What’s The Difference Between Spirituality and Religion
What’s The Difference Between Spirituality and Religion
And there is a difference.
When I entered the Program of AA, I was very much against organized religion.
Was my bias fact-based? At that time, I was just coming off the madness. So how much of my life and attitudes could have been fact-based?
When I saw the 12 Steps, Big Book, and heard others talking at meetings and all mentioning God, I thought “Oh, no. Just another attempt to slap me upside the head with a bible.”
Just before distancing myself from AA, I decided to bring this up with my sponsors.
They very quickly told me that AA was not a religious program. But, it was deeply Spiritual. Of course, I thought they were just playing with semantics, so I told them so.
Bless those big, ugly bruisers.
They told me that Spirituality is what is inside us, not “Up there or out there somewhere, maybe in Heaven.” Spirituality is divinely inspired and in my soul so I can call my Higher Power anything I wish.
I didn’t have to call this Power God, Allah, Mohamad, Buddha, Satan, or even anything at all.
The important thing for me to learn was that there is a Power of some kind like electricity, felt and used but not seen.
How else could I explain the creation of the universe, the orbiting of planets around many stars in regular order, the changing of seasons on Earth, the heartbeat, and breathing without even thinking of it?
There must be something and I finally realized that there was a Power that created all of this and keeps on keeping on.
These sponsors then introduced me to the teachings of Dr. Emmet Fox. Mr. Fox was the Spiritual Advisor for Bill W. and many of the original AAs. His Sermon on the Mount was used as the first Big Book until Bill wrote the one that we still use today.
From it, I learned how to pray.
Instead of only using “foxhole prayers,” pleading for my judging, punishing God to save me, I learned that every thought is a prayer.
WOW! What a concept.
I didn’t need a minister to pray for me. I could talk with my Higher Power myself. Anytime that I wished! I adopted Mr. Fox as my Spiritual Advisor by using his teachings.
Mr. Fox had transitioned in 1951, and his books and papers were where I learned about my Spirituality for almost 40 years before meeting my present Spiritual Reminder, Reverend Stephanie Sorensen, of the Life Enrichment Center.
Her thoughts mirror and add to much of what I have learned in AA and studying spirituality for the last 45 years.
I know that my relationship with my Higher Power, who I now choose to call God, is deeply personal to me. I don’t need someone standing at a pulpit talking to God for me. I can communicate directly with my Higher Power.
In fact, when driving by myself, I may seem to be talking to myself.
This is because I am talking to my Higher Power as if He were a friend sitting right next to me in the car. In actuality, He is much closer than next to me on the seat. He is in my heart.
Since then, I have met religious and spiritual leaders who I like and respect very much.
I have learned that we are all Spiritual Beings living in a Spiritual Universe, that is governed by Spiritual Law and one with All that exists. I now also know that we are eternal beings who are now having this human experience.
Spirituality is something that is divinely inspired. Religion is man-made, and interpreting someone’s idea of what Spirituality is.
Recently, I saw something that makes real sense to me.
It was a picture of a fish bowl containing a fish. The bowl, and its water and fish, are in the ocean. The ocean is Spirituality and consists of every bead of water in it, including the water in the fishbowl.
The Ocean is Spirituality, with all of its component parts or beads of water.
The fishbowl is Religion, a bead of water in the ocean of Spirituality. So, this means that there is no Spirituality versus Religion. There is only Spirituality AND Religion.
Spirituality contains all of the religions thought of by mankind. I am comfortable with this now.
Thank you, God!