The Similarities and Differences
between Spiritual and Religion
Definition of Spirituality
Spirituality is a disciplined attempt to align yourself and your environment with something greater than yourself and to incarnate (make real, enflesh) spirit in the world. Other meanings of spirituality are:
q The Latin root for "spirituality" is "breathe, "the breathe of life"
q A beautiful image for spirituality is "the hatching of the heart"
q Spirituality is being open and available to what is
q It is to experience awe, reverence, gratitude, seeing the sacred in the ordinary
q Spirituality is to fell the poignancy of life, a passion for existence
q It is to give yourself over to something greater, a way to cope with life, an outlook on life
Spirituality transcends the ordinary and paradoxically is found only in the ordinary. It is beyond us, yet it is in everything we do. It is extraordinary yet extraordinarily simple. Spirituality is about seeing, not earning or achieving. The root of spirituality is always about relationship with someone or something else and not about results or requirements. Spirituality is not so much taught as it caught, spoonful by spoonful.
Definition of Sacred
Sacred is the movement towards deeper truth, deeper connection, deeper understanding. Whatever helps us move in that direction is sacred.
Spirituality and Religion
The first mistake we make is trying to define spirituality with religion or piety. Here are some of the differences between spirituality and religion:
Spirituality Religion___________________
A quest for answers to ultimate questions An organized system of beliefs, symbols, practices
Which may not lead to specific practices designed to bring one closer to God
Poses questions Composes answers
Is mystery/mystical Is history
Stresses experiences Stresses catechisms
Comes from within Comes from without
Right brain Left brain
Transcends reason, language, culture Rooted in words, texts culture
Metaphorical Dogmatic
Focused on individual growth Focused on establishing community
Less objective, less measurable More objective, more measurable
Less formal worship Formalized worship practices
More emotion-based, inner experiences More behaviorally-based, outward
Less authoritarian, few prescriptions More authoritarian, prescribed patterns
More universalizing More particularizing, one group from another
Shapes souls Shapes history
Transformative, transcends ego, Translational, consoles ego, emancipating gives sense of place and security
Heals pain, vertical Provides answers to pain, horizontal
Known only through experience Known primarily from the inside
This is not intended to highlight one over the other, spirituality vs. religion.
According to Huston Smith, the great philosopher of religion, the problem is religion is like a cow. It gives milk and it kicks! For everything good done in the name of religion there seem to be an equal number of things done bad, again in the name of religion. But, Smith goes on to say that just as there is as much bad art or bad music in the world, we do not build museums or concert halls highlighting the bad art or music. We build halls highlighting only that which is good. So why do we tend to do this with religion? It is because religion is such a powerful force in most of our lives that we tend to speak of the impact religion has on us. Yet, religion, like music and art, is imperfect, filled with incomplete ideas and notions, because religion is credited by and maintained by imperfect humans. Frederick Buechner states, "A spiritual person is one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along on it, & who has at least some dim & half-baked idea of whom to thank."
The problem is also that religion is always trying to teach us how to be spiritual when we already are spiritual. According to Carl Jung, "The human psyche is by nature religious and spiritual." However, Jung also stated that "Doubt and insecurity are indispensable components of a complete life (what her termed holy agnosticism). A complete life does not consist of theoretical completeness." Thus the task for religion is how to define a person within a faith community and/or practice without asking that person to embrace an ideology that divides the world into "them" and "us."
We need both a healthy dosages of spirituality AND religion. Huston Smith says spirituality needs the "traction of religious tradition" to keep it accountable to a community. Otherwise, spirituality risks becoming a self-centered quest for personal growth alone. Smith fears that an avoidance of commitment to any single tradition means that the person simply chooses what is easy and avoids what is hard, to the detriment of disciplined spiritual maturity.
To come to a healthy form of religion, to find our common ground, we need to return to what is termed the Perennial Philosophy of the great faith traditions. These have been stated over millennium by various faiths and re-asserted by Aldous Huxley and most recently Ken Wilber and Huston Smith. The tenets of the perennial philosophy are:
1. There is such a thing as Spirit
2. Spirit is found within each person
3. Most don't realize this Spirit within themselves because of separation from themselves, what can be termed "sin," that which separates us from Spirit
4. There is a way/path out of this dilemma
5. If we follow that Way, we will experience rebirth, enlightenment, salvation, a direct experience of Spirit within
6. This ends the cycle of suffering and sin
7. It brings social acts of mercy and compassion.
The convergent themes of religion and spirituality are:
q What should we do (the basic ethical question)?
q Who are we? Are we the kind of person we'd like to be (the existential question)?
q Why do we exist? What is the vision of life (the spiritual question)?
The three common themes of life, found in most faith traditions, are:
1. A drive towards generativity, especially in life's second half
2. The need for intimacy (in-to-me-see)
3. A craving for creativity and belonging (to be-your-longing)
The three major tasks of life are:
1. To triumph over what suffering we have
2. To transform and reclaim ourselves, our true self, that which we were created to be
3. To transcend through wisdom and compassion (character, generativity, legacy).
The Relationship between Spirituality and Psychology
Not all of the early roots of psychology distanced itself from theological explanations of behavior. Some made spirituality a focus of their therapy: Gordon Allport, Erich Fromm, Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and his brother, Jerry May. In fact, Carl Jung said, "Spirituality is an essential ingredient in psychological health." He said he could heal only those middle-aged people who embraced a spiritual or religious perspective toward life.
The aim of psychology then, should not be to describe a patient as "a male, raised in a Christian family, with a narcissistic mother, a co-dependent father," thus reducing the soul of the person, forcing it to evaporate in the thin air of reductionism. Instead, we ought to appreciate his shadow and its virtue. We ought to allow the person's stories to be told without analysis, conclusions or interpretations. We need to allow the person to find his/her own unique spirit, that which he was created to be. The aim of counseling ought to be to bring about compassion, to find the sacred in the client's life.
The root word from the Greek for diagnosis is "a knowing that exists through or between." Thus, a correct diagnosis requires a uniting of doctor and patient so knowing can flow between them and yield a solution, a sharing, and a sense of empathy. The keys to being a skilled helper are:
q To offer vulnerability, sharing of the client's pain and hopes
q Acceptance of the other just as they are, valuing the individual, listening to their story
q Speaking from the core of one's being, to give of yourself, facing your own disabilities, your shadow.
This form of counseling is not new. In a 1990 American Psychological Association conducted at Pepperdine University found that nearly all APA members assessed the patient's religious and spiritual backgrounds. Fifty-seven percent used religious or spiritual language or concepts with patients. Thirty-seven percent recommended participation in a faith community./ Thirty-two percent recommended religious or spiritual books. Twenty-four percent prayed privately for a patient and seven percent prayed with a client. In another study, sixty medical schools offered courses on spirituality to doctors in training. Ninety-nine percent of family doctors believed prayer, meditation and spiritual practices helped their clients. Fifty percent recommended meditation to their clients (Harvard University, "Spirituality and Healing in Medicine").
An APA study conducted in 2000 at the University of Alabama found that for those recovering from substance abuse, higher positive outcomes were achieved by patients that had higher levels of faith and spirituality. These patients showed:
q More optimism about their recovery and life
q Increased coping skills
q Greater perceived social support systems
q Lower anxiety
q Higher resilience to stress