Health Center: What is Spirituality?

What is Spirituality?

Whether we are religious or not each of us knows something of the spiritual life. We are creatures who experience desire, depth and meaning. For some, the spiritual dimension of life may be experienced as the drive to excel or the longing to connect. For others, it might be a subtle, inner stirring, summoning, beckoning – even questioning.

Doubt and hope, joy and sorrow, indifference and appreciation along with a host of other interior dispositions touch our lives and have an affect on our behavior. Whether a particular situation stirs delight or disappointment, the power of spiritual experience and the possibilities of spirituality become real, if we open ourselves to this inner movement.

Although it may occasionally generate restlessness and discomfort or provoke serious and at times painful questions about life’s meaning and direction, learning to acknowledge and engage spiritual experience can enhance and enrich our lives. Just as the skilled runner has learned to stretch before the race and to reach beyond the “wall” in order to finish, the spiritually lithe individual is conditioned to expect and respect challenge, in the discovery of life.

Spirituality is about paying attention to, and seeking to understand the interior life. Spirituality is about discovering the deepest longing in our lives and allowing it to direct our action. Spirituality resides beneath who we are and what we do, as it serves to shape who we are becoming.