Untangling Religion from Spirituality

By Mike George

Some people say, “I am spiritual but not religious”.
Others say, “I am religious and my spirituality is based on my religion”.
And a few say, “My religion is my spirituality”.
Then there are those who say, “Religion is spiritual and you can’t be spiritual without religion”.
And a very few say they cannot be compared as both are the same!
Phew!
So there is an obvious mixing of the two ideas. That’s why untangling them can only happen in one’s own consciousness when there is clarity about each.

Mike sets out to help you discern the difference between religion and spirituality but in a way that engages you to ‘see for your self’.
In 101 areas of comparison he articulates both the substantial and the subtle differences with simplicity and wisdom.
Why is it important? In his words, “Right now religion still dominates our world. For many it provides a comfortable set of beliefs by which to live. But if you want to prepare your self for what is to come, if you want to be ready, willing and able to face the challenges ahead, you will need to cultivate your spirituality. And that, for many, is not so comfortable”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike George
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781916343610

Book preview

UNTANGLING

RELIGION

The 101 Differences Between

Spirituality and Religion

from

SPIRITUALITY

UNTANGLING RELIGION from SPIRITUALITY

Text Copyright Mike George 2021

Print Edition ISBN: 978-1-9163436-1-0

Also available as an E-Book

Published by

Gavisus Media

Email: [e-mail]

First Edition

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Cover Design: Charlotte Mouncey - www.bookstyle.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of phonographic recording; nor may be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use, other than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher.

The information given in this book should not be treated as a substitute for professional medical advice; always consult a medical practitioner. Any use of information in this book is at the reader’s discretion and risk. Neither the author nor the publisher can be held responsible for any loss, claim or damage arising out of use, or misuse, or the suggestions made or the failure to take medical advice

Image1

Other Books by Mike George

The Wisdom of Personal Undevelopment

BEING BEYOND BELIEF

Liberating Leadership

MINDSETS

The 7 Myths About LOVE…Actually!

BEING Your Self

Don’t Get MAD Get Wise

The Immune System of the SOUL

The Journey from IGNORANCE to ENLIGHTENMENT

The 7 AHA!s of Highly Enlightened Souls

Learn to Find Inner Peace

Learn to Relax

In the Light of Meditation

Subscribe to CLEAR THINKING

Clear Thinking is a regularly irregular e-article that serves to sustain the ongoing unlearning necessary to increase your self-awareness and self-understanding - to subscribe go to www.mikegeorgebooks.com

You can take the person

out of a religion

though it’s not so easy

to take religion

out of the person!

But you cannot take

the spirituality

out of a person

simply because

spirit is what

I/You/We

are.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Other Books by Mike George

Subscribe to CLEAR THINKING

Many Names for YOU?

Part ONE: Head and Heart

Prologue

1. Access by Mouse

2. What is Your Lens?

3. The Attachment Mistake

4. What do I mean by RELIGION…precisely?

5. What do I mean by SPIRITUALITY…exactly?

6. Affirming Your SELF as Soul/Spirit

7. The Real Fall

8. The Central Figure

9. Entering the Field of Wonder

10. The Ending of Our Story

Part TWO: The 101 differences between Spirituality and Religion

Subscribe to Clear Thinking

Many Names for YOU?

Throughout the course of the book I use a variety of terms which all refer to ‘you’. If you ever start thinking ‘what does he mean’ when you encounter such terms this page serves as a reminder. You may have different beliefs about what these words mean but at least you will understand what I mean as you read the following pages.

SELF

That’s you. There is a self as in ‘the being’ that you are.

CONSCIOUSNESS

You are conscious. You are consciousness itself. Not the form you occupy but the being of consciousness that dwells in and animates form.

SOUL

Is another word for consciousness. The soul, that’s you again, is not something you have. Soul is what you are.

SPIRIT

Is another word for soul simply because the energy of consciousness/soul is spiritual energy.

AWARENESS

Strip everything away and you are left with awareness. You are, I am, we each are, pure awareness. However, while we are ‘consciousness’ all of the time our awareness is either blocked or diminished or limited by our attachments i.e. the ‘things’ we become attached to within our consciousness, within our self.

BEING

You are ‘the being’ that is being! As you occupy and express through the physical form you ‘create’ many ‘doings’.

I

Perhaps the simplest answer to the question ‘who am I’ is I am the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’. So in one sense all the above terms always refer to ‘I’ to the ‘self’ that you are.

—

Self, consciousness, soul, spirit, awareness, being and I are synonymous. Which means you don’t have a name. Your body has a name but you don’t!

Part ONE

Head and Heart

Religion tends to be driven by belief, devotion and duty, whereas spirituality is the natural expression of the heart.

Religious people tend to act from the belief that it’s good to be loving as they ‘consciously create’ the intention to be kind and forgiving.

Whereas spirituality requires no thought and is naturally loving and kind, as that is the true nature of every human heart.

As soon as you think, How should I be?, or What should I do? it is an early sign of the absence of genuine spirituality?

That’s not to say strategized thinking, shaped by beliefs such as ‘should’ or ‘ought’, is wrong. It’s perhaps just not as authentic as that which arises naturally from the heart.

Not the heart of your body, the heart of you, the spiritual being.

We’ll encounter this idea throughout our ‘untangling’.

Prologue

There are numerous scriptures filled with other peoples versions of what is good and true. Religious scripture is encoded wisdom where each of us has the opportunity to break the code and induce our AHA moments! There are many who have made it their life’s work to break the code. But what wisdom are they realising as they reawaken their understanding? Only what is already present within their consciousness, usually buried in their subconscious. You can only realise what you already know, is an insightful claim made by many.

There seems to be a spectrum. At one end are the ‘believers’. They were brought up by believers of the predominant scripture. They tend to be raised in a culture defined by the application of a set of scriptural principles. Their life is shaped by the stories of those whose legacy is recorded in religious texts. They too become ‘believers’. While studying their scripture they make the connection between cultural morality and a set of beliefs responsible for their conditioning and vice versa.

At the other end of spectrum are the ‘knowers’. These are the people who have plumbed the depths of their own consciousness, probably with the aid of wise teachers and spiritual practices along the way. They have gone beyond words, concepts and analogies and rediscovered the power that lies in their still and silent being. They have realised their personal version of universal truths and are able to emerge their truths and respond wisely and appropriately, no matter the scene or the relationship they find themselves facing.

Such is the difference between the believers and the knowers. Which one are you? Neither is right or wrong. Just different in their ability to respond to the challenges that life will throw at them. Which would you prefer to be? Would you prefer your wisdom to be acquired and consumed from a historical source or through a rediscovery of a knowingness that is entirely innate? Perhaps a mix of both. Would you prefer to thoughtfully reason your way to decisions and action or intuit your way into the subtle inner territory of your deepest feelings?

Perhaps centred by one and balanced by the other!

Welcome to the untangling of religion from spirituality as we discern the difference between each end of this spectrum and the wisdom of both.

1

Access by Mouse

It's the age of electronic exploration. The history and the beliefs of almost every religious tradition, alongside the philosophy behind almost every spiritual practice, are now available at the click of a mouse. But it's a tsunami of information. How do we discern the accuracy, validity and efficacy of what we find from thousands of books, videos, talks and websites? In this era of fake news how do we know what is true and what is false? How do we discern illusion from reality? How do we choose who to listen to and what we study, practice and integrate into our life?

The purpose of this book is not to make such a ‘choiceful discernment’ for you, but to help you to make it for yourself. There is only one agenda - clarity. My intention is to layout, as clearly as possible, the significance, meaning and implications of the possible choices when it comes to religion and/or spirituality. Do they define different ways of being and doing? Or are they essentially the same? Which of the two would you align your self with and why?

I do have a dimension of curiosity to this exploration and that is to see more clearly for myself. That's what happens when you sit down and try to organise your understanding about what is perhaps the most controversial subject in this and the previous century, which is religion, in comparison to what is probably the deepest subject, which is spirituality. Ultimately, it's your own third eye, otherwise known as your intellect, that has to do the work of clarification.

Comparing, contrasting and untangling these two dimensions of our life is both complex and complicated. While religion and spirituality can be separated they can also ‘seem’ to overlap in so many areas. The challenge is to bring simplicity to each without a loss of meaning and depth, as we explore what they have in common alongside the differences.

I am not a philosopher and certainly not an academic. So I don't claim to be an ‘authority’ on either topic. My sense is it’s the I am an authority/expert on this matter mindset, that often gets in the way of the clarity we seek.

I have however, been integrating what I would call 'spiritual practices’ into my life for over 30 years, while deeply exploring the meaning of spirituality. The questions fuelling my curiosity include; why do people become so locked into their religion and religious belief systems while their certainty has no evidence to affirm the truth of such beliefs? Why do so many people believe that religion and spirituality are synonymous? Is faith blind or a sign of ‘the enlightened’? And what is the real reason authentically spiritual people would never instigate a conflict?

The Early Years

While my childhood saw me go to a Christian Church on a fairly regular basis I never really bought into the content of the scripture or the musical poems we used to sing. I wasn't anti-religion or resistant in any way, I just didn't see the relevance at that time. I was more interested in playing badminton in the church hall. That was then and this is now, over forty years later.

Between then and now I've been on a journey, mostly an inner journey, trying to work out those age old questions that have challenged many a scholar and philosopher - who I am, what I am and why am I here? So I would say that cultivating an increasingly spiritual perspective and approach to everything has been a significant aspect of my everyday life.

Brain washingly weird!

Many people believe there is a lot wrong with religion. They would say it fragments the world, gives rise to conflict and tries to brainwash our children. Other people see spirituality as a weird conglomeration of new age ideas, therapies, mind bending philosophies and quaint practices, somewhat reminiscent of the sixties hippie culture.

I seek not to establish the supremacy of one over the other. As clearly as possible I seek to discern the differences between these two areas that are part of all our lives. That said, it’s obvious there are differences, some of which are barely discernible. Even more challenging is any attempt to articulate such differences in the medium of words. Try defining spirituality when you are next with a group of friends. Try pinning down the meaning of religion without the conversation descending into an argument that becomes increasingly emotional. I am not free of bias so feel free to let me know where you may spot bias at work. There are likely to be many instances, most of which can be traced to our personal definitions and interpretations of the words.

I invite you put your back to the back of the chair and, as far as possible, put your preconceptions to one side, and enjoy the journey. This is not a scholarly investigation. I will not be quoting academics, religious scholars or spiritual leaders. I won't even mention any particular religion or spiritual philosophy by name, but simply juxtapose these two 'ideas' according to my own understanding and perceptions at this stage of my life.

It represents an opportunity for you to do your own comparative work and I am sure you will generate your own insights and discern your own differences, if you haven't already. I would encourage you to take the ideas and insights and reflect, explore, ruminate on them. As you do you may then induce your own Aha! moments and your own clarity on the topic may be enhanced. I am certainly not here attempting to convince you of anything.

As you read and contemplate the 101 juxtapositions in Part 2 you will have your own perspective/s on each. Please feel free to tell me what they are. I am always open to new and deeper insights.

So thanks for picking up this book. I hope you find the descriptions, juxtapositions and comparisons on the following pages are useful in untangling the differences between these two well trodden pathways through the jungle we call life.

2

What is Your Lens?

Those who explore these juxtapositions between spirituality and religion will do so through their own lens. So it’s probably appropriate to declare the lens through which I am exploring what I perceive to be the similarities and the differences.

Like many others I see everyone as a spiritual being occupying and animating a physical form. Other names often used for the spiritual being are consciousness, soul, self or simply the ‘I’ that says ‘I am’. Every experience is therefore a spiritual experience as it is the spirit, the being that ‘I am’ and you are, that is creating the experience of …everything! However the quality of that experience will vary according to ones lens, which is another way of saying ‘according to the beliefs and past experiences we are using as filters’. The primary belief we are all taught is that you are just a material form. Spirituality is then associated with materiality, complicated further by religious beliefs and it all becomes entangled together. Hence the reason for this book.

Spectrum Analysis

Imagine a horizontal spectrum of experience. At one end there is the body, the physical form, animated by spirit/consciousness/self. You are having ‘material experiences’ through the senses of the body. As they are made up of sensual stimulations these might be considered ‘outside in’ experiences including the physical sensations that you feel.

At the other end of the spectrum there is spirit/consciousness (that’s you again), the occupant of form. You are having experiences that are mental and emotional. These would be arising from ‘inside out’ as the self/spirit is the creator all thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

The deepest experiences, from a spiritual point of view, are of your own true nature which is naturally peaceful, joyous and loving. These are self-generated, ‘inside out’ thoughts and feelings. They would probably be more accurately called ‘insperiences’. One notices that it’s not possible to consciously emerge these higher natural feelings until there has been a quietening of the stimulations from the material world ‘out there’.

These external and therefore physical stimulations tend to ‘trigger’ emotion within consciousness. When emotions are created notice how they flood your mind and block the natural feelings of your deepest nature. That’s easy to say but not so easy to see for most of us. Such is our addiction to emotion that we find it hard to discern and generate our natural feelings that originate from our natural states of being. Hence the pleasure of sensual stimulation is confused with happiness.

Somewhere between our materially based experiences (outside in) and spiritually based insperiences (inside out), sits religion. On the one hand religion tends to require attachment to belief, which originates from outside in. When anything is perceived to threaten that attachment or during the celebration of that attachment, emotion is triggered. On the other hand, there are contemplative practices within some religions that transcend belief. This allows the individual to feel what could be considered ones true and natural self. These feelings could be called ‘spiritual insperiences’. In such moments we are insperiencing our true nature as states of consciousness.

If we upend our horizontal spectrum and make it vertical the ‘inside out’ insperiences of the spirit that we are would be at the higher end. The materially stimulated ‘outside in’ experiences i.e. physical feelings, would be at the lower end. These ‘outside in’ feelings are not bad or wrong, but they generate a lower ‘vibration’ when they register in consciousness. They are therefore a lesser ‘quality’ of experience.

At this, the lower ‘outside in’ end of our vertical spectrum, life is more likely to be perceived to be happening to you as you see your self as the form. You will more likely adopt a ‘victim consciousness’. At the higher ‘inside out’ end, life is happening for you. You are consciousness and therefore the master of all that occurs in consciousness, in you. You are therefore able to be the observer of the dramas that occur around you and maintain your choice of response. With a victim consciousness you have allowed your self to be sucked into those dramas, similar to watching a movie. So it feels like life is happening to you. When you master the art of ‘watching life unfold’ it’s as if it’s all happening for your entertainment.

When you are the master of your consciousness it’s as if, in the cinema or theatre, you never lose the awareness you are watching a movie/play. You appreciate the creativity of others without being sucked into the drama or the characters and being triggered into an emotional state. In reality we can ‘be’ and ‘do’ both roles i.e. be a member of the audience watching the play and be participant in the play. Mastery is the conscious ability to be and do both. Wisdom is knowing what to be, audience or participant, or both, in each moment.

Transcending entirely this upended spectrum is the awareness that one’s life is not even one’s own creation. It just happens. However this awareness is only possible when consciousness no longer has the habit of losing itself in, and therefore identifying itself with, any memory, belief, idea, image of object or person. In other words consciousness no longer identifies with anything material (objects/people) or mental (ideas/images/beliefs). This allows the natural purity and innocence of self/spirit to be restored. Once this innocence is restored a natural surrender to life as it occurs takes place. All control, which was always an illusion anyway, is relinquished.

For some, this way of seeing and understanding is obvious. For others it’s not so obvious, not so clear. For many this understanding would not make sense at all. But at least it may help you to understand why I say what I say during the rest of the book. And remember I am not trying to convince you of the ‘rightness’ of this perception, but I am offering these perspectives so you can challenge your own understanding and create a greater personal clarity. That may include simply disagreeing as part of that ‘clarifying for your self’ process. But if you do disagree don’t forget to check if you have ‘clarity of reason’ for doing so! And have you personally challenged the beliefs contained by your reasoning?

In other words try to stop frequently throughout the book and stare out the window as you reflect on, What does that mean to me? Notice whether your contemplations arise out