Recognizing the meaning of spirituality and religion will give you a better understanding of what it means to different individuals, the terms religion and spirituality are used interchangeably but they are not the same.
Meaning of Religion
Religion is based on an organized set of beliefs, teachings, and practices of a particular people or community. Religion can serve as a guide in fulfilling your spirituality
Meaning of Spirituality
Spirituality is more of individual practice, it can be seen as a way of finding peace, focusing on your purpose in life, it helps you to develop belief and cope as an individual in any situation. one’s role in life is way more than just what we do daily and depending on materialistic things in life, spirituality helps us to focus on a great opportunity that life has to offer.
Spirituality is of different types which include
- Social spirituality: it is practiced by individuals who experience peace and solace why socializing with people, for example, a group of people doing yoga. This is an important aspect of spirituality.
- Intellectual spirituality: This is practiced by people who enhance their knowledge and understanding of spirituality by analyzing beliefs of historical, spiritual theories, or archetypal figures.
Different between spirituality and religion
- Individual vs group: spirituality is more of an individual practice that concentrates on an individual soul, while religion is a group of people brought together by common faith and beliefs on the divine. All the religion in the world preaches the same thing to them their story is true but a spiritual person picks out different ideas from different religions and use the ideas to formulate what they will believe in, which means one can be spiritual and religious.
- Origination belief: spiritual people usually develop their beliefs from experiences which makes them discover their truths without any boundaries, it’s inspires people to follow their heart and trust their instincts while in religion they learn their beliefs base on what they were told to believe as the truth.
- Organized and formless: one thing religion is known for is organization and is structured.it governs the behavior of individuals, beliefs, rules, laws, codes criteria, and doctrines which helps to guide their faith they develop their ideology themselves and have their own organized set of rules which allow people to do the things that are in their own best interests while a religious person just accepts the truth as stated by his or her religion who are recorded and shared with others and there is a punishment or reward for following the truth but for spirituality the reward is one’s peace of mind because they do what they feel is right without considering if it’s right or not, they focus their mind on positive things and showing love. It has no restrictions and rigid structures.
Fear vs love: The word sin, God’s wrath, divine judgment, and everlasting punishment can create a burden that makes one worry and not have peace of mind while spirituality makes one have a more loving and better approach to life and death and it makes you not to be guided by fear of punishment then you focus more on ending suffering and living a peaceful and happy life.