This month's focus is spiritual health, and we're going to start with the difference between religion and spirituality.
According to the dictionary, here is how those two words are defined, as well as the word "spirit":
Religion: 1. the service and worship of God or the supernatural; commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance. 2. a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. 3. scrupulous conformity. 4. a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.
Spirituality: Of, relating to, consisting of, or afflicting the spirit
Spirit: 1. an animating or vital principle held to give live to physical organism. 2. the immaterial intelligent or sentient part of a person.
Religion focuses on the outward; spiritual focuses on the inward.
The only person we can truly change is ourself, and that change, to be lasting, has to come from the inside out. Our outward actions come from what we think, feel and believe within.
Therefore our spiritual health is at least as important if not more so than our physical health.
In order to nurture both, we need to set aside time and space devoted to our practices. For spiritual health, meditation and/or prayer and reflection, preferably on a daily basis, helps bring clarity to who we are inside and can help transform us into our best being now.
Even if it is just five minutes of sitting quietly and clearing our minds by focusing on our breathing, that small amount of time letting go of the outer world helps bring balance back to our inner world which we can then share with the outer world.
We cannot give what we do not have ourselves, and we cannot know what we DO have if we do not know ourselves and how we fit into the greater scheme of life.
Tending the garden that is our spiritual life enables us to know ourselves on the deepest level.
What are you doing today to bolster your spiritual health and bring balance to your life?
Namaste!
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