Category: Spirituality
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List Of Secular Spiritual Activities
I asked my favorite AI tool to create a list of secular spiritual activities (with descriptions) and here is what I got. Some ideas are pretty common and some are totally new to me. Reflective Practices Journaling Contemplation Self-inquiry Life review Mindfulness & Meditation Mindfulness meditation Breathwork Body scanning Walking meditation Loving-kindness meditation (metta) Physical…
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When Spiritual Needs Go Unmet: Understanding the Consequences
Summary (long read): You have everything you thought you wanted—a good job, comfortable home, supportive relationships—yet something feels fundamentally missing. It’s not depression exactly, but a persistent sense of emptiness, a nagging question about whether any of this really matters. You’re not alone. Millions experience this “existential vacuum,” a term coined by psychiatrist Viktor Frankl…
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How Spirituality Shaped Human Belief Systems
Spirituality is a fundamental part of human nature that predates all religions. This article explore why spirituality evolved, how it shaped religion, and what this means for finding meaning. Spirituality and religion, while often used interchangeably, represent fundamentally different aspects of human experience. Spirituality is humanity’s innate need to understand the world and our place…
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A Spiritual Event We Have All Experienced Actually Has A Scientific Name: Flow
Flow: An optimal psychological state where individuals become completely absorbed in an activity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s groundbreaking research on “flow”—those optimal psychological states where individuals become completely absorbed in an activity—reveals profound connections between creativity and spirituality that transcend conventional boundaries between secular psychology and religious experience. Core Characteristics of Flow Flow states emerge when several…
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How And Why Does Christianity Conflate Spirituality With Religion?
Conflate: To fail to properly distinguish or keep separate (things); to treat (them) as equivalent. Why Does Christianity Claim Spirituality? Christianity conflates religion and spirituality in an effort to justify it’s existence by distracting secular thinkers from the fact that spirituality is a universal human capacity that doesn’t require belief in the supernatural. This confusion…
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Understanding Religions: A Necessary Step in our Secular Spiritual Journey
For those of us who identify as secular thinkers (atheists), it might seem counterintuitive to spend time studying and discussing religion. After all, if we’ve already concluded that religious frameworks don’t offer valid paths to understanding reality, why dedicate energy to analyzing them? The answer is this: we cannot truly free ourselves from something if…
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Three Avenues to Spiritual Fulfillment
There are three general avenues to satisfy our spiritual needs: religion, mystical spirituality, and secular spirituality. 1. Religion: Structured Doctrine and Institutional Frameworks Religion is a system of belief centered on supernatural forces—such as deities, spirits, or divine beings—and is typically defined by formal doctrines, sacred texts, institutional hierarchies, and organized rituals. Major world religions—including…
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Spirituality: The Quest for Meaning and Purpose
Summary: The search for meaning is built into human nature—wired into our brains, shaped by culture, and essential to our well-being. This article explores spirituality not as a religious doctrine, but as a universal human drive to make sense of existence. It delves into the science behind spiritual experiences, the role of culture in shaping…
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Our spiritual need is innate
We are spiritual for three reasons: Mankind’s spiritual need is innate. It’s part of our human nature. “Humanity’s enduring fascination with the same set of existential questions—life after death, the human soul, morality, ethics and the nature of God—has compelled some anthropologists to describe us as Homo Religiosus, distinct as a species based not on…
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Why a secular guide to spirituality?
There is a need for a secular guide to spirituality because there are so few resources available on the subject. There are huge amounts of resources available about religious spirituality: Sacred texts (Bible, Koran, Torah) and plenty of experts (Priests, Fathers, Rabbis, Imams) to speak to and plenty of religious scholars to study. And religions…