All of us are on a journey through life. For lower order life such as a worm or a plant, that journey has a horizontal path which leaves it at the same level of existence at its end as it had at the beginning. There is no spiritual advancement and emotional growth gained. In the end it passes on in the same form in which it began. For a worm or a plant that is just fine.
When we get into higher order forms of life, humans and even the highest orders of mammals with which we share our lives as pets, even to be regarded as family members, the dimensions of our existence change. For us, our lives expand in an ever-increasing sphere of awareness that gets greater in scale the longer we live. The larger the frontier, the greater the horizon area of awareness.
Starting as children we learn from both our parents, if we were lucky enough to have had both, how to care for ourselves and by role modeling, our responsibility to do so. As we grow, we emancipate having learned both our social and personal responsibilities fully. But unlike a worm, plant, or a reptile, we have begun on a never-ending journey to learn so much more! We realize that we are living on not just the physical level, but also on an ever-emerging spiritual level as well. We become aware of this through our emotional life.
The material and physical side of our learning consists of housekeeping, personal hygiene, education, and vocational and social placement in our community. These are mainly our roles in employment and the family roles we choose for ourselves. For men, it is usually the making of a household, and for women it is the expansion and warming of a household, and these roles can be reversed depending upon the personalities of both. At this point our world expands from material fronts to what we define as spiritual. It is in the spiritual front where we will spend most of our adult life’s energies until we die. So, what then is spiritual? What is spirituality and what part of us, an individual is spiritual in nature, and what does it all mean?
To answer that we need to look in several places and see if what we see in these different places give us a clear picture of our spirituality. We will look first within ourselves and question what it is that makes us tick. When you were born you were intentionally made very different from everyone else on earth. Not just in how you look, your height, color of eyes and hair, but very different in how you think, how you see things, and what things on which you place value. You were also given a unique viewpoint on hobbies, interests, talents, and gifts, both mental and physical, which no one else on earth has.
You were given a predisposition upon how you would choose to spend your time on these things. Moreover, you were given a plan on how you would spend your life in what you would feel would be a successful life. Any major deviation from this you would feel would be an unsuccessful life, wasted, in your opinion. Your uniqueness is the first part in understanding spirituality and your spiritual dimension. Your sense of your uniqueness will grow deeper as you look at yourself in your adult’s eyes than as seen from your child self’s eyes.
The next place we look at to find what is spirituality is in our community, our culture. Society’s conception of spiritual is contained in the religions that society embraces. In America where people from many different cultures have merged, many religious versions exist. There are many different cultures’ views on spirituality. You by default will be skewed to look at spirituality through your culture’s religion normally. Studying psychology over time we have found that there is more variation between individuals in a given culture than there are differences between the cultures themselves. Therefore, any culture’s religion will not be acceptable to every member of that culture. This is not because those who reject it are immoral and lost, it is for another very important reason: They simply see things through their own individual eyes, as you too should do.
So, what that means is your culture’s religion may not have the answers to your emotional and spiritual questions, which we find is becoming more often. People are finding their sense of spirituality is not being answered by their culture’s religion. Moreover, the more people we speak with feel more aware of something spiritual, even though they cannot easily put it into words. The fact that people are feeling more aware of spirituality, and their questions on this awakening awareness are not being answered in their religion means there is an awakening shift and expanding consciousness in Humankind.
What that tells me is Humankind is outgrowing mainstream religion as the sole source of spiritual enlightenment, which it once was by force of government hundreds of years ago. There will always be those who feel called to serve God in a religious role, and that is as it should be. But the true realization is, it is right for them because they were destined to do so, as you are called to some other role in Humankind, because it is right for you because it is within you.
There is an inherent problem arising. All the different cultures’ views of spirituality vary, moreover they all agree on one limiting rule that denies your individuality as significant. And that rule is that there is only one right religion to explain spirituality, and all the other versions of it as explained in other religions are wrong and the other persons seeing their spirituality in the other religions are wrong and are lost. That in effect is like saying there is only one size shoe to wear and anyone who is not comfortable in that size of shoe is wrong. This is especially true of Christianity, whose many denominations each claim their form is the only right one and the others are all wrong. Something with that world view is wrong. The problem I see with our mainstream society’s view of spirituality is religions declare spirituality is only seen and enters Humankind only through their religion. That propaganda is to promote their religion, and status in their religion is through academia only. That is not correct.
We believe all spirituality is seen through character and enters Humankind through our individuality and our talents and interests shared as gifts back into our communities. Religion should reflect and promote those values of individual contribution. Just as a child may well leave home upon reaching adulthood, so too may many of us leave needing a religious context to explore spirituality. That is the advancement of Humankind. Understanding of spirituality, and our uniqueness can also be very well found outside of religion and acquired from two other main sources.
Those sources are nurturing family in our childhood, and through that within our individuality itself. Through these portals we will learn our relationship to first ourselves, and through that, our relationship to God. All that happens very often outside of any religious input of any type in many cultures. I have experienced it in the lives of the most complete, loving people, many of whom have never set foot in a church anywhere.
As mentioned earlier, our sense of spirituality is generally gained through family nurturing and then learned from within ourselves as we follow our familial teachings, but what if we had incomplete or bad family settings? The lack of family can be part of our spiritual growth which will be made up for in another form. Life, God, and Eternity does not punish us with lack of things, for it is to teach us to find it elsewhere and to teach us lessons about our selves in doing so. Spiritual means character, honoring others and living in a contributing way in your community. Spirituality means pride and servitude through your good works to yourself, others, and your culture overall. Spirituality means finding your deepest self and encouraging others to do the same.
Being selfish does not cause you to steal from others as religion claims, it is not either-or, it is both-and. The more you grow your personal estate in social standing and economically with the best employment, the more you will inspire others to do the same. The more money you make, the more taxes you will pay and the more you will buy from your community, creating jobs and economic flow within the capitalist system. Prosperity is not an accumulation as is commonly believed, it is a flow. So too is spirituality a flow, brought on by our character, pride in ourselves and our hard work and sharing outwards with others. Capitalism is the function that created America, the greatest country that will ever be on earth, and it is character and pride and patriotism, the elements that compose spirituality that ultimately fuels it.
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Finding The Meaning Of Life A Beginner Guide To Self, Religion And Spirituality The Meaning Of Life Is In Your Gift To Humankind And Sharing Who You Are
Just for the record, this is an emotional and spiritual encouragement ministry. We are selling nothing here and are not at the present time even set up to take donations, and probably never will. Your healed life is our reward enough, and we are very pleased with that. If you want to, please share your strength with others in your future so our nurturing can live on.