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What Is Spirituality?
March 10, 2009 by Ray Baskerville
Spirituality, like so many things we refer to and speak of on a regular basis, is not so easy to define when we sit down and think about just what we mean when we use it. I imagine that a survey of this question would bring back as many different answers as the people who took it.
In this time, when so many are turning away from organized religion to find meaning in their lives, and with the vast proliferation of teachers and teachings, many people’s idea of spirituality may be a postmodern mixture of all kinds of different elements.
So here’s what I think. Spirituality is our conscious engagement with the process of our spiritual evolution. It is my experience that life in its very nature is a spiritual process of Consciousness evolving. We, in our individuated forms, are the living means through which
Consciousness evolves.
Most of us, most of the time, are caught up in the identification with our thoughts and emotions. In this state our lived experience is dominated by the impressions we receive from our senses, and as such is focused outside of ourselves.
The spiritual process of life takes place within us as our inner experience and manifest externally. If we do not have any means, tools, practice or experience of connecting to this inner dimension of our experience we may be completely oblivious to it. Spiritual practices then are intended as means of developing awareness of this inner dimension and conscious engagement with it.
This inner dimension and the process of spiritual evolution is most commonly considered the domain of the soul or spirit, the realm beyond our physical senses. The soul and spirit being different terms to describe the presence of the Mystery, ever present as the true nature beyond mind – Consciousness with a big C.
Stripped down to this fundamental state, spirituality has nothing to do with a particular set of beliefs, does not require any external objects or rituals. It is in essence our relationship with the Mystery. Spiritual experience then is direct experience of the Mystery, how we interpret it will depend on the belief systems we have at the time. Sometimes such direct experience confounds our existing belief systems and inspires us beyond them.
Many call the mystery – God, by one name or many, and place upon it the beliefs and expectations that we find in religion. The experience of entering the mystery is however a movement into not knowing. The deeper we enter, the further we move away from what words can describe or the mind contain.
Who and what are we when we are not identified with our thoughts and emotions, our bodies and minds? Who and where are we when we are asleep? What is this ting we call ‘I’. Engagement with questions like these is spirituality. All the answers and beliefs our mind comes up with as we go along, will have to later be released, as the Mystery, within us, that inspires spirituality, defies the limitations of concepts however grand.
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Spirituality is a human search for the true self and its connection to the source of life. It is being with the mystery in a beauty way.
[...] spirituality and religion, at a core level are about our relationship with God, the Divine, the Mystery or [...]