What is the difference between religion and spirituality?

[andyjohnsonman]

I feel like it's just semantics and they are actually the same thing. Sam Harris talks about the separation being not wanting to throw the baby out with the bath water and keeping the best parts of Religion to make it Spirituality but as we have leant in the recent corruption video Religion/ Spirituality corrupts through lack of sovereignty as people just do what Leo calls the telephone line passing the information down from generation to generation each generation corrupting it a little more and most without doing hardcore practices so in this way spirituality and religion are the same. 

From a Spiral perspective i was originally inclined to say religion is more stage blue however that's not true as there are some stage yellow, turquoise religious practitioners. It's not the belief in deities as Buddhism is a religion and is deity free therefore i think the 2 words are mutually exclusive. 

Thoughts?

[andyjohnsonman]

I also think it could be an ego game where people think they are above religion by calling themselves "spiritual". All the traps that are present in religion are just as present in spirituality and at this point think it's just using different words to point to the same thing. however I see many spiritual people getting triggered when being called religious.

Edited October 16, 2019 by andyjohnsonman

[Gili Trawangan]

I see a huge difference.

With spirituality, you are undertaking an investigation into the nature of reality and yourself.

With religion, you are believing what others have supposedly discovered without questioning it, or merely questioning it on an intellectual level.

The level of understanding you get from one compared to the other is different by orders of magnitude.

[andyjohnsonman]

But i think these are how the original religious teachings were displayed to undertake an investigation into the nature of reality and yourself. However they were corrupted due to the way most human minds work wanting to give up their sovereignty to an outside authority in the same way as how most spiritual teaching will also eventually end up. 

 

 

[Gili Trawangan]

12 minutes ago, andyjohnsonman said:

But i think these are how the original religious teachings were displayed to undertake an investigation into the nature of reality and yourself. However they were corrupted due to the way most human minds work wanting to give up their sovereignty to an outside authority in the same way as how most spiritual teaching will also eventually end up. 

 

 

That's when spirituality becomes religion.

Just don't confuse the two, they are very different.

[andyjohnsonman]

But saying that would infer that all religious people are dogmatic and without any undertaking and investigation into the nature of reality for themselves which if you have been to a Zen Monastery would immediately be discounted. I think they are the same and it's actually about the person who practices it not the religion/spirituality itself. 

[andyjohnsonman]

In Zen the teacher talks in riddles as to not fill the minds of practitioners with unnecessary dogmas and can focus on understanding the nature of reality through direct experience.

[Leo Gura]

Religion is just spirituality turned into unquestioned ideology.

But that doesn't mean spirituality is free of dogma or ideology. Just that religion is much, much worse.

Religion is what you call it when spirituality has turned into a cancer of the mind.

Corruption is like water, it seeps into every crack.

[andyjohnsonman]

So its the same thing then it's just a question of time. Eventually all spiritual teachings will be corrupted and turned into religion just as all original teachings were spiritual messages that turned into religion. The only difference is how far away they are from the original source. So we could just call it the same thing and just measure their levels of corruption as they are all corrupt in someway anyway. 

[andyjohnsonman]

It's like all countries have different levels of corruption but we still call them countries. I don't see why we need different words other than for pedestaling purposes. 

[Leo Gura]

@andyjohnsonman You're not quite appreciating how the English language works. We have many words for everything, and each one has slight nuances. Nuance is important.

To call Actualized.org religion would be inappropriate. To call it spirituality is more appropriate, although limited.

[andyjohnsonman]

Yea i agree. It's just the labelling tends to polarise and make many people unaware how similar they are. 

[Leo Gura]

Is anyone really confused that religion and spirituality are closely related topics?

A bigger problem is how seldom people see the similarity between religion and science.

[andyjohnsonman]

Not that they are closely related topics but what they stand for. I have friends who think they are a long way apart hence why i asked this question and feel i have more clarification on the matter now.

[whoareyou]

Once you have a deep "awakening", you will see that there is no need to be "religious" or "spiritual". Spirituality and religion is for the egos - if you know that you are God you will see that there is no need for any of that.

[remember]

17 minutes ago, whoareyou said:

Once you have a deep "awakening", you will see that there is no need to be "religious" or "spiritual". Spirituality and religion is for the egos - if you know that you are God you will see that there is no need for any of that.

well but spirituality you can`t avoid - if you think you can avoid that and simultaneously being god you are nothing but an ego.

[whoareyou]

36 minutes ago, remember said:

well but spirituality you can`t avoid - if you think you can avoid that and simultaneously being god you are nothing but an ego.

That is not what I said! I said that once you have a deep enough of awakening, you transcend "spirituality" all together. It doesn't mean going back to the same place where you were not into spirituality. 

[remember]

5 hours ago, whoareyou said:

That is not what I said! I said that once you have a deep enough of awakening, you transcend "spirituality" all together. It doesn't mean going back to the same place where you were not into spirituality. 

that`s what you say now

[Nahm]

@andyjohnsonman Infinite religions and spiritualities do not hold a candle to the life & reality altering power of a single kenshō.

[MiracleMan]

No difference, with the exception that spirituality has more market value.  None has more merit than the other, both are deceptions, without any substance or meaning, like everything.