What Does it Mean to be Spiritual?

I was recently asked by someone, “How would I know if I am spiritual?”

This essay is a composite of my answer to that question and the ideas that it sparked.

First, you must believe you have a soul. Without that belief, being spiritual is pointless.

I would not be arrogant enough to tell you what having a soul means to you, but I can share what it means to me…

To me, the soul is a person’s truest essence, separate from the mind/ego. The lineage for this definition goes back to the Aramaic word that Jesus likely used for soul: Naphsha. The etymology of the word is “breath” or “breath of life”, but is specifically used to describe the uniqueness of a person. Interestingly, when naphsha is translated to Greek the word is psyche.

The concept of having a soul is as old as humans. The Egyptians named it ka. The Polynesians called it mana. The Comanches referred to it as puha.

The idea of a soul is also supported by many prominent Western thinkers:

It is over-quoted (and often misattributed) but scientist & priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Noted mathematician and scientist, Rene Descartes argued that the universe consists of two fundamentally distinct substances: matter (the physical body) and the soul (the non-material mind).

One of the reasons that psychiatrist Carl Jung split with Freud was a belief in a spiritual realm and in the existence of the soul.

Psychotherapist and former monk Thomas Moore wrote, in my opinion, two of the best books about the soul: “Original Self” and “Care of the Soul”. Inspired by Jung’s views, Moore believed that true consciousness was finding our original Self, which was the same thing as our soul. One of my favorite quotes of his:

“There is nothing neutral about the soul. It is the seat and the source of life. Either we respond to what the soul presents in its fantasies and desires, or we suffer from this neglect of ourselves. The power of the soul can hurl a person into ecstasy or into depression. It can be creative or destructive, gentle or aggressive. Power incubates within the soul and then makes its influential move into life as the expression of soul. If there is no soulfulness, then there is no true power, and if there is no power, then there can be no true soulfulness.

Being immersed in Christian fundamentalism for so long gave me the impression that my soul was something that belonged to God; that I was borrowing it and he was going to reclaim it. I was led to believe that sinning would cause me to lose my soul. Like almost all aspects of fundamentalist doctrine, that definition is deeply flawed and very limiting.

About 15 years ago, I began my examination of the concept of soul.

Here is what I learned:

The soul is self-affirming. It requires no outside validation. As such, it needs no religion, doctrine, or orthodoxy.

The soul is the translator between the mystical and the material. As such, it often plays the role of muse.

The soul is frequently in conflict with the mind. However, it doesn’t force itself upon you, doesn’t shout, doesn’t interrupt.

The soul can be buried under the cacophony of modern life. As such, you must seek stillness, silence, and solitude to be able to connect with it and listen to it.

The soul does not die, does not get sick, does not have defects. It also doesn’t understand human-made time.

Your soul is the part of you that is connected to the universe. By extension, this means all of our souls are connected which is why we must treat each other with compassion, dignity, and respect.

The soul feels pure emotions. When it loves, it loves. There is no possessiveness. When it is angry, it is angry; often related to injustice.

Because the soul is devoid of anything ego related, it does not compare. It doesn’t become jealous. It is not greedy. It does not lie. It contains zero manipulation or guile.

Similar to Taoism, the soul and sexual/sacral energy are much the same in that the soul yearns to experience what it feels like to be human. To achieve that, the soul expresses itself through sensuality and play.

The beginning of being spiritual is to have faith in your own soul. That it exists. That it knows what is true, what is right, what reality is. From that foundation, being “spiritual” is living, as much as possible, a soul-centered life.

This can look like many things, but I’m certain that it includes choosing:

• Wisdom over information. Wisdom is an inner knowing that is intrinsic to every human. Information is collected and sorted by the mind. Of course, information has its place, but it can also be distorted by bias and logic fallacies. Wisdom is immune to both.
  

• Intuition over instinct. Intuition is an inner signal that can be accessed within any decision, situation, or circumstance. Instinct is a survival mechanism designed to keep you alive. Again, a useful thing but it is often mis-used to keep the ego in control.
  

• Creativity over consumption. The soul understands the value of creating art, connections, and meaning. The American mind tries to exact value from consumption, which actually creates a spiritual crisis.
  

• Interconnection over isolation. Being in community is a natural part of many cultures and an oft-forgotten element of westernized Buddhism. While solitude is essential, isolation leads to bitterness, paranoia, and fatalism.
  

• Relational over transactional. A spiritual life includes living by the Law of Reciprocity. “What can you do for me?” is an underlying narrative of a non-spiritual life, whether it is being amorally Machiavellian or intentionally manipulative.

“The basic contribution one can make to one’s community is not to add to the general unconsciousness of the time.”
― Thomas Moore

Living a spiritual life means organizing your life around your purpose and talents.

Your purpose is the thing you are here to do that only you can do. No one is here to keep things the same. I firmly believe that we are each here in some way to use our lives to contribute to the advancement of humanity in some way. In that sense, spirituality does not defy the law of evolution. It just applies it in a more spiritual and esoteric way.

You could also reverse engineer this. Do you know of anyone that has a spiritual life but that does not have a purpose? I do not.

Talents are your natural gifts and your learned skills. When I’m coaching someone on their personal brand, this is one of the exercises I do:

Consider 5+ things that have always been easy or natural for you. Don’t judge by merit or opinion what these things are. I promise you that there are always at least five. For many people, this is their first time looking at their talents this way.

Now, do a skills audit. This is stuff you would be put on a CV or in a bio. These are skills learned through credential learning, experience, or autodidactally.

Once you have both lists, you can see how both contribute directly and intentionally to your purpose. Or if you don’t yet know your purpose, this exercise can help lead you to it.

Contrary to the woo-woo industry, being spiritual is not all unicorn farts and rainbows. Nor is it “manifesting” and $5000 “spiritual” retreats. That is because telling the truth is a shitty business model. Who would sign up for a “dark night of the soul” retreat?

The dark night of the soul is the crucible that separates true spirituality from privilege masked as spirituality. It is when the scaffolding you mistook for the building comes down. The feelings, the sense of presence, the highs that come off spiritual practice, all of it goes dark, and not because you did anything wrong. The silence comes from inside the one place you trusted completely, and the inner knowing you’d use to fight your way out is the very thing gone quiet.

The silence in the dark night does not mean the soul left. The soul cannot leave, because the soul is who you are. What the darkness burned away was any pretense of spirituality. What you learn, once you make it through, is that you were never spiritual because you felt “spiritual”. You are spiritual because you are spiritual.

Being spiritual in this modern world can be a challenge in other ways.

It can mean feeling perpetually like an outsider. You see what the comfortably numb and the apathetic don’t want to see, which means shallow conversations, meaningless work, and the general chickenshit of life can be painful to tolerate.

It is a perpetual dying and re-birth; a getting to know yourself over and over again. The Greeks called it metanoia, the mind turning all the way around. You die to who you were and meet who you are becoming, again and again, for as long as you live.

It is navigating the crease between material needs, security, and comforts and spiritual nourishment, meaningful work, and discovery.

It is being aware of both apathy and atrophy; the twin dangers of becoming so “spiritual” that you remove yourself from humanity and tying your identity too much to your spiritual beliefs so that you become arrogant and callous.

It is a constant battle of liberating yourself from systems that don’t give a shit about the soul, yet will promise you security, stability, and safety if you sell your soul.

To be spiritual is to change your priorities. How you use your resources, what you give attention to. As such, spirituality is the antithesis of modern living. Instead of obeying a calendar, worshiping a to-do list, or doing “retail therapy” on Amazon, you prioritize the health of your soul over anything else.

Instead of diminishing yourself with a career or job that doesn’t feed your soul, you walk away.

Instead of relationships that require you to modify and mollify, you set boundaries - which often means walking away.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
— T.S. Eliot

Of course, one essay can’t ever fully cover such a vast and esoteric topic. The soul resists the written word on purpose. You cannot define it the way you define a material thing, because the definition of spirituality is entirely experiential and unique to each person.

But I do promise you this: if you go looking for your soul, you will find it. The search and the finding are the same path. You don’t hunt the soul like a lost key, somewhere outside you, waiting to be recovered. The looking is the soul waking up to itself. The moment you turn your attention inward and ask what is actually in there, the asker and the answer turn out to be one thing.

And when you find it, you will find yourself and you will start to live a spiritual life. This is the oldest instruction in every tradition said in a hundred tongues.

Know thyself, carved over the temple at Delphi.

The kingdom of God is within you.

Tat tvam asi — thou art that.

They were all point to the same truth: the divine you are searching for is inside of you.

A spiritual life is what you do after that discovery, not how you find it.

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