Religion v. Spirituality

by Shanagirl 16 Replies latest jw friends

  • Shanagirl
    Shanagirl

    • There is not one religion, but hundreds

    • There is only one type of spirituality

    • Religion is for those who want to continue rituals and the formality

    • Spirituality is for those who want to reach the Spiritual Ascent without dogmas

    • Religion is for those who are asleep

    • Spirituality is for those who are awake

    • Religion is for those that require guidance from others

    • Spirituality is for those that lend ears to their inner voice

    • Religion has a dogmatic and unquestionable assembly of rules that need to be followed without question

    • Spirituality invites you to reason it all, to question it all and to decide your actions and assume the consequences

    • Religion threatens and terrifies

    • Spirituality gives you inner peace

    • Religion speaks of sin and of fault

    • Spirituality encourages "living in the present" and not to feel remorse for which has already passed - Lift your spirit and learn from errors

    • Religion represses humanity, and returns us to a false paradigm

    • Spirituality transcends it all and makes you true to yourself

    • Religion is instilled from childhood, like the soup you do not you want to take

    • Spirituality is the food that you you seek, that satisfies you and is pleasant to the senses

    • Religion is not God

    • Spirituality is infinite consciousness and all that is - It is God

    • Religion invents

    • Spirituality discovers

    • Religion does not investigate and does not question

    • Spirituality questions everything

    • Religion is based on humanity, an organization with rules

    • Spirituality is DIVINE, WITHOUT rules

    • Religion is cause for division

    • Spirituality is cause for union

    • Religion seeks you so that you create

    • Spirituality causes you to seek

    • Religion continues the teachings of a sacred book

    • Spirituality seeks the sacredness in all the books

    • Religion is fed fear

    • Spirituality is fed confidence

    • Religion lives you in your thoughts

    • Spirituality lives in your conscience

    • Religion is in charge of the "to do"

    • Spirituality is in charge of the "to BE"

    • Religion is a dialectic

    • Spirituality is logic

    • Religion feeds the ego

    • Spirituality makes you transcend

    • Religion makes you renounce yourself to the world

    • Spirituality makes you live with God, not to renounce him

    • Religion is adoration

    • Spirituality is meditation

    • Religion is to continue adapting to the psychology of a template

    • Spirituality is individuality.

    • Religion dreams of glory and paradise

    • Spirituality makes you live it here and now

    • Religion lives in the past and in the future

    • Spirituality lives in the present, in the here and now

    • Religion lives in the confinement of your memory

    • Spirituality is LIBERTY in AWARENESS.

    • Religion believes in the eternal life

    • Spirituality makes you conscious of all that is

    • Religion gives you promises for the after-life

    • Spirituality gives you the light to find God in your inner self, in this life, in the present, in the here and the now…

    May peace, happiness and universal love continue growing in your heart.

    You are All That Is.

    Shana

  • Phizzy
    Phizzy

    Sounds good Shana, but coming from a JW background, I really do not know what "spirituality" actually is. When I have observed the ones described as "spiritual" in the JW's, they have been people working hard at door to door work and that kind of thing, but not what probably you would call spiritual.

    The people who I have observed elsewhere who describe themselves as spiritual strike me as being, pardon the phrase, but "up their own arse" !

    Someone who comes over to me as at peace with the "Cosmos" if you like, and therefore spiritual, is the Dalai Lama, but I cannot explain why that should be.

    Maybe it is because he believes inspreading love and compassion ,rather than a religion ?

  • Band on the Run
    Band on the Run

    I don't agree with the dichotomies. Religious people can be the most spiritual of all people. Thomas Merton. Daniel Berrigan. The Desert Fathers. Religion is not monolithic. It is wrong to take complex matters and put them into cutesy boxes. This post has religion bad. Spirituality good. Well, Hitler was spiritual.

    Dictionaries will not define them as antonyms. People saying they are spiritual and better b/c they have no detriments of religion is silly. The two concepts correlate a bit. I spent years in spirituality groups sponsored by my church. We met in small groups and used mediocre writings to get us to reveal ourselves to each other.

    I refuse to say all religion is wrong. Alll Spirituality is right. Life is complex. My religion makes me more spiritiual. The longing in my soul was present before church and after the Witnesses. The church provided a structure and community.

    Paul was profoundly spiritual and religious. I must believe that members of the Spanish Inquisition believed they were spiritual. In England, Sir Thomas More considered it his spiritual duty to burn witches, dissenters, members of the platagenet family, a whole host of people to death.

  • botchtowersociety
    botchtowersociety
    You are All That Is.

    So what are you, a figment of my imagination?

  • Shanagirl
    Shanagirl

    There is a difference between Religiosity and Spirituality. Religiosity is dogma, Religious ritual and law, judgement, not God, but Worship of God according to the rules of Religiosity. Religiosity is praciticing the law of obedience and punishment. Religiously directed acitivity repetively in behavior.

    Spirituality is the Law of love, the practice of the principal of kindness, the inner knowledge that the light of the Divine is the All that is. Spirituality is when we bring our integrity and goodness into a church who demands Religiosity of it's members, to conform to the act of Religiosity. Spirituality is the longing to seek the Divine and how to connect to what is Divine on a personal level thru inner knowing.

    Religiosity is believing we are separated from God. Spirituality gives you an awareness that spiritual light is within us and we are connected to the Divine Light and Love of God.

    Religiosity is the rules fo the Ten commandemnts, given by an angry jelous god, then later telling to break those commandments for his worship.

    Spirituality, and inner knowledge from the True God of light and Love, lets us know we don't need to be given these rules, it's within the spirit of us to know already what is right and what is wrong. We as spiritual beings know already not to kill even in the name of a jealous god, a crazy Yahweh, Jehovah God, demanding sacrifices of blood. Our inner spirit tells us this.

    We are all a spark of the divine light that dwells within us the helps us to know these things. This was jesus greatest message. To do away with the LAW, and replace it with Love.

    Shana

  • lifestooshort
    lifestooshort

    A religious person will either approve or disapprove of what someone says. A spiritual person can accept what another person says because they accept that we are all on a journy and some are further along then others. A religious person only sees who is below them and looks down. Not very accepting and devisive. Whereas spiritual is accepting and sees the common ground.

  • EntirelyPossible
    EntirelyPossible

    Religion - they tell you who your imaginary invisible silent friend in the sky is

    Spiritual - you are making up your imaginary invisible silent friend in the sky

  • lifestooshort
    lifestooshort

    Seeing things as black and white has its advantages and disadvantages.

  • Band on the Run
    Band on the Run

    Some people need to consult a standard dictionary. Next, they need to study religion and spirituality from anthropolical/historical viewpoint. Of course, maybe these members use the New Age dictionary. Life is not so simple.

    Jesus was spiritual and religious. Perhaps 20% of religion has a negative outcome. YOu don't throw the baby out with bathwater. I expected much more depth from this thread.

  • Terry
    Terry

    The Stolen Concept
    is the fallacy of using a concept while denying the validity of its genetic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept(s) on which it logically depends.
    To change Religion into Spirituality the change presupposes the concepts of what changes, from that and to this, without the law of identity: A thing IS what it IS.
    In other words, it is a counterfeit idea.

    It is like using a $20 Dollar Bill, bleaching it, printing a $100 on top and calling it currency.

    The idea of SPIRIT is non-provable, non-tangible and originates in the idea of "breath" or exhalation as a metaphor for "life" itself.

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