Spirituality: Defining an Abstract

Some words are so loaded with predefined ideas, that no sentence is required on its flank to convey strong meaning. Love, Art, Religion, Spirituality....God. So the first thing anyone can do to understand what any of these things are, is to forget everything you know; or rather, everything you think you know. A clean slate. Start new. This is important because abstract concepts are like emotions; they just are what they are. If you try to think about them too hard, try to label them, you lose the full depth of their power.

An ancient parable of a Mentor speaking to a very eager Student. The Student did not wish to wait until after the Mentor's morning tea to begin his lessons, but the Mentor insisted. As the Mentor poured the Student's cup, he poured and poured until the cup flowed over. When the Student asked why, the Mentor replied, "How can I give you more, when you are already so full? Drink first of what you have...then when you have room for what I can offer, I shall fill your cup anew."

So, appreciate what you already know...put aside everything you think, believe or were taught about Spirituality. Forget the word Religion. Forget the word God. None of those apply anymore. For the sake of avoiding argument, they won't be used. Now allow yourself to take in something new.

Spirituality quite literally means: "of the spirit." More fully, it is that which is intangible, unseen, not of the corporeal. Since the word spirit is one of those loaded words, we'll drop that out and stick to the intangible. One can have Spirituality within the construct of their religious beliefs, to believe in an intangible force, a supreme being, or simply the presence of a noncorporeal existence. In this case, Spirituality is working toward a likeness of, or oneness with the intangible. If applied outside of any preconceived belief system, Spirituality is merely an abstraction...a distillation of concepts in search of a singular truth and therefore is more of a process than a state of being.

To ask how one achieves or attains Spirituality, you first must define your spiritual abstract. If you already subscribe to a predefined Truth and accept it as such, then achieving Spirituality is a matter of alignment. Align yourself with that Truth, to emulate it, to be one with it. Spirituality for you then is to bring your entire being into the sphere of that Truth's existence.

If those concepts that others have put forth are not the singular Truth that you commit yourself to, then Spirituality for you is not merely a matter of achievement or attainment, it is not a destination so much as a process through which you sift through the intangibles. Spirituality is a matter of discovery and exploration. It is a transcendental wandering, which is not to imply you are lost- to be lost means your destination is defined. To wander, to explore, these are to say that you do not know what exactly you are seeking, only that when you find it there will be no question.

Neither definition or application of Spirituality is better/worse, correct/incorrect any more than one artist's method or style of applying paint is correct, or that photography is/is not better than drawing. It is a matter of personal definition, self-discovery and those intangibles that make up whatever it is that propels our corporeal bodies above the instinctual habits of eating, sleeping and procreating. A great many concepts are grouped into the words Spirit, Mind and Soul, but they all refer to the individual distilled away from its meaty form. Spirituality, by either definition, requires first the identification of the individual. Like the proverbial first step...begin there.