What is Spirituality? Types & Importance

Spirituality is a very wide and broad concept and a sense of belief that something is much bigger and greater than ourselves. It’s something that we can only experience through our senses, and it is divine and cosmic in nature that surrounds ourselves and we’re part of it. 

Spirituality also means finding a purpose in life that our existence is more than just satisfying biological needs. It’s the process of knowing that we have a significant role in the unraveling of life in ourselves and our universe. 

However, spirituality deals with the exploration of common universal human experiences like truth, wisdom, life after death, altruism, compassion, and love. It’s also acknowledging the fact that some people have achieved higher self-development. Some people would explain the spirituality or spiritual experience as some sort of deep interconnectedness, alive, transcendent, or sacred. 

Some would say that their spirituality and spiritual life have a complicated connection with the synagogue, mosque, temple, or church. The others would say that they’re happy by developing a relationship with the higher power and connection with nature. 

Importance of Spirituality 

After defining what is spirituality? It’s significant to discuss the importance of spirituality. Just like different people have got different perspectives and definitions of spirituality. Similarly, spirituality has helped many people in different ways. Some of the main reasons that why spirituality is important for many people are as follows; 

Sense of Purpose & Direction 

It doesn’t matter whether you have an excess of worldly luxuries and richness or limited resources. We all feel the inner emptiness, our limitations, and our dissatisfaction now and then. However, some people are sensitive to these things, and others are good at avoiding them by chasing endless goals and worldly materialistic pleasures. 

Spiritual guides a person to find direction, purpose, and meaning in life. It helps you to fulfill the emptiness inside of you, comprehend life in the broader perspective, and find the meaning of life and living. Most importantly, it allows you to connect with something bigger than yourself as an individual and your ego. 

Connection of Oneness 

We live in a world that has created a perception of incompleteness and a sense of separation. We try to find love and develop connections with other people and things, connect with the divine (in any of the religious forms), and become one with the universe. Either way, it turns out to be a painful experience. 

However, spirituality helps you to find happiness in just living, accept yourself in its totality, and give and receive unconditional love. When you follow this path, then it helps you to find the source and sacredness of the universe. 

Growth 

It is our inner instinctive human desire to reach our fullest potential, evolve, go beyond the boundaries, improve, and get better. However, spirituality allows you to amplify your consciousness, develop virtues, cultivate your mind, live life in truthfulness, and continuously learn and grow yourself. 

Truth & Answers 

We often wonder about questions like; who are we? Why are we here on this planet? What else is there on this planet and outside? All of these questions lead towards the comprehension of how life works. From this point, spirituality helps us to absorb, understand, and become one with the truth of the universe. 

Peace & Happiness 

The reason people come toward spirituality is because of suffering, fear, grief, and anxiety. We have the perception of finding satisfaction and happiness from external sources. The worldly external sources are variable and irrelevant, and they give you stock market happiness. 

As we’re aware that suffering is a mental and psychological case, and spirituality is the process of transforming your mind in order to achieve a better life. It’s also an internal drive to seek the peace of mind and happiness. However, you could also reduce the suffering to some extent. Most importantly, it helps you to achieve balance in life, appreciates life, and be independent of external sources. 

Enlightenment 

The definition of enlightenment is different in various cultures and traditions. However, the most common definition of enlightenment is transcending from the current suffering state to a better state. 

We can say that it’s a permanent shift of our human experiences and perception of the world, and that’s far away from the senses of an individual person. However, it’s a desire to achieve and experience merging with the divine energy, transcending from our ego, find the reality of our existence, and peace of mind. 

Mystery & Exploration 

Spirituality allows you to dive deeper into your consciousness and explore various other aspects of reality like adventure, experience, thirst for knowledge and learning, living without mystery, sacredness, unraveling the mysteries of nature and life. 

Serving 

Spirituality develops a desire in you of uplifting humanity, helping them and making a difference in their lives, and serving at a personal and deeper level. 

Types of Spirituality/What is Spirituality

There are different paths and routes that you can use to achieve spirituality. They follow various approaches ranging from religious to secular. Some of the main types of spirituality are as follows; 

• Shamanism: you learn to live in synchronization with nature, along with developing power and knowledge to work invisible forces of the universe, helps you to heal your soul and spirit, and making sure the spiritual welfare of other people. 
• Jainism: it deals with becoming a perfect human being, karmic purification, salvation, and liberation of your soul. 
• Kabbalah: it encourages you to study the laws of nature, know yourself and the creator, and then live with it accordingly. 
• Daoism/Taoism: learning to live in synchronicity with Dao, developing your mind, body, and soul, and cultivating the sublime energy. 
• Christianity: you have to feel and experience the love of the creator, the union of God, and the kingdom of heavens. 
• Sufism/Islam: you serve God by surrendering yourself to him, and experiencing a divine revelation. 
• Vedanta: you dissolve the knot of ego by knowing your true self, and ego restricts your consciousness to mind and body. 
• Yoga: you learn to purify your mind in order to achieve liberation, it means uniting your soul with the energy/soul of the universe, and it allows you to become one with the world of consciousness. 
• Buddhism: you achieve enlightenment by seeing reality what it is, and removing anything that is spoiling your mind.  

Whatever path, route, and philosophy you follow, the end goal is the same and that is personal transformation, and seeing things way beyond yourself. It could be to achieve personal growth, happiness, liberation, becoming one with the higher power, and dealing with suffering. 

Impact of Spirituality 

Many research studies have found a great impact of spirituality on our mental and physical health. Some of those findings are as follows; 

• Spirituality and religious beliefs help a person to deal with the stress of daily life. Another study has shown that spiritual experiences in elderly people amplify positive feelings and overcome negative thoughts. 
• Elderly women are more thankful to God than elderly men, and gratitude helps them to get social support. 
• According to another study, people with intrinsic religious beliefs show less physical reactivity towards stress than those people with extrinsic religious beliefs. However, intrinsic orientation means that people live their lives for higher power and God. The extrinsically oriented people use religion to increase their social circle and making friends. 

In order words, we can say that the people that use spirituality and religious belief to deal with stress; believe that whatever God/Universe decides for them is best. Prayers work for them, and surprisingly there’s a great connection between spirituality and prayers in terms of; 

• Handling stress 
• Having a positive attitude 
• Lower stress in the difficult time
• Low hypertension
• Low depression level 
• Psychologically well 
• Have a better physical health 

Conclusion: What is Spirituality? 

After an in-depth study of “what is spirituality, the importance of spirituality, and types of spirituality.” We have realized that spirituality and beliefs play a significant role in our lives. It’s not only in terms of dealing with stress, however, but it also helps you find a purpose and live a meaningful life.