What is the Meaning of Spirituality?


The word "spiritual" comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath or wind. In ancient times, the term referred to the soul or mind, which is why we use the word today.

 

Some definitions of spirituality are "a sense of connection with something larger than oneself, an awareness of the sacredness of life, and a feeling of being part of something greater than oneself."


"Spiritual life is the bouquet of natural life, not a supernatural thing imposed upon it."

— Joseph Campbell


Spirituality covers a vast landscape of partitioned beliefs—types of spirituality range from the Egyptians and Gnostics to today's evangelical movement and quantum consciousness. The word has implied different things to various cultures throughout history.


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Its secular version is related to words such as love, patience, contentment, harmony, concern for others, and altruism, all of which reflect the best in Homo sapiens. In the religious sense, however, the meaning of spirituality jumps off into the supernatural. Here we find a departure from the natural world into an unseen mystical realm.

Is Spirituality a Religion?

The spiritual landscape is an invisible realm where mysterious beings exist. Some belief systems describe a hierarchical order where God is at the helm of a structured cosmology. Others convey a pantheon of beings complete with time loops, dimensions, and alternate universes.

 

Is spirituality related to God? It's not necessarily a religion. It's the foundational belief behind religion. For instance, spirituality in Christianity is the idea of two realms, the spiritual and the physical. The story consists of an earth realm that has fallen under God's curse and a spiritual realm full of angels and devils. You can apply this template to all religions.


But as you will see, the original meaning of spirituality has nothing to do with substance dualism (physical and non-physical) and everything to do with nature.

Spiritual History

A chronology of the history of spirituality would take up volumes. But for the subject, I will list a short progression to explain how the word has evolved.

 

In the 5th century, at the end of the middle ages, words translatable as spirituality began to surface and make their way into the common vocabulary. The term represented heretical ideas outside the religious tradition, placing innovators at risk of losing their reputations and lives. In the 18th century, thinkers opposed to religion translated its meaning into a more sublime expression of emotion.


In his Transcendentalist movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson put the word on the map as "an intuitive experience." Transcendentalism suggested that we could intuit truth through our communion with nature instead through a mandate from God.


"Your Stairway lies on the Whispering Wind."


— Led Zeppelin


In modern times, the current spiritual version is called "Consciousness." It is an all-encompassing name that includes everyone and everything in the cosmos rather than a chosen few. Being spiritual rather than religious is more acceptable these days and shielded from religious ridicule.


Spirituality, from this perspective, allows for more articulate explanations. Serve up a bowl of Quantum Physics and Holographic Theory, throw in a dash of "What the Bleep Do We Know," and you have a delicious buffet of paradigms.

 

Let's look at the description of spirituality from Merriam-Webster:

Spirituality is the concept of an alleged immaterial reality. It points to existence beyond the natural world. This word has evolved over time and now refers to our subjective reality in more general terms. Let's look at a few more definitions:

All these definitions sound meaningful and fantastic, but does the word actually imply "meta-physical?" As we stated at the beginning of this article, the etymology (root definition) of the English word "spirit" is the Latin word spiritus, which means "soul, courage, or breath." Spiritus replaced the classical Latin version of animus, which came from the Indo-European root meaning "to breathe."

 

The word "breath" is an Old English word meaning "air exhaled from lungs." As you can see, it is a natural definition. If one were religious, speculations could arise to support the belief that air is a product of the supernatural. This word, however, is not characterized as anything esoteric in its base definition. The earliest descriptions appear to infer a much less spiritual meaning than how it is understood today.

Spirituality and the Soul

The soul was treated as part of the body throughout the ancient world. It was no different than breath or wind. Victor Stenger, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii, states in his book, The New Atheism:

 

The Hebrew word for soul is nephesh, translated as "life" and connected to breathing. Also, in Hebrew, ruah is translated as "wind" or "breath," and sometimes "spirit," "soul," "life," or "consciousness."


The association of the soul or life force with breath also occurred in the isolated Hawaiian Islands. According to one undocumented story from an oral culture, in old Hawaii, when someone died, native shamans tried to breathe life back into the body by shouting, "Ha!" in the body's face. When Western doctors came to Hawaii and were observed not to do this, they were called "Ha-ole," which meant "without breath." To this day, whites are called "Haoles" in Hawaii.


For most of history, the soul was considered part of the body as material as wind. The ancient atomists believed the soul was like everything else in nature, made of atoms. Some Christians maintained a unity of body and soul with the physical resurrection of Jesus.

 

There appears to be a significant focus on the physical breathing process. Spirituality has acquired diverse and sometimes conflicting meanings, so, without going into myriad explanations, I will proceed with the root definition, as we've seen, from which to work. In its immediate definition, the word implies physical properties.


So how does the word find its place in the non-physical arena?

Spirituality and Death Anxiety

The earliest evidence of religious thought is founded on the ritual treatment of the dead. For the animal kingdom, death is a relatively normal event. The relics of ritual burials tell a tale of man's early awareness of life and death.


Our primal ancestors developed the ability to self-reflect upon the natural world through art and ritual. With the onset of language and symbols, humankind began conceptualizing the environment. Behavioral Neuroscientist Todd Murphy explains:

 

"At this point in our evolutionary history, a fundamentally new experience became possible. A person could look at a dead body, remember the experience, think about it, personalize the whole thing, and conclude that the same thing is going to happen to them. Language skills are utilized, and the sentence appears in the mind: "I will die." The conclusion is reached without the person having any first-hand experience at all."

 

"The concept is very threatening. Our new cognitive skills would allow a lot more imagination than before, and it would have been very adaptive for us to use this skill to imagine as many ways of dying as possible. The more ways of dying we can imagine, the more ways we can avoid it. But death anxiety is very stressful.

 

If we were aware of our death at all times, we would be at risk for several psychoses, like the ones that follow the development of the normally fear-laden temporal lobe seizures. Persinger has theorized that we developed a mechanism that shuts death anxiety off—the spiritual experience."

Spiritual Evolution

Spirituality takes on a fresh new light when viewed from an evolutionary standpoint. Spirituality has a physical reference as well as a conceptual one. The spiritual concept was born, and mythologies developed, labeling the natural world with our ideas, fears, and fantasies. In the conceptualization (imagination, image, copy) of nature, our species has fallen into the trap of believing our ideas about things rather than going by the physical evidence OF things.

 

Replacing spiritual terminology with "human subjective experience" grants a more honest appraisal of the phenomenon at hand. The word "subjective" means "existing in mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought." This distinction is so important that I cannot stress it enough.


Our memories, feelings, and beliefs are the lens through which we sense the world. We become susceptible to delusions if we believe our subjective perceptions without question. We can interpret a new language if we understand how our emotions communicate through archetypes and symbolism.

Dreams are the language of the inner world. When correctly translated, they make sense. Just look at them from a feeling rather than a logical storyline. Think about a painting or sculpture and how it speaks to you. The meaning you get IS the message. Remember, it's all about the feeling-sense of the imagery.

Sharp Mind, Open Heart

Critical thinking skills are essential for integrating our inner world experience with the outer world. Not only does it remove the dependency on the shaman and pastor, but it also helps us learn from direct experience rather than authoritarian.


It is of utmost importance to develop a relationship with the inner aspects of ourselves to relate to the universe around us. I recommend the Focusing Method for internal work in replacement of traditional methods. It is clean, without dogma, and takes you directly to the source of your spiritual life. It is immensely effective for personal healing and awakening.

 

I prefer to use the term BioSpirituality because it accurately defines the word. Ultimately, it is a concept that points to the subjective experience from which our myths, stories, and fantasies are born. And the human experience wouldn't exist without breath.


— Zzenn