My friend Julian suggested this topic.

I seem to be spiritually blind, so I am genuinely curious. I would particularly like to hear from persons of faith who would be willing to share their experiences (if they can be expressed in words.)

To be debated: What is spirituality?

Aside from whatever Mr. Webster might say, I think this has a lot of potential answers.
For me it is an awareness of the potential for inner peace and tranquility. Accomplishment of that goal may never happen for me, but I can claim to be making the journey.
I am looking forward to the other responses. If something better comes up, I will subscribe to it readily.

To me, spirituality is social at an individual basis, i dont know how to better say it but that. I think spirituality from the times long ago may have been glue for humanities survival and advancement in a way, being you find so much in it that relates to the social aspects of human life. I do think that more stuff can be put in it then really needs to be at some points, and the organized fashion of it ruins it to me, whats the fun to wonder about stuff if you have someone trying to tell you that there is no need to anymore Plus like the word sexuality, i dont think spirituality really covers whats all being said and such.

I think spirituality (aside from Webster) is people's interpretations of their feelings as some external force working in theirs and the lives of others. It becomes "spiritual" I suppose from the idea that there are either entities or forces beyond our control consciously working to shape events of this world and beyond.

I cant prove it scientificly but I believe you have a spirit. Its not something you can see, feel, touch, taste or smell, but its at the center of your being. Matthew Henry said in his commentary at the end of Revelations, "man is a clod of clay and a beam of light, at birth these two are joined and at death they are sepereated for the power beyond the grave" I could really run with this one but I am convinced that at the center of your being, you are a spirit. Paul in discussing why men turn from faith said that the spiritual truth is spiritually discerned. I wont press any further then that.

I am an atheist, but I use the word spirituality to describe my affinity for nature. I think that the word spirituality means many different things to many different people, and I think that it would be nearly impossible to develop a group consensus of what it means.

Reading an article larger in scope, I stumbled across a paragraph I thought might be pertinent in terms of what I was trying to get across in my previous post:
Spirituality, I think, is the encompassment of such creations by humans. Whether it be gods or spirits, luck or fate, spirituality is something (I believe) of our own making to set our minds at ease about the world.

Do we include religious based spirituality? Or is non-religious the topic? Or both?

Both would be welcome, as well as any other meaning for the word you can come up with.

I wouldn't be so sure about that, Victoria. Have you ever considered that your active imagination and fantasy life might be your psychological equivalent for the spiritual? In other words, your personal answer to an inherent search for 'something more', which the logical side of you instinctively rejects?

I believe that human beings are deeply connected on a level beyond the material physical world. I can offer no other explanation for the astounding influences of some of the most seemingly inconsequential things. A simple idea can shape a country, lead to millions of deaths, millions of births, man on the moon. Jaime and Mike decided to form this website and because of that decision there are now hundreds of posters from thousands of miles away and different walks of life communicating directly and exchanging ideas. Perhaps each of us is in turn influenced by something on these discussion boards.

As hard as it is to accept the concept of some underlying consciousness, it is almost more difficult to accept that inexplicable coincidence is the result of pure chance, and universal regard for goodwill the simple product of evolution. Just my own opinion, of course.

Maybe this can help your search: Be wary of anyone who wants you to buy a whole lot of things to enhance your spiritual experience. My experience has been that the more "stuff" I required for a successful prayer/meditation experience, the less successful the experience was apt to be. All you really need is you.

Spirituality in itself is free. It is your perception of yourself and why you're here. Many meditators use breathing exercises to achieve a heightened state of awareness. Some asthetics tune out their environment during meditation; others tune themselves in to their environment to feel a part of the larger picture. Is the bigger picture important to you?

What qualities about yourself do you like? What is it you do or want to do when you desire to be more true to who you really are?

Do you believe there is a purpose to your being on earth? Who gave you that purpose, or did you originate it yourself?

Think of examples you feel characterize "right" and "wrong." Check how these thoughts resonate within you. Do they matter to you? Are you here to just be, or to act upon something or relate to someone in your existence?

These questions can guide you in meditation. The more you understand your deepest needs, the more capable you become of a deeper spiritual experience.

(Edited to add: I found this entry of yours in the thread regarding ethics. Maybe this philosopher can help you out(?)

Spirituality
Break the word down
Spiritual-ity - ity turning the word into an action to be practised, of the spiritual.
Spirit-ual - Being of the spirit

Spirit-ual-ity - A practice of enhancing the spirit (or soul) by actions in order to develop your understanding of the world in which you live

This next bit maybe slightly off the subject but it sets my point on firm ground.

Why would any man right a book (namely the Bible) saying that God would send people to eternal damnation if they did not repent of his ways. Either he was a fool and understood not what he wrote or he was a wise man that sat and damned himself as he wrote or it was written by righteous men of which there was only one (Christ) And the Bible was not written by one man it was written by many over a period of several hundred years and all affirm what the other said. I can quite easily say that I understand the logic of this article better than the person who wrote it and could take it further than he does and show the author the flaws because they are not looking at evidence from science. Also if man evolved did humans some time in the past think Oh if we kill off all the missing links and incinerate there bones so that the don't fossilize we can say we were created by a God because this is the best way to stop ourselves killing each other. This is just stupid but is the only logical explanation for no missing links that something decided to kill them all. If evolution is true their should be massive genetic diversification and constant uncontrollable mutations in all life but all life multiply's after its own kind as God hath said.

All People are given a soul at conception, an untouchable higher essence for the greater worship of God. Animals do not have souls and this is what separates man from the beasts of the earth and the air and the sea. For Man has a purpose, to give all that he has back to his God and fall into his mercy and grace(undeserved favour).
Spirituality is fulfilling the desire of your creator and returning to how you where created as by the actions of one man and one woman are all men slain (when death came into the world as a result of the disobedience of Adam and Eve and the curse of God upon them for he could no longer abide with them for they were sinful). You must deny your ability to do anything for yourself and open your soul for Christ, the great spirit (God) who came into this world to save sinners.

You are a spiritual person if your spirit, your soul, is awake and only God can make you whole as we live in a world of flesh and God in the realm of the Spirit. So we cannot interact with our maker unless we are awake in spirit and only God can awaken a sin sick soul and show you the folly of your ways.

I did? Cool

Anyway, in my opinion, spirituality is a largely redundant but mostly harmless instinct largely based on the need for a subconscious awareness of one's surroundings when in an environment where one might be possibly in danger from predation.

I'd say that a way it usefully manifests itself today in it's original form is the way that one can often be aware of someone else's presence without consciously knowing how. Human ears emit a quiet, high-pitched whine that can be heard consciously when sitting in a silent room (it's easiest to notice at night, by resting on one's side with one ear against the pillow). There is no reason to suppose that, just as we can pick out a conversation in a noisy room, we can still pick up the tell-tale signature of another person when their "ear noise" is masked by other noises to our conscious minds. (As an aside, I think that's probably why cats can tell when you look at them - they aren't psychic, they just have better hearing than we do, so they might be able to tell from the way the noise sounds which way our heads are pointing.)

I don't KNOW that's the mechanism, but it makes more sense to me than postulating that we have some "extra sensory" awareness that lets us know when we are not alone.

What might the original function of spirituality have been? Maybe to inculcate a healthy respect for our environment, in the times before we learned how to manipulate it to our own ends. Also, our social nature and our capacity for language lets us share our urge for the spiritual to pool our resources. And, even today, the human thirst for spirituality can be (and usually is) useful in ameliorating the emotional pain we feel when we are harshly treated by the events of life (the death of a loved one; being struck by misfortune, illness, the effects of natural disasters and weather patterns, and so on).

However, I think the original "purpose" of spirituality - to bind us to our environment in a way that balanced our desire to thrive with the sustainability of the environment itself. Few societies that survive today entirely as hunter-gatherer groups we are thought to originated as have any kind of formalised religion beyond animism - respecting the spirits of the plants and animals they use to survive, and the wider environment in which everything interacts. I think it is only with the beginnings of agriculture and permanent settlements that we started to imagine spirituality in terms of some kind of god - at first, the sun which is the source of life; the moon that marks the passage of seasons, and so on. Rain gods are present only in cultures that regularly experienced drought - obviously enough. Temperate zone cultures (e.g. Europe) more often had thunder gods than simple wet weather gods.

As we got better at agriculture, and began living in larger groups, we began to specialise. A person could make a living as a brewer or a blacksmith and trade their skills for food - they didn't have to grow it themselves. We began to get farther away from our environment, and farther from the roots (and usefulness) of our spirituality. Can it be a coincidence that many of the most religious parts of the world are still largely agricultural, or that the most religious parts of our sophisticated societies are often in farming areas, I wonder?

As our sense of the size of the groups we belonged to grew, we started to need identifiable leaders to follow, instead of just elders to consult. AS our societies changed towards this model, so did our religions - monotheism was "invented" by the Zoroastrians, whose origins are closely linked to one of the earliest cities - Babylon. We know the Jews spent a lot of time there - the Bible itself mentions this. When they got back to their homelands, what's the first thing they did? Build a city!

Today - right now, in fact - our ideas of what form a particular religion should take, how it should be interpreted, and so on, are being shaped in response to changes in our society. Has human nature changed so much that we can't imagine that exposure to monotheism and city living changed the ideas of the people who later became the Jews, giving them the idea that there was only one god?

Even for credophiles (told you I liked that word!), this could be a credible explanation - only with a spiritual revelation at it's heart rather than a sociological response to changed circumstances; the Jews largely stopped flirting with multiple on-the-spot idols (e.g. Aaron's golden calf) once they settled into their own towns and cities. After that, the likes of Baal were largely competing monotheistic ideas, rather than multiplying idols.

Of course, my theory has holes big enough to fit the (largely urban) Romans into, although I could reply that the creation of divine emperors and kings in other, polytheistic societies sated both the desire for leadership and spiritual satisfaction.

Sorry if this is a little muddled - I thunk it as I typed it, for the most part.

And none of this is meant to be any kind of insult to credophiles (I have plenty of better ways to do that ), it's just my considered (and long - sorry) opinion in response to the thread question at hand.

I thought I should give it my best shot, seeing as how I suggested it in the first place. Apparently (Thanks for the plug, VS!)

I suggest the following:

Earnestly consider for yourself why you exist (not the mechanics of how, I mean why). At some point, you will utterly convince yourself (and you must be completely honest) that:

[A]There is no reason for my existence
[B]There is a reason for my existence.

If B, then keep going. Soon you will know better than if you had read every available book on the subject.