finding my spiritual home: part 2

In part 1, I discussed my former spiritual home, and in this part I hope to explain my current spiritual beliefs, values, and needs, and propose some possible “places” I might find a new spiritual home that fits them.

I currently identify as “spiritual but not religious.”  My personal dissatisfaction with religion stems from my experience in it, as well as a more objective observation of how it functions in the lives of other people.  I am not, however, anti-religion.  I find that religions provide a meaningful structure for the spirituality of many people, as well as a sense of belonging and community.  Because religion is heavily cultural, it is hard at times to separate a religion from the culture it relates to, thus making religion an integral part of the daily lives and cultural identity of its adherents.

Critics of religion cite the many religious conflicts (past and present) as evidence of religion’s harmful nature, but I find that argument misguided.  I would go a level deeper and say that difference of any kind has the potential to cause the same animosity that religion causes.  My own criticisms relate more directly to the idea that religion just does not work for me, at least right now.  My feeling is that if the church or religion you belong to is meaningful, helps you become who you want to be, and is overall helpful for you and not hurtful to yourself or others, then by all means, stay in it.  I also see that people sometimes hold onto their church or religion in unhealthy ways, particularly when the person and the religion are incompatible.  I have seen far too often individuals who cannot seem to let go of their religion, but who are also miserable or at best bewildered by being different and not feeling fully accepted by the general religious community.  Still, above everything I value self-determination and do my best not to judge people who either stay in or leave a religion, and I ask the same for others when they examine my personal experience.

In some ways, psychology has become my religion.  I am ambivalent about this idea, because while it is true that the ideas I have learned in my studies have helped me deconstruct many unhealthy attitudes and paradigms, I am also uncomfortable with being labeled as another “godless psychologist” who was led away from the doctrines of God by the philosophies of men.   Still, psychology is often the lens through which I view the world, and it helps me maintain a balanced, inclusive perspective of all aspects of life, including my spirituality.  Psychological principles provide the primary means through which I understand my experience of the world, which is also one of the main functions of religion, so on that ground you could say that psychology is my religion.  Because of this, I value reason, empirical evidence, and existential concerns as important parts of my spirituality.

Even from a young age, I have been a spiritually sensitive person.  I have had many significant spiritual, even sacred experiences, which I continue to cherish, though the way I frame them and explain them has changed over the years.  I believe in dreams, the metaphysical/supernatural, and an afterlife.  I have felt and continue to feel guidance from a higher power, and I still pray and meditate fairly regularly.  The most important part of my spiritual self is what I perceive to be a “center” or “core” with which I strive to remain in harmony.  I know when I am at peace and when I am not, and I try to make choices that are consistent with that place that I feel inside me that indicates when I am living in harmony with who I am.  Indeed, harmony is one of the key elements of my current belief system.  I strive to live in harmony not only with myself, but also with nature, other people, and with God.

Another important part of my spirituality is conscious, deliberate living.  I often seek to live with the five senses, to be fully present in the world I inhabit and sink my toes deep into the substance of life.  I feel like too many people (including myself for many years) do not go through life fully aware of what it means to be alive and to fully enjoy living.  They tend to go through the motions, not really thinking about what they do or believe.  I aspire to be as conscious as possible of what I believe, consume, feel, see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and say, as well as what others believe, consume, feel, see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and say.  The idea of deliberate living came to me from my reading of Thoreau’s Walden, which I consider one of my personal books of scripture.  Reading that book changed so many things about the way I see myself and the world, and his advocacy of deliberate and simple living touched my soul more than any book I have read.  The paradigm he paints in his writings serves as an ideal to which I aspire and try to implement.

For a couple years now, I have felt like a spiritual wanderer, packing around my beliefs and experience wherever I go, but never feeling like I found a place where I could put down spiritual roots and feel the same security and assurance I felt when I was younger.  I believe that when I do finally “come home” I will know it, but I do not know where that home is yet.  As I see it, there are several possibilities of potential spiritual homes:

My spiritual home might be within another religious community.  I have not ruled out this possibility, even though I do not consider myself religious.  Even when I was an active Latter-Day Saint, I enjoyed and drew significant spiritual satisfaction from visiting other religious communities, and I have sampled from many of the major Christian denominations, as well as a few other non-Christian religions (Buddhism and Hare Krishna).  As I said, I have had meaningful experiences in many of them, and I now sporadically visit some of the churches in Fort Collins.  While I might not believe everything that is sung or discussed in the services (as I do not consider myself a Christian), I do appreciate the structured time to think about my spirituality and to connect with a community of believers.  Indeed, the sense of community is the most attractive aspect of joining another religious congregation.  I feel that if I do so, it will have to be a congregation that is pretty “hands off” in reference to a person’s beliefs.  For this reason, I really enjoyed the Unitarian Universalist church I sometimes attended in Salt Lake City—you can be Christian, atheist, agnostic, or anything else and still participate in a church community that values social justice and activism.  Incidentally, I have started attending the Foothills Unitarian Church here in Fort Collins.

My spiritual home might be found in nature.  There is something inherently spiritual to me about nature, and I enjoy going on a walk in the woods or in a park to clear my thoughts and to meditate.  I will try to connect to nature through all of the five senses, trying to be fully present and part of the world around me.  This connectedness to the earth is increasingly important for me, as I view myself as simply a part of a whole that is the universe.  It is in nature that I can begin to feel something similar to what Thoreau must have felt, and like him I look to nature to learn important lessons about what it means to exist.  However, I’m not sure nature would be sufficient in meeting all of my spiritual needs, since I have become a “people person” and I place a lot of value on sharing and connecting with others.

For that reason, my spiritual home might be found in relationships with other beings.  I believe that humans are inherently relational beings, and there are some human qualities that can only be experienced by interacting with other people.  Love, service, generosity, sacrifice—these require us to interact with other beings in order to experience them fully.  I say “beings” because I mean to be inclusive of people, animals, and other spiritual entities (God, angels, spirits, etc.).  There is also something about sharing and connecting with others that is meaningful to me.  Lately my spiritual needs have been met simply by having a good discussion with another person about things that matter to us.  Connecting with another person is spiritual to me, and that connection can be emotional, intellectual, sexual, or physical.  It can be in the context of a romantic relationship, a friendship, a family relationship, or simply a person one meets in passing. 

My spiritual home might be found in myself.  Wherever I do find a place to settle and make spiritual roots again, I feel that this part will always ring true.  Ultimately, all one has in this life is oneself.  People, churches, and “spiritual states” come and go, and change is inevitable.  The one constant is “me.”  Upon leaving my previous spiritual home, I focused on what I believed, felt, needed, and sought, and that has been a central piece in my spiritual progression.  Such spiritual self-sufficience has proven useful to me because I have learned important lessons about myself.  Whether I find another spiritual home and wherever it is, I feel confident that I will continue to value many of the same things, and as long as I remain in harmony with myself and the world around me, I think any and all of the abovementioned ideas could help me develop spiritually and reach out of myself in order to make the world a better place.