Spirituality

The word "spirituality" is frequently used but rarely adequately defined. Similarly, individuals may be clearly gifted with spirituality but be unaware of it in themselves. It has been suggested that seeking for spirituality means that one has it while belief that one has it indicates one has lost it - that spirituality is a journey or pilgrimage whose goal is not reached in this life. Although spirituality has often been virtually equated with religion, many on the spiritual path refer to themselves as "not religious". The difference seems much a matter of approach, religion being held to be rigid and fixed as compared with the fluidity, almost sloppiness, of spirituality. Proponents of the spiritual life indicate that religion may even be a means of avoiding direct confrontation or experience with God, by hedging the individual in with doctrine and ritual. As the old hymn says "but we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own". The spiritual is that which, although it can be experienced, we cannot touch, control or dogmatize, it is that beyond material reality. The spiritual person is aware of who he or she truly is, accepting the imperfections and paradoxes that this involves and and realizing that this is the material to be worked on and through which peace and serenity may arise, not necessarily through avoiding pain and suffering but through joyous acceptance in the awareness that this may be the very chink through which God enters the individual's life. Perhaps this is the essence of spirituality, not of looking for God, defining God or following some preconceived set of rules, simply of letting one's self be found.