Those who speak of spirituality outside of religion often define themselves as spiritual but not religious and generally believe in the existence of different "spiritual paths," emphasizing the importance of finding one's own individual path to spirituality. However, as a person who believes in a specific religion, I would say I find spirituality in the religion that I practice.
I define spirituality as something that is an intrinsic pathway that leads you to creation through inspiration and discovery. Spirituality, I believe, involves your important and more ingrained values, which aid in finding inspiration. Although I have practiced many forms of spiritual practices, it seems to be that things like meditation, prayer, and even just contemplation, that people seem to find a type of wholeness, and are able to connect with their inner self to find some type of meaning and beauty in things, and life in general.
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Spirituality is different from religion because religion is something that can help influence spirituality.
Spirituality is so intrinsic and religion can help influence practicing and developing ones inner self. Religion can help alter or determine important values that help shape who they are and will become. Spirituality is the thought and reason put behind prayer and religious practices so they are not one in the same but they do influence each other.
Spirituality is one thing that drives the original thought and inspiration for the idea or subject. Ones values and inner path lead to the creation of something special and meaningful. Something that inspires the artist and possibly other people themselves. After sensing some type of original idea through hearing, sight, or feeling, spirituality can help bring inspiration to the artist to create something completely different for the original to make into some idea, or multiple ideas come together into one. Spirituality drives inspiration, which drives
creation. I have learned from the class, a religious person accepts a certain set of beliefs as true and observes a certain set of rituals. A person of the Christian religion believes Jesus is God's Son and observes baptism and Communion. A person of the Muslim religion believes that Allah is the God and Mohammed is his prophet. Jesus is his prophet as well and observes Ramadan and Salat, which is prayer. In contrast, spirituality is the fact of being spiritual and is usually evidenced by the act of doing spiritual things. Praying, meditating, reading Scripture, and giving to a charity are all things that a "spiritual" person might do. Yet neither spirituality nor religion is inherently good or bad. The practice of religion may lead to good or to evil. Likewise, one person may claim that feeding the poor is a spiritual act, while someone else claims that murder is a spiritual act. Accepting and respecting everybody’s religions and believes is my reaction to what I have learned in the class. That is what Islam taught me and told me to do whenever I meet somebody with different believes than mine. Moreover, I treat as I want to be treated. That is the golden role, so my reaction to anybody would be nice and kind. I have gained more knowledge than before when I started listening and negotiating with the people who have different religions and believes than mine. This thing made my life much easier because I kind of know what to say or act with them to be away from any misunderstanding.
In all dominations there are people who may consider themselves spiritual because that is how we connect as human beings. For example, those of the Pentecostal faith, view the “holy ghost” as their spiritual higher power. A Buddhist may not look at Buddha as necessarily their God, but a higher power as well. A female person of the Islamic faith will have her head covered; that is religion. In this chapter authors have given examples supporting this concept, however, in theses readings, my understanding of spiritually does allude to religion as the foundation. Additionally, it would be safe for me to view spirituality with a connotative meaning. Spirituality transcends religious practices; therefore, religion expresses how one worships. Yes, according to our readings they are very separate; however, it is my belief they carry the same foundation. This is where the theme of spirituality was somewhat weak to
Based on a mixture of ideas coming from the stated authors, I comprehend spirituality as believing in something and living for a purpose in life. Regardless of a religion, people can still be spiritual. Spirituality is the influence behind a person’s actions; whatever a person desires to do, will lead to actions and in turn, spirituality (Rolheiser 7). According to Rolheiser, “Spirituality is mo...
Spirituality is a connection to something much bigger than ourselves and involves one’s search for the meaning of life. It is something that can have a profound effect on all of us. When a person is searching for the meaning of life, most are surprised to find that the answer to that question lies deep down within ourselves. By allowing yourself to connect to higher consciousness we set a personal path for ourselves in finding our own truths.
While spirituality is often defined today as the synonym for religion, there are many dissonant voices in Christianity who would disagree with this meaning. Peterson is one of them, arguing that spirituality is not religion or exclusive, but that spirituality is deeply integrated in the
Worthington et. al. (2011) says historically, religiousness involved individual and institutional elements; however, now spirituality is thought of as an individual phenomenon and linked with meaningfulness, New Age beliefs, and personal transcendence. Additionally, spirituality is described in personal terms like one’s relationship with God, and as a result, spirituality is more highly regarded than religion. The authors define spirituality as a feeling of closeness and having a relationship or dedication to God or a higher power; this can be a religious experience or a nonreligious one. They state that what one considers sacred is usually related to the awareness of social influences. According to the authors, four types of spirituality have been identified based on closeness to God. First, is religious spirituality. Religious spirituality’s connectedness to God is based on one’s specific denomination and the closeness is specific to the deity identified. Second is humanistic spirituality. Humanistic spirituality involves closeness to humans. This type of spirituality fosters a loving connection with a specific group of people and a sense of selflessness and concern
Spirituality refers to the perspective of that which is valued in life, and that which must to be upheld and defended under any and all circumstances, regardless of the social environment and surrounding conditions.
Spirituality is a major factor for many people when deciding their morals. Spirituality can have various definitions, depending on who is asked. It can be something as simple as looking for a higher meaning to life, or something so complex that one can base their beliefs, religion, morals and overall life around it. According to the Oxford Dictionary, spirituality can be defined as “relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.” You can find this sense of spirituality in almost everything. Finding spirituality in something can make an individual feel enlightened and bring strong emotion and deep feeling. In comparison to the Oxford Dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary states that spirituality is “the quality or state of being concerned with religion or religious matters.” There is not one sole definition for spirituality because every individual has their own beliefs on what they think is spiritual.
Spiritual formation is a process that morphs as we grow and change. There is no one singular correct path this type of journey takes because each journey is as individual as the person who is experiencing it. Most obvious, the journey will be different from those who identify as religious and those who do not and will diversify with in each category. For example, the spiritual journey a Buddhist takes will be different from that of a believer in Judaism or Christianity. In fact, the journey will continue to diversify between Christians, male and female, age groups, even by demographic location. Consequently, the spiritual formation process is as diverse as it is intricate and we may never be able to discover all the journey options. Although individuals may not actively recognize they are experiencing spiritual formation it is a process that affects all. Because it is in human nature to question, learn, grow, and act, everyone to a certain extent is exposed to a unique spiritual formation journey.
...s nature. One angle on this is that abstracting the moment from spirituality, namely, to focus on the temporal moment involving worldly affairs, is to prevent spiritual inwardness to be reached. Another angle is to understand that with spirit it is possible to understand the future with an immediate sense of its possibility to go about life as an earnest task, which means that one does not need to be anxious about the future and idly waiting for it to come in order to understand human possibility.
A spiritual connection is an intense or deep feeling for something
Spiritualism is the system of religious beliefs centered on the presumption that communication with the dead, or spirits, is possible (Grolier '97). Spiritualism challenged dominant cultural beliefs of the 19th century (Paul) and is still in practice today.
In his book, Spirituality and Prayer, Kevin defines spirituality as a movement that entails the coming to know God by humans and their response to God. This suggests a calling by one party, God, and the responding of another party, Human beings, which ends up into a relationship. A Relationship, among human beings, is a sort of significant connection between two or more parties. This involvement with one another could be emotional. In other words, human relations involve dealings, associations, affairs, contact and even interactions. With this in mind one can more or less easily build a relationship with God that can be referred to as a spirituality. A spirituality is grounded in a specific understanding about God, about God’s relationship with the world and about the human person in that world.
It is often helpful to approach these disciplines or practices in terms of your entire body experience of sight, touch, sound, and even taste. If you are a visual person, you may wish to try meditating or even praying with art or specifically, religious icons. Simply behold the artwork and allow it to "speak" to you. What details do you notice? What does the artwork signify? What does this artwork say to you regarding your Higher Power?
The most fundamental concept of spirituality is that there is a transcendent dimension to life, something or someone beyond our own ego and sense of experience. The experience of connection ...
Ganga and Kutty stated (2013) spirituality refers to a path of life that enables people to seek reason of their existence and helps people explore challenges. Ganga and Kutty (2013) conducted a study on adults to see if spirituality had positive effects on their life, meaning did their life have purpose or value. Each participant partook in a study that asked questions about their life and purpose. The study consisted of a daily spiritual experience scale, it was a point scale that consist of 16 items to be rated on a 6-point scale. The results concluded that spirituality has positive effects on their life when seeking their purpose. Each participant felt that he/she had a purpose and that their life was valuable and meaningful (Ganga and Kutty, 2013). According to Ganga and Kutty (2013), spirituality is a way for people to discover the meaning of their life. Spirituality is a personal adventure to understand answers to the questions they seek to find about their spirituality and purpose in life. It says spirituality is a set of beliefs and practices that concludes with life changing paths that make a person’s life meaningful. Spirituality has been viewed as an important factor when realizing the purpose of life. Ganga and Kutty (2013) expressed spirituality enhances our emotions, thoughts, beliefs, relieves stress and it finds meaning and purpose of one’s life. I believe