What does spirituality mean to you?

[Eleanor]

Spirituality has been a great part of my life. It has helped me through a lot of difficult times and it has increased my life quality. It helps me find inner strength, love, peace and joy.
I mostly experience it through meditation and yoga. I sometimes create spells or mantras to help me in my daily life. It gives me a feeling of empowerment and inspires me to improve myself every day.

There are probably as many forms of spirituality as there are people, so I was curious about your experiences and views.

What is your definition of spirituality, or what does spirituality mean to you?
When do you consider something to be a spiritual experience?
How does it help you in your daily life?
Do you follow a specific spiritual path, like Buddhism?
Do you combine it with a (pagan or other) path or do you see it as a path by itself?
And any other thoughts you'd like to share

[Rhythm]

I’d define spirituality as the practice of developing one’s faculties of and seeking out opportunities for the sense of the numinous.

It’s difficult to itemize all of the ways this helps me in my daily life. From fundamental things like the values and commitments I make, to private moments of relief from the daily anxieties of having a litter of children. In this sense, any experience can manifest spiritually relevant content. I have stand outs, like anyone. Raw nature. A particularly satisfying relationship. Whispering to the earth and pounding the clouds. Crying out to the heavens by any description.

No specific tradition beyond a private zen and a religion of nature. No God, gods, or animating spirits of any kind. No intermediating force. No intervening mechanics. Nature as metaphysically ultimate. A pagan anti-theist, lol.

[Azvanna]

I’d define spirituality as the practice of developing one’s faculties of and seeking out opportunities for the sense of the numinous.

So eloquent! I really like this defiintion.


I consider something to be a spiritual experience when it makes me feel like I'm connected to something eternal. I have had atheistic spiritual moments if that makes sense. I don't really know what you'd call those. Moments of wonder and awe? Epiphanies? One of the marks of a spiritual person is someone who is curious and open. Someone who is still asking questions and being open to possibilities. There are people of this ilk in all kinds of religions and non-religions.


Many people have heard this story before but a long time ago, I realised the God I was experiencing wasn't much like the God my religious leaders were describing. I prayed: God, if you're real, show me who you really are. Since then, I've been lead to broaden my view on what the divine is and where it is. I still follow the Jesus way.. I feel marked for it so to speak. But I steer clear of absolutes.

Eleanor, I practise yoga as well. I'm not very good, but I have a very good teacher! I have a spiritual experience every time I go to one of her classes. I know that I meet something other than the spirit of Christ when I'm there, but it's still divine and it still eminates love and warmth. In my early twenties, I got very sick. I had a few minutes where I was sort of only half here, but I knew that if I kept breathing, I'd be okay. Since then I've really cherished using breath and body together. Do you know that there is an idea in Judaism that God's sacred name YVHV is the sound of breathing? There's a lot of implications in that if you dare.

Thanks for posting your question Eleanor!

[anunitu]

i try to stay attuned to the natural vibrations of our reality,that may not be the same as our solid concept of solid objects
but there is a constant energy that exists all around us

[Rhythm]

Thx, it was hard to define without saying too much or too little.

Its super interesting on multiple levels. Particularly in that while the sense of the numinous is ubiquitous to humanity, regardless of religious beliefs or their absence, there’s no such thing as an honest believer. Not in the sense that we seek to deceive, but in the fact that our conscious schema just doesn’t contain the operative details of the experience. We don’t have an io address, or the list of chemicals involved. Only those aspects of the experience salient to our body model without an accurate description of their source or origin.

This, in part, lends “spirituality” an ineffability central to the concept. The universe appreciates irony, it seems.

[Azvanna]

Thx, it was hard to define without saying too much or too little.

Its super interesting on multiple levels. Particularly in that while the sense of the numinous is ubiquitous to humanity, regardless of religious beliefs or their absence, there’s no such thing as an honest believer. Not in the sense that we seek to deceive, but in the fact that our conscious schema just doesn’t contain the operative details of the experience. We don’t have an io address, or the list of chemicals involved. Only those aspects of the experience salient to our body model without an accurate description of their source or origin.

This, in part, lends “spirituality” an ineffability central to the concept. The universe appreciates irony, it seems.

I really have only a vague idea of what you just said. Mind rephrasing minus jargon? Pardon my ignorance.

[Medusa]

After reading everyone's responses I have come to some weird conclusion. I am not spiritual. Yet I am quite content and happy. Go figure how that works.

[anunitu]

what works works that simple

[Rhythm]

I really have only a vague idea of what you just said. Mind rephrasing minus jargon? Pardon my ignorance.

Sure, np. Spirituality is hard to pin down. To comprehensively and accurately describe. This is amazing given how many of us experience it. One very compelling explanation for why this is, is the incomplete set of information we have about our own experiences.

We know that we’re having the experience, what it feels like, but that description doesn’t accurately report what the brain is doing....or even what it’s doing it in reference too.

- - - Updated - - -

So we end up with descriptions, often contradictory, of what it feels like, and what it feels like it’s about...rather than a machine reporting “region x fired in a specific pattern in conjunction with region y in response to a sudden change in the field of vision of the subject whose brain was then fed a rush of partially disorienting chemical inhibitors meant to adjust for balance and depth perception in the extreme, leading to s report of feeling closer to the divine - the sense of the numinous”

aka, standing on a cliff listening to the wind and hearing god’s voice. Feeling the sense of the numinous.

[Azvanna]

Sure, np. Spirituality is hard to pin down. To comprehensively and accurately describe. This is amazing given how many of us experience it. One very compelling explanation for why this is, is the incomplete set of information we have about our own experiences.

We know that we’re having the experience, what it feels like, but that description doesn’t accurately report what the brain is doing....or even what it’s doing it in reference too.

- - - Updated - - -

So we end up with descriptions, often contradictory, of what it feels like, and what it feels like it’s about...rather than a machine reporting “region x fired in a specific pattern in conjunction with region y in response to a sudden change in the field of vision of the subject whose brain was then fed a rush of partially disorienting chemical inhibitors meant to adjust for balance and depth perception in the extreme, leading to s report of feeling closer to the divine - the sense of the numinous”

aka, standing on a cliff listening to the wind and hearing god’s voice. Feeling the sense of the numinous.

Wow yes! That makes a lot more sense now and is along the lines of what I meant when I said on another thread that I'm not sure science can ever prove that God doesn't exist. It's to do with our language. Listening to a lot of people here, we all talk a lot about the same sorts of things in different ways. A lot of talk on spirituality sounds to me like a mixture of preparing the mind to think a certain way and then filtering experiences through that lense. Like you say we can't accurately report what the brain is doing or what it's doing it in reference to. Our framework for making sense of reality, the words we use to describe it all are very different.

I really love the diversity in paganism. Seeing the same experience through different angles bring a profound depth to human experience.