What does "spiritual" mean to me? PART 2

Continuing what I talked about in the last post: When it comes to practice and experience, I have a daily meditation, prayer and yoga routine. To me, this is also an essential part of spirituality. Spirituality follows me throughout the day, but it is also something I consistently practice while I’m alone. And just like with God, I think that even if some sort of daily routine is not a necessary component of spirituality, something is missing if one does not have such a routine. The same goes for trying to be a decent person by the way.

Spirituality to me also means awareness of the fact that I have an ego. The ego, the way I see it, is basically a lower self that is ruled by instincts, seeks instant gratification and cares only about its own little wants and needs. The ego is the unconscious beliefs that one is one’s thoughts and living from it means to live in a reactive mindset. Something happens and we react to it. Over and over again. The ego is absence of free will and the illusion thereof. Among other things. Spirituality for me entails a wish to transcend the ego so that it does not run my life anymore. 

Spirituality is finally a source of meaning. A belief, or in my case a knowing, that life serves a higher purpose than to just live in an ultimately pointless universe, die and then be gone forever. That there is a meaning to all of this and that we go on living in some way after we die. What this afterlife is I don’t know exactly. I don’t think anyone does. It’s hinted at in religious scriptures, but all of them, at least in a literal sense, cannot be right. And what is actual descriptions and what is mere symbolism is unclear. 

A higher meaning can be an antidote to the mindless hedonism and ego-gratification just mentioned. Because when life has a higher meaning, it becomes essential to try and be one’s best, so that one is capable of seeking and living this higher meaning.