I’m spiritual AND religious.
I’m spiritual: I believe reality-experience far transcends my individual self-reference, my understanding, and the understanding of science; and I believe this transcendence has a causal impact on the happenings of the world.
But I’m also religious: I’m dedicated to daily transformative and devotional practices; I’m daily connected to other practitioners; I study “the transcendent” all the time (God, the universe, Truth, Love, Beauty, philosophy, awakening, shadow, etc), I learn from lineages with thousands of years of wisdom. I’m informed, challenged, supported by a community of fellow practitioners, teachers and students who are all involved—in my business, family, friends. I show up every Monday night to relatefulness, and sometimes y’all work me :)
Some of y’all may not even realize you’re part of my religious community. You may want to keep the word out of your mouth like a bitter root. But you send me podcasts, articles, comments, give me gifts and ideas that show how much exists beyond what I knew, perhaps beyond what is knowable. You show me what I’m holding on to that I can give up. You show me how to be a better father, son, husband, citizen, steward of the evolutionary impulse. You show me love, humor, gentleness, forgiveness. You show me ways to come into greater integrity.
I don’t mean that I belong to a specific form like Christianity or Buddhism. I belong to you.
And I belong to a commitment: to inhabit and be changed by spirituality, rather than just claim it. To knowingly devote myself to it in every single moment, especially when I’m resistant.