We all constantly do something: we walk, read, work, buy, sleep, eat, breathe. The totality of all human actions can be combined in one word - activity. But how different our affairs are! Someone is sawing a forest, and someone is confessing in a temple, someone is inventing a car, and someone is studying art. Some actions are necessary for our body, and without some, our soul cannot be satisfied.
What is a person ’s spiritual activity?
The concept of spiritual activity came to us from philosophy. It is found in theology, which interprets it in almost the same way. Spiritual activity is the activity necessary for a person’s spiritual life. Reading books, creating paintings and poems, forming religious (or atheistic!) Views, understanding the value system, nurturing other positive (as well as negative) qualities in oneself, exchanging opinions that go beyond the limits of frank life - all this refers specifically to spiritual activity.
Spiritual activity is also the process of finding the meaning of life, ways out of difficult situations, identifying and understanding philosophical categories such as happiness and love.
In contrast to the material activities that exist to change the world (the construction of new buildings, medical experiments and even the invention of a new salad), spiritual activity is aimed at changing individual and social consciousness. Even mental activity, as a kind of spiritual activity , works for this ultimate goal, because, thinking about something, a person comes to new conclusions, changes his mind about something or about someone, becomes qualitatively better or worse.
Definition Issues
Some sources equate such concepts as “spiritual life” and “spiritual activity”. This is not entirely correct, because the word “life” is so comprehensive that it only includes “activity”, but is not limited to it alone.
Are all people on Earth inherent in spiritual activity? This question is ambiguous, because no matter how many interpretations of the term we read, everyone will understand it in their own way. Those who believe that spiritual activity must be necessarily creative, that is, have some obvious result for everyone, can say a categorical “no.” From their point of view, a person who is not interested in anything other than receiving money, who does not read books, who does not think about the eternal, and who does not aspire to improve himself at all, does not engage in spiritual activities.
But these skeptics will certainly object to those who look at this concept more broadly. They will say that even marginalized people and crazy people, maniacs and the
most cruel killers still engage in spiritual activities without realizing it, because they at least think, build some kind of images in their heads, set goals, even if they are wrong, and strive for their achievement. There will also be those who claim that even animals, to one degree or another, carry out spiritual activities, because even a kitten, once in a new house, begins to study it, discovering and knowing the world ...
Does it make sense to break spears, trying to find a compromise in determining the concept of spiritual value? Perhaps not. After all, any philosophical concept is even philosophical, which implies a space for reasoning, polar opinions, individual understandings and assessments. Therefore, when defining this term for oneself, one can be content with one of the classical interpretations given in the educational and encyclopedic literature. For example: spiritual activity is an activity of consciousness, as a result of which thoughts, images, feelings and ideas arise, some of which subsequently find their material embodiment, and some remain intangible, which does not mean non-existent ...