What is Spirituality?

The question “what is spirituality?” was posed in a recent article by Robert Ralph

in Third Eye Gypsy.

What Is Spirituality He invites other writers to write about what spirituality means to them as well, since he is new to a spiritual practice and just getting into Meditation.

Personally, I have meditated on and off since I was a teenager, so this is a question that has been on my mind a lot over the years. Also, my word of the year is spirituality. So, I am pondering a lot of spiritual topics lately.

My Word for the Year is Spirituality What is the Difference Between Religion and Spirituality? To me, spirituality is a search for deeper meaning, and a search for answers to life’s deepest questions. These are questions like,

• What is the meaning of life?

• What is my highest good?

• Do I have a soul?

• What happens when we die?

All of these questions are things that religion, spirituality, philosophy and science have tried to explain for thousands of years.

These are questions that have inspired mystics and poets alike in their journeys of solitude.

Spirituality is looking inside yourself, it is seeking the silence of the Soul to find the answers.

“Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.” –The Bhagavad Gita

Since yoga is a deeply spiritual practice, I think this quote is fitting for how I would describe what spirituality is to me. It is the soul’s journey to dissolve into the boundless Self.

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”― Rumi We journey through lifetimes looking for knowledge, wisdom and love. We search for meaning in the madness, order out of chaos, and answers to seemingly unanswerable questions.

You can find answers in spiritual texts, from attending religious services, through practices like prayer or meditation, or from spiritual guru’s. There are as many answers as there are people.

Spirituality is how we find meaning in life. This is something deep that can be felt with the heart, and is difficult to put into words, no matter how hard that we try.

I have always had a mystical soul with an analytical mind. So I believe very much in the mystical experiences that have characterized the lives of so many throughout history, myself included. I have experienced Oneness while I was on my yoga mat, and in dreams and meditation. Inner peace, stillness, openness pave the way for us to have a mystical experience.

What is a mystical experience?

According to Lone Wolf, All throughout history, the mystical experience has been referred to as a “religious” or spiritual experience, where the few mystics that recorded their experiences reported it as a rapturous and undifferentiated sense of profound Unity with all of existence.

There have been many descriptions of the mystical experience throughout the ages. A few of my favorites are firstly the ancient Greek word and mystical Christian concept of Kenosis, or divine emptying. Such an intriguing word has been used for centuries to describe the state of divine receptivity that closely mimics what it’s like to have a mystical experience.

For me, spirituality can be best understood on a personal level in the context of a mystical experience. But you don’t have to be the Buddha on the mountaintop to have one.

I am just a normal girl with a normal life. The most mystical experience I have had of oneness was after my morning yoga practice, sitting on my patio, looking out at nature. I just felt at one with everything around me. I felt like, I was a piece of life’s heart.

Like we are all this vast body of the cosmos, and each one of us is a cell in that vast body of space and time. We are so small, and we are all interconnected. We all need each other to survive.

So to me, spirituality is interwoven into the very fabric of our lives. It is a part of our every action, our every reaction, our every day in this world. Spirituality is the way we treat ourselves and other people. Spirituality is how we parent our children. It is how we treat our lovers and friends.

Spirituality is how we treat the planet and our ecology. Spirituality is how we treat the less fortunate, and helping others.

Spirituality is everything. Because we are all spirit. We are all a piece of this infinite fabric of the universe.

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

You are that eternity. You are the boundless drop. You are your true nature, all you have to do is wake up and remember who you are. That is spirituality to me. ❤