The holiday season has passed and as we, who live in the Northern Hemisphere move into the dead of winter, I find myself reflecting on the nature of the spiritual path.  These days it is often accepted that the worlds of spirituality and religion are to be separate.  Spirituality belongs to those willing to pursue their own course into the realm of things we call spiritual.  Religion is relegated to the formal structures passed down from previous generations, codified into a set of rules to abide by.

Sadly the two have been so separated that most people who talk about being disciples of a spiritual practice have discarded religion in favor of spirituality.  Religion is something you believe in; spirituality is something you live.  

No doubt the formal religions of the world have contributed to a widespread rejection of “the way of religion.”  In my own Christian tradition the matter is particularly jarring because the church has continued to speak of faith as something that comes from the top down—from the leaders, the so-called elders, who carry on the past traditions spouting out the way to God.  By following the rules, one survives this horrific world “down here” and achieves heaven in the afterlife.  Sad to say there are many who continue to promulgate a religion of this sort, leaving little if any room for an individual path to the Divine.  Individual searching remains under the umbrella of the central tenets, the so-called doctrines of faith.  Buy into them or leave the church.  From one strict code of behavior to another, churches pop up in revolution to the one they just left.  The answer is seen in the quest to get it just right, that is, my church now becomes the way. Competition survives.  Cooperation as in mutual understanding of shared experiences is rejected.

The separation between spirituality and religion is growing because of the misunderstanding of what religion has to offer.  Instead of a dried up set of beliefs that one adheres to, the word religion in its original meaning suggests a way to bind together various parts into a unified whole.  I understand religion to be an attempt by the community of those who share a belief to bind-together, “become as one,” in order to connect with the Source of all life.  Here the emphasis is on the community sharing in a belief.  The community acts as a way to assist the individual on her path by intensifying the vibration which occurs when we, the community come together.

In our secular world we do this.  Recently I read in the paper the concern at certain NFL games that the joint effort to cheer the loudest for one’s team might injure eardrums.  My take was that the attempt to cheer the loudest was a community effort to raise the vibration of what seemingly everyone wanted—victory for the team they shared.

We must bring the essential need for connection into the realm of the spiritual yearning.  This yearning gone underground, arrives in the form of mass gatherings. Lost in our world is the shared experience that religion brings—the sense we are in it together, struggling to maintain our awareness of things Divine.

What we commonly call God is an energetic so powerful it permeates everything, including Nature and our interior self.  When we become aware of our yearning to connect with this higher vibration our job as “followers” is to re-connect with this energetic on a daily basis.  And religion as the voice of the community binds-together the common desire to honor that yearning.

In my work as a teacher, psychotherapist and spiritual director I have found something lacking in those, whose parents rejecting the tradition of their parents decide to avoid the issue by not offering their children any tradition.  The foundation established by the ways of the tradition is lacking therefore leaving one unprepared in the ways of “listening” for Spirit in life.  It is as if individuals with no structure from a religious upbringing are thrown into the world of spirits trying to find their way through the morass of various ideas and fascinations.  In other words, without the basics there is no ground from which to build upon.

Now I am sure there are plenty of readers who believe they are the exception to this idea.  I-can-do-it-on-my-own is the calling card of anyone who lives outside of the professed beliefs of tradition.  Yes, many can.  Yet it is my contention that the religious tradition provides a jumping off point from which the individual can explore out from.  The real jumping off point for deepening one’s individual connection to this yearning comes from a perseverance developed by the sense of belonging, being a part of a larger community.  Perseverance, this stick-to-it-ness, the Sufi mystic Rumi tells us is the key to joy.  Knowing how to navigate the common pitfalls of any mystical path develops a muscle on which one can rely.  History provides such a muscle.  Those who come before us, show us how to stay with it.  This staying with it fortifies any belief we may have by testing our beliefs, our ideas in real time.  No amount of thinking and reflecting will ever get us to the essential truth which experience brings.  Even so, this experience will eventually bring us to the sense of being lost without any markings to guide us.

The many who come before us have shown that being lost, lost in the desert experience is part and parcel of one’s spiritual growth—a desert experience that returns throughout the journey to renew us and renew our commitment to stay inside, inside our interior world.

The traditions offer access to the eternal truths passed down throughout the generations.  Each tradition has its own slant on these truths but the key is the common spiritual atmosphere a child absorbs as the tradition is carried on.  For instance, the sense of integrity fostered by truth telling and it’s eventual connection to the figure of Jesus within Christianity, establishes a way which is inherently adopted by the child.  As a figure to be emulated, Jesus reflects the struggle of telling the truth about one’s world, the hypocrisy, the pretentiousness and the like.

One can argue that such ideals as living one’s life with integrity can be absorbed into the culture without the need for a religious tradition.  Secular humanism would proclaim such a promise.  My contention is that religion provides the central core of a belief system which incorporates the truths into one’s very being.  Secular society alone, in my mind, cannot provide such a context since the disparate parts send a child in many directions.  Messages, for example, about the efficacy of cheating in achieving one’s goals will pull one away from the opposite message of integrity.  If a tradition has provided clear ideals, then it is more likely a young person will be prepared for the inherent hardships of adult spiritual development.

Perseverance and the power of a prayerful life lend themselves to an interior sense of these eternal truths.  However it is equally true that this “knowing from the inside” is mostly lacking in the religious traditions today.  Thus the shift from top down to interior searching must be incorporated into the traditions, in order for a tradition to effectively re-establish itself as necessary in the development of a spiritual life.

What is necessary for any tradition is a true reformation shifting from simply the passing down of truths through the generations to a tradition of mysticism whereby the interior search is honored.  If so, it sets in motion a foundation from which we understand the initial desire to connect as community.  A shared belief is not about buying into some set of doctrines but in the understanding that we as a community must support the path of each individual.  And we do so because we share in the process by knowing the common experience of spiritual maturing.  The elders of the indigenous societies have taught us the power of such wisdom, by letting the “child” fly the coup and fall as she may, fully knowing she will still be picked up again and supported in going deeper.  Deeper into one’s relation to things Divine and one’s sense that “I” am part of the All—the Source of all life, both without and within.