What Exactly is Spirituality?

Spirituality is a personal focus that is concerned more with the human spirit consciousness than material things like the human body.  Its primary focus is the human spirit consciousness, but the full scope of spirituality is a person’s quest to understand their consciousness in the context of all perceived reality.  In this context, the ultimate goal of spirituality is a clear and complete understanding of all reality both spirit and physical.

Human beings are a  carefully crafted body/spirit consciousness existing simultaneously in the physical and conscious realities.  This blend is so seamlessly perfect that it is difficult for most people to understand that they are actually a blend of two realities, and as a result, there is much confusion at even this most basic level of what we are. 

The human spiritual quest is a combination of considering and trying to understand the body/spirit blend puzzle and the never ending search for infinite happiness. Spirituality is an inescapable and universal element of the human experience, and everyone whether they know it or not is trying to understand something about their consciousness in the context of at least some portion of their physical reality.  This inescapable spiritual quest is centered around the two fundamental questions of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is going on around me?’
 
Spirituality springs from the very simple realization that we exist, and there is something going on around us. These two revelations become the basis for the human aspiration to discover 1) the Personal Truth about their personal spirit consciousness centering on the core theme of ‘Who am I and How can I be happy’ and 2) the greater ‘Everything Else’ Truth of how their spirit consciousness relates to the complex reality that surrounds it centering on the core theme of ‘What is going on around me and how can I use it to my advantage?’.

From this high level, spirituality is a very general concept, but a particular individual’s implementation has a much more specific focus. For the vast majority of people, their personal truth spirituality is their daily search for their individual identity with mundane internal questions around the personal truth core theme like ‘What kind of work do I want to do?’. 

Similarly, their spiritual search for ‘Everything Else’ truth at this very fundamental level is focused on equally mundane internal questions around the ‘Everything Else’ truth core theme like ‘How can I get to work?’. Most don’t even think of these simple questions are spiritual yearnings, but at a very basic level, they are an expression of spirituality’s core longings to discover our Personal and ‘Everything Else’ truths. These simple yearnings eventually become the complex and sophisticated questions of deep spiritual significance when given enough time.

Everyone’s life whether they realize it or not is a journey of spiritual discovery. Every thought and every action no matter how coarse or misguided is driven by core primitive impulses to 1) understand these personal and ‘Everything Else’ truths and 2) be happy. The short term goal of spirituality is to define your conscious identity in terms of functioning in the physical world (i.e. ‘who am I and what do I want to do?’), but its ultimate goal is to develop the spirit consciousness to its highest potential and live life to the fullest possible extent. 

With the passage of time, these natural occurring and seemingly superficial discoveries driven by the core primitives eventually become more clearly recognizable as spirituality, the only path to the ultimate truths. Every individual interpretation of spirituality is different based on their particular level of spiritual evolution and their special interpretation of their surrounding reality.

These spiritual pursuits of themselves are focused on the immediate necessity to understand ourselves and surroundings. They do not specifically require us to consider the questions related to how all this came to be and whether or not a creator exists for us and this surrounding reality, but for many, the existence or not of a creator weighs in at some point because it seems to helps resolve some of the body/spirit blend mystery. Unfortunately, most fail to start their search for the creator by building on their own body/spirit nature. They are more driven by body centric ego, fear, and arrogance which corrupts the purity of this quest. The end results are many varied and distorted perspectives on the subject of the creator.

The discussion about the existence of the creator is not important for this level of personal spirituality. These personal matters of understanding consciousness in the context of greater reality exist and must be addressed whether there is a creator or not. The subject of the creator will be addressed in a latter post.

Understanding the Human Spirit: Fundamental Questions

A key element in the search for the Ultimate Truth is a good understanding of what needs to be known. Unfortunately, we are cast into this reality without that clear understanding. The predicament created by this gap in our most basic understanding eventually leads us all to the two most fundamental of questions: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is going on around me?’. From these two fundamental questions, all further human inquiry ensues.

The human being is a complex blend of a physical body and a spirit in the form of conscious awareness. The carefully crafted body/spirit blend is so seamlessly perfect that it is hard to discern the two distinct entities even for those who inhabit the blend. As a result, there is much confusion at even this most basic level of what we are. Humanity is also blessed with a naturally curious mind, and this great puzzle of this body/spirit blend and how it relates to the bigger reality around it is a primary target of that curiosity.

This naturally curious human mind in its waking state is in a constant state of activity. There is a flutter of thoughts passing through the mind as it tries to make sense of all the sensory input it is receiving and just thinking about various things that have caught its interest. Frequently, this flutter appears to be random and chaotic with some people consciously trying to slow the pace down and improve their ability to better focus the mind and concentrate. While it appears the mind is capriciously going from thought to thought in a haphazard manner, the mind is actually in this constant state of activity for a very particular reason.

An old analogy relates the wandering mind to the wandering of a bee from flower to flower. The bee spends a little time on this flower before moving on to some other flower where it will spend some amount of time, maybe more, maybe less before moving onto yet another flower. The bee’s behavior on the surface appears to be random and chaotic until one considers what motivates the bee. The bee is looking for sweet nectar. It finds this nectar in a flower and stays there on that flower until the nectar is consumed, and it then moves onto another nectar bearing flower. If the bee were to find a flower with an inexhaustible source of nectar, it would just stay put on that flower consuming the unlimited nectar.

The mind is like the bee except instead of nectar the mind is looking for sufficient happiness to be content. It entertains thoughts or sensory inputs for a while until all the happiness from that thought or experience has been consumed. The mind comes pre-programed to seek out sources of happiness, but the mind’s thirst for happiness is infinite while all the pleasures this world has to offer are finite. Many things in this physical world can sway the mind for a time, but ultimately the mind’s desire feels unfulfilled with these finite pleasures. The only thing that can truly satisfy the mind’s insatiable desire is the infinite happiness that comes from knowing the ultimate truth. Thus the mind wanders in search of this very special happiness that can only found in the knowledge of the Ultimate Truth.