26. Spiritual Direction in the Modern World

Posted by T. T. in April, 2019

From the earliest of times, the so-called ‘Ancients’ had a firm belief in the concept and reality of evil; they seriously feared being attacked by evil, in any of its guises. As a defense, they relied heavily on the ‘good spirit’ to protect themselves from invasion by the ‘evil spirit’. It appears that present generations, at least in the so-called developed nations, no longer believe in evil and thus they have abandoned the notion of good spirits being created in order to balance the power of evil spirits. Now, it seems that the present world is unprotected from an evil attack.

Kenneth Leech (1939-2015), an Anglican priest, theologian, and social activist, wrote a book entitled “Soul Friend”. In it, he emphasized his view that there existed highly established traditions of systematic spiritual direction in both Hindu and early and medieval Christian religions. He stressed the importance of spiritual matters at the present time and in the future.

Although it is perhaps unrealistic to urge present people to have a vivid image of evil (the devil, demon, or Satan), actually, the mental world of present people is being almost fully occupied by some kind of evil spirit. If an evil spirit dwells in a person’s soul, it could manipulate the person’s thoughts, beliefs and actions, such that they become motivated to love only themselves and to be indifferent to others, including future generations. To save this evil-occupied soul, a good spirit must confront the evil spirit.

In our body, our immune system can defend us, very successfully, from attack by many kinds of pathogen, and the immune mechanisms have been scientifically clarified in detail. Unfortunately, scientific understanding of the soul is still undeveloped so that we have to confront any evil spirit which dwells in our soul without the reinforcements of scientific knowledge and power. Now our Planet Earth is in danger from the environmental crisis;  we might regard this as emerging from our soul that has been occupied by an evil spirit. If so, we perhaps may save our Planet by enforcing good spirits together with our soul friends.

Soul Friend by Kenneth Leech was first published in 1977 with a sub-title of A study of Spirituality. The sub-title was changed in a 1980 version to The practice of Christian spirituality. In the revised version of 1994, it was again changed to Spiritual Direction in the Modern World. In the New Revised Edition in 2001, the subtitle remained unchanged. Leech would be satisfied with this prophetic sub-title.

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25. Gift to the remote future people

 Posted by T. T. in April 2019

Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), a cultural anthropologist, investigated many undeveloped tribes, and found that there were strict rules of gift-to-return relationships, and he concluded that there is no such thing as a free gift.

In modern societies, gift-to-return relationships still exist in ordinary life. When we try to give a gift to remote future people, we cannot expect any return from them. Such a gift will be seen as a free gift. Thus, it seems reasonable that if we ignore giving to remote future people, we will not be criticized.

However, it is obvious that we have already received great many gifts from our ancestors, not only from human ancestors but also from a great many biological species in the history of life. If we consider that the whole environment including from the past to the future is the counterpart of our receiving and giving, then to provide a return to be balanced with the received gift will be regarded as our responsibility.

More than that, if we love future people sincerely, we will be willing to gift them more than we will have received. Regrettably, we have already consumed far too much of the natural resources, and seriously damaged or destroyed whole swathes of nature so that we cannot recover all that has been lost. Even so, if we can seriously change our attitude to the needs of future people, dedicating gifts to such future people in various ways, a strong bond between present and future people could be established, and its outcome would be tremendous.

Further information

Mauss’es essay about this topic was first published in French in 1950, and the first English translation, “The Gift”, was published in 1954 by Cohen & West. Its Routledge Classic version, first published in 2002 by Routledge, has a nice cover design imaging a gift.