What does it mean to be spiritual but not religious?

It is quite beautiful I assure you. I have a close personal relationship with God now that I could never have had while laboring under the limitations that religion imposed.

A religion is an organized belief system, A religion is a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience.

Once someone frees them selves from religion they are free to look into the truths that are to be found in all belief systems yet they are not confined or restricted to any particular set of beliefs.

This freedom allows a far closer, infinitely more personal relationship with the source than the confining box that religion is could ever be.

Love and blessings Don

My understanding is that the roots of the word 'religion' are 'to bind together' - in other words a point of commonality between many different people.

My 'spirituality' does not involve anyone else, although there are others, here and elsewhere, who seem to talk a similar language. I believe in no 'God' in the sense of a personal 'creator'. You could I guess call my 'way' a philosophy if you liked, rather than a religion. I choose to call it a spirituality, because it involves feelings beyond proof and rationality. Things such as a sense of 'universality' and underlying order to the cosmos.

I don't know if that helps at all. It's difficult to precis a whole system of belief in a little box like this. But maybe this'll give you a flavour. Thanks for your question.

Peace and light.

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You are right that There is little different between the two. I am not sure there is enough different to make a clear cut between either.

I believe that Religion is man's attempted to please a god or gods and spirituality is belief in a god or gods. Can a spiritual person be with a religion? I think yes but it hard to pin down when a spiritual person becomes a religious person

k1

You hit on it. Their beliefs aren't part of an organized system.

And since they don't have a specific religion to name when people ask, they simply say spiritual. (Or do you think they have to make up a name for their religion and explain what it means ever time they're asked or have to fill out a form?)

I'll do you one better. Name one person, of ANY faith, who accepts exactly every single tenet of that proposed faith as absolutely true beyond doubt.

It's a lot like that, just on a larger scale. You can have a "faith" without holding to all the tenets of an organized religion.

Just ask yourself "What is God?" I bet with 6 Billion people, you'll get 5 billion answers. The other billion would use a synonym for "imaginary" but we'll discount them.

In common usage, a religion is an organized belief with accompanying rules that govern those who adhere to that belief. Spiritual would refer to the individual and their adherence to their particular belief.

Lots of overlap but not really the same thing.

Hope that helps.

Religions usually have the following to some degree:

* sacred texts which must be obeyed or accepted

* organised hierarchy which leads the faithful

* central holy teacher or god-person

* usually dualistic eg dark vs light

* scary afterlife beliefs

Spirituality can be marked by:

* openness to all sacred traditions but bound by none

* freedom to explore and express without control

* embraces holistic philosophy of life

* duality replaced by underlying cosmic unity

* possibility of enlightenment & reincarnation

* being in charge of your own growth & journey

Not only do I not have a specific religion, but I don't have very many specific beliefs. My beliefs change and develop as I pray, meditate, have new life experiences, and read the writings of various other beliefs -- all of which it seems I have just barely begun.

Simply put, I think a spiritual person defines their own worship and/or quest for understanding and truth, whereas a religious person follows already established patterns.

Religion has a lot to do with actions, whereas spirituality is internalized.

Spirit is of the way we think, in regards to the Bible is the view point

it will manifest in the things that we do

religious is the thing that we do, the act of what is in our heads

if what is in your head is not Spiritual, of the Bible, then the action will be religious mish mash

= cult religion

Savvy ?