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Your Spiritual-Religious Life
It is said that we live in four different worlds: the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, and the spiritual-religious. The first three are easy to identify. However, most folks get stuck when talking about the spiritual-religious world. And, they get stuck for good reasons.
We can define the spiritual-religious as that which is not comprised of matter, feeling, or thought. In other words: the spiritual-religious is not the physical, the emotional, or the intellectual. But, this definition as the absence or negation of other things, doesn’t really help.
The spiritual-religious — like truth, beauty, and love — is very hard to categorize. Moreover and adding to the difficulty, the spiritual-religious often encompasses notions of God, the infinite, and that which cannot be defined.
In Biblical days, the spiritual-religious was characterized as being “like the wind” because it can’t be seen, yet its impacts are evident.
While I don’t have a perfect definition of the spiritual-religious, I can tell you that by creating a relationship to your spiritual-religious life, you will gain a greater sense of connectedness and perspective in your overall life.
I don’t mean to suggest that people who lack understanding of their spiritual-religious lives fail to experience connectedness and perspective. I am suggesting that those of us who are not the proverbial captains of our own spiritual-religious ships may experience feelings of connection only sporadically — as hit and miss feelings — compared to those of us who have developed “religious-spiritual fitness.”
Think of it this way: physically fit people are better able to handle physical activities and are healthier than those who are unfit. Similarly, those who have spiritual-religious fitness have a greater sense that they are loved by an unending love — and they have a better understanding of what that means.
Your spiritual-religious life is like singing. Most of us can sing, but few of us do it in public. Even fewer do it in public without embarrassment. I want to encourage you to develop your spiritual-religious voice so that you can — to use the words of the Psalms — “sing a new song to God.”
A Healthy Spiritual-Religious Life
People with fully developed spiritual-religious lives feel that they are a part of something rather than apart from everything. They see meaning in places that others do not. The criticism leveled at them — for example, of being a dreamer in the face of reality — doesn’t bother them. They have a sense of hope and of purpose.
Having a developed spiritual-religious life can bring a greater sense of faithsurrender. It makes people less frantic and more able to distinguish between things that can be changed and things that cannot. Those with a healthy spiritual-religious life, are calmer — believing and knowing that things work out in the grand scheme of things. This belief and knowledge stays with them amidst the good and the difficult times. and
People with developed spiritual-religious lives are better able to accept things that are beyond their control. They have the courage to change what needs to be transformed in their lives. They have a deeper perspective of the world. They see a glass of water as half-full, not half-empty. In fact, they can even see how one’s attitude can turn a prison into a monastery (or vice versa). Moreover, their perspective gives them the ability to sit through and move on from “negative” feelings — as opposed to sublimating them, denying them, and watching them appear elsewhere.
Those with developed spiritual-religious lives feel connected to and have a meaningful relationship with (the) God (of their understanding).
This week's spiritual-religious advice: Think about what will help you develop your spiritual-religious life and pursue that.
With love,
-Rabbi Brian
