Reflecting on Spirituality: A Journey of Personal Growth
As I was reflecting on the topic of spirituality and how I understand it personally, I came to the realization of how much my personal spirituality has evolved over the years. I realize how necessary that change has been for my growth and thriving.
Understanding Spirituality: An Underrated Aspect of Wellbeing
In my opinion, spirituality can be a pretty underrated aspect of our wellbeing, and I think this is perhaps because it is misunderstood. Spirituality can tend to get lumped in with negative associations of religion and is seen as something that feels judgmental, rigid, shaming, oppressive, and based in fear. Spirituality is also often connected to practices and beliefs that can be negligent and exploitative. These critiques are fair, and it makes sense why people would divest their time and energy away from spirituality.
But I wonder if, because spirituality is connected to these objectively not-great things, the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater and we lose what I think is a really important part of our humanity and wellbeing.
My Spiritual Foundation: Growing Up with Evangelical Christian Beliefs
So I wanted to share a bit about my journey of spirituality, what I have come to understand about spirituality, and hopefully a bit about my process of allowing my spirituality to evolve in order to nourish this aspect of my wellbeing.
What is Spirituality?
For me, spirituality is the framework and practices that help me find meaning, authentic expression, and purpose in life.
Spirituality supports me to find connection and grounding in the world around me.
Spiritual framework and practices help me to understand and live out my personal ethic. They are the guiding moral principles that inform my behavior, what I choose to do, and why, which allows me more presence and peace of mind.
Thinking Through Your Spiritual Past
Starting out, my parents were evangelical Christian missionaries while I was growing up. Spirituality in my childhood was heavily informed by an evangelical Christian understanding of spirituality.
My parents’ beliefs provided a framework for right and wrong, good and evil, beauty and suffering, and other existential and moral questions. I believe that this helped me at the time, to make sense of life in a way that helped me feel grounded and safe.
The Impact of a Shared Spiritual Community
Being a member of a spiritual community with people who shared beliefs and values, I, along with my family, benefited from meaningful connections with people who cared for and supported each other. We celebrated and mourned together, and enjoyed spending time together. This spiritual framework also gave us a sense of purpose, to help the world around us to heal, to grow, and to thrive.
Challenges and Growth: Encountering Doubts and Fear in a Dogmatic Framework
As I look back now, I can genuinely say I am grateful for this foundation for my spirituality that my parents gave me. AND as I grew and began experiencing life as an individual, I began to encounter people, have experiences, and learn things about myself and the world that challenged my paradigm. My spiritual framework needed to evolve to incorporate these new understandings of the world. However, as sometimes happens with dogmatic spiritual frameworks, I had a lot of fear and shame about my questions and my doubts.
Suppressing Authenticity
I suppressed the cognitive dissonance and sacrificed my authenticity to feel safe and connected to the group.
Because my spiritual framework became increasingly governed by fear, my personal ethics became stringent rules, and personal passions became conformity and blind obedience.
Life felt increasingly stifling and empty. Relationships and connections with people felt shallow; I didn’t feel understood or valued, and I felt dissatisfied and unfulfilled with my life. What was once something that contributed to my wellbeing was now constricting my life force.
Reclaiming Purpose: Returning to Missions Work
So, wanting to reclaim a sense of meaning, connection, and purpose for my life, I chose to return to something that was familiar and comfortable for me—missions work. I joined an international community of people passionate about the purpose of helping other humans heal, grow, and thrive. I felt passionate about this purpose; it aligned with my ethics and dreams for my life, so it felt like a perfect fit for me.
Healing and Evolving in a Spiritual Community
This spiritual community provided me with opportunities to understand and solidify my personal ethics. They held guiding principles for how I want to live my life and why. This helped me feel more firmly grounded in meaning and my purpose. Although the spiritual framework and practices were similar to the one I had growing up, the community created a safe space for me to heal from and change beliefs that were suffocating, and to grow and explore a more authentic expression of this spiritual framework.
Embracing Change: Balancing Tradition with New Discoveries
It was a great time for me and, for a time, and then I started to grow and change again. As I felt more and more grounded in my spiritual framework and personal ethic, I felt safe to explore the world. I felt safe to learn new things, interact with people who had different experiences and paradigms, and I began to again have doubts and questions that challenged my spiritual framework. I felt a deep inner conflict between the desire to honor the teachings I was raised with and the need to explore and embrace the broader truths I was discovering.
The Internal Struggle: Letting Go of a Rigid Spiritual Framework
This internal struggle often left me feeling isolated, as if I was betraying something sacred by simply seeking answers.
This framework had helped me feel safe and grounded in times of uncertainty and change. It helped me find hope and purpose in a life that so often feels meaningless. It helped me to feel connected to others and part of a community.
I was scared to let this framework go because I wasn’t sure who I would be without it.
Growing Toward a New Path
But in order to grow in the ways I needed to, I had to let go of my spiritual framework. This was by no means an easy feat for me. I worked through a lot of fear, shame, and grief.
With time, I found that by releasing this particular spiritual framework that made me scared to explore the world (and some of my own authentic expressions), I had a lot more freedom and curiosity to explore and have experiences.
A New Perspective on Spirituality:Rediscovering Spirituality through Exploration
At the time, I would have said that I wasn’t connected to spirituality or investing in my spiritual well-being at all. However, now I see things a little differently now. Looking back, I realize that this period of exploration and self-discovery was, in fact, deeply spiritual.
By shedding the confines of a rigid framework, I was able to reconnect with a sense of wonder and openness that had been stifled. I began to understand that spirituality isn’t confined to a set of beliefs or practices but is woven into every aspect of our lives—our connections with others, our experiences, and our ongoing search for meaning.
This realization allowed me to embrace a more expansive and authentic spirituality, one that is rooted in freedom, curiosity, and a profound sense of inner truth.
Embracing an Ever-Evolving Spirituality
What I have learned about spirituality over the years, for me personally, is that it has to be allowed to change as we do. As we are given opportunities to grow and learn and have new experiences of the world, how we make sense of the world and our place in it changes.
For me, spirituality is the framework and practices that help me find meaning, authentic expression, and purpose. It helps me to find connection to the world around me and to forces that feel higher than myself. This framework and practices help me to understand and live out my personal ethic and dreams for my life.
Final Thoughts:
This framework and practices have changed over the years; black and white has become a lot more gray, God has become more expansive and personal than I ever imagined, and practices of prayer and worship have become contemplation and long walks.
Even though that change was necessary, it was often painful and scary. What I have found to be true is that the more I have allowed myself to face the painful and scary things (thankfully often with the help and support of others), the more freedom I have felt. And what I have come to realize with time is that my ethics and dreams haven’t really changed; they’ve just become a lot more solid and a lot more freeing.
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