I’ve cracked the code on the difference between religious and spiritual. Tonight, as I lead my interfaith group into a discussion of the Yamas and Niyamas., a good friend, while referring to a quote in the book ‘The Yamas & Niyamas’ by Deborah Adele on page 173: “The way to have a good day is to open up the door and LET GOD IN!” referring to surrender, she asked, where does the tension rise from, where does it enter when it enters religion? Where it suddenly become ego over love? And my response was ‘expectation and judgment’. For myself that is what has turned me away from religion, from organizations that push a rule book and then frown upon you if you’re not following the rule book. Organizations where questions are sort of ok, as long as they stay in the scope of what they’re changing. However, it is encouraged to find the answers within the books published among said religion.
Instead, I am about philosophy, the exchange of ideas, the questions without judgments, and those without direct answers in a book but maybe by growing your faith through experiences. That is what spirituality is. Believing in an unknown beyond you and having faith that it has your complete back but being able to doubt and question and go by your feelings and not necessarily judge those feelings. To look for the answers, that lies in you, by searching for things bigger than you out of you. Things that are not easily explained; flowers, animals, the sky, day into evening and evening into the day, the world turning, rain and snow, leaves turning color, a million and one species of animals and bugs, flowers, so many flowers, and plants and grassland and on and on and on. Feelings and emotions and whatever feelings you’re having, to explore them. To sit with them. To feel them. That although they feel so much bigger than you, there’s an answer in them.
That is the grand difference between religion and spirituality. Well, at least for me it is. I believe that in the end, believing in something greater than you, that it has your back or IT has your back or that he/she has your back, whatever it is identified for you, is enough to live an exploratory life. I believe that when you’re being asked, mostly by organized religion, to live in this box and be identified by a title and a certain way of “doing things right” by their judgment book, that is not unity, that is not peace, that is a standard to live by and we weren’t meant to live one standard.
I agree the moral compass should be the same for all; no killing, cheating, stealing, jealousy, sneakiness, backstabbing, gossiping, yadda, yadda, all the things that are toxic and you know whether you’re 10 or 100, not to do because it doesn’t bring any peace or have any real value to. But the point of all these greats that have passed through this world; Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, and others…., have all instilled the same things and have the same common thread, ask questions, be curious and give due to where due should be given, the person/thing that gave you life, that has you breathing without you needing to think about it, that has given us plants and flowers and animals and all species of fish and mountains and sky and trees and oceans and seas. And to give this due, we also need to respect it. We need to live by the moral code of humanity.
Don’t take more than you need to, there is plenty to give around. Be grateful. Be humble. Stop comparing, stop judging, stop worrying. Be mindful of your neighbor. Find love in yourself, even in all the weirdness and quirkiness because we were not, in fact, all made the same and that is the beauty but we were made equal. We are all imperfect humans trying to find ourselves, trying to heal, trying, just trying. And so when you’re trying to fit me into a box and asking me to live by a standard, I can’t believe that a God that has created me and created so many different species of insects and plants and flowers and animals and people and nations and places and seasons and intellects is asking me to choose a label, a box, one way to be for the rest of eternity.
Instead, I believe He is asking me to live morally and is giving me the choice to choose good or bad, to suffer or find peace, to love or hate, to judge or accept, to understand or stay confused. We are given these choices and they are simple, so very simple, without the ego getting in the way.
And in that, we are being asked to go past the ego, to find our heart center and see who we really are because it is there that all creation is based on. It is our heart centers that hold all our DNA and completes us. It is there, in that very center that tells us who we are, were meant to be, and are meant to become before roads led us elsewhere.
So I am asking you, all of you, myself included, to just sit, hand placed on your heart, and quietly search every day, every second of the day, what lies there. What is that truth? It is there you will find your moral compass and the way to your freedom.