What is the difference between spirituality and religion?

Question

Just as what is the difference between being part of a community of faith and a member of a cult?

Answer 1

Spirituality has nothing to do with religion. Religion is another insurance scam for the ignorant and the gullible. People for the most part are born into a religion and never get beyond it. Their parents,meaning well but not really very knowledgeable either sent their kids to the local church and sunday school because it was the thing to do. As the kid grows up he or she becomes very resistant to outside criticism of their faith because we don't want to think our parents and teachers might be wrong. That then becomes the first hurdle to becoming an adult,you've got to start thinking for yourself. Meaning just because you were born there does not mean you have to stay there. However, we become so busy with family and career and bringing home the bacon we're usually just to tired to think much
beyond it. Indeed 95% of people never get beyond this point. They spend their entire lives ignorant and gullible and seldom even dreaming there might be something better. That is just exactly where religion seeks to keep them,they want to keep you deaf dumb blind and stupid where you are so they can continue to fleece you. And you,too busy or too tired let them do it because it's easier to give someone some money and ask to be told what to do than to figure it out for ourselves. It's easier to fork over some dough than read a book or do anything that might threaten our time. We think we have bought some insurance with the man upstairs if we give some money,even though we never took it very seriously.
Spirituality, on the other hand will try to enlighten you and show you how to think for yourself. Exactly what the religious people will not do because then you might get away,then they couldn't control you.
Then when they preach hate and violence and promise you 70 virgins in heaven if you only kill some people you won't believe it. Then you have learned to think for yourself.
Now you have graduated to the top 5% of humanity who are at least open to the possibility that there might be something better. If you are smart enough to realize you need to read up on these things and study with an open mind,then everything you encounter becomes an avenue to it,to further your understanding. By now you have discovered Hinduism and Buddism and maybe you have read Plotinus and Plato and Alice Bailey and Jane Roberts and A Course In Miracles and a thousand and one other worthy authors each with their own variation on things,and you begin to discover these people are really all saying the same thing,each in their own way. They are all talking about truth,the same truth. Indeed there are as many paths as there are people but they all lead to the same place. They all lead home. No matter how diverse you were when you started out you begin to suspect we might really be all the same. Not only the same point of view but the same person. Beginning to suspect we might be playing all the parts all the time and only pretending to be different we arrive at some clarity as to what the "son" really is. He is us and when we begin to accept that is the "second coming". The Holy Spirit,long a trusted companion and guide and infallible advisor begins to be seen in a new light as our higher self. And with further clarity we realize no difference between us and we are one. And this is the Grail Quest, and we realize we have been on it all our lives,and we are the "Grail" and we have discovered ourselves and all the time we thought we knew ourselves and didn't even know who or what we were looking for. We look back and marvel at how far we've come and we see it's but a single step and all the others are still there,still blind in their cocoons of unknown search and to some of these we reach out a hand and they bite and kick and we endure and try again and seldom do they listen or even seem to care and we see ourselves in them and we know it's as it should be and we smile and go among them as the road unfolds before us.

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Answer 2

two entirely different questions. A cult is a group that denies that Jesus is who He said He was. A religion is an organized group that appropriates buildings and spends a lot of time patting themselves on the back for being the ones who know what is right.
A spiritual person is someone who prays, and does works that they believe to be acceptable in the eyes of a supreme being while trying to be a good friend with God, or in the abstract like in the Eastern peoples try to appropriate growth in those areas they believe to be good for their spirit.

Answer 3

They are altogether different. Religion is basically a group of people following certain dogma/rituals told by a book or a prophet.

Real spirituality is not the one professed by christianity or other religions...in fact spirituality has nothing to do with religions.

Spirituality is our inner progress irrespective of our religion. A spiritual person is more concerned about the philosophy of god and creation, without caring for the mythological crap.

Religious people may be fanatic, stubborn and idiots, whereas spiritual person more lives in harmony with his fellowmen, in more harmony with God and His creation.

The prime duty of every religion is to advance its followers towards spirituality....but our mind fools us by circling into crap, ego and rituals

Next evolution of mind is spirituality...many have already reached there...others are following slowly...some zigzag...some straight

Answer 4

Religion is an established organization by men. Spituality is your faith in the Lord. It may be illegal to be a specific religion in certain countries. You can not put a law on the heart. Heb 11:1
"Faith is the substance of things hope for, the evidence of things not seen."

Answer 5

Spirituality is the belief in something more. Some higher power by whatever name you wanna call it. SOme call it Budda, Some Call it God, others call it Jesus. And it is soley personal and can be solitary.
But Religion is where people practice spirituality in specific ways and have all the same beliefs. The only thing is that religion is run by man and there tends to be hierarchy and politics. This is the only way men know how to run things.

Answer 6

Spirituality is believeing in stuff like ghosts and other stuff. Religion is something that
A) Gives someone some power
B) provides an idea what death is like
C) how to become perfect or something similar
and the second one, there isn't much difference

Answer 7

Spirituality is the essence of the belief. Religion is the name given to a group of different beliefs.

Answer 8

Some cults are unto death and christianity is not. It is the group of believers in Jesus Christ as our Saviour andGOd the FAther and in the end we pray we are found to be worthy to enter the kingdom of heaven that our heavenly father has prepared for us.

Answer 9

Spirituality is being free to explore and embrace what feels right for you. Religion is about conforming to a set dogma.

Answer 10

Spirituality is what you feel, whereas religion is more a belief, a following,whatever. Sorry im not very good at expressing sometimes.