Spirituality vs. Religion

My work requires both spiritual and religious work. I am looking for a way to define/separate the two in as few words as possible.

How would you define spirituality vs. religion?

Religions are about rules to love God. They find it almost impossible to see God’s work in anything other then their own form of worship. They also have a large canon of rules to guide what is correct social behaviour.

Spirituality is about finding God in everything. They realise that God is greater then just one faith and one people. They do not fell the need for all the rules to love God. They just love God. Morality isn’t about religious rules.

I think religion is some kind of framework of some moral values. Religion describes exactly what is good and what is bad. Religion puts a circle around human’s imagination and tells him about the good and the bad deed, what should he do and how can he live as a good person. First it’s a combination that includes values of the ideal person; description of the world on the Earth and after death; history of the religion or some spiritual guide and few details.
Also, some religion have instances where the faith has biggest power (like churches for example).

Spirituality is personal description. It makes an exact inventory of the values of certain person. Spirituality is mainly referenced to the soul and mind. All people have their spirituality in their own way, but not all of them belong to some religion or agree with religion’s rules.

Pax, he said as few words as possible. Wouldn’t “Religion = Bad, Spirituality = Good” have been more to the point and just as effective?

Yes, I need as few words as possible.

While bad and good is descriptive, it is not definitive.

any more?

Call “It” whatever you want, the supernatural, the mystical plane, whatever term you want. I’ll just use “It”:

Religion is man’s reason applied to “It”, Spirituality is man’s emotions applied to “It”.

Uccisore wrote:

And they need each other to collectively experience how limited they really are by themselves.

Nick,

Could you explain that more?

From Simone Weil

ejanti

I’ll have tread on this very lightly because it isn’t a politically correct idea. It has to do with “quality”

We understand intellectual knowledge as different in quality. For example in math or in chess a person can prove that their knowledge is more comprehensive and therefore of a greater quality. If player A continually defeats player B, it is safe to say that player A understands the game better making his knowledge of the game greater in quality.

Spirituality concerns itself with the life force permeating the universe that for certain reasons we do not feel at one with. Spirituality calls a person to experience through their feelings their connection with the expanse of this life force in whatever way they are able. This “feeling” is also relative. The emotions can reflect anything between objective feeling,animal emotion, to subjective escapism. With no means of external verification as in math or chess a person must verify the truth inwardly. Here is where the intellect comes in. The intellect is able allow the emotions to discriminate from reality and illusion.

This is not possible from associative thought as in math or chess but in the power of attention itself that doesn’t choose one or the other but just stays present. The intellectual power of attention allows for a qualitative emotional experience that a person "feels"of a greater quality stimulating humility rather than the normal emotions of self justification.

A person’s interest in spirituality can take a person just so far. At some point, excluding some very rare exceptions, their own ego defenses will not allow any further self revelation necessary for the desired spiritual experience giving way to a rationalization.

This is where religion should come in. A religion initiating with a conscious source at first becomes an esoteric school. In this way the ideas remain alive or conscious in it and can be passed along as a living oral tradition. The teaching is for the purpose of allowing one to experience such qualities of consciousness. The corresponding quality of emotions stimulated by the teaching allows for the force necessary to remain present to it and not sink back into the old artificial habits that do not wish to die. After a while though, an esoteric school that is the essence of a religion is lost and just the religion remains and becomes adapted by culture losing its living inner or esoteric purpose and quality becoming satisfied instead with ritual. The living part remains hidden within it and open only to those with the courage and need to seek it out for its inner purpose which is beyond culture.

The emotions that inspire spirituality can differ in quality reflecting either escapism or the impartial open experience of life’s impressions. The intellect that furthers religion can either reflect consciousness which is the power of attention and of a high quality or self justification which is judgmental in support of self justification which is of a lower quality.

In these times though, this idea of quality has been condemned in favor of “It’s your own truth” making everything the same. This is why words such as “art” have no qualitative meaning anymore. Even the thought of such a thing is frowned on as elitism.

If all else fails however, there’s always good scotch as partial compensation.

You might want to try the [define] feature in google:

define: spirituality
google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& … irituality

define: religion
google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& … A+religion

Religion:
The outward act or form by which men indicate their recognition of the existence of a deity or of deities having power over their destiny, to whom obedience, service, and honour are due; the feeling or expression of human love, fear, or awe of some superhuman and overruling power, whether by profession of belief, by observance of rites and ceremonies, or by the conduct of life; a system of faith and worship; a manifestation of piety; as, ethical religions; monotheistic religions; natural religion; revealed religion; the religion of the Jews; the religion of idol worshippers.

According to the Webster Dictionary, Spirituality means of or pertaining to the soul or its affections as influenced by the Spirit; controlled and inspired by the divine Spirit; proceeding from the Holy Spirit; pure; holy; divine; heavenly-minded; - opposed to carnal.
Examples:
That I may impart unto you some spiritual gift. --Rom. 1:11
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings. --Eph. 1:3
If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one. --Gal. 6:1

God is Spirit (John 4:24). Spirituality is God expressing Himself through human beings in awareness, love, joy, peace, patience, compassion, wisdom, intelligence — a manifestation of God in those living by faith. It means being tapped into our the Source of Life that gave man the mystical “breath of life”.

Shalom

God is unnecessary for spirituality, IMO. Buddhists are spiritual despite lacking any omnipotent creator type god. To me spirituality implies a belief in or sense of “connectedness with” life beyond the biological. It’s the idea that we have a soul independant of our body. At least that what it means to me.

I cannot succesfully seperate the two terms, even though conventional ‘wisdom’ says that it is possible. To the extent that we are aware of our own conciousness, we are also aware of all around us - including all of our questions about who and what we are, why are we here, and how did this happen? Whether we choose to accept a conventional religion or embrace a ‘religion’ of non-religion, we think and feel. That is our spirituality expressed inside of religion.

JT

I dunno, I’m sort of a spiritualist atheist. While I can’t really buy into the idea of an omnipotent creator god, I still have some vestigal feelings leftover from my Catholic upbringing. I still like the ceremony aspect of the Church, and most likely the feelings of trancendentalism I still have probably stem from that.

The rationalist part of me realizes we’re a collection of proteins, chemicals and mundane elements, but the romantic in me still thinks life is a wonderment. The commonness of mammilian existance doesn’t detract from the miraculousness of it, in my eyes.

I think spirituality vs. religion is kind of a moot point. However, I would argue that most conventional religions don’t really have much spiritual discipline. They tell God what to do interminably, as if he didn’t know. And then they tell each other what to do as if they could or even wanted to.

I’m much more inclined “spirituality” that implies a discipline. Such as contemplation or meditation. And in most religions, ie. Christianity, Judaism, it’s almost impossible to exercise comtemplative prayer during mass, or service. You’re constantly being advised, exorted, edified. I know all religious followers aren’t like this, but that’s the general impression I find.

How about a religion that entails a transformation of your consciousness? I think that’s why people are so interested in Buddhism and Hinduism, because they’re trying to tranform their consciousness to acheive Maksha, or Satori, or Enlightenment. Which is something you don’t get in Church. I mean, there have been Christian mystics, but the church is pretty quiet about them.

But then again, isn’t physical reality a concept? Isn’t spiritual reality a concept? Perhaps if you can free your mind from concepts, you’ll stop feeling out of touch with reality. Ie. Meditation.

If someone describes themselves as ‘spiritual’, it means they’re in touch with that side of their being that represents everything from philosophy to politics, to astronomy to psychology, as those concepts relate to their inner-being and ideology. If someone describes themselves as ‘religious’, it means they belong to a cult and subscribe their being to a set of dogmatic rules.

Needless to say, that’s just me.

Hi Phaedrus,

I think you may remember that I have said that the word “God” stands for the Ineffable and the Tao is also described as the ineffable. Bearing in mind that the Essenes are thought to have had copies of the scriptures of Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism from which they taught in their communities along with the Tanakh, I think that you would find that there was a great deal of recognition between spiritual traditions, with or without deity.

There is an anecdote about Buddha that reports that he was asked to talk about the divine. He is said to have answered, “Why should I speak to you about the divine, since you haven’t perceived humanity yet?”

We all carry vestiges of the traditions we were brought up in, if there were any. If these vestiges would help us dig into the depths of being to discover the spiritual half of existence, giving us the balance that is often lacking, we are fortunate. Otherwise, we have to search ourselves.

The scientist that dissects an animal and says, “look, that is life” is surely as blind as anyone can be?

Hi JT,

I think the two terms are a bit like body and soul, form and content. Religion is the book and words, spirituality is the inspiration gained from reading those words.

Hi Torrentfields,

I quite like your approach. I think you are exactly right about spirituality constituting a discipline, since the spiritual are often disciples in the widest sense of the word. Contemplation, again, is half of it. It is like the story of Martha and Maria, which the church seems to have decided is in favour of Maria and critical of Martha, although the Mystics have pointed to the fact that we need both.

The Church has often given the Mystics a hard time, since they accepted the authority of the Church only to avoid spiritual anarchy, but often contradicted church teaching in favour of a more consoling approach, supporting the needy and healing their ills. They were contemplative and compassionate, spiritual counsellors, healers, carers. Their religion had to be in service of the spiritual.

Shalom

The minute I posted that example, Bob, I knew it would get me into trouble. :wink: It was only meant as an example, and I think it wasn’t a good one. Buddhism is irrelevant to my point- what I meant to say is that I define spirituality differently than merely being religious.

To me, spirituality is seeing ourselves in others and them in us; it’s realizing that we are all the same in our suffering and in our joy. Seeing the humanity in others as an extention of ourselves is what I’m getting at.

I don’t require any god or goddess to do that.