Many people have a spirituality that includes the feeling of being watched by an invisible entity and being either approved of or disapproved of by that entity. That entity is often currently referred to as "God." So if that entity is seen as (believed to be) approving of and wishing for our inflicting PSDED on each other (or ourselves), then according to my values that spirituality would be bad spirituality.

Now a currently arising approach to preventing bad spirituality is to take a stand against spirituality in any form, and the way that this is done is to point out that science has not demonstrated the presence of spirits, that of God or of anyone or anything else. But the problem is that science is purely an extension of the Objective Model, whereas spirituality is a phenomenon only of the Subjective Model. Let's elaborate upon this idea.

Remember that we identified "will" as being a certain subjective experience (of "intention," etc.) and beliefs about that subjective experience that do not make use of the "rules of the universe" the way the Objective Model does. Beliefs about the rules of the universe come primarily from the Objective Model, mostly from what we have heard from others. Our moment-by-moment decision-making does not generally have anything to do with a "universe," but instead this chair, or this person, or this food, etc. There is the "feeling"/"belief" that I am deciding, and also the "feeling"/"belief" that this other person (or animal, or even occasionally inanimate object) is deciding what to do moment by moment, perhaps with regard to interacting with me or having an effect (good or bad) on me.

So the concept of "free will" is part of the experiencing of "spirit." And science does not have as a part of it "free will," because the concept ignores the "rules of the universe," the learning of which is the fundamental and total nature of science. There is nothing within the Subjective Model that even suggests that everything is basically predictable, that is, is following certain rules, whether we know what those rules are or not. Such an idea is irrelevant and useless in the Subjective Model, where we know we "have to be prepared for anything." This is the very opposite of the foundation of the Objective Model, which consists of the basic belief that everything follows certain rules, and that the more we discover them, the more we will be able to do, and the fact that we obviously don't yet know them all, and will never be able to predict everything perfectly, in no way implies that we should stop trying.

And so spirituality is outside the realm of the sciences, except insofar as certain sciences might study spirituality by, for instance, correlating reports of spirituality, or certain kinds of spirituality, with things about the world, including the reported quality of life and the observed effect on the group, society, or species, as well as on certain processes in the brain. There is no way for science to "prove or disprove" the "existence of God," or even find evidence for or against such existence, such "existence" being essentially a component of the Subjective Model, including subjective experience. We know that some people accept all that science comes up with regarding how things work in the universe, but then add that it is God that has decided to make things be that way, rather than some other way. But note that such a belief adds no additional ability to predict anything, and so such belief does not belong within scientific explanation (modeling) nor have any effect on scientific explanation.

So, what should be our basic orientation toward spirituality?

First, we can say that spirituality of some sort is normal and natural, and probably necessary for good mental health and an optimal quality of life. Therefore, the having of some sort of spirituality, in itself, should not be a reason to be criticized.

Second, if we remember that subjective experience is all that we ever have, and that there is no way of saying that one person's subjective experience is the same as another's, spirituality is completely personal. One person's spirituality may be quite different from another's. (One can gain some impression of this of course from the linguistic modeling by a person of his or her own Subjective Model beliefs about his or her spirituality, but one's imagination with regard to what such linguistic modeling, or "description," actually means for that person is just that, one's own imagination.)

Third, although spirituality is basically a good thing, it, like anything, can be "disordered" or "diseased" or "unhealthy" or non-optimal. Therefore, it makes sense to devote some attention to optimizing one's spirituality.

And how does one do that? We learn to improve our lives drastically beyond that which is normal and natural by our ability to "objectify." We linguistically model our Subjective Model, and thereby are able to share and compare our Subjective Model with others, leading to the attainment by our species, and by each of us to a certain extent, of the Objective Model, and ultimately the sciences. So we can identify those aspects or characteristics of spirituality that lead to PSDED, and work toward changing those. And are there fairly common examples of such aspects of spirituality that indeed promote PSDED?

Through our use of the Objective Model, we have come to realize that there are aspects of our species which, although they have served well for the survival of our species, just as for other species, are not good for promoting the good life for everyone, now and in the future.

One of the most important of such aspects is our tendency toward the establishment of dominance hierarchies on the basis of hostility and aggression. This is no different from what is true of chimps. But we are beginning, just beginning, to realize the huge amount of PSDED that is caused by our living this way, and are moving toward using methods of social cohesion and cooperation that are based upon different basic principles than dominance through "force" (induction of PSDED in others) by those most powerful. Democracy is an example. (And perhaps we can do even better with democracy in the future than we currently do, there being much awareness of imperfection in how we do things now.)

So it is not surprising that our spirituality sometimes takes on such negative properties. It is not surprising that some of our religions include a spirituality that has us feel like there is a God that is vengeful and punitive, and that advocates the same for us, and even sends us to war. (My strong impression is that such a God-experience is an extension of the experiencing of one's parents, as will be further discussed below.) Such spirituality is associated with PSDED, and in fact has been associated with incredible amounts of it. Thus, insofar as we wish to reduce human-induced PSDED as much as possible, it becomes apparent that there is room for improvement in at least some religions, and in spirituality in general.

So it is through our use of the Objective Model that we can do some work within our Subjective Model that may have benefit with regard to our own subjective experience and with regard to the quality of life of our species in general.

Changes in our beliefs about our subjective experience result in changes in our subjective experience. We have noted how beliefs about subjective experience can alter the subjective experience by, for instance, adding certain feelings to that subjective experience. What we believe sometimes determines how we feel, so what we believe about an experience determines what we feel about that experience, and that feeling is activated with the experience, becoming a part of that experience, this occurring at a deep level within the brain.

So, if we develop the ability to change our beliefs about our subjective experience, we should expect our subjective experience to change, that is, to feel different. An example would be that of no longer fearing doing something or being in the presence of something. We come to learn (believe) that a situation is not dangerous, so we come to experience the situation as not dangerous.

And this raises the general question as to whether we can and should be attentive, within ourselves individually and within us as a species, to the quality of our spirituality. If we have any ability to determine at least to some extent the quality of our spirituality, then I believe this may be one of the most important efforts we can engage in.