Evolving a public language of spirituality for transforming academic and campus life

Abstract

A growing interest in spirituality in higher education has been accompanied by a range of responses to the challenge of defining the term. These responses include avoiding the problem by leaving it undefined; stipulating a particular and often context-specific definition of spirituality; and practising a kind of ad hoc eclecticism. This article promotes the project of creating a conceptual framework that would serve as a ‘public language’ of spirituality for scholar-practitioners who may not share a common religious, philosophical, political, and/or cultural tradition. In the first section, we present and account for the criteria we believe a conceptual framework must meet to serve as a public language of spirituality. In the second section, we draw from Ken Wilber’s integral theory to bring forth distinctions that we believe will be useful in facilitating this project. We conclude with suggestions for further work to advance this project within higher education.

Keywords:

• spirituality
• integral psychology
• human development
• wide reflective equilibrium
• transformative education

Notes

1. Examples just within Canada of institutions whose educational initiatives attend to spiritual development are The Vancouver Research Network on Spirituality and Healing; the Dalai Lama Centre for Education and Peace; and the Transformative Learning Centre at OISE/UT.

2. As Dwight Boyd has argued, for education in a realm of human experience to be possible, judgments in that realm must be open to correction, which presupposes shared criteria of appraisal.

3. As Dwight Boyd has argued, for education in a realm of human experience to be possible, judgments in that realm must be open to correction, which presupposes shared criteria of appraisal.

4. According to Emmons (2000), the five components include (a) the capacity for transcendence; (b) the ability to enter into heightened spiritual states of consciousness; (c) the ability to invest everyday activities, events, and relationships with a sense of the sacred; (d) the ability to utilise spiritual resources to solve problems in living; and (e) the capacity to engage in virtuous behaviour (to show forgiveness, to express gratitude, to be humble, to display compassion.