We sometimes hear people say that they are spiritual but not religious. In fact, surveys have shown that perhaps a fifth of people identify themselves in this way.
This is a very loosely connected group that rejects organised religion and dogma, in favour of an individual sense of the transcendent. It manifests in a wide range of ways: Western occultism, Eastern mysticism, positive psychology, alternative healing. Practitioners may embrace concepts like personal energy, and interconnectedness.
There seems to be a sense in which traditional religion is rejected as a constraining and outdated concept, but a stark materialism is also considered inadequate as it doesn’t describe things like the experience of awe and beauty people can feel in nature or the need for a sense of peace and joy. There appears to be a feeling that there must be more to life.
“My short reply is that you can yearn for higher as much as you like, but what you’re yearning for ain’t there. But the desire won’t go away.”
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Why I’m Spiritual AND Religious
“I’m Spiritual, but Not Religious” - From a Catholic Priest Perspective
What it gets right
There is such a diversity of manifestations of the ‘spiritual’ that it can be hard to pin it down, but these are some of the aspects that practitioners find useful as a way to find fulfilment.
Meditation
A common practice. The Meditation Trust highlights benefits such as reduced stress and anxiety, greater clarity and calm, and improved focus.
“We simply allow the mind the freedom to follow its natural tendency towards happiness, and it will settle spontaneously into silence.”
The Meditation Trust Oneness
Some people look to a sense of oneness with the universe, where everything is a single, interconnected whole and the self is not of primary importance. There can be a desire to dissolve the isolated self to realise a deeper, universal spiritual reality. This perhaps can help people feel less isolated and lonely.Freedom
There can be a desire for personal freedom and of seeking truth across traditions. Formal religious requirements might be seen as overshadowing a simple relationship with a higher power.
The Catholic view
The good news of the Gospel is that ‘what you’re yearning for’ is there!
“The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.”
The Catholic faith is deeply and fully spiritual, and Jesus left the sacraments (such as the Eucharist and Confession) as clear ways to connect people with God’s grace and with each other in the community of the Church. In the sacraments, grace is communicated through physical means like water, bread, and oil, and an individual spirituality cannot replicate this means of receiving grace by which we share in the life of God.
Meditation in its fullest reality
Meditation can definitely be a good thing, but the Catholic view would not want there to be an excessive focus on the self or on complete nothingness, which could be potentially harmful. Meditation in its fullest reality is a way of uniting oneself to the fullness of the God who loves us and wants to dwell in us.
Saints and mystics like St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross left us rich traditions of Christian meditation and contemplation of huge spiritual depth.
“In the inner stillness where meditation leads, the Spirit secretly anoints the soul and heals our deepest wounds.”
“God, like the sun, stands above souls ready to communicate Himself.”
“In the first place it should be known that if a person is seeking God, his Beloved is seeking him much more.”
“Faith and love are like the blind man’s guides. They will lead you along a path unknown to you, to the place where God is hidden.”
Creation, the self, and heaven
In Catholic teaching, everything in creation is good insofar as it exists, and the goodness of creation should inspire awe and wonder, but there is no need to deny the existence of the individual self.
However, there is the concept of oneness after this life, for heaven is the state of total, eternal union with God and complete harmony with all the saints in the whole communion of saints. In heaven, our souls participate directly in the shared life and love of the Holy Trinity, seeing God face-to-face and experiencing supreme, unending joy. When the souls redeemed by Jesus Christ rise again with glorified bodies, heaven and earth will be united, and here, every human longing for truth, love, and beauty will find its final rest in God.
Here no one is alone.
Rules, or signposts?
A rejection of the Church for having rules that limit our freedom is a misunderstanding of the reasons for these rules. The rules that are God’s laws are not restrictions, but clear signposts to save us from what can harm us and lead to spiritual death. Throughout salvation history God has tried to teach his people how to be happy and how to avoid sin that damages our souls and closes us off from God and from other people.
He shows us the right path and hopes we will take it, but he will never force us to do so. If we do take the path given to us, then God gives superabundantly and cannot be outdone in generosity. The feeding of 5000 people by Jesus shows this great generosity:
“Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds. They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over—twelve wicker baskets full.”
Only our own reflection
The danger of rejecting all rules, or of taking aspects from different traditions, is that we lose the concept of revealed truth and we shrink God into something we have constructed ourselves. We will never see God, but only our own reflection.
God did not remain beyond our capacity to know and love Him. He became physically present (incarnate) in Jesus Christ, and provided a Church to dispense the sacraments, to provide clear moral teaching, and to guard what is objectively true, thus protecting a person from simply reshaping God into whatever matches their personal preferences.
Worth holding onto
Just being spiritual with no external God-given rules may mean we start to make up a false code of ethics that doesn’t help us to grow and become fully human. But on the other hand, it won’t fulfil us to just follow rules and not pray or have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.