Spirituality needs to be able to tackle criticism because, not infrequently, people who say they are spiritual, if they get confronted with criticism of their ideas or their life, find nothing better than getting irritated or denigrating criticism itself, the excessive use of human intelligence, or taking refuge in the uncontrollable, that is, the heart, feelings, intuition, which are places where superficiality and imposture can find a fertile ground. On the opposite side there are those who would never tire of arguing, they love posh chat, provided that they are left untouched in their personal responsibilities. This can cause feelings of mistrust, discouragement, confusion, refusal of engaging in the tiring task of understanding, even in general, towards the very generic activity of thinking and reasoning. This can be considered even a world historical phenomenon where philosophy and thinking have become victims of their own criticism. Once spirituality, as inner life, is considered as the lifestyle which one adheres to with their whole being, it is understandable that criticism is felt not as a simple pleasure of reasoning and discussing, but as an attack against the person. Furthermore, spirituality, even if related to philosophy, is more an experience, a journey, than just reflection, disquisition, so that authentically spiritual and serious people may feel displaced, unprepared, when they face shrewd criticisms. Spiritual people do not set being specialists in reflection as a goal of their life: this specialty belongs to philosophers, theologians, mathematicians; rather, the spiritual person intends to make exist in herself a life experience that can be appreciated for depth, richness of meaning, adherence to concreteness and to the human.

How can we keep us capable of confrontation with criticism, able to give positive and encouraging answers, while at the same time not wasting too much time in preparing counters to all imaginable criticism? Here are some ways that can help.

One way is humility: the spiritual person does not claim to have a ready answer to every question, in spite of how instead these people are often imagined or they show themselves. In this context, the spiritual person aknowledges criticism of her ideas and her lifestyle, without this having to imply to abandon her way. Not knowing how to answer gives obviously a bad impression in front of the community, but, about this, we have the dramatic example of Jesus, whose silence, when he was tried by the priests of the temple, was transmitted to us not as a bad impression, but even as a judgment of condemnation of his accusers. In this context we understand that humility is a beautiful thing in a contexts of serenity, but it may require heroic strength to avoid being plagiarized by popular judgment. From a psychological point of view all of us are, to some extent, dependent on judgment we get from others. However, the spiritual person knows that she cannot give too much space to this dependence, we cannot adapt to the image of ourselves that other people want to impose on us. This, evidently, gives already a glimpse of the prospect of a spirituality work that we need to plan and cultivate with constancy and organization.

Another way of reacting to criticism is criticism of criticism, that is, if everything can be criticized, this also means that there is no criticism that cannot be, in turn, demolished by another criticism. However, since the spiritual person cannot spend her life in studying how to react to every criticism, it will be good to keep in mind some criteria capable of demolishing them all. One criterion is that of the limits of our awareness: to anyone who criticizes us it will be always possible to point out that there may be aspects of the question that both us and them are missing; this means that no criticism can ever make a claim to be definitive.

It may be noted that these paths presuppose, however, on the part of spirituality, an appreciation of criticism as an indispensable tool for growth, and not as an enemy to avoid.

There is a criterion that can resume all of these things in just one: walking. If you are walking nobody can blame you, because you can answer “I am walking, I am already commited to a path, to a work about trying to improve myself”. Besides, those who walk are less exposed to those who try to force our attention to those things that they decide are important. On the contrary, those who are walking are able to challenge this, by proposing their own important subjects and by opening the possibility of discussions about what should be considered important.