That's rather close to my view. I think it in a way that ideally, spirituality is born first and then religion is built around it, as a theoretical construction to have words and concepts for spirituality. But it can work other way around too, when becoming familiar with religion sparks spirituality.
I do take issue with religion for that reason, its a theoretical construction (as I said in my prior post) that is subject to a different culture and context, how much of the theory can one put into practice? Of course a person could be mindful of that when reflecting on any particular faith, but I certainly would'nt hand that construction to my kids as a body of work to digest. Better to find those spiritual components and share. I think a person indoctrinated at a young age runs the risk of getting lost in the construction and the interpretation of such, if it runs contrary to what I deem to be the spiritual components.
For me personally, its mostly feeling of presence of god, experience of being guided, visions, dreams, inner sense of being connected to spiritual being etc. Stuff like that. I understand not everyone experiences it same way so it can mean other stuff too.
I've been guided with my understanding of being more aware and embracing a more intuitive life, mostly from meditation, but not with an absence of logic and reason. Also lucid dreams and remembering certain dreams upon waking have been insightful. I'm more guarded these days about the terminology I use and I never normally use the word God in my normal conversations or something like a spiritual being. That's just my outlook. So the bolded part above I would relay as an inner sense of connection, and in that process of connection that I am the spiritual being, a being that is connected. Also that in that moment I am present, as opposed to being in the presence of God.
Of course one could ask 'connected to what', to which I could just say life, a greater connection to life and the experience of it.
If religion is understood to be like language to communicate with divine, then it is.
Language is used to convey a meaning about the human experience, that's as far as I'm prepared to stretch in its relation to religion. I would argue that modern psychology and neuroscience were better ways to convey that perspective of the human experience than religion is, so I align more with the terminologies within those areas more than I would religious ones, given that is the culture and context I find myself within. As for communicating with the divine, well I would hope that religions were about getting in touch with your true nature of self, our whole as a human.
I'm too influenced by western and Christian moral standards to accept such extreme ideas I assume, unless I totally change and lose myself. So possible risk scenarios would be different.
Of course, I used an extreme point to convey my own, but in a lesser educated area or within a reduced moral standard, my point about communicating with God is valid because there are less restrictions on acting with what's in your head, or acting on what's in a book from God. This is why I don't see religions as default, but that spirituality as described in my previous post is.
But there is interesting view point: While it's possible to end up morally lost while being individualistic with religion, if we look in the history of organized religions and see all the stuff organized religions have done, I just think that being organized religion is not any better guarantee of being morally on right path than being individualist is.
I'd agree. As you can see I have my own individualistic outlook, based on a whole number of things.
