I've had a lot on my mind the last day or two and I'm not quite ready yet to write those thoughts down. Instead I've decided that I'm going to take some time to write about something a little more on the intellectual side if for no other reason than to give myself a bit of time away from my other lingering thoughts.
I've been an atheist for many years now and one concept that I had a really hard time wrapping my head around was the concept of spirituality. I've had friends in the past that have described me as the least spiritual person they knew, and I didn't even know how to interpret that because I didn't even know what the word meant in any practical sense. These friends weren't even religious people, so their concept of spirituality couldn't have been wrapped up in religion somehow. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the concept now, and admittedly it stings quite a lot that some people would think of me as being very low in spirituality. They're definitely wrong about me, but that just leads me to wonder why I come across that way. In fact, it kind of relates to a conversation I had with Dorota yesterday. She (once again) suggested that I was a very unemotional person. That also seems very odd to me considering how intensely I feel about so many things, particularly when I'm with her. The other strange thing is that I feel like I generally have a very hard time concealing what I think and feel, so it's baffling that I come across as unemotional. I'm considering that perhaps I express my emotions in a very subtle way compared to others. For example, it takes a lot to make me yell out in anger at someone, but that does not mean I don't feel intensely angry or that I don't make it clear that I'm angry.
Anyways, I went off on a bit of a tangent there so I'm going to try to bring this back to where I initially intended. It has struck me that I am a very spiritual person, but that I didn't know that the word was referring to those aspects of me. Spirituality is going to tie very close to religion when a person happens to be religious and that is partly because spirituality is one of the aspects of human experience that religion tends to hold a domain over. As an example, it is possible for people to be moral or have opinions on morality that are not based in a religion, but if a person happens to be religious, their moral principles are of course going to be closely tied to religion. Spirituality is a very strange thing and I'm not entirely sure why we experience it (though there is certainly bound to be an evolutionary reason). It is essentially the feelings of tremendous importance that people get with certain aspects of their lives. A lot of evidence suggests that many drugs (in particular hallucinogenic drugs) have the tendency to be able to induce intense feelings of significance. In other words, it seems that some people use drugs as a means of spiritual fulfillment. A friend I made about a year ago after having known me for a few weeks had learned that I do not use any drugs. We had also discussed and shared music with one another on several occasions. The most interesting thing he ever said to me is that he thought I don't use drugs because my music seems to serve that purpose to me. I didn't disagree with him, but I had to think a lot about that. He's not wrong.
What I think I'd like to do is make a list of things that tend to be of spiritual significance to a person of religion and the ways in which I kind of have the same things.
Music is an easy example and I did just mention it. Religions often make use music due to the fact that music has a strong ability to induce feelings of tremendous significance. My music does precisely the same thing with me, but of course it isn't tied to a religion. My music sometimes transports me somewhere else, or makes me have such strong emotions that I have nearly completely broken down.
Many religions have a holy place. That could be a place as in a building (a church or temple) or it can even be considered a holy land (such as Israel to the Jews or Mecca to Islam). I too have a 'holy place' - my old cottage. I make 'pilgrimages' there at least once a year and the biggest reason why I do so is to just have experiences that make me feel very intensely.
Even aspects of the gym are spiritual in nature. Religions often have rituals that involve some type of sacrifice. That sacrifice could be relatively small like a short prayer or the occasional fast, or they could be fairly large sacrifices that require tremendous effort or the ability to withstand a lot of pain like the Native Sun Dance. The gym is often painful and very hard (particularly the way I do things). Lifting 400lbs or more multiple times is exhausting and incredibly hard, and yet I go and do it multiple times a week. I do it because it makes me feel very good when I am able to meet a goal that required so much time and effort particularly since in the past I would never have figured I'd be able to do those things.
There are more aspects of my life that are linked to spirituality that are nearly religious in nature, but this post is getting very long by now. It has also served it's purpose in directing my mind from something else. I really hope I don't screw everything up.