What is spirituality? – Part 1

By admin · Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Spirituality, it should first be said, is a word. A word with different meanings to different people – for some, it is a 19th century cultural movement, for others a religious faith, and yet others simply a feeling they have in times of peace. But these interpretations are misguided. Empty bastardisations of a word which has lost its essential meaning for too many. How ignorant we are! The misunderstanding of what a word like spirituality means is, of course, only a natural product of the wider loss of touch with that to which such a word refers.

The essence of spirituality, the true meaning of the word, is a connection with something greater and more complete than either the self or the everyday world of experience. It is the aspiration towards higher things, and wonders that come through it. It is the moment of realisation that confirms all your suspicions that there was more to life than ‘this’. It is that sublime revelation that deepens and widens the dimension of our lives, not through reason, nor though faith, but through direct personal experience, intense and ecstatic. Where the veil that hangs always before our eyes is finally lifted, that we may see the truth in all its intensity. Every religious tradition of the ages, in so far as it has been a true and pure religion, has brought this connection with ’something greater’ into the lives of people. For Christians, they aspire to enter the kingdom of heaven. For Buddhists, it is a path to enlightenment that they walk. Muslims seek to draw close to God through self-submission. While the short-sighted see only conflicting opinions and irreconcilable differences between such traditions, those with insight can see that each is a particular expression of the same essence, different cultural currents which all converge at their purest point – the realm of true spirituality.

Yet, so many of us are held far away from that converging point, unable to see the deeper significance of religion, and in fact of all things around us. Truly a fallen state! For that very reason, most of what passes for religion today, the alleged paths to spirituality, are an empty shell of the spirituality that once animated the human spirit, taking its form but lacking its content. Even the New-Age movement, with all its overt passion for the metaphysical and spiritual, is characterised by a superficiality which cannot take us far in a search for something lastingly meaningful. There are no obvious routes to salvation.

In such

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