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Spirit of Place
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nigelswift
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Re: Tombo and Shestu, there's more...
Jun 27, 2003, 10:10
As I was saying....

Then I had my Big Thing. I found that, as often as not, this feeling was magnified hugely at ancient sites. When Shestu talks of spititual experience at ancient sites I guess it’s reporting precisely the same intense feeling of appreciation that I have. But no way can I call it spiritual, other than if that means utterly rational. My affliction remains entirely uncured. And yet, here I am, after a long and wicked life utterly and exceptionally untroubled by the least glimmering of spirituality in any area, going specifically to ancient sites and having intense feelings of appreciation of place that people like Shestu would happily embrace and understand as being spiritual. Oh, shit, how can I rationalize the position, and avoid admitting that Shestu might be right and I’ve been blind all my life? Well, maybe I can’t, and I should admit that I’ve been given a late glimpse of what I’ve missed. I can live with that, I’m not prejudiced against knowing the Truth, whatever it is. But the thing is, the curse of rationality is that it’s a nitpicker, and it won’t let me entertain spirituality until I’ve explored every other possible explanation. And it’s forced me to come up with aesthetics as an explanation, or at least a theory, as to why I have “spiritual” experiences at some of these places.

Quite simply, I think the ancient people had a heightened capacity to appreciate the beauty of “place”, (what I call aesthetics) compared with us, , and sited many of their monuments accordingly. What more human? I speculate that our involvement with towns and buses and Big Brother has dulled us, whereas their lifelong immersion in exclusively natural surroundings made appreciation of it part of their fabric of being, not merely a weekend wonder. So I speculate that our “spiritual” experience at these places is the result of our being able to appreciate, fleetingly and dimly, what they appreciated naturally and effortlessly. For us, a degree of effort is required. Thus, those who are able to entertain the concept of spirituality, often talk of needing to make themselves “open” to the spirit of the place. For poor saps like me, cursed with Rationality, we can sometimes get to the same position of appreciation by apparently irrelevant training of our minds by constantly peering round an easel.

So that’s my testimony on the subject. The Rationality v Spirituality debate is an artificial construct when it comes to these places. Their Spirit is their beauty, but it’s a beauty beyond every-day observation, requiring us to view it with different eyes. Hence, it effectively lies within a different, largely forgotten dimension. If it’s that, we can all agree without quarrelling.
In reply to:
Tombo and Shestu (nigelswift)		 Replies:
Wow Nigelswift (pebblesfromheaven)
Aha...! (Moth)
Re: Tombo and Shestu, there's more... (Shestu)
it took up several beermats! (TomBo)
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