So what is the difference between being spiritual and being religious? One includes the other, right? Well, yes and no. The core of most all religions are built on a spiritual foundation, but remember that Man invented religions and so it is subject to his flaws. If a religion says that it’s alright to beat up a woman for a trivial reason or that you must wear a silly clown hat every other Tuesday, does that make it spiritual? Or even moral? No, of course not. So where, then, does being religious part company with being spiritual?
Religions attempt to gain access to a higher power in the hope of improving your life’s condition. This usually means sending out your prayers to the deity of your choice, hope that you’re heard, then have the firm belief that something will happen. Spirituality involves the attempt to focus your mind to gain access to the higher power within yourself in the hope of improving your life’s condition. This usually means meditating to send your thoughts to the Universe in general, hope that it hears you, then have the firm belief that something will happen.
Religions are simply evidence of mankind's human spiritual connection. We connect with something greater than self and we can't wrap our primitive monkey brains around what it is exactly, so we invent religions to explain it.
Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience—something that touches us all.
Even the definition understands you are just trying to find meaning to your life. I love it when people like you think something is missing in our lives because we don't buy into this crap.
Being spiritual is a human experience.
Do a quick Internet search on the word “spirituality.” Go ahead. I can wait.
In less than half a second you will likely get around 47,000,000 hits.2 Staggering, right? While that may seem excessive, it perfectly captures the number of different responses you could get if you asked random people on the street what they think spirituality is. It then becomes terribly difficult to discuss spirituality with others because it is so individualized.
- See more at:
What Is Spirituality?
We can see from the Latin that the Romans believed in a connection between our breathing and our souls.
But it wasn’t until after Christianity became the widespread Roman religion that a word for spirituality itself—spiritalitas—actually developed.
The modern idea of spirituality sprang forth from the individualistic tendencies of Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism, which greatly emphasizes the power of the individual’s inner or mental essence, arose in response by figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to New England Calvinist traditions that preached predestination and the doctrine of the
Trinity. Emerson and Thoreau believed in neither predestination nor the Trinity; they subscribed to Unitarianism.7 Unitarianism states that while Jesus Christ was the son of God and a man, he was not himself an aspect of God as is believed by Trinitarians.
The Transcendentalists became known for their rejection of what they considered to be the conformity of church congregations. They instead advocated a life spent in isolation, during which time God could be experienced. These experiences, the Transcendentalists held, were the only ways in which a person could come to
know God. Emerson went so far as to advocate that Jesus, as a man, celebrated the greatness of man and gave man an avenue in which to share in the divinity of God and take on a likeness to God.8
Transcendentalism paved the way for some of the key aspects of modern spirituality. The individualistic nature of Transcendentalism led many people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to question organized religions and their definitions of what is sacred and holy. As a result, Transcendentalists moved away from ritualized worship and began to seek out ways in which the individual could connect with the beyond.
Online
