Shifting Spirituality

It’s fantastic being a spiritual unicorn. Try it. Try it over and above religion. Religion is religion, not spirituality, and that’s all very well and good. It’s a formal means of keeping society together. It is a belief system designed for the good of the formal social order rather than the individual. It works best when the majority of the population is from a similar background and, in general, has the same or similar beliefs about how humans ought to live to form a civilization.

Religion can be used as a means of inclusivity (keeping the herd together) or exclusivity (keeping people out who are said not to belong to the herd).

Spirituality is different from religion. It’s private. It’s personal and unique. It has to be developed by each individual on their own. While we draw from what we hear and see from others, every soul is irreplaceably rare.

Over my long years of experience I have known many people who have described their spirituality to me. Some have done little more than parrot the beliefs of one religion or another. That is fine because that is what suits them.

Other people have gone into exquisite detail describing their spirituality, it’s source, what they have learned and from who or where they have learned it. Listening to their descriptions of where they started in life and how they got to the point they are currently at is to hear some pretty elegant stuff. What they have to tell me, and themselves, is incredibly exciting.