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Reception of religion and media 137

to a question about values. She sees it as important that kids be raised to
“have their own mind, to not be influenced by the outside culture,” she
says, “and maybe just the belief that the outside culture isn’t necessarily
positive.”
Distinction from the outside culture is thus quite important to Priscilla.
Its influences are negative, and its vectors into the home (once again, tele-
vision being the primary one) need to be confronted as much as possible.
In describing her own values, Priscilla describes them very much in
reflexive, autonomous, metaphysical, “seeker” terms.
I would describe them [her values] as really functioning from your true
self. I guess that is something that I worked on myself, trying to peel
off the layers that I’ve accumulated from people saying how I should
be and what is good and what is bad. I was raised Catholic so lots of
polarity with good/bad. And, just raising the kids to be aligned with
their inner selves and their true being and act from that place and not
act because Mom says you should act a certain way. Although, you
still have to work within the culture so it is a little tricky to teach them
good manners and stuff. But I still allow what I hope is enough of
their true being to survive and not get buried. So that is really impor-
tant. That and the belief in God, the universe, the spiritual energy.
That is really important and we talk about that a lot. I try not to make
that different. It is just all together. Kind of like when I lived in Japan.
You are not separate from the sacred it is just all together.
Typical of the late-modern, autonomous sensibility, she makes a clear
distinction between the traditional Catholicism of her roots, and what she
sees as a more individual, self-generated spirituality. Spirituality, she says,
is not something that one just does on Sunday.

No, right. It is not something you have to go to church for and you
don’t have to dress a certain way. It is acting from your core and your
heart and your loving being, I guess . . . and respecting nature and
other people. I see that with organized religion that does not always
happen. To me, it creates separation and judging . . . criticism. To me
that breaks off that flow of compassion.

She sees a clear distinction between the traditional ways of church religion
and what she finds the more ideal spirituality she has discovered in
Buddhism. In the process, she articulates the sort of critique of traditional
religion that underlies individuals’ interests in what I have called “repressed
modes” of religious experience. “I know there were ways of getting [spiritu-
ality] through church but it just seems that it was too hard. There are too
many layers to peel off. Where in Buddhism it seems like it is more just