What Exactly Is Spirituality?

It’s amazing the questions that are posed during a work meeting, especially with one’s manager-once-removed! A cup of coffee and a coaching/mentoring session can dredge up almost anything, which is part of the beauty of taking time out to simply ‘relate’; a luxury not often afforded busy ‘secularians’. At the end of the session, walking back to the workplace, knowing my penchant for things spiritual, the question came: ‘So, what exactly is spirituality?’

I found it strangely difficult to answer this question, but seeing the rare opportunity I had to seize it, like a seagull on a chip. Here are some of my own reflections on the answer to such a broad question. Spirituality is:

- Looking at life through the guise of your death--a platform for joy and thankfulness at the very least;

- The opposite of materialism--we can’t see it or own it;

- The mind offering therapy to the heart and vice versa—in psychology circles this would be explained as ‘thinking us into acting differently’ or ‘acting us into thinking differently’;

- Eternal and ongoing as the material is temporary and fleeting;

- Our inner world--the speaking of our souls;

- Knowing we’re sinners and knowing we need a Saviour i.e. that we need God’s forgiveness and grace to experience the full life.

According to Dorothy M. Neddermeyer, PhD, “Spirituality is the God related science of developing or freeing the God made innermost being”.[1] I’m inclined to agree--it’s the sanctifying and possible saving of the soul through self-God-revelation. The Free Dictionary has it as the “Preoccupation with what concerns human inner nature (especially ethical or ideological values) ‘Socrates’ inwardness, integrity, and inquisitiveness’” –H.R. Finch.

Perhaps the spiritual can be described as heaven, and the material, hell. “In Heaven all is bliss, in Hell all misery. On earth, between the two, both one thing and the other. We stand between the two extremes [on earth], and therefore share both [whilst we remain here].” –Balthasar Gracian.

At the end of the day those who cannot ‘get’ spirituality are like the person Paul wrote to the Corinthians about: “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” -1 Corinthians 2:14 (NIV).

Why do people reject God? Is it fear of submission, or spiritual blindness, or pure greed? From a spiritual person, I sense genuine sorrow in my heart for people who have not yet found peace with their real self spiritually. The ‘trick’ of true spirituality is this: Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” –Mark 8:34-35 (NIV).

The great paradox of the gospel is we must be prepared to lose our life to save it. This is what it means to be a ‘living sacrifice’. This is the essence of true spirituality. It’s beyond altruism.

Copyright © 2008, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

[1] Neddermeyer, D. M. (2007, January 25). Spirituality and Spiritual-Definition. Retrieved October 21, 2008, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Spirituality-and-Spiritual-Definition&id=431584