The Neglected Topic of Spirituality

This blog is devoted to a discussion of spirituality and ideas related to this topic. While there are so many websites and blogs about all sorts of ideas under the sun and beyond, the topic of spirituality is a neglected one.
More Searches on the Body

By searching through the web pages we find the impression that this topic is not given its due importance. Using the data generated by softwares which search for the times a word is searched in the Internet it seems that the word “spirituality” is searched fewer, much fewer than other words.

For example at one time while there were 20,742 searches for "beautiful female bodies", there were only 1,019 searches for "spirituality". It would seem that people are more interested in beautiful female bodies than in spirituality.

But when we consider our life more realistically, spirituality is more important than a beautiful female body.

The body becomes worn out, ugly, tired and dead after a couple of years. But the spirit endures for years and generations to come.
Spirituality Not Taught in Our Schools

We need only reflect on the years we had in school to realize how neglected this topic on spirituality is. We learned so many things about our physical world in the natural science subjects. We learned also about our mental world in the subjects of philosophy and psychology. We learned about our society in sociology and history subjects. But we learned so little or none at all of the world of the spirit.

We had classes in Natural Science 1, Natural Science 2, Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2, etc., English 1, English 2, etc., Sociology, Psychology, History, but we never had a subject in Spirituality 1.

We might have had classes in religion, theology, or values education. But what did we learn there? We learned about religious or church doctrines, moral principles, values education and topics related to these. But we did not encounter the spirit there. At most we learned how to save our souls. But souls are different from spirits. The topic of the spirit was discussed more in Ouija board sessions (where we use the spirit of the glass!), in cases of spirit or demon possession, but not in formal subjects in school.
Subjects Related to Spirituality

Interestingly enough the subject closest to spirituality among high school and college subjects is not Religion or Psychology but Physics when it deals with the topic of mass and energy. You see, the spirit is energy, the highest form of energy. And yet we did not pursue the subject of spirituality in our Physics class. We were then interested only how to harness this energy to produce mechanical energy, electrical energy, chemical energy, etc., but not spiritual energy.
Spirituality Not Integrated in our Subjects

Furthermore this topic of spirituality is not integrated in our textbooks. The textbooks which offer a natural place for the integration of this topic are those of Physics, Religious Studies or Education, and Values Education. But textbooks on these subjects do not integrate spirituality in their pages. Instead these subjects deal more with the behavior of physical objects or the behavior of human beings.

That is why I have chosen to discuss this topic of spirituality. Here we ponder on more important things in life, the things that endure, that last for eternity. And we may be surprised to find out that this topic is very interesting also, although we cannot see the spirits with our physical human eyes.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Spirituality vs Religion

To contrast religion vs spirituality gives us a clearer understanding and appreciation of spirituality. The main differences of religion and spirituality lie in the traditional areas of doctrine, rituals and morality. All religions have these three basic components: 1) doctrine or beliefs; 2) rituals or ceremonies; 3) morality or a set of laws governing conduct. It is in these areas that I will make the contrast of religion with spirituality.

Doctrine Versus Experience

Religions have a set of teachings which all members are enjoined to believe in. If a member believes differently and teaches others to do so also, he or she is labeled as an unbeliever and may be excommunicated or put out of that religious group. Thus Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions have a different set of doctrines. In the religions oneness of doctrine is of paramount importance.

In spirituality while there are certain teachings these are not emphasized so much as personal experience. Spiritual persons may be members of different religions but they have the same or similar experience. Christian mystics focus on the experience of union with the divine. So do Hindu or Muslim mystics. They may differ in the means of attaining this union with God but they agree that this has to be experienced as the goal of their spiritual life.

Rituals Versus Intimacy

In religions there are certain rituals or religious ceremonies meant to express human relationship with the divine. In Christianity we have the sacraments and the religious services like the Mass, preaching service, worshipful singing, etc. In certain religions this is so important that a person is obliged to perform these rituals as a means of salvation, like the ritual of baptism.

In spirituality the emphasis is not so much on these rituals as a personal intimacy with the divine, usually attained through personal prayer and meditation, activities which in a sense are the opposite of rituals. Rituals are done in a crowd or group of people. Meditation is usually done in solitude and silence.

You can see now that there really is a contrast between religion vs spirituality.

Morality Versus Compassion

Religions produce a set of rules to follow. This is usually expressed in written laws and oral traditions. Thus the Catholic Church has a Code of Canon Law. The other Christian churches have written policies or a system of precedents. The Muslims have the Shariah Law. The Hindus have their own laws, particularly the laws which regulate their conduct in their respective castes. After a while the tendency is to increase the number of laws and to codify these.

In spirituality the central focus in human conduct is on becoming compassionate to all of creation. I was about to write "love" instead of "compassion" in the sub-heading. But over the years the word "love" has lost much of its real meaning. In almost all seminars, conferences on spirituality compassion is accentuated as the most important attitude required of human beings toward creation. This compassion begins with realizing our oneness with the divine and with all of creation. It is not just a matter of feeling but is expressed in actions of kindness towards all we meet, human beings or other parts of creation. The tendency in spirituality is to simplify the laws, just like what Jesus did, reducing all of them into two: love of God and love of neighbor.

The question I would like to pose is: Which do you think is better, religion or spirituality? My opinion is that both are necessary to human life. Religion functions as a cement in human culture. But with the recent ongoing studies on spirituality we are going to see an increasing number of men and women who are becoming more spiritual rather than more religious. Perhaps churches which have lost their active members, as in certain areas in Europe, can  shift their focus from religion to spirituality and give meaning in life to more and more people.  Religion vs spirituality will increase the awareness of more people to learn more of the enduring values in life.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Are You Ready For a Spiritual Awakening?

Yes, are you ready for a spiritual awakening? Are you in a position to take advantage of the great spiritual awakening that is occurring in our very own time?

How would you know if you are ready for this spiritual awakening?

Here are the dispositions or attitudes you should have in order to know if you are ready for this great spiritual awakening that is happening before our very eyes.

Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo

The first indication that you are ready for this spiritual awakening is a dissatisfaction with your present state of life. You may be rich or you may be poor. You may be healthy or sick. You may be normal or disabled or are a special person. You may be academically advanced or illiterate. But if you are deeply dissatisfied with the way things are in your life, then this is a sign that you are ready for a change, a change provided by this spiritual awakening.

Many Attempts But No Success So Far

The second indication is that you have tried many other things to get rid of this dissatisfaction with your present situation in life and you have not found one which has given you the success that you expect, one that surely satisfies and lasts.

You might have tried religion. You have gone to churches, Bible seminars, religious fellowships. But you are still left with this hunger for better things in life.

You might have tried alcohol and perhaps drugs. These have given you temporary relief. But afterwards the gnawing feeling of lack of joy and fulfillment in life returned and you are pushed to more alcohol and more drugs or worse than these.

You might have tried sex with different partners, hoping to enjoy the ultimate sexual thrill, only to be disillusioned and perhaps sick with deadly venereal diseases.

You might have tried basically good living, disciplining yourself to live a decent life, doing good to your self and others, without the help of religion. But to no avail, you are still left with this haunting fear that this kind of life has made you miss many of the enjoyable things in life, like a healthy body and the comfort of a family.

You Have Not Lost Hope for Better Days

And the third sign that you are now ready for this great spiritual awakening is you are still hopeful that there is a better way to live other than the ones you have discovered so far. You have not despaired. You know deep within you that there is a way of escape from the meaninglessness of life.

If these three attitudes are yours, you are ready for this great spiritual awakening.

You may ask me, Does a person have to go through all those miserable experiences of looking for meaning in life, like drugs and irresponsible sex, in order to be ready for the spiritual awakening?

Not necessarily. But most will have to go through one or other of these experiences in order to realize their futility. I myself had to go through the empty rituals of religion to discover that the way out of meaninglessness was not here, in these rituals.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Five Similarities Between Religion and Spirituality

This is now the third post on the article of Dr. Gianni Zappalà, “Spirituality is the new black …and it has social impact!” Its source URL is http://www.csi.edu.au/uploads/31642/ufiles/CSI%20Background%20Paper%20No%201%20-%20Spirituality%20is%20the%20new%20black%20-%20Part%20I.pdf

If you want to read the whole article, please click that URL.

Here is the portion of that article and my comments follow the article portion. The author’s words are in italics, mine are in ordinary roman.

Spirituality and Religion

Part of the confusion and difficulty in defining spirituality is that at least up until the end of the 20th century, the words spirituality and religion were used, especially in popular discourse as synonyms. The media for instance still often (mistakenly) refers to ‘spiritual leaders’ when what is really meant is religious leaders (usually in a position of authority) of a particular religious group or place of worship.

There may be similarities or connections between spirituality and religiosity but it does not necessarily need to be the case. As Robert Fuller pointed out in his book, Spiritual, but not Religious, for instance, both terms allude to a belief in a higher power of some kind, be it the more traditional notions of God from the Judeo-Christian tradition or the concept of a universal energy field or force.20 Both terms also describe a desire to connect with this higher power and albeit less so with spirituality than religion, both concepts also have an interest in rituals and practices that help deepen one’s spirituality or religiosity, be it yoga and meditation or attending church.21

The result of this confusion between spirituality and religion is that much of the writing on the ‘new spirituality’ is about what spirituality is not, in particular, how it is different to religion. The two examples below, the first from an academic scholar of spirituality and the second by a best-selling popular author on spirituality illustrate the point:

„[S]pirituality refers to our relationship with the sacredness of life, nature, and the universe, and this relationship is no longer felt to be confined to formal devotional practice or to institutional places of worship…spiritual development is the intrinsic human capacity and yearning to embed the self in something greater than the self. In contrast, religions are the cultural mechanisms that can provide rituals and beliefs to aid this process’. 22

„[R]eligion asks you to learn from the experience of others. Spirituality urges you to seek your own..23

In short, the two concepts have become ‘polarized’ in the scholarly and popular literature. Table 1 summarizes some of the key differences often noted between the ‘new’ spirituality and religion taken from recent writing and studies. While stark academic dichotomies do not always do justice to the complexities, subtleties and contradictions present in real life, the characteristics of religion and spirituality depicted in Table 1 suggest that the two concepts diverge in several important respects. While traditional approaches generally saw religion as a ‘broad-band construct’ that was not differentiated from spirituality, and religion was seen as having both positive and negative aspects, modern approaches (such as those depicted in Table 1) tend to define religion more narrowly and explicitly distinguish it from spirituality. Religion is generally viewed as negative (with connotations of doctrine, institutionalization and authoritarianism) while spirituality is generally viewed more positively (as an individual journey and exploration of the self).24

Here are the footnotes:

20 See for example Greg Bradden, The Divine Matrix, California: Hay House, 2007.
Page8
21 Fuller, op.cit.
22 Tacey, op.cit p.38
23 Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God, Vol 1., Sydney: Hodder, 2005.
24 Zinnbauer et al, op.cit, p. 898-99

Here are my comments:

When we were children we were asked, Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If we based our answer on the creation story in the Bible, we would answer, Chicken. But if we based our answer on our experience in raising chickens, our answer would be, Egg.

The same can be said of the answer to the question, Which came first, Religion or Spirituality?
In terms of our experience with religious books and discussions, religion came first. It is only now that more and more people are talking about spirituality and writing about it. In terms of the origin of both words or in terms of the object of our understanding, spirituality came first. The spirit was there before there was any religion. God was there before there was anybody to worship him.

We can even say that spirituality is an offshoot of religion. For many centuries people professed religion. Some of them even fiercely opposed religions other their own. Christians for many centuries opposed paganism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and any other religion. This has happened also with paganism, Islam, and the rest. They too opposed other religions.

But more and more people are discovering that mere religion cannot answer their deeper yearning for a better experience of life. So, they turn to something deeper and better than religion. They find this in spirituality.

Because spirituality in a sense is an offshoot of religion, there is bound to be some similarity between them, just like the similarity between the egg and the chicken.

These similarities are mentioned in the article of Dr. Zappala. Here are the three similarities.

First, both believe in a higher power of some kind. Religion believes in God the Father or Jesus, or Allah, or Brahman, or Tao. Spirituality believes also in this God or it may conceive of God as a universal or primal energy. Both believe that such being possesses power higher and greater than what we have.

Secondly, both religion and spirituality desire to have a relationship with this higher power. Although the nature of the relationship is different in religion than in spirituality, the desire for this connection is there. Religion connects with this higher power with fear and trembling. Spirituality connects with this higher power with love and affection.

Thirdly, according to the article both religion and spirituality have rituals and practices which deepen one’s religiosity or spirituality. Religion usually has sacred rites or sacraments. Spirituality has meditation or yoga sessions.

I may add two more similarities between religion and spirituality.

Both have respect for the sacred, the other worldly. This is not just respect for God. This is respect for the reality that is beyond our senses and reason. When religion pushes this respect to its extreme, it becomes superstition. When spirituality pushes this respect to its extreme, it becomes religious spirituality.

And the second similarity I want to add is that both have fear of failure. In religion this failure is punished by hell fire or repetition of existence or some other worse fate. In spirituality this failure is the inability to realize one’s true worth or value and the destiny of a life of meaninglessness. Hell, repetition of existence, non-existence, meaninglessness are forms of punishment for failure, either in religion or in spirituality.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.