Welcome to Spirituality and Your Health! In the months that follow we will be exploring the role spirituality has in healing and maintaining health, both physically and emotionally. But before we jump into the health aspect, we need to define what spirituality is. By default, many people think “religion” in association with spirituality. A spiritual person is thought of as someone who prays a lot and sings hymns and is generally very devout. So taking care of one’s spiritual side means dressing in our Sunday best and sitting in a pew for an hour, right? Yes. And no. It depends on who you are.
Let’s begin with the basics. Every person on earth has a longing. There’s a desire, a fire burning in our hearts, a pull that lives deep within us telling us we need to do something, be somebody, find our place in the world, define who we are, to belong in this life. This is the spark of creation itself. It is the driving passion that makes us feel alive when we are indulging it. All people have this longing, it is with us when we are born. We cannot choose to have this fire, we can only choose how it manifests. That choice–what we do with our fire–is spirituality.
Spirituality can be affirming or it can be destructive. Some spend their fire energy, or eros, doing good for others: teaching, volunteering, healing. Others use their eros to satisfy something for themselves: painting, taking classes, rebuilding engines, …
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