The interpretation of crisis from the spiritual perspective

Abstract

World economic and financial crisis with far-reaching consequences arose in 2007. If the crisis is not simplified to the group of experienced events which not only diverge in relation to the ascertained laws, but are regarded as the ones which cause transformations of self-interpretations, then, major steps will be taken towards the acceptance of spiritual considerations. In our opinion, the crisis is of immense importance for considering spiritual engagement. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that the crisis arises not only in the field of economics but in different domains of human life as well. For example, the crisis in medicine represents the moment when the doctor has to choose between life and death for his/her patient. The crisis is also present in religion, in the History of Salvation. Nevertheless, despite the differences, the crisis always represents the milestone in the context of uncertainty which cause profound changes in people's lives. In this paper, we will insist on distinguishing between objective and subjective aspects emphasizing the dynamics of the Self. We think that this dynamics is related to the perception and interpretation of the crisis. This is why we find it important to describe the crisis and its consequences: we share the opinion that the consequences of the crisis have motivational power regarding the self-consideration. This means that the crisis represents one of the decisive moments for self-interpretation of a modern man. Based on the relation between subjective and objective moments, we will specify the spirituality as a post-secular phenomenon and affirm the difference between secularism and profanity. The importance of spiritual practice for economic crisis will also be covered in this paper. The already mentioned economic crisis causes analysis of the structural dimensions of capitalism based on the spiritual aspect. We will clearly state those dimensions relevant for this paper: it can already be seen that it is the correlation between rarity and abundance which will thematize the triangle man-nature-man, then we will analyze the money as an absolute measure which became significant by enormous financialization, and finally, we will highlight the central term of economics, which is the wealth, and which needs to be rethematized based on the tendencies developed over the last decades. Eventually, aspects reinterpreted in this way will allow us to reconsider important aspects of spiritualism such as love, poverty and already mentioned profanity. We interpret spirituality as a reorientation practice, that is, we will show the crisis as a sequence of the following processes: orientation-disorientation-reorientation. © 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.