I keep hearing from people in my life that spirituality is an essential part of living a meaningful existence. I hear the phrase “let go and let God” and “everything happens for a reason” used a lot as advice and comfort. However, I’m an atheist and a materialist. I don’t know how I could even be spiritual with those beliefs. At the same time, my life is not fulfilling despite the fact that I am not struggling financially. Moreover, I feel paralyzed when I try to get off my privileged ass and do even the bare minimum for socialist organizing because I realize that it goes directly against my labor aristocratic class interests. I feel like knowing that sticking my neck out and contributing to the real movement to change the present state of things is the morally correct thing to do isn’t enough to drive me.
In short, what is spirituality? Is it compatible with materialism? If so, how? And if spirituality is the wrong tree to bark up, how can I drive myself to do what is to be done?
I was once described as a “spiritual athiest” for believing in a connection between myself and the universe around me. As I move through life I take and I give or, if you prefer, I am influenced from and I am influence by the world around me. While I am alive I have some choice in how to shape those interactions. When I die, the last of me is released from this consciousness and returned to the universe. All without any form of supreme being.
The only “higher power” I believe in is the ineffable rules that ties the universe together, and those rules don’t care about me as an individual. I act and the rules respond, void of any conscious thought.
That type of thinking doesn’t really drive or motivate me beyond informing my decions in choosing a path to a destination or deciding that a destination is not worth the journey.
If you are not driven or motivated to continue your pusuits then it might be time to move on to something else. You tried something and it is not right for you at this time. Learn and grow from the experience to help find future interests. Maybe you come back to it later or maybe you don’t.
We exist for such a brief moment and, in the end, it doesn’t really matter to the universe what we do so uou might as well spend your time trying to focus on what makes your journey the best one for you.