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Spirituality

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KindelingBoy's picture
SpiritualityKindelingBoy90Belief
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Belief

I could not honestly describe myself as a religious person.  I do not hold to any specific set of religious ideas or beliefs, but I have tried several times in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.  I really enjoy religion, I like discussing these subjects with religious people, I love religious documentaries and programs.  Even when I don't agree with them and think that they are blatantly misreading or misrepresenting another proposition, it still facinates me.  My life is, and I think will always be, unseparable from religious ideas. 

I prefer to describe my relationship to religion as a spiritual one, rather than a philosophical one.  Philosophy entails a kind of academic distance that I am not entirely comfortable with.  I would rather share in religious rituals and create a discourse with religious people than read about them from a book.  I would rather study and recite and memorize their holy books than criticize them from afar.  I would rather religious ideas become apart of my life rather than a subject of me studies.  I meditate, and if I found the right prayers, I would pray.  The only difference between myself and the true believer, is that I would not pray to a deity, but rather to reaffirm my own secular beliefs and faith in humanity.

Spirituality, in a narrow sense, concerns itself with matters of the spirit. Spiritual matters are those involving humankind's ultimate nature, not only as material biological organisms, but as beings with a unique relationship to that which is beyond both time and the material world.

—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality

 

Spirituality is not just a general term that describes humanities attempt to relate to transcendant ideas, but also individuals who do not define themselves within any religious camp, but nevertheless have religious practices and subscribe to specific religious ideas. They often refer to themselves as being spiritual, rather than religious.

I could hardly deny the existence of individuals who very sincerely and devoutly take themselves to be the lone communicants of what we might call private religions. Typically these people have had considerable experience with one or more world religions and have chosen not to be joiners. Not wanting to ignore them, but needing to distinguish them from the much, much more typical religious people who identify themselves with a particular creed or church that has many other members, I shall call them spiritual people, but not religious.

-Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell

 

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