To define something is to limit it.
The trouble with defining something is it presents limitations.
If I say spirituality is a deep well within you, or a distant star you must spend the rest of your life trying to reach, you have a mental image to put to the idea of spirituality. This makes you feel better, safer, informed.
“Ah, spirituality is a well deep within me,” you say, nodding thoughtfully. ‘It has a definite shape and purpose. It has an opening, a base, an inside and an outside. It holds water and has a roped bucket for dipping into it. Now I know what spirituality is.”
And off you go to spread the word.
Within weeks you create a workshop on the subject and design a PDF with one hundred dot points to share with the public. You present a short video with appropriate props on YouTube. And before you have time to taste the water from the well, you become the latest Spirituality Guru with a new name and a fat book at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
But perhaps you prefer the idea that spirituality is a distant star you must spend the rest of your life trying to reach. You may not get there, but, hey, you’re going to give it your best shot! You throw away all your shoes, don a homespun tunic, and trek to a place where mountains are reputed to be closer to heaven than anywhere else on earth. You subsist on nuts and the humble adoration of passersby who, when they get home, enthrall their credulous neighbours with the tale that they saw a mystic light emanating from your shaved head.
Lightheartedness aside, I can’t tell you what spirituality is. But I can tell you what it is like.
Spirituality is like humility. The moment you notice you’re being humble is the moment you cease to be so. The moment you notice you’re being spiritual is the moment you cease to be so.
Spirituality can’t be touched, seen, heard, smelled or tasted. Nor is it a thought.
You don’t have to dip into it with a bucket or stretch upwards to gain it.
It’s everywhere, flowing through all things animate and inanimate.
Stop striving for it. Stop trying to drag it out of yourself or put it on like a cloak.
It’s here, all around, and in you.
You don’t need to spend years trying to connect to something bigger than yourself. You’re already connected to the biggest “thing” there is.
Spirituality is the consciousness of the universe.
With love, Marlane