What is Spirituality?
Symbol: A path
The questions:
- What is spirituality?
- What about meaning?
- What about relationship?
- What about different paths?
- What about your path?
Theme: Meaning and values
- What is Spirituality?
Spirituality – ‘the flow of the experience of meaning and relationship’ – does not require any belief in a god and runs much deeper and flows more widely than any one philosophy or religion.
“Would you identify yourself as ‘spiritual’? If so ‘Why?’ If not, what problems does it raise for you?”
Spirituality comes from the Latin word spiritus, meaning ‘breath’ or ‘wind’. Each is invisible, yet both are powerful. Breath and wind flow. Spirituality flows because life itself flows.
- What about meaning?
Life certainly flows, but “Does this flow have a path?” Spirituality askes the question about this meaning, and we need to come to our own answer, and take responsibility for our choice.
“Where on a continuum about life being meaningless or meaningful would you stand, and why?”
Every global culture understands lifegiving values like love, justice, peace etc. How can this be? Are these shared values the result of chance? A divine gift? Evolution? Human experience?
- What about relationship?
Relationship is about connecting. Meaning comes alive within relationships. My behaviour makes it clear to others who I really am. Living by values nurtures and matures our spirituality and its impact.
“What kind of person do you really want to be; for yourself, for others, and for Earth?”
Every global culture seems to have some version of the ‘golden rule’, “Treat others as you would like them to treat you.” The respect these words give to both every other human, and the- more-than-human world, is remarkable.
- What about different paths?
The point at which spirituality meets culture is where religions, faiths, and beliefs often begin to emerge, offering many different paths; each bringing fresh insights to universal lifegiving values.
“How can we use diversity of beliefs and ideas as a strength with which to build a shared future?”
Shalom’s distinct focus means it can support each person’s unique path, while at the same time becoming a uniting link between every religion, philosophy, faith, doubt, belief, and unbelief.
- What about your path?
Spirituality offers no map. It’s a call to find you own path, living spontaneously and wisely each moment with integrity, love, and joy in all relationships, touching the lives of others for good.
“So, what do you think the next step on your own personal spiritual path will be?”
Spirituality creates ways, like the wind creates waves; a personal path, shaped by living in harmony with the same forces that created the cosmos. Your wave of life becoming your way of life.
find your path