Spirituality v.s. Religion

Answering Life’s Biggest Questions

There comes a time when everyone asks themselves the big questions..."What is the purpose of life and our existence? How should I live my life, and where will I go when I die?" We all need to believe in something to give meaning to life. Some people choose to follow the practice of others and to join a church, and some choose to follow their own inner guidance.

Either way, these are the questions that spark an interest in something greater than us, something beyond this physical realm. These are the questions that lead us to either a religious practice, or to an inner practice referred to as Spirituality. Religion at its core is spiritual because it requires you to believe in something you cannot see or touch, but it is not spirituality. They both believe in souls but religion does not look to the soul for answers, it looks to a god or even several gods for guidance.

Religion is a set of beliefs required to abide by and spirituality is just beliefs; belief in anything without restriction. This is where religion sits apart. In religion, certain beliefs are restricted and even chastised; you must obey. In essence you could say that they are two opposite sides to a coin. Religion is fear based whilst spirituality is love and freedom driven. I believe religion originally may have been well intended but over the ages it became sullied.

The moment we were taught to look up for answers, we forgot about the heart. We forgot love. Love is and always has been the ultimate answer to every big question. It's the reason we exist. Perhaps we shouldn't be questioning our existence at all, perhaps we should just be grateful for the miracle of breath every day. How wonderful a thing it is to be able to breathe in a universe so vast and unfit for it. We are so small and seemingly insignificant yet we exist for some purpose if not any other than simply to exist.

Perhaps we have a great destiny to fulfill or a divine plan was set out by higher dimensional beings to help us become gods ourselves. I guess that just depends on your definition of "God". The one thing I do know for certain, is that we were given free will, so therefore we choose our purpose. We choose our destiny. No matter what you believe, that is your right and no one should attempt to convince you otherwise. Believe what you wish but remember to be understanding and don’t push your beliefs on others either.

We should be able to communicate peacefully about our beliefs without being criticized. After all, they are just beliefs and no one can prove anything. So why get upset and try to change each other’s minds? Treat others how you wish to be treated. Live by the principles of love, respect and honor, and let all the others fall by the way side. That’s all humanity needs in order to create world peace; acceptance of our differences.

Those who dedicate themselves to the path of spirituality know the power of love and they know that true love is unconditional. It loves because it loves and needs no reason more than that. It just does. You cannot contain it for long, it is free and unchangeable. It must remain free because that is it's essence. It soars high above the clouds and pierces every heart. They see that there is love in the pain and the sorrow and that all darkness derives from it.

"Religion is for people who are afraid to go to hell, and Spirituality is for those who have already been there." ~Ralph Smart

The reason Ralph says this is because most people do not have a spiritual "awakening" until they’ve been dragged through the mud (metaphorically). Sometimes it takes losing people close to us. Sometimes it takes getting your heart shattered into a million pieces before you finally ask the big questions. Fortunately, I came upon my awakening differently than most. I started looking for the answers to all the biggest questions in life shortly after falling in love.

Eventually things did not work out with her and I was thrown into the emotional pits of hell. I then had to find love again. But I soon realized it was not going to come from someone else, it had to come from me; for me. I had to learn to love myself and it wasn’t easy because I blamed myself for everything. I was the one who took that journey through hell by choice. I went to a dark place, a nightmare, and I had to wake up all over again. I knew it would be different this time.

After some time I began to feel like I was finally healing. Receiving love from family helped me get through it all. But just as everything seemed to get better I was betrayed by a potential lover. She led me to believe a bag of lies and used me in every way possible. Before I could fall in love she broke my heart. This made it hard to trust again. I started fooling around with random women I met at bars until I realized that sex was not the same without a genuine connection. I wanted love.

I got addicted to cocaine, not because it was addictive to me but because I was bored and stopped caring about what happened to me. I overdosed one night after months of binging and drinking. I almost died in my friends bathroom. I begged, with my last few faint heartbeats for something or someone to give me another chance and that I would better myself if they allowed me to live. By some miracle I was heard and I was able to breathe again. My heart was weak for months after that but I did recover and I kept my word.

Spirituality found me again. A Tarot deck of dragons was given to me that changed my life FOREVER. Something I never would have received had I not survived the depths of my own personal inferno. Every day after that I chose to always better myself. Spirituality is that path. It is a conscious effort to evolve in every single way fathomable. Once you step into this path you may stray from it at times but you can never go back.

I strayed from my path several times more, even after all that I had learned. I was burnt to ashes but I rose from the ashes over and over again, reinventing myself and the person I wanted to become; the person I’m still working on. It’s a never-ending journey. Although it’s been rough, I wouldn’t take back a thing. It has all made me stronger and with every dark night I grew brighter. The world had to empty my cup in order for me to fill it properly.

Spirituality is finding beauty in the ugliest things. It’s not masking or denying those things exist but it is accepting them for what they are; lessons. It’s understanding that life can be viewed from different perspectives. One perspective could be that everything in life is happening to spite you, and another view could be that everything is happening for you and your ultimate benefit. I would argue that both are right.

There are different levels of awakening and eventually you realize that there is truth to everything and that it's all a paradox. This realization can happen at any period in a person's spiritual journey. There is no straight line to evolving consciously. We all learn different lessons at different times and not always in the same order.

First, you may realize that all matter is energy at it’s core. Everything that is physical is actually not, based on your perspective. Reality isn’t real. What’s real is how we feel. Reality is what we believe it to be. We create our own personal reality based on our beliefs. The paradox is that every one opposing answer is correct and nothing is wrong about anything. We create our truth.

Spirituality is so many things because it has no bounds. It is ever-expanding just as the universe is. It is a flame in everyone's heart begging to burn brighter. It is our connection to divinity and something righteous in nature. It is knowing that we are part of that divinity in spirit and that we will become righteous beings again. It's understanding that we are not humans having a spiritual experience but rather, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Religion is limited to someone else’s beliefs and it is constricted to that. There is no room for growth or expansion; only fear. I’ve often heard preachers in the street yelling at people that they will burn for not believing in their god. They have taken the feminine energy out of many religions and are taught to only worship the masculine energy for creating everything. This has created a massive imbalance in our own human nature.

Everything and everyone has light and darkness as well as masculine and feminine energy, including you. Yin and Yang that balance each other out. When we ignore this fact, we ignore our own nature. Religion has taught us to ignore the feminine energy and by doing so, we've subconsciously learned to treat women unfairly, and we've subconsciously buried our own feminine energy. This has caused us to turn away from love and our own childlike innocence.

This has also caused us to ignore the cries of Mother Earth and so we've continued to ravage her and all her creatures. Many wars were started because of religion and religious conquerors. Religion has always been forced on people and it just leaves people miserable, dead or scared for their life. I can't deny that it has helped some people. It can be good in many ways, but overall it is hypocritical and detrimental to the health of all things. It destroys and it manipulates.

Spirituality is based on love and understanding. It's true forgiveness, not just of others but of oneself. It never manipulates. It is just and kind. Spirituality leads to something known as "enlightenment". Once someone reaches true enlightenment, through the practice of meditation, they become aware of the nature of all things. They understand that we are all connected through energy and by harming another they would only be harming themselves.

A spiritual awakening happens when we wake up from the illusion we have always been sold. The illusion that we are separate from one another. It's like coming out of a dreamy haze and realizing we have been living life in auto pilot according to society's expectations. Enlightenment is waking up to your inner light and realizing that you are divine. It's understanding that magic is all around us. It's knowing that we are God and God is everything; that WE are everything.

So in conclusion, religion grew from a spiritual nature but then it strayed from the path of love and became a way to control nations. I will never follow a practice that ignores the heart and I only hope that those with religious backgrounds wake up from the illusion as well. Find your own truth by looking inside yourself and quieting your mind. The mind can be programmed but the heart can never lie. It is your gateway to the divine.

~KingRich42