About – What is spirituality? | Definition of Spirituality | 2023 (Updated)
While many believe in spirituality, little do people know about what is spirituality.
There are many mysteries in the world, and spirituality is one of them. What is spirituality? Has this question crossed your mind? Even if this occurs, it is probably hard to define with a prominent answer.
People can define spirituality from various perspectives, and each one has some righteousness to it in defining the term. However, the definition is an understatement to define it wholly.
If you are curious about what spirituality is, let’s explore it with a sense of understanding of the realm.
Understanding Spirituality
Spirituality is a connection and sets a bond with abstraction. While practicing spirituality, many neglect the point of connecting with someone who we can not see.
Spiritual awareness of a person is regarding the senses and connection of abstracted thoughts, feelings, and beings.
While spirituality answers the mysterious situation of the universe, it also helps people to contemplate the acceptance of things without seeing the proper logic behind them.
Some of the terms that significantly go with spirituality include meditation, soul, aura, chakras, sixth sense, and many more.
To make you see more logically, spirituality is awareness of more than what you are. It depicts the control you have over your body, the intuitiveness of your brain, and your connection with the soul.
The term is often linked with divinity because gods and spirits are both non-concrete, highly intelligent beings that people can not see.
The sacredness of spirituality begins with the time when you know there is more to the world than a person can look into.
Our imagination carries the reality of things that we can not see. Our minds carry knowledge that we can not seek with available books. Lastly, our hearts carry the bond that we can hold onto without.
Seeing through things in life with the perception of being who you are is a part of spirituality. Even people are not aware, but they are always practicing spirituality.
Our life perspective and seeing through life is quite different, and not just because of a different experience. It is a matter of understanding, the thoughts we come across, and how we want to remain in this world.
While there is no proper definition of spirituality, there is always more to it to make it clearer. Let’s get to the root of finding spirituality.
Types of Spirituality
Spirituality can come across with many different assumptions and behaviors. One may seek the way a person wants to perceive his life. Everyone is spiritual in their way. If one tries to deny it, there is still some part of him that practices spirituality.
Let’s see the types of spirituality and how people practice them differently.
1) Mystical Spirituality
We all have some fascination with words like déja Vu and visions. Intuitiveness is a part of brain functioning for most people. However, it is highly aware of the things around you and beyond you.
Mystical Spirituality focuses on one’s awareness of things beyond what a person can see in life. The mystical presence highly focuses on the feelings and understandings of the person.
While there is an explanation for everything, some things are better without explanation because of the nature they consist of.
Mystical spirituality is in terms of the belief in the greater meaning of everything around us. The term soul searching connects with practicing mystical spirituality, as in both we try to find something beyond what we see in the world.
2) Authoritarian Spirituality
Even spirituality can have rules to abide by people with some restrictions. Authoritarian spirituality focuses on the strict pattern of the soul.
There is a limit to everything. Infinite is the term that exists when a person does not want to look beyond, but there is a limit to everything that exists in the world or something that we can feel.
The authority of being spiritual with the core sentiment of the practice always helps in differentiating between what to do and what not to do.
Religion beliefs are linked with authoritarian spirituality, as both set boundaries. While authoritarians can define religious beliefs well, vice versa may not work.
Even with the term, there are some limitations, but most of these limits are already beyond our reach to see.
3) Intellectual Spirituality
Many people might consider spirituality as a practice for the body, heart, and soul. However, the mind also plays a crucial role in developing spiritual presence.
Intellectual Spirituality is about the knowledge of the true presence of spiritualism. Like any discipline, spirituality has its theories that one may form during his journey of spiritual development.
Wisdom stays with spirituality. One can not deny the fact that, as a spiritual person, you need to become a wise person too.
Those who are more diverted towards intellectual spirituality tend to focus on what and how the perspective of life. They like to surrender their thoughts to what they can see beyond knowledge.
4) Service Spirituality
Developing a bond and connection is always followed by care and nurturing. Service Spirituality is about devoting time to other beings.
Self-realization is quite vital for personal development. However, obsession with self-actualization can cause you doubts and confusion.
While serving others, I always look at doing well for others while wanting nothing in return. In actuality, you get more than what you can think of while serving others.
It is more than happiness and contentment, you will get when serving others. It is the time of knowing and understanding what is more in the universe than you. You may help people for their betterment, but the same help will aid you in creating much-needed perceptions of life.
5) Social Spirituality
Spirituality begins at both personal and social levels. The development of spiritual sense with people is part of social spirituality.
While spirituality focuses on connection with abstraction, the connection with people through abstraction is also possible.
Many times, two people who see each other can not look at everything present in each other. Spirituality helps those two people to connect and bond with each other while understanding what the other means in their lives.
The concept of ‘red thread’ is also a part of the spiritual realm. Fate and destiny may involve a great part of the enchantment. However, spiritual presence also has significant involvement in them.
Elements of Spirituality-
Relationships, values, and life purpose are the three major elements of spirituality.
Connection ties with the meaning of life. Value ties with how to live a life. Life purposes focus on what you need to live a life.
Every explanation of every question gives rise to another question and ends up with one thing that everyone wants to answer. What is its existence?
Exploration of the spiritual realm will help in finding many answers. However, many deep-rooted questions are better for most of us to not get the explanation.
Elements of spirituality define what gives rise to spiritualism. Learning about the meaning of connections, values, and life purposes will make you realize what you need rather than what you want.
Spirituality and Religion
Over time, the term spirituality expanded with the evolution and change in lifestyle. However, the origin of the spiritual realm derives from religion.
Spirituality was termed as a religious process to connect with God to find the right path to living life. It was considered as a channel between the connection realms and God.
There are over 4300 religions in the world, and in every religious teaching, spirituality plays a crucial role. The teachings of religion always relate to developing spiritualism.
As time passed by, people enunciated more about what is spirituality? In terms of religion, there is some connection between the two and there is no denying it.
However, spirituality considers the awareness of being human and the mysterious connection more than God. In spirituality, people connect with a higher power, something they can not define, but can feel the strong presence of the being.
Practices of Spirituality
The way of following your spiritual being is to depend upon you. There are many ways tradition has developed over the years, which includes many tactics for practicing spiritualism.
Let’s see some of the famous practices of spirituality-:
1) Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion that is profoundly spread across many Asian countries. However, Buddhism’s practices and teachings are all based on the exploration of the spiritual realm.
The oneness of everything in the moment of silence is what Buddhists believe can help you define everything.
The famous concept of Buddhism is nirvana, which means liberation from the repeated birth cycle. The divinity of the concept follows the acceptance of the soul. While the body is the core of living on the earth, the soul is what guides us through life and time.
2) Yoga
Yoga is an Indian practice that has been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years.
In Yoga, people believe the true happiness of being in the body has a prime connection with the heart, soul, and mind.
Yoga is more than asanas. It describes the level of agility, strength, sharpness, and intelligence one can abide and increase.
When one can reach the point where he can see through his soul, that is where he can find the prime reason for what is life for him.
3) Taoism
Taoism is a Chinese-originated practice. Taoism, also known as Daoism, focuses on the flow of energy.
According to the practice, we all have some divine energy churning in and around us. With keen focus and by creating a linkage between the mind and the inner body, one can control this energy flowing in and out through him.
Taoism is one of the oldest spiritual practices. It is as old as Yoga. The practice focuses on cultivating the body, mind, and spirit while subliming energy.
4) Shamanism
Shamanism is a practice that involves interaction with the spirit world in a state of trance. The use of the practice is for healing and other beneficial purposes, by transferring energy from the spiritual realm to the physical world.
The three main elements of Shamanism are consistently altering consciousness, the knowledge of controlling energy in practice, and the crucial ritual of altering consciousness.
All religions in the world have spiritual teachings and practices as every religion focuses on the meaning of life and the oneness of the universe.
Spiritual Practices
To reach the level of togetherness with you, there are some certain practices that everyone performs, even if their way of finding the spiritual realm is different.
1) Meditation
One of the most widely popularized practices of spirituality is meditation. The moment of purity with reaching to the core of inner feelings makes the practice sacred.
Generally, you can practice meditation in two ways. Guided meditation is one in which the voice of the other person helps us explore the surroundings according to what the person is telling us to do.
In the second practice, one guides himself through the mind. In the time of serenity, the sincerity of being a human and something more than a body washed over the person.
The origin of meditation took place in the Asian region. However, the practice remains so sacred for the people that people meditate for calmness globally.
Many spiritual leaders have taken meditation as their prime source to reach out to their teachings on soul searching.
Spiritual Gurus like Sri Ravi Shankar and Sadhguru have spread their teachings throughout the world. The Art of Living organization by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is working in 196 countries to help people find divinity through sacred practices.
2) Chanting
The emotions of every world change the energy within and around us. The same reason is why people are always told to speak positively.
Chanting is a practice of repeated enunciation of sacred words while keeping the eyes closed.
Om is one of the most common chants. However, there are many more multi-syllable chants that differentiate between religions. However, the divinity remains the same for every sacred word.
Chanting believes it creates a connection between your spirit and a higher power. The calling out the name of God with chanting reaches out to them without any greed and immerses them in the word.
3) Breathing Exercise
Breathing is the main source of living, as one can survive without food and water for some time, but in minutes without air, one can give up his life.
We are all aware that air circulates oxygen in the body that helps in the entire body’s functioning. However, the pattern of breathing can define a lot.
If you curiously note it, then you will find that with the change of emotion, your breathing pattern also changes. If a person is highly aware of his breathing, then he will not face problems with exaggerating the emotions he feels or showing them.
Moreover, controlling breathing patterns also helps in the situation of headaches, stomachaches, and other common health issues. Regular practicing breathing exercises constantly balance your body’s functioning, which in turn helps in living a healthy life.
Breathing patterns also play a vital role during meditation and chanting. It is one of the primary causes of being alive and exploring the spiritual realm.
5 Best Spiritual Books to get started with
After a long discussion about what spirituality means, we have concluded that the definition of spirituality changes with perception.
One can have its meaning of spirituality as it defines his rightful way of living a life that others might not understand, yet he can derive true happiness and serenity from it.
However, finding one’s spiritual realm can become a strenuous task for most of us. We all need a helping hand to show us the path of wisdom and spirituality.
Books can become your partner in reaching the level of spirituality where you can find the meaning of your life.
There are many books out there that can aid you in one way or another in better understanding spirituality. Let’s look at some of the best spiritual books.
1) The Alchemist
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is one of the bestselling books. According to the sources, the book has sold over 65 million since its release.
Even though the book consists of a fictional book, that does not mean it can not help a person to learn.
The plot of the book revolves around a boy named Santiago, the shepherd. The boy follows the omen from his dreams and finds mysteries of life. In search of finding destiny, the boy faces many obstacles and searched around a lot before coming across his happy ending.
Throughout the book, the author mentioned many logical spiritual terms and facts that may help a soul to search deeper than just the core of the body.
2) The Four Agreement
The Four Agreements is a book penned by Don Miguel Ruiz. Since the release of the book, it has been translated into 46 languages and has generated readers globally.
The book revolves around the ancient Toltec people. The ideology of the book is that every person has an agreement sealed by him with others, with God, and with life. The book explores the meaning of true happiness, love, and freedom.
The Four Agreements focus on the virtues of being impeccable with your word, not taking anything personally, not making assumptions, and always doing your best.
One can not miss the deep relevancy of the assumptions we make about ourselves and how to deprive ourselves without knowing our self-worth.
That is why God gifted us this. Do not question your existence because it is never a problem in your life.
3) The Five Love Languages
The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts was released in the year of 2010 by the author Gary Chapman.
The 5 Love Languages is a book series that has six books to date. The journey of feeling, getting, understanding, and giving love is not an easy task for a human.
The author explores what defines love between two people and the ambiguity people abide in self-love. The book explores the secret language of love between couples.
It highly enunciates the love between the married couple and how they can develop their secret language to understand each other’s thoughts.
The book also reflects the spiritual connection between the married couple and how the connectivity of the soul can help each other understand more about themselves in the relationship.
4) Spirituality before Religion
Prof Kaba Hiawatha Kamene has beautifully portrayed the self-concept of life in Spirituality before Religion.
The book is a comprehensive study of African Deep Thought by Tep Heseb. The book significantly points out the need for spirituality and how it is much more than religion.
While God defines it, there is a higher power one can surrender himself to for learning the concept of making mistakes and learning life. However, when one binds the relationship with God, he may not remain a free man with his own will to live life.
5) Chakra Healing
Chakra Healing by Margarita Alcantara is a beginner’s guide to self-healing techniques that balance the chakras.
The book elucidates the seven chakras that maintain the overall health and energy of the body. Connecting the chakras with the mind can help you to reach the level of epitome satisfaction.
The book describes many helpful techniques to balance the chakras and the energy flowing out from them. Many health problems, including indigestion, allergies, headaches, fatigue, and body aches, can be healed by chakra healing.
Chakra healing is one of the spiritual methods of living a healthy life. Due to changes in the environment, where we currently inhale many pollutants, our daily lifestyle unbalances our body’s energy.
Concluding what is spirituality
In the article, we have significantly covered a lot of topics related to the true meaning of spirituality. Spiritualism is hard to practice without proper knowledge. It starts with understanding the situation in life. If you think there is something more to explore in the world than what you can do, you are on the right path.
What is spirituality? It will always come with a question mark because, as a layman, a person can just think of it and not know it. The feeling of exploring the spiritual realm is airy without any other conscious feeling of touch. This concludes the topic what is spirituality.
