While spirituality and religion tend to be thought of as two completely separate and unrelated belief systems, they’re actually much more closely related than people might realize. When we think of religion, the image that comes to mind is churches, temples, holy books, and Gods. When we think of spirituality, we think of meditation, souls or spirits, and the universe. The problem with this perspective is that we aren’t seeing the similarities.
Religion and spirituality are not exclusive. They often can and do intertwine with one another. The main teaching of any religion is love. The basis of every religion is universal love, free of judgment or expectation, which is exactly the same sort of positive energy we want to spread through spirituality.
I once took a crystal class which took a turn and ended up being a class about energy, love, and spirituality, and one of the best things I learned was “God is an essence, God is not a religion.” Essentially what I took away from this was that God is energy. God is a name, a personification of universal love and the energy and consciousness that flows through the universe and through all of us.
If you take a closer look at different religions, they all preach the same idea of treating people with kindness, compassion, and love as well as the existence of souls that are not bound by our bodies or earthly limitations. The Bible states “Fear them not which are able to kill the body but not able to kill the soul.” Even the Koran (or Quran), the religious text of Islam, states “A soul will not die,” and in Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita says, “For the soul there is never birth nor death. It is not slain when the body is slain.” What these quotes mean is that we all have souls, or rather, we are souls. We have bodies but our souls are not bound by our bodies and do not die when our bodies die.
All these books and religions, as well as many more, also teach universal love and compassion for everyone. Jesus taught to love your enemies and said, “If you love only those that love you, what reward have ye?” The Avot de Rabbi Nathan (which is usually read with the Talmud of the Jewish faith) says, “Teach not love of scholars only, but love of all.” Buddha said that there are only three things that matter in the end, the first of which being how much you loved. Each of these quotes are a small portion of the teachings of love in each of these religions. Each of these religions teaches the same general idea: love everyone and love unconditionally.
None of these messages should be disregarded just because they come from a different faith than your own. Each of these messages come from the same energy of the universe, they’re simply manifested in different ways through different people, faiths, or books. But God also appears in all of us and in everything, connecting everyone, according to many of these religions.
The Bible states that the kingdom of God is within you, which is similar, if not the same, to the belief that reality and the universe are within you. The Upanishads in Hinduism say, “The One God is hidden in all living things,” and a Lenape Indian stated that in their faith they think of Tirawa (God) as in everything. Muhammed stated that all creatures are members of God’s one family and a Jewish prayer book says, “All people are your children, whatever their belief, whatever their shade of skin.” All of these messages come from different holy books, different religions and places, different figures in history, but they all have the same underlying message. They all say that we are all of God, whatever you believe that God to be (energy, the universe, the love of a Creator named “God”, etc.) and that we are all connected to God and therefore connected to each other.
In the end, all religious teachings stem from the same energies and messages. They’ve just divided people into different categories of beliefs when they all have believed essentially the same things all along. Religions have separated and directed people’s thoughts and made people think that their beliefs are the right ones, while other religions have it wrong. In reality, they’re all teaching the same things about love, compassion, and souls that any spiritual being believes. The only difference between religions and spirituality is that religions are more exclusive and make distinctions between each other while spirituality is inclusive and accepting of many ways of thinking and living.