Spirituality and Religion

Match.com is probably the largest on-line dating site. I'm single and have tried match.com as well as Craigslist. One question that comes up frequently is religion. And the most common response is , "Spiritual but not religious."

But what does that phrase mean? I have been pondering this for some time. My ruminating is fed by my own experience of religion. I am both religious and spiritual. Religion can be a set of doctrines and dogma and a group of people who are able, willing and even eager to adhere to those doctrines, often proudly proclaiming that theirs is the only legitimate set of doctrines and dogma; theirs is the only God. This is probably the most common kind of religion, but this is not the only definition of religion.

Before providing the other meaning of "Religion", let me state what I feel is the best meaning of "Spirituality": Spirituality is a pursuit or practice that is intended to enhance, help understand and deepen the experience of the "More". (William James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience") The More is also called by a variety of names like God, The Sacred, Ground of Being, Allah, Heart of Buddha and more. Spiritual practices include "prayer", "meditation", "ritual", "mysticism" dance, music, and others.

The other meaning of "religion" has to do with community. There are religious communities which have, as their primary purpose, the support and enhancement of the spiritual quests of their members. These communities engage in study and ritual, perhaps using a traditional religious language, but recognizing the metaphorical nature of that language. Sometimes it is also, the same community which comes together to pursue joint political and ethical actions that they agree come from their common search for spiritual truth.

Sharing our personal experience of "The Sacred" requires using some language. All we have are human words. Truly spiritual people recognize the temporal nature of language. Therefore they also recognize the completely metaphorical nature of any verbal representation of their experience. It is not possible to express the literal nature of spiritual experience, but we can, like Jesus, say, "God is like a daddy, a loving father." He didn't mean that God was our literal father, he knew the difference between God and his literal father, Joseph. All the great spiritual teachers, like Gautama, the Buddha, understand this difference.

In order to share their wisdom and experience they used common language and experience as metaphor. However, in most cases, the second or third generation of followers began the process of reification, (The process of regarding something abstract as a material entity, Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness,")

Sidhartha Gautama, the Buddha, spoke of the fallacy "Mistaking a Finger for the Moon". He was concerned that his followers would make him an object of worship rather than seeking their own spiritual reality. Like Jesus and other great spiritual teachers, he was only a finger pointing to the moon. Mistaking a finger for the moon is what creates the first form of religion.

The first form of religion shows up in all fundamentalism, Christian, Buddhism (Yes, there is a Buddhist fundamentalism.), Judaism, Islam, Atheism (Oh, yes. Even an Atheistic fundamentalism) and even Wicca. The first form of religion brings a great deal of misery into the world. It is a form of belief in magic. If you reject this form of religion, you do well. But if you reject the second form of religion, you lose an opportunity to learn from others and share your life.