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.

What does "spiritual" mean to me? PART 1

Our language is full of words that we sort of, but not really know the meaning of or what they mean to us personally. That in itself is quite interesting.

“Spiritual” is a word that means many different things to many different people. To me, at the core, it means to have a belief in, relation to, knowing of and connection with something transcendent. To me, this transcendent is ultimately God. And forgive me if I step on some toes here, but I believe that any spirituality that does not include an intelligent, personal God that cares for us misses the, by far, most important component. But while I believe that this is an essential component in spirituality, it is not an absolute part of the definition of spirituality.

Contrary to many other people, I don’t make a clear distinction between “spirituality” and “religion”. The way I see it, both are relating to the same transcendent reality. Religion seems more oriented towards rituals, morals and tradition, while spirituality seems more oriented towards practice and experience. But personally, I think one needs both and that they overlap a great deal. There is something to be said in the defense of some tradition morals, as long as they don’t become stale. Namely that that which has been transmitted over generations for a long time generally has been transmitted because it has served some sort of function, even if it isn’t always clear what that function actually is. But if this is all that one’s religious/spiritual life becomes, I think that it loses its vitality. 

Back to spiritual. For me it also has to do with how I conduct myself in my day to day life. What I choose to fill my days with and what I choose not to fill my days with. Even if I’m far from perfect and do lots of things that I know that I shouldn’t do when my emotions get the best of me, the spiritual side is something that I always relate to in one way or another. It’s always in the back of my mind.