

From reading this paper, the idea of spirituality really resonated with the experience I had attending Christian bible studies. Throughout my life, my father has always fed me a strict belief, that religion is a brainwashing made by the people to control others for power or money. As a former Christian himself, my father was a follower of Jesus Christ himself. He would attend church regularly, as he told me he was truly into it.

In order to be a former Christian, he had to cease his faith at one point. During his Christian life, my father dreamt that he had seen Jesus Christ in his dream.The context was vague and he did not understand Jesus Christ’s visit. Confused, my father moved towards the local church where he asked the pastor to clarify his dream. My father explained the dream of how Jesus Christ approached him and told the pastor, but the pastor’s response was much too silent for my father. The pastor gave him a multitude of possible responses of what the message might have meant, which only further confused my father. He went looking for answers and only received more questions. This made him grow skeptical of the church and the religion he followed.

My father told me he quit following Christianity that day. He has always told me, “religion is a tool used to control the weak minded. It’s bullshit.”

However, regardless of what background one observes my father’s experiences, you should not agree or disagree with his experience. Whether one is a strong follower of a faith or believes in no faith at all, there is nothing here to be an agreement of.

The point I am trying to make here is that whether or not there is an agreement or disagreement with my father’s beliefs, one must realize that there are people out there, not just my father, that hold the same belief. And that is okay. It may be in the norm or not the norm. It may be one’s beliefs it may be against one’s beliefs.

One must realize that these people exist, they are part of our world, and that we must share it. Not just as a way to appeal to others, but to understand that in order to operate as a community, we need to have both similarities and differences. If everyone followed one belief, we would all have the same beliefs. We would have a science, only that there are no discrepancies of inconsistency. Our different beliefs is what shapes our community. It gives life to our diverse society and we should accept our so-called, freedom of religion.

Debate among religion always ends up in flames. “I’m right! You’re wrong!” Everyone holds onto their belief as correct, and if anything contradicts that said belief, there is an argument. People always try to hold onto what is correct and what is wrong, although that will never be met in a spiritual discussion. There are different spiritualities and outlooks on how life operates, and we still have unanswered questions of how this world works. All these beliefs are just different ways of explaining how our world works, whether in our current life or the next. Of course there are going to be differences in one explanation when contrasted to another.

So why is there argument on what is correct and what is false? No one knows how or why people are on this planet. Different beliefs will always have different explanations. By human nature, people will reject anything that clashes with their belief, but in order to understand our connection to spirituality under the belief of Ritskes, we should encompass all of our variety of beliefs.

Indigenous spirituality is more often than not disregarded and dominated even by the more western spiritual forms of spirituality. So there is a difference between the two, indigenous and western(christianity, catholicism, etc.). In order to be able to utilize spirit as a from of resistance we must be understanding of the various forms it comes in and that there is not one way of practicing it. Ritskes elaborates on the fact that there is multiple ways in combatting the oppressed methods our society has created through the demoralization and dehumanization of our indigenous spiritual practices. Even though these are some methods of resistance, we must remember that our indigenous people have endured many years of terrorizing and colonization, so there is still much healing to be done that cant be done in a matter of one course length.

Ritskes explains the various forms by dividing them up in too 4 categories; Recognizing and Affirming Difference, Affirming Collaborative Learning, Creating a Space of Openness and Belonging,  and Creating Space for Active, Embodied Learning. These methods are all great and have there individual qualities that are beneficial to the exploration of spiritual methods. Though one of the major flaws that Ritskes even sees is that this is not something that can be fully adopted by the academy as curriculum. I also agree with this even though he goes on to state why it should be used, because it starts to become something that is formulated to fit within a system it is not meant to be in. With that comes the process of acculturation and assimilation, that is something constantly being resisted on a daily basis. 

As a summarization of the methods Ritskes proposes I believe that the best way to use spirit as form of resistance is through the community setting. Allowing people to be able to practice indigenous forms of spiritualism through there own  community where the environment is welcoming to all. Being able to instruct community members on the various forms increases awareness on the subject and provides others the tools to explore their own spiritual self.  Unfortunately due to the colonization of indigenous people and cultures it will take a long time and work for their lives to be able to live in peace because of the historical legacies that have plagued their existence. As a human race we need to become more understanding of other peoples forms of living and be okay with seeing each other as equals.


Works Cited:

Ritskes, Eric. "Connected: Indigenous Spirituality as Resistance in the Classroom." Spirituality, Education & Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 May 2017.