“Literature is a yoga, a soulnerd’s intellectual-spiritual practice of contour-fitting what we know to what is so.”
I read this in a Psychology Today article this morning. It’s given me heart on this Monday morning after a night of not sleeping and feeling really very raw about how I’m “doing life”. The article is about evolutionary thinker Jeremy Sherman’s take on what it means to be spiritual, in the context of coping with our mortality.He identifies that spiritual can either mean:
1. adhering doggedly to a doctrine of some sort that provides the answers for you (and comfort), or
2. existing in the now, such that you “let go” of the notion of the future (and impending death).
True.
But he also identifies a third way. That of the soul nerd. That of studying our predicament with considered curiosity.