What is a spiritual life?

I’ve been challenging myself to be more explicit about my intention to live a life centred on spirituality. In Aotearoa some people find that really weird. We don’t always make it easy to talk about these things. 

Sometimes people ask if you need to believe in God to be spiritual. Sometimes people think I want to start a cult. And sometimes people will talk to me about various inner yearnings that can’t seem to be met by regular spiritual traditions. Sometimes people explain the extreme (or kind of mellow) wonder they experience when walking through the bush. Is that spirituality, they ask. 

My working definition is that spirituality is the part of ourselves that feels most connected to things that are bigger than us. Those things could be called God, or gods, or angels, or trees, stars, or the mighty sun’s disk - Akhenaten or so many other things. 

The part that matters to me isn’t so much what we connect with, but the part of us that is connecting. And to me, that’s the bit that often gets called ‘soul’. So, spirituality is about acknowledging and nourishing that bit. 

We can do that in traditional ways like going to church or a mosque or a  temple. And we can do it by making art or caring for the people in our communities, or making a garden, or making better habitats for our birds or lizards… if we know that in doing this we are nourishing our souls, then we are living a spiritual life. 

This can take courage, and I am always so encouraged by those brave and magnificent people around me. And I’m always keen to hear what others think about these things. If you want to share your thoughts on these things in The Urban Monk Zine, email me at matt@urbanmonkquests.com.