Spirituality is Personal
Spirituality is personal. More often than not this is about faith and belief in yourself.
Who I am is unique to me. I am a lot of things, depending on whom I am presenting myself to and what I am doing. But when all is said and done I am the one and only me.
You are unique to you. You are a lot of things, depending on who you are presenting yourself to and what you are doing. But when all is said and done you are the one and only you.
While these are both true, they leave out a key point. Neither you nor I are unchangeable. Both of us can create incredible lives for ourselves.
To do that you need to do work. What work you do is going to be specific to your goals. But this comes down to intentional actions to make change happen.
Being mindful of your thoughts, feelings, and actions in the now will get you from here to there. But there is a deeper, underlying issue that cannot be ignored.
You need to have faith. It’s important that you believe.
This is not specifically about God, the Powers-that-Be, or any other deity or deities, this is about faith and belief in yourself.
Spirituality can involve other-worldly powers, but in the end, it comes down to you.
Clarifying a misconception
All too often spirituality is one of three separate but equal tenets that get lumped into one place. What am I talking about?
- Religion
- Spirituality
- Morality
Each of these are totally separate notions, but they frequently get lumped together under religion. But they are not one-in-the-same, they are separate and unique.
Why? Because of what they are.
Religion is a community of people that come together who share a specific belief in an omnipresent deity. That community holds similar beliefs and religion is an identifier they take upon themselves.
Morality is your personal ethos. It is the lines of right and wrong you hold and includes things like adultery, murder, stealing, and lesser matters like how you treat the people around you.
Spirituality is how you believe and hold faith. It is NOT the same as religion, as it may utterly ignore, disregard, or even deny an omnipresent deity. Spirituality is often about believing not in a higher power, but yourself and all that you can achieve.
The reason these are separate is that you can be any one or a combination of these three. Ergo, someone can be religious but amoral and not spiritual; a person can be moral and spiritual but not religious; you could be spiritual but amoral and not religious; and so on.
All of these tenets are personal. The partial exception is the shared community of religion. But spirituality and morality are personal and unique to every individual.
Because spirituality differs from religion as much as it does, it may not involve the omnipresent. Spirituality can be all about YOU.
What do you believe?
There are two main aspects of spirituality. The first aspect I’m going to explore is belief.
Again, this is more about believing in yourself than in any higher-power or the like. But more than that, spirituality acknowledges a wider world of potential and possibility.
Spirituality ties into abundance. Why? Because it is the belief in there being more. Something greater than just the simplicity of existence. Humans are creators, capable of making amazing structures, unique art, and lives that are as unique as snowflakes.
When all is said and done spirituality comes down to belief in yourself. Who you are, what you are, and all the things you can do – even if you are not presently doing them. You are a creature of infinite potential, largely limited by your own imagination.
No two spiritual beliefs are necessarily alike. Some involve rituals and tools like crystals and pendula. Others eschew materialism and focus time and attention on meditation. Some involve journaling. Still others are about cooking, or hiking, or skiing, or backpacking through Europe, or some other practice that makes you feel peace, contentment, and that connects you with abundance and possibility.
Spirituality IS that simple. It only gets complicated when you believe that is how it needs to be. Real spirituality is deeply personal and doesn’t harm anyone because it is the point of building potential in order to realize a larger and more incredible world.
Faith in spirituality
The word faith tends to make people cringe. Why? Because it has been abused by people who falsely use faith like a hammer. This is also one of the main places where the misunderstanding of how spirituality and morality are actually singular, and not a necessary aspect of religion.
Over history, far too many atrocities have been committed in the name of faith. The Crusades, the Inquisition, Trump’s MAGA followers are all prime examples of this abuse. But this is not true faith, because true faith is personal.
When it comes to spirituality faith is again in the self. You know what you are capable of, even that which you may not be currently doing. Faith is knowing not only who you are, but who you COULD be. It is the faith that if you work up to your potential you could be virtually anything you desire to be.
Faith is tied to belief, in that it is often a manifestation of the belief in people, places, and things. For example, faith can be attached to friends and family, places that bring you comfort or joy, pets, the lucky coin in your pocket, and so on.
This is another personal matter, and as such is not necessarily something you can or will share with anyone else.
Spirituality is personal
More often than not this is about faith and belief in yourself. This is an underpinning of mindfulness that can open you up to conscious reality creation. When you have faith and belief in yourself you can see all that you are capable of doing and what it can take to get there.
Spirituality is not a bad thing, and it can be utterly private and will be unique to you. Even if you do not call it spirituality as such, that doesn’t mean you don’t possess an aspect of it. Your spiritual self can be another guide upon any paths of your choosing in this life.
Do you acknowledge your spiritual self?
This is the four-hundred and fifteenth entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for, and my personal experiences with, walking along the path of life to consciously create reality. I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. I also desire to empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here. My additional writing works, both fiction and non-fiction, are available here.
Please take a moment to subscribe to my mailing list. Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive your free eBook. Thank you!
Follow me here!
