Press Release Summary = In recent years, spirituality in religion often carries connotations of a believer having a faith more personal, less dogmatic, more open to new ideas and myriad influences, and more pluralistic than the doctrinal faiths of established religions. It also can connote the nature of believers\' personal relationship or \"connection\" with their god(s) or belief system(s), as opposed to the general relationship with a Deity as shared by all members of a given faith.
Press Release Body = Some Indian traditions define spirituality (Sanskrit: adhyatma) as that which pertains to the self or soul (Sanskrit: atman).
Certain forms of spirituality can appear more like philosophy: note in particular the scope of metaphysics.
Due to the broad scope and personal nature of spirituality, however, one can perhaps gain an overview of the field by focusing on key concepts that arise when people describe what spirituality means to them. Research by Martsolf and Mickley (1998) highlighted the following areas as worthy of consideration:
Meaning - significance of life; making sense of situations; deriving purpose. Values - beliefs, standards and ethics that one cherishes. Transcendence - experience, awareness, and appreciation of a \"transcendent dimension\" to life beyond self. Connecting - increased awareness of a connection with self, others, God/Spirit/Divinity, and nature/Nature. Becoming - an unfolding of life that demands reflection and experience; including a sense of who one is and how one knows. The British magazine What is Enlightenment?, in its tenth anniversary issue, published an article which drew a distinction between what it called \"feel good\" or \"translational\" spirituality, and \"transformational\" spirituality, the former covering essentially the practices whereby a person feels better or changes approach, without in fact enhancing personal underlying spiritual centering (or ego-related viewpoint).
Osho, a controversial Indian teacher, comments of spiritual teachers that \"[o]ut of one hundred masters, there is only one Master, ninety-nine are only teachers. The teacher is necessarily learned, the Master ... it is not a necessity... The Master is a rebel. he lives out of his own being, he is spontaneous, not traditional...\"
Those who speak of spirituality as opposed to religion generally meta-religiously believe in the existence of many \"spiritual paths\" and deny any objective truth about the best path to follow. Rather, adherents of this definition of the term emphasize the importance of finding one\'s own path to whatever-god-there-is, rather than following what others say works. In summary: the path which makes the most coherent sense becomes the correct one (for oneself). Many adherents of orthodox religions who regard spirituality as an aspect of their religious experience tend to contrast spirituality with secular \"worldliness\" rather than with the ritual expression of their religion.
People of a more New-Age disposition tend to regard spirituality not as religion per se, but as the active and vital connection to a force, spirit, or sense of the deep self. As cultural historian and yogi William Irwin Thompson (1938 - ) put it, \"Religion is not identical with spirituality; rather religion is the form spirituality takes in civilization.\" (1981, 103)
For a religious parallel to the approach whereby some see spirituality in everything, compare pantheism.
2025
