Week 9: Christina Lukban

In the reading "New Age Commodification and Appropriation of Spirituality" by Michael York, we discuss this week's theme of looking at the future of Spirit Realm studies. When regarding spirituality being integrated into our education system, there's grey area between one's "universal rights" versus someone's particular identity. Personally I sometimes find difficulty differentiating what the differences are between religion and spirituality and I feel that this is also where the difficulty comes in when trying to implement these ideas into our class curriculum. Our institution often tries to separate religion from our curriculum and focuses on science as the true reality of life. With science being what is culturally acceptable and deemed as the "correct" way of life, religion is never really taught in school because of how diverse and conflicting religious views are from not only science, but with other religions as well. With this and the inability to separate religion and spirituality, spirituality being taught in our studies has also been made unacceptable too. Over time, Western society ideologies have even changed and overpowered certain traditional religious practices and being a part of this educational system in this Western world, it is up to us to reclaim our truths and understand our true moral values when it has been erased and changed over time. This is why spirituality is such an important facet in adding into our curriculum. If we are not the ones learning and obtaining this information, overtime, these traditions, helpful practices, and answers could continue being erased when in reality, it is extremely beneficial to our lives.

When looking at the future of spirituality being incorporated into our curriculum, how can we ensure that we are being inclusive and learning about all different types of spirituality?