"The Druid system forbade learning from books.... and insisted
on oral and meditational communication with other people and
Nature,,, sustaining spiritual Tradition through individual relationship with the Infinite, rather then by ready-made recitations from previous people's findings."
__W. G. Gray, "Patterns of Western Magic," in R. J. Stewart's
"Psychology and the Spiritual Traditions"
Genuine, living spiritual traditions arise from our own life-context, not from our adoption of other people's experiences and teachings. This rather startling revelation is the received tradition of the Celtic realms and of traditional societies worldwide that rely upon oral rather than written sources.
Today, when so many people are seeking to appreciate their ancestral spirituality, there is a hunger for 'authentic sources.' Unfortunately, many seekers gravitate to poorly researched or speculative commercial works that have no basis in any kind of practical spirituality.
Our individual relationship with Spirit has to be personal and immediate for it to have authenticity. It cannot be gained by reading books. In every place, in every time, with every person, Spirit communicates in its own ways. Those who advance their spiritual lives by spending time in nature, in meditation, and in practice learn the eternal knowledge which is the heritage of mystics in every tradition. To simply make repetition or to blindly accept the findings of others, without personal perception and understanding, invalidates our spiritual path.
The truly authentic spiritual tradition is the one we are actively practicing: while it may indeed correspond with that of many other people, there will always be features within it that arise unquietly from our own living context, which we know to be authentic to the very core.
"Recognize at least three principles discovered from your own life-context by which you spiritually steer."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
Do you think that when we rely on written sources, we inevitably lose something in the translation? It seems to me that those cultures that have a rich history in oral traditions are more in touch with their own personal spirituality, as well as their cultural history.
ReplyDeleteYes, I do think we lose something in having only written sources as our spirituality source. There is something about the passing on of spiritual learning in the spoken word that books can never convey to us. The actual contact with other humans who practice what they say can be made up with written words on dry pages. Sobeit
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