girl in a green forest spiritual

This Is What It Means To Be ‘Spiritual,’ Because It Isn’t Just Tarot Cards And Crystal Grids

There’s something happening in the world today that everybody is seeing, but few people are registering to be as profound as it is.

We are no longer accepting institutions on the surface. We are no longer adhering to narrow prescriptions of how love, work and self should be. We are practicing meditation, yoga, eating well and discovering the importance of thinking clearly. We are utilizing tinctures and ancient healing modalities. We are honoring emotions and finding kindred spirits. We can sum up the core of it all in one line:

Instead of worshipping the good, we become the good.

That’s what spirituality is. 

It’s about not begging for grace, but being grace. It is not about earning mercy, but showing mercy. It is not about earning kindness, but embodying kindness. It is not about praising a creator, but becoming one.

Spirituality is what people want it to be, often pulling from different teachings and practices from around the world. But there are a few common beliefs: first, that life is about soul development. That what we experience is a mirror of what we are, and the objective is to become conscious of it so that we can change it. That we are energy fields, apart of one greater energy field, and that the whole of it is god (rather than a personified being).

It is knowing that you are a spiritual being having a temporary, human experience – not the other way around.

It is seeing relationships as assignments, and other people as teachers. It is taking full responsibility for what we create, and doing what we can in response to what we don’t.

It is boiling life down to some of the simplest facts there are: that everything is energy, and that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. It is honoring nature. It is acknowledging our roots. It is embracing psychology and philosophy and physiology and anything else that brings us into a clearer awareness of what we are and what we need. It is being present. It is becoming a witness to our thoughts and feelings – rather than a slave to them.

Spirituality is the willingness to control what we can – ourselves.

It is being able to say that nobody may know with absolute certainty why we are here or where we go after, what we do now is good enough. Spirituality identifies the pattern. It aligns the things that most religions have in common at their core. That we are here to be a force of good, and that doing so will free us. 

Sometimes, it means using tarot cards and crystal grids and other practices that make us feel connected to ourselves. But mostly, it’s about doing what resonates with love rather than what terrifies into obedience. Thought Catalog Logo Mark


About the author

January Nelson

January Nelson

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.