I've always wondered why people who don't believe in a religion could still be susceptible to belief in "spirituality". Wouldn't they doubt spirituality for the same reasons that they doubt religion? Sure, spirituality would lack most or all of the dogma associated with known religions, but it fails in exactly the same basic way. Once you get to the root of either one you find that you never had a single good reason to believe in them. Religious people will talk about their religious texts, about "feelings" they had while praying, and about coincidental occurrences they witnessed as proof of their beliefs. Spiritual people will talk about "life energy", "auras", erroneous conceptions of the conservation of energy, or other pseudoscientific nonsense to prove their beliefs. Not a single bit of it is convincing to someone who thinks critically.
FUNDAMENTAL difference, don't even throw both things into one pot
Religion is something you are taught, by a priest or by your parents. Or you are just "belonging" to a religion because you're born in a certain location or because your parents belong to specific religion.
The fundamental difference is that religion does OFTEN not incorporate the element of *experience*, in fact, "experiencing" is actually actively rejected or seen as something counter-productive, "blasphemous".
(Here the example of the religious lady who had a NDE and mentioned this to some nuns. The nuns told her to shut up since what she is talking about is "against god" or worse, must come from "the devil" etc..etc...)
You give the example "of "life energy" or "auras" but I don't think this qualifies as "spiritual", this is just new-age quack. ALSO something you get taught and at some point you decide "to believe in it" or not.
Spirituality is, if you will, that you make-up your mind about, say, god, the afterlife etc.. WITHOUT a bias of "belonging" or without reading from a book of rules and without echoing WHAT A PRIEST TOLD YOU.
Example: I think most religious organizations and churches are absurd. So I reject them.
However, I have my own view about, say, the soul, the "after life", our purpose. So I could say I am "spiritual" since I am not rejecting those ideas. I am building my own theory, based on reading, people's experiences.
I am believing for example (Yes, I am BELIEVING) there is a duality of mind and physical body. Our "self" is not a mechanical result of our brain, there is possibly more to it.
Religions, IN SOME PARTS, in my opinion, get actually some things right but then get a lot more things wrong or turn them even around.
(Example here is how in pretty much all major religions there is the element of the "after life" and in most religions there is some element of an entity/deity with, IMHO, not so relevant differences).
While I said that I *believe* in my own theory I didn't pull out this belief out-of-thin air. It's not a dogma. I formed the belief based on "rational" thinking of what theory "would make the most sense"...how does it fit in which what people experience? (NDEs, Reincarnation stories, our understanding of how the brain/universe works etc..)
And I am also free to change my belief of course.
Eg. If 100s of people report they had NDE experiences it justifies to look into this closer. Current scientific "debunking" attempts of NDEs, also about dreams etc. doing them off as "misfiring neurons" etc. did NOT convince me whatsoever.
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If I were to summarize my (current) spiritual belief: I think that our self is actually multi-"dimensional".
Our physical existence is only ONE possibly existence of many, our physical body (obviously) is the medium which allows us to experience this one "physical world". (For what purpose would be another discussion )
There are more "realities" where the physical one is only one aspect. Those realities CAN be experienced under certain circumstances (trance, drugs, "religious" experiences, meditation, dreams etc.). I could also further speculate that other life-forms, such as hypothetical extraterrestrials who advanced millions of years *beyond* us have mastered to actually leave the limits of "physicality" at some point and are now existing in such realities which we (normally) cannot access. (This is actually cool since it means they are not reliant on the laws of physics, concepts like distances, speed, time etc. only exist here)
I think there IS evidence that there are more "realities" and aspects of ourselves than this physical one.