The purpose of this post is to create an opportunity for you to reflect and look inward. A chance to create for yourself a position, a stance, an opinion regarding an impirtant question in your conscious journey.

This question gets asked quiet often and while many of struggle with creating the distinction others grasp to definitions or explanations that make sense to them. In the book “A New Earth” by Echart Tolle this question gets address with a rather clear answer:

“Many people are aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. They realize that having a belief system – a set of thoughts that you regard as the absolute truth – does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those beliefs is. In fact, the more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off are from the spiritual dimension within yourself. Many “religious”people arecstuck at that level. They equate truth with thought, and as they are completely identified with thought (their mind), they claim to be in sole possession of the truth in an unconscious attempt to protect their identity.they don’t realize their limitation of thought. . . .
The new spirituality, the transformation of consciousness, is arising to a large extent outside of the structure of the existing institutionalized religions. . . . A growing number of followers of traditional religions are able to let go of identification with form, dogma, and rigid belief systems and discover the original depth that is hidden within their own spiritual tradition at the same time as they discover the depth within themselves. They realize how “spiritual” you are has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness. This in turn determines how you act in the world and interact with others.”

This information presented in his book, presents interesting view points on the comparison of these two realms. as you reflect on this subject, there are a few questions which can assist you in reflection :

Where are your beliefs? What are the ideals you “hang you hat on”?

Where is your state of consciousness? What do you do to reach “salvation”, “enlightenment”, “liberation”, “awakening”?