Now, I know I dont usually ask you guys stupid questions...?

Question

Ok, maybe I do. So sue me. Ive got another stupid question for you:

What exactly does spirituality mean?

As most of you know, I consider myself an atheist, a former Christian. I love my fellow man, I see beauty in a sunrise or sunset, and I get the warm-fuzzies when I look at a kitten. I feel pain when I see others in pain, and know that I am a compassionate person. But does any of that make me spiritual?? To the few of you that have gotten to know me personally (as well as email allows that...) - would you consider me spiritual? What does this mean to YOU?

Thanks all for your responses...

Answer 1

That's not a stupid question. Spirituality - unlike most people think - has nothing to do with religion. According to what I've just read (I couldn't define it on my own so I had to look it up),spirituality has to do with you conecting with something greater than yourself - something not tangible. It has also to do with a state of mind. So,it's beyond all earthly things - which makes sense because you only start to focus on your spirit and psychology when all your physical needs have been satisfied.

Answer 2

Spiritual means that you have a spiritual part of your make-up. Just as it is that you are human only because you are well... human. You experience spirituality because you are made with spiritual components, which exist forever. You cannot deny your spirituality insofar as you cannot deny that you are human. A plant cannot claim it has a human side just because it likes the warmth of the sun and so does a human. Neither can it deny it's plant-ness because that it what it is.



I think in your time as a Christian you probably weren't born again into the real knowledge that the Lord is YOUR God, regardless if you like it or not. Perhaps though, you know enough about God to feel the shame of denying His existence, just as you are doing now. Perhaps (even though you know he is a good God and is worthy of your devotion) you are denying all the truth that you know about God in order to persist in the ways which your God-given conscience tells you not to. This is what the Bible describes as suppressing the truth, worshiping the creation and not the Creator. Perhaps you know all this down deep.



With that said, if I've struck a nerve--I rest my case--you ARE a spiritual being. If if haven't... well, I doubt that's the case.

Answer 3

Great question (star). I am experiencing a change in my life right now (sort of that getting old, ovaries sputtering hormones at irregular levels, hot surges type of crap) and I wonder about my beliefs. God? Jesus? Prophet? Meaning of life?



I think that if you are living your life with minimum selfishness, think of others, do the best that you can on any given day and try to live well -- what more can anyone ask?



Spirituality? I believe that if you do the above, try not to hurt anyone else (including yourself) and again, do the best that you can for that day - what more can you do? I try to lift the spirits of those around me because I feel that if everyone just practiced this, what a wonderful world this could be (isn't that a song?).



I don't know about God or prophets or the meaning of life, I just try to make those around me suffer less if I can.



Emad -- thumbs up!

Answer 4

What matters is how you feel about it. I consider your actions and reactions to nature and humanity to be "spiritual". Perhaps the word "soulfull" might better describe it, if you don't want to be considered "spiritual" due to past experience as a Christian..

I don't answer stupid questions. This was a good question, especially as a former Christian who is now an Atheist. "Can an Atheist be 'spiritual'?" The answer, my friend, is YES.

Answer 5

Being spiritual means experiencing an almost unexplainable emotion; something that transcends the physical boundaries of our existence. You may be able to emulate others, find happiness with cute animals and be compassionate. But until you experience "the emotion" you're absolutely correct in saying you're not a spiritual person.

Answer 6

Man - I got NO idea what that means... I think it's PC talk for "esoteric" or "pontificating existential philosophies" or some such crap.



I think the common use of the word connotates that a person ponders the eternal as it relates to themselves. If you fit that description then yeah, I'd say you're spiritual. Whether or not you got soul is a whole nudder can o' worms.



Damn! There's alot of novel writers in your questions! You actually read down this far to mine? LMAO

Answer 7

Everybody has an aura around them. An energy field if you will. Depending on that persons mood and/or personality you could picture this aura as being in different colors and shapes. When people are mad or passionate their aura turns bright red. Anyway to be spiritual is when you mesh or open up your aura to feel the energies around you. If you feel pain when you see someone in pain, this is because you have opened up your aura and felt their energy. Warm fuzzy feelings from cute little kittens is the same transpiring of energy.

Answer 8

The features of your behavior are typically assigned to human traits. Though the individual examples you give have somewhat universal recognition, consider the cute little wild squirrel during a local rabies outbreak. I am a country boy, and to have seen children fleeing in panic from a squirrel at the edge of a forest is abrupt gestalt to say the least. From your examples, there is the possibility that in the near future, feline leukemia could mutate to affect humans. Should that ever happen, your example of warm fuzzy thoughts of kittens would be looked upon at as psychotic or at least delusional, and if you wished to avoid infecting yourself & those around you, certainly not spiritual.

Which makes my point. It is not possible for you as an individual to embrace hope without God. That is to say, the thing you call hope is by intent a small cry from what is available to me: it isn't just about God, but also the human condition, sited by you above as spirituality. No.

Without that hope, your capacity to be human is diminished, not because God dictates it, but because does man in the infinite manners of slight and demeanor - formed, encouraged and compounded to diminish all who pause for a moment to think.

Spirituality is an investigation of what lay above the human realm. To see humanity with a past and a future that can use strengths greater than ourselves to uphold truth in the darkest hour, when it will kill us to speak, and to breathe deep.

While you example worldly concepts and hold them up as spiritual, there is an entire realm of perception behind a door in your mind. You have the right and privilege to open the door a bit or not touch it at all.

Consider resisting the human temptation to peek through the keyhole.



"Open it up,

Open, Open,

Baby,

Open that Door"

-Grace Slick

Answer 9

Humans tend to pretend to be more or less than they actually are, And develop protective images that get upheld. That takes effort and energy, in the mean time the human gets burned out. Spirituality is the act of reconnecting, re-energizing that true human. So it feels wonderful and can be caused by many ways, all depends on the nature of the protective devices in question.

Answer 10

I agree with Rhsaunders. 'Spirituality' is one of those "warm-fuzzy" words with many connotations. As an agnostic, I would not want the term applied to me because for me it has a quasireligious or spiritualist(ghost conversing) connotation. Feelings of transcendence from walking in nature, listening to music, or getting high on pot are, as another poster put it, just chemical events in our brains. "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins is the most transcendent book I've read recently.

Answer 11

Spirituality is nothing more than being aware of your emotional feelings concerning questions of life, (a subject called Cosmology,) and not reacting automatically, but thinking about them, judging them true or not true or cruel or caring, and working with those feelings to create a better you. I too, am an avowed atheist, yet I have written much on spirituality.

Answer 12

My mother is an athiest and she would say that all those fuzzie feelings are chemicals enduced by your body. Sight is not unlike smell, taste or touch really. If it tastes really good, how do you feel? kinda thang.

BUT, in addtion to your question, my vote is that you are spiritual. Not simply because of thise things, but rather and more imortantly, you are simply insightful enogh to be open enough to absorb and appreciate those things. Like life was intended.

Answer 13

Spiritual ...?

Well , I feel the same as u do , and do exactly as u do ...

I am -as told- sensitive that cares for people and got a golden heart -that I deny feverishly , I hate looking like kind- ....

does this make me spiritual ... ? huh .. ?



if u think its Yes ... then please re-consider ...



I am Muslim , and we are mainly realistic with the world and spiritual to worships and ourselves ... = ) please don't try to convince itself with things that might mislead u ... after all , its that right path that I wish for u .. = ) have a good day ...





p.s. I know that I am gonna have a lots of down thumbs tonight , but I really don't care as long as I have told what I believe and what I Truly Am... ! thanks everyone

Answer 14

This is not at all a stupid or silly question, and you will probably get as many different answers as responses. Like you, I have never been able to figure out a satisfactory definition of the word, and it is possible that no such definition exists.

Answer 15

i think of spirituality is thoroughly individual -- it relatively is an relatively gray term, even with the undeniable fact that i'm specific some might say that it is not and that their version of spirituality is the only way . That sounds wide-unfold. I ought to declare that i think of in its essence, spirituality is distinctive than a spiritual journey via fact the former implies a point of individual journey and the latter implies extra of an element of the "collective know-how" (thank you Jung). i could no longer enable you to recognize in case you have been a "religious" individual or no longer, yet a minimum of you journey empathy and compassion in direction of your fellow being (and the older i'm getting, the rarer i think of this is). prefer to hearken to my version of "spirituality"? i think of Sunday mornings are sacred for great long runs and motorbike rides. this is my version of a communion with the international around me -- and that i've got got here across it extra relaxing and non secular than any day I had ever spent in church (it fairly is yet another tale even with the undeniable fact that).

Answer 16

I think it makes you spiritual.

I equate spirituality with compassion and feeling empathetic.



It means you look beyond just what you see visually. You see with your heart as well as with your eyes.



I hope that makes sense.



I don't know you well at all, but I see you as a caring, spiritual person.

Answer 17

You certainly seem spiritual. I, (in my distorted view of the world) segregates religion from spirituality. I am not a fan of religion but consider myself to be spiritual. Don't lie, don't cheat at golf.

Answer 18

Spirituality... to me. Is taking meaning from feeling. Feeling inspired by a non direct catalyst (such as beauty or nobility)



Essentially something that is not effecting (or is it affecting) you directly.



I would say you have spirituality.

Answer 19

There are no former Christians. You're just backsliding. Go back to R&S where you belong and get right with God.

Answer 20

The praticed way of life that is correlative to one's religious convictions.

Answer 21

Well, in fact, you do.

Spirituaity?

Try

Transcendence