How do you express your spirituality? | Page 2 | INFJ Forum

How do you express your spirituality?

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I love how spiritual this is without being religious.
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Thanks mintoots. I think religions are important because some of the best signposts come from them, and (very importantly) they carry us when we are spiritually lost, frightened or low . But people confuse religious signposts with the goal - and they can hide things in a concealing fog that’s more about safety and control than spiritual experience.

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But without some sort of religion we are alone in the void - this isn’t an experience that many of us can easily withstand. Those of us who are like that can just lurk on the edges, play with their spirituality and get nowhere.
 
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Thanks mintoots. I think religions are important because some of the best signposts come from them, and (very importantly) they carry us when we are spiritually lost, frightened or low . But people confuse religious signposts with the goal - and they can hide things in a concealing fog that’s more about safety and control than spiritual experience.

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But without some sort of religion we are alone in the void - this isn’t an experience that many of us can easily withstand. Those of us who are like that can just lurk on the edges, play with their spirituality and get nowhere.
I'm just nodding in agreement. I wholeheartedly agree with the signposts. I have a long way to go through this journey but I can't explain how I profoundly understand what you mean. To me these signposts are manifestations of God although in no way will it look like Jesus or Buddha or Allah. To me God is more the burning bush I'll never be able to see. This is why it resonates with me.

@JennyDaniella's mention of us being made of stardust is also a good point. I recognize this too but deep within me is a recognition of an intuition that there's something else more ethereal to living. Maybe it's a meaning I designate to life to make it worthwhile but even then it is integral to me and every other being I encounter.
 
This is maybe going to sound a bit cryptic, but I'll see how it goes. It won't be any better if I write an essay.

We are all born with a void within us, an empty space filled with longing. For me spirituality is exploring that emptiness, that fierce longing, finding out how to fill it and letting it fill in a good way. Nothing in the material world can do this, at least not on its own, though learning, teaching and sharing the journey with others is incredibly important. All around me are people who I see reacting to the void inside them and trying all sorts of fruitless ways to fill it which is sad - nothing in the material world can fill it, and there are all sorts of other traps and blind alleys too. Sometimes I find people who have travelled far down the road and they are filled with an unmistakable glow. There is powerful help out there, but it's on the other side of the void, not on this side, though there are signposts for those with eyes to see and feet to follow.

In my late teens/early twenties I wrote a lot about this void, it's something I understood on a visceral level.
I had forgotten about all of those thoughts and emotions until reading this, so thanks for reminding me :)
 
It's interesting that stardust and this void are both being mentioned here.
I was just reading about both of those in a similar context and the coincidence is weird.
I was reading this book based on kabbalah (I enjoy reading about kabbalah, but don't even consider myself as scratching the surface. There's this principle that's used in kabbalah - any word, any concept, anything we use to allude to certain ideas is only the manifestation of that idea in this dimension/ level. The more 'real' forms of those ideas are pretty much beyond comprehension. Or something like that.)

Anyway, according to kabbalah there were seven worlds created and destroyed before this one, whatever that means, and the way it's described in material terms is that each "world" was a "king" with a universe-encompassing empire.
Problem was each of those "kings", although enlightened beyond our understanding, missed their mark and succumbed to narcissism on their level.
So those worlds "fell" and are known as the "shattered vessels"
When the vessels shattered, the lights from the vessels got reabsorbed to their root back on high.
Yet some of the light got trapped in the vessel's walls before they shattered and they are known as "sparks".
These trapped sparks (each trapped to a different extent) incarnate through time, objects and people. And these sparks yearn to reunite with their root on high, (hence that "void" but there are more ways, including a more comprehensive and profound one that I don't really entirely understand, in kabbalah to describe that void. This is one angle, I guess) but in order to do so, they must overcome their tendency towards narcissm.
As humans, our job is to release those sparks, wherever they may be. Our actual core is made up of "released lights" but we all have "sparks" within ourselves and without that are assigned to us to release.
There's a lot more to it than that, and honestly, I don't understand it much.
So don't take my word for any of this.
Just an interesting thought and I wanted to share.
 
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For me, nowadays, it's in my interactions with other people, the odd animal, and a smattering of inanimate objects.

You can read my blog (not a thread) here to see how I used to be. I'm pretty embarrassed by that now because I was so resistant to the mystery that I was trying to systematise my experiences and make them make sense. It was a defence against the experience of God.

I still do it now to a much lesser degree but, as I said in the first paragraph, my sense of spirituality is kindled at random times and I just go with it for a while provided I'm alone. Seeing myself and other people, indeed all that is, as extensions or reflections or embodiments, or perhaps the physical manifestation, of, well, God, I suppose, has changed the way I interact with others massively, albeit mostly in my work and what could almost be described as a social life.

Other than that there's still a near-constant dialogue between my present self and higher self but I have neglected this in part because I was so guns-blazing before that I'm overly hesitant now. The higher self is not my ego-ideal, id, or supergo, they're still there and arguably taking precendent. This... I don't know what...is quiet and doesn't demand anything but is always there, almost tangibly so, when I allow myself to let it be...felt? I don't know, I struggled to end that sentence.

I've also turned back to Christianity in many ways because I have nothing thorough enough to replace it with. Also, for me, the garden of Gethsemane passage is especially moving.
 
I have been infatuated before, prepared to drop everything, prepared to travel great distances in order to realize a sacrificial sort of love. Today this would be called simping, but it was once seen as a noble endeavor.

Theologically, Jesus Christ simps for us all of the time. He was tortured on a cross in order to spare us a worse fate and I just continue to fail him, we continue to fail him. It's all quite astounding. After all of our failures and faults, he still loves us.

What a man.
 
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I was raised in religious family so I guess spirituality comes naturally to me.

I think there’s something wonderful about being connected to the higher being. This has helped me in facing many challenges in the past. It’s comforting to know that there is an existence above me who is in control of everything. It also gives me hope that I can be better person today.

I think it’s about faith and what I genuinely believe in.
 
Spirituality for me is being aware of my true nature.

I practice it through meditation and being aware of stillness during my day. Spending time in nature is good. I see helping others as being an expression of spirituality too.
 
Spirituality to me is about connectedness and oneness to all living beings around us like other people, animals and nature, especially. Feeling a deep sense of appreciation for life and living itself, how all is connected. Life is precious and beautiful.

My expression of spirit is love, striving to love others by showing kindness, helping and caring others; sometimes only a genuine smile to someone is all you need. Love for animals and nature. Love towards oneself in the form of meditation and self-awareness, feeling contentment in the silence and just being – quiet the thoughts so your innermost self can come through. Growth of a person as a whole as trying to become a better human being. Another expression of spirit is music, deeply connecting to the melodies of the songs, how it enhances the human spirit in such a joyful way.
 
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Theologically, Jesus Christ simps for us all of the time. He was tortured on a cross in order to spare us a worse fate and I just continue to fail him, we continue to fail him. It's all quite astounding. After all of our failures and faults, he still loves us.

What a man.
I'm old. I had to Google "simp."
Christ simped for your sins. You're a riot. :laughing:
 
I express it in my writing, especially (so far) my more philosophical writing.
 
This thread was so nice to read - it was quite heart warming.

For me spirituality is through my religion. I didn't grow up in a strictly religious home but faith was still strong but it wasn't imposed or forced on me to pray regularly etc. I found that my religion helped me through some really hard times and this has helped me and still helps me to this day. I don't think I'd survive without it because it comforts me knowing that there is a higher being looking over me. So I express my spirituality through my daily prayers and also my clothing - I like the idea of having faith in a higher being greater than my self.
 
As a Christian I believe in miracles, in supernatural things that still happen today.
But it's not just a believing. I am a person who is very much influenced by what I see.
When I close my eyes I always see some kind of images.
I also daydream a lot, because it inspires me and gives me new thoughts.
And very often it has happened that I have seen things from the future in my dreams.
Or I dream at night, I sit in a concert and listen to a piece of music with a choir and a whole orchestra.
I hear every instrument and the harmonies. And then I wake up and still have the melody and harmonies in my head.
At times like that I realize that I'm inspired by things I have no influence on, that don't necessarily come from within myself.
 
I think my sense of spirituality comes from a desire to reach some state of wholesome 'perfection', or how it would be called in my religion 'enlightenment'. I find a lot of purpose in trying to find a state of personal being where I'm imparting the most amount of good I can upon the world. Spirituality to me is this quest to try to constantly improve myself for myself and everyone else. I've always thought that what I do, which is what I can control the most, by not choosing sides and being impartial is what's most important. When I'm doing a good job expressing my spirituality I'm improving myself, taking care of myself, reading a lot of books, learning, reflectively writing and meditating. On a important to me level, but not as important as whole, is expressing a lot of my spirituality by connecting to life and nature.
 
Spirituality, hmm. This journey we as an individual walk, with the myriad of paths, share one intangible experience, experienced through infinite perspective. What I choose to see, that choice being desire, creates my experience which will always reflect my desire. What desire? A question of what spirituality is creates a desire to know. A seeker. That's us as individual. Now what are we desiring to know in a world of percieved chaotic difference? Well the world, the universe, is also a seeker too. However, this seeker knows everything, because it is everything. It created this universal playground of happening. It, we can call consciousness. The all encompassing energy that motivates, is Love(God,Source,Universe). It is consciousness, it is Love. A vibration unceasing with no end. What would an infinite creator that knows everything do? Desire to know itself. And how would that come about? It would create individual points of itself that didn't know everything, but just as it desires to know itself, these creations would desire to know everything. So why do we as beings, aware to our seeking, never cease to stop desiring? We are Love looking at Love. Infinity looking at infinity, learning through creative expression and it's all creative expression. Anything that we do or don't do, whether it's under the cloud of Art or not. Breathing is art, walking is art, war is art, every pixel on this page is art, every atom in the pixel is art, every space between atoms is art, for it is all encompassing expression of one experience. The experience of Love. Love is infinite. You the seeker, is Love. There is only Love. Or God, or Source. Humans have done a splendid job of creating seperation with language and this big ol mind. There's no disconnect between the clothes you're wearing and the skin. Nor the seat under you, nor the floor under the chair. It's all one energy, one creative source. So then, we are aware to this energy because anywhere the seeker casts its awareness, it is looking at itself with senses. And senses not seperated by the brains identificationwith them, but through a understanding that consciousness is much bigger than what we believe it is, and not localized between our head and feet. It's all consciousness, it's all Love. We are the universe, we are the light, we are the Love. Sooo, my spiritual journey of my own created breadcrumbs has brought me to two fundamental questions. What is my relationship with my Self? And what is my relationship with Love,God,Source? These two questions of self inquiry expand my consciousness, and return me to myself through the balance of being aware that I am Love in form and also Love in infinite formless. Rememberence and forgetfulness. Birth and death. Eternally. So any and all that I am, is expression. Love is benevolence always, expressing always. How big do you think you are? A single life in a blink in time and if you don't live that life a certain way, you are cast into fire and punished? That doesn't sound like a benevolent creator. Or tickle the belief that we are sooo much more than what any of us has been told and that infinite Love is our birthrite? Ask from the beautiful gem that is your heart, "Dear God, Dear Spirit, what am I? Could even one bit of infinite love be true?" You will be surprised and happy at the familiarity of the response. You start expanding the core of your truth. All of our truth. You are Loved!! You are Love!! Forever!

Spirituality to me, is everything. All inclusive, no one is wrong. No one is right. There's acceptance of all walks, all religion, all practice, because when we see one another as divinity in different forms, it doesn't matter how we Love. We understand we're Loving the same thing in infinite ways.
 
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