Neurodiversity and Spirituality

We’re in the process of spinning up a “Neurodiversity and Spirituality” group. This will initially be a limited run of events to better flesh out a collective understanding of the relationship between the neurodivergent experience and the concept of spirituality, whatever exactly that is.

There are a lot of overlaps between neurodivergent traits and those characteristics historically ascribed to “spiritual” people, prophets, shamans and the witch who lives just outside of town. This community call is going to seek to answer a set of questions, including:

What exactly do we mean when we use the word “spirit”? Clearly, humans all over the planet all throughout history have meant something by their flavor of this term, but just as clearly the thing they meant doesn’t really translate to into contemporary worldviews. Is there a way to salvage this concept, and in so-doing reclaim ancient ways to relate to ourselves and each other that others have found valuable throughout time?

What is a spiritual awakening? This is an experience that a small subset of people seem to keep having, and broadly speaking it seems to refer to an experience that cannot be easily translated back into terms that those who haven’t had it can actually understand. We’ll take a look at Jung’s sense of the three births of a human being (literal birth, individuation or psychological birth, and spiritual awakening) and collect experiences from group members to better understand what this means.

What’s the difference between a spiritual practice and a religion? These concepts often get conflated, but there are strong arguments to be made that actually they are quite distinct. Is “spiritual but not religious” just a thing people say to mean “open-minded”, or is there something more concrete to it?

Can we reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable truths of different spiritual traditions? Ought we? Different traditions make different claims as to the nature of reality and to what matters in life. As neurodivergent people we are broadly experienced with the idea that humans can exist across largely irreconcilable “realities” - can we apply this perspective to spirituality, and in so-doing seek to understand some underlying axioms?

What’s up with psychedelics? We see their use in mystic sects across time and geography, and they’re often strongly identified as tools used by spiritual guides to better access the spirit world. What does that mean, though?

This group is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and I can tell you right now that many of the conversations we have are going to be in tension with the idea that any one religion is “true”. This space is for people who are curious about other ways to relate to metaphysical reality, and we’ll see if we can’t walk away with a richer understanding of these ancient traditions that’s informed by what we are learning about the way our own bodyminds interface with reality.

Meetings

Meetings are going to be on Saturday afternoons at 6pm EST starting on Saturday, August 3 2024. This is an experiment, and our goal is an open-minded conversation to see what shakes out. If this proves fruitful then we may make this a regular thing, if not we’ll do a few conversations and wrap it up.

If you’d like to participate, please make sure that you have requested access to the Google Group and please RSVP to the calendar event. There’ll be a separate website set up, private to members of the group, for us to keep track of our conversations and to have ongoing discussions as they unfold.

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Request Google Group Access Here

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