Articles and Teachings

Forging New Perspectives in Challenging Times: Why Interspirituality is Vital Today
by Michael Pergpola

We live in challenging times. The human population may well be approaching the carrying capacity of the planet. Weapons of Mass Destruction give us a power to destroy each other and our environment. Over the last 50 years virtually all of the remote areas of the globe have become connected to the larger fabric of civilization. Communications have penetrated nearly every part of the planet and every area of human life.

Not long ago most of us lived in self-sustaining local villages, albeit frequently besieged by famine, disease, ignorance and localized violence. We grew our own food, and were reliant primarily on other people within our local area. Few of us traveled very far from where we were born. We had our own set of beliefs protected from the intrusion of novel ideas that challenged our worldview and our way of life. As long as our environment was stable and we were not overrun by a more powerful adversary, we found ways to make sense of our short lives. A large proportion of the “sense making” in the course of recorded history came through religious expression. It was not unusual for people with different religions to use those viewpoints as a reason to do battle with each other.

Today we live in a global village where we are exposed to a panoply of competing ideas. Many of us are saturated to the point where it is difficult to absorb anything more. Yet we are faced with a world that we can not adequately understand – at least until we develop a new capacity that has not generally been a part of the human repertoire. It is the capacity to take a variety of different perspectives, often at the same time, without becoming confused or disoriented. The one fixed perspective that was the basis of the religious and cultural world view that each societybuilt their life on no longer provides a flexible enough foundation for the rapidly changing and highly interdependent world of the 21st century. New, more integrated forms of religious expression,both within the existing traditions and beyond them, are emerging to meet this need. Download .pdf below to read full article.

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