Spirituality, a preface to

A couple of weeks ago, I concluded my post, "All in or All out," with the statement:

I do have at least one remaining question. It has to do with the distinction between religion and spirituality. As a noble doubter, I felt that I could "be spiritual" even though I found it ridiculous to try to "be religious." The question is: Now that I've opted for being all out when it comes to religion, is spirituality still an option for me, and what does that mean?

The initial, easy answer to the first part is yes. Any conscious being can "be spiritual"—for the simple reason that a conscious being is spiritual, and essentially so, I think.

The Greek word psyche ("breath," "life," "soul," "spirit") reveals the philosophic roots of consciousness as spirit. Introspection, as a branch of psychology dealing with one's own consciousness, can be understood as the study of spirituality, primarily of one's own personal spirituality.

In future posts I will attempt to elucidate this in order to understand better what I mean by it. I will also, of course, report on how satisfactory such a "study" of my own consciousness is in fulfilling my personal need to express my spirituality. I even want to discover how such a pursuit can answer my need to be connected to the world, to other creatures, to the Cosmos, for one need traditionally filled by religion is just that need to be connected. (The word religion, after all, has as its root meaning "to bind" or "be bound." Think of the words ligation, ligature...Perhaps my main gripe with religion has been its usual focus, as practiced in America, on being bound up with dogma and closed-minded, dogmatic people.)