Spirituality and your spiritual path: What’s most important? There are three things that I know are essential for the spiritual dimension of life.
The following is a text version of this posting.
Spirituality is a significant focus of my life and my work. While many things can be explored under the topic of spirituality, I thought it would be helpful to explain the three things I find to be most important about spirituality. Perhaps that will make my overall perspective and approach more accessible to others.
First, I don’t view spirituality as being limited to prayer, spiritual practices, beliefs, or rituals. Those are elements that people connect to the spiritual dimension of their lives. But spirituality itself is much more. Spirituality is about every aspect or dimension of our lives. It’s about how we live as individuals, in connection with others, and on planet Earth.
As we learn to develop the spiritual dimension of our lives, as we grow spiritually, we realize that spirituality operates and is expressed through our experiences of love, beauty, wonder, and appreciation of life. Spirituality draws us toward compassion for ourselves, others, and everything that exists. In that way, spirituality is expressed in our work, our relationships, our interests and hobbies, our sense of self-care, and so much more. Yes, spirituality is typically nurtured through spiritual practices, but spiritual practices are the doorway to the development and awareness of spirituality in our lives. Spirituality is about who we are and the way we live.
Second, healthy spiritual growth and development lead us to discover and understand who we are most deeply. Many experiences in life draw us away from the person we are most deeply. Sometimes people encourage us to follow paths in life or make choices that they think will be good for us, but they are off target. Other times, our jobs and work requirements result in taking on attitudes or values that are not our own. We may aspire to things that just aren’t who we are. In addition, the challenges, pains, and hurts of life can lead us to protect our inner selves by protecting our hearts from further harm. As the spiritual dimension of life becomes more prominent, all of these things begin to fall away. We come home to ourselves and are better able to live from our center, the core of who we are. George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, referred to the inner light within each of us. It is this inner light, this Divine spark, that is the core of who we are. Spiritual growth and practice bring us home to that warm, inner light.
Third, while the spiritual aspect of our lives takes us inward to who we are most deeply, it also takes us outward. As we become more centered in who we are most deeply, we become more aware of life around us. That includes people, interactions, nature, the pain in the world as well as the joy and awe of life. We become more aware and sensitive to everything around us.
In addition, spirituality opens us to a transcendent dimension in life. By this, I don’t mean that we are somehow escaping life’s realities. Instead, while more rooted in our deepest selves, we look out around us and see that there’s something more in our experiences than what is most obvious to us.
What’s most important to me about spirituality? Three things: that spirituality is infused through every aspect of our lives, that spirituality leads us to live from the deepest part of ourselves – our heart or core, and that spirituality opens us to experience life more broadly and deeply, discovering that there’s something more to life than we first realized. Spirituality is a critical dimension of who we are as human beings.