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Do You Use Spirituality to Escape Pain?
In all honesty, there’s very little that many of us do that don’t involve trying to escape pain and suffering. It’s human nature to avoid discomfort! We’ve survived as a species by minimizing and handling catastrophe, and that includes physical and emotional pains.
Psychology — the study of human behaviour — must’ve come about by wanting an explanation as to why people suffer. Religion came about because people wanted an explanation as to why natural disasters ravaged the land as diseases simultaneously wiped out our fellow man.
Spirituality is a bit of both, isn’t it? Spirituality concerns itself with explaining consciousness and life as it is. Spiritual people often seek an enhancement of one’s consciousness often by incorporating practises to improve how one feels and perceives life.
As someone who became Christian at six years old, who studied psychology in school and outside of school, and has dived into spirituality for the last ten years, it is not only easy to use religion, psychology or spirituality to escape pain, but it is largely expected.
Spiritual people would be shocked to realise how much they have in common with the alcoholic, the smoker, the sugar lover, the sex addict or the gambler — they are all trying to escape pain. And the most important thing to note is the motive as to why…
