Spiritual but not Religious

 Rev. Dr. Lilian Danial draws us back o the old debate, that unless you think and believe like I do, you are “boring”, I am glad of her choice of word for using ‘boring’. The whole discourse is restricted on western understanding of the word spirituality and religion; in India hundreds of years ago people find spiritual solace in the caves on the mountains, on the bank of the mighty river and even under a tree in a deep forest.

In the modern time people find spiritual solace in Yoga and I can only speak about the one I joined conducted by the Art of Living Foundation. People from all religious background and even non-religious join in the yoga class. And there is nothing religious about the class and even the name of the organization does not have any religious meaning to it, and Rev. Daniel will have a lot of persuasion to do to convince me that what I experienced was not spiritual. And yes we have one yoga technique call ‘surya namashkar’ it has to do with greeting the sunrise. 

Where I live we also have indigenous religion, which may not fit in the western definition of religion, but they worship the nature and find spiritual solace in their sacred forest which they kept since time immemorial. 

The difference between a UU like me and Rev. Daniel understanding of the subject is that in the UU church too we had hundred of similar experiences with the SbnR, but instead of calling them boring we allow them their rightful space in the spiritual realm to explore their spiritual path. We do not close our doors and limit our understanding of people spiritual experiences and instead of calling their experiences boring, we try to understand and appreciate their unique experiences.