Emotion, spiritual experience and education: a reflection

Abstract

This paper, informed especially by the work of the philosopher John Macmurray, focuses on two personal anecdotes in order to explore the relationship and distinctions between emotional and spiritual experience. Despite being unique to the individual, emotional experience requires relationship, and thus appreciation of the feelings of others is possible through empathy. Emotional development may be a pre-requisite for spiritual experience, and shares some of its features, but the latter is shown to be distinctive in a number of ways, not least in being playful, unpredictable and total. The kind of (child-centred, progressive) education which might facilitate and promote the development of this kind of spirituality is briefly examined.

Keywords:

• emotion
• spiritual development
• spiritual experience

Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented as a keynote lecture to the Eleventh International Conference of the European Affective Education Network (EAEN) at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in June 2011.

2. The influence of Goleman is not without its critics. For example, from an American perspective, Scheindlin (2003) finds it ‘disappointing to recognise that the emotional intelligence movement in schools, rather than promoting rich emotional experience, more than ably serves the interests of the attenuated twentieth century emotional style. The single document most frequently referred to in educational materials for promoting emotional intelligence is Daniel Goleman’s popular Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ (1995). It has little been noted that the dominant theme of the book is the management of emotions’ (Scheindlin 2003, 187). The equally (if not more) important task of developing the capacity to experience and express emotions appears to be greatly overshadowed by the perceived need to control them.

3. As I have said, relationship is central to the experience of ‘the dance’, but there are other sorts of spiritual experience where relationships with animals, things of beauty, even ideas (rather than another person) are central. Being in relation to (at least the idea of) a transcendent Being (God) is, of course, a powerful possibility. All these possibilities I take to be embraced by Hay and Nye’s (1998) concept of relational consciousness.

4. Play has, of course, been central to a number of the great philosophies of education of the last two centuries, most notably that of Friedrich Froebel for whom play was ‘the child’s work’ (see Liebschner 1992). How planned, structured and sequenced such ‘play’ should be remains a bone of contention, especially in regard to education in the early years.