What Do We Mean When We Say Spirituality?

There are certain words people use with great confidence, even when no one in the room means quite the same thing. Spirituality is one of those words.

For some, it immediately brings up religion, prayer, scripture, ritual, God, and belonging to a faith tradition. For others, it means meditation, nature, intuition, creativity, healing, energy, grief, consciousness, or simply the quiet sense that there is more to life than what we can see, buy, prove, or schedule. And for many people, the word makes them tighten. They worry it means being told what to believe. They worry it means abandoning reason. They worry it means floating above the real work of being human.

I understand that hesitation. The word has been stretched, softened, commercialised, and occasionally emptied of meaning. It has been printed on journals, sold in retreats, placed beside candles, crystals, yoga mats, and promises of transformation. But I don't think that means we should throw the word away. I think it means we should look at it more carefully.

Where the word begins

The word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath, breathing, wind, air, and spirit. Its root is connected to spirare, "to breathe." Before spirituality became a category in the self-help aisle, before it became a lifestyle, before people began describing themselves as "spiritual but not religious," it was connected to breath. The thing that proves we are alive. The thing that changes when we are anxious, grieving, afraid, moved, relieved, or finally telling the truth.

That feels important to me. Perhaps spirituality begins there — not with doctrine or certainty, but with the question: what animates me? What brings me back to life? What helps me stay connected to something deeper than the noise of the day?

Historically, spirituality was not separate from religion in the way many people understand it now. It was woven into religious life and often referred to the inner experience of faith: the tending of the soul, the shaping of character, the desire to live in relationship with God, goodness, virtue, or sacred truth. Religion gave people shared language, ritual, music, moral structure, community, and a place to put grief, awe, fear, and gratitude. For many, it still does.

But over time, especially in modern Western culture, spirituality began to move outside formal religious structures. It became more personal, more interior, and more self-defined. That shift has been both liberating and confusing. Liberating, because it allows people to have a relationship with meaning, mystery, purpose, and the sacred without needing to belong to a particular institution. Confusing, because once spirituality is no longer defined by a shared tradition, each of us has to ask what it actually means to us.

And I think that question is worth asking.

The search for the sacred

In psychology, spirituality is often understood not as a specific set of beliefs, but as a dimension of human experience. It can include the search for meaning, purpose, connection, transcendence, values, and what psychologist Kenneth Pargament has described as "the search for the sacred." I love that phrase because it opens the door without forcing anyone through a particular one.

The sacred does not have to mean religious in a narrow sense. It can mean holy, yes. But it can also mean deeply valued. Worth protecting. Worth returning to. Worth organising your life around.

For one person, the sacred may be God. For another, it may be the natural world. For another, family, art, service, justice, beauty, kindness, truth, or the quiet commitment to become more fully themselves. This is where spirituality becomes deeply personal, and also deeply practical. It asks: what is sacred to you? Not what sounds impressive. Not what your family told you should matter. Not what your culture rewards. What actually matters to you? What helps you return to yourself? What reminds you that your life is not only a list of roles, tasks, achievements, obligations, and disappointments?

Where psychology and spirituality meet

This is also where spirituality and psychology meet in a very human place. Psychology helps us understand our patterns, wounds, defences, attachments, beliefs, fears, and relationships. Spirituality, at its best, helps us ask what all of that is in service of. It moves us beyond "Why am I anxious?" into "What kind of life am I trying to build?" It takes us beyond "Why do I keep people-pleasing?" into "What part of myself have I abandoned in order to be accepted?"

That, to me, is where the word has power.

Modern self-help has embraced spirituality because so many people are not only trying to function better, but trying to feel more alive. We are materially connected and often emotionally lonely. We are busy, informed, stimulated, and still, many people feel undernourished in some essential way. They are not only asking how to succeed. They are asking why this version of success feels so thin. They are asking who they are without the title, the role, the achievement, the relationship, the approval, or the carefully constructed life that once made sense.

The risk of spiritual bypassing

Of course, spirituality is not always used well. There is a version of it that helps us become more honest, grounded, compassionate, brave, and responsible. And there is a version that helps us avoid reality. John Welwood, a psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher, coined the term "spiritual bypassing" to describe the use of spiritual ideas or practices to avoid unresolved emotional wounds and uncomfortable truths.

We have all seen this. "Everything happens for a reason," said too quickly to someone in pain. "Just let it go," said when what is really needed is grief. "Raise your vibration," said to someone who may actually need support, rest, boundaries, medical care, financial stability, or justice.

That is not mature spirituality. That is avoidance dressed up as wisdom.

Real spirituality does not ask us to float above our lives. It asks us to inhabit them more truthfully. It does not require us to deny anger, grief, ambition, disappointment, aging, money, fear, or longing. It asks us to bring consciousness to them. It asks us to stop living only on the surface of ourselves.

And this is where I think we need to reclaim the word from both cynicism and performance. Spirituality is not about becoming a serene, polished person who never struggles, never gets irritated, never wants too much, never falls apart, and never says the wrong thing. It is not another project of self-improvement. It is not a way to make ourselves more acceptable.

It is, perhaps, a way of asking what we are devoted to.

A deeper participation

That devotion may be quiet. It may look like caring for someone you love. It may look like walking by the ocean because you cannot solve the whole thing today, but you can keep breathing. It may look like prayer, therapy, art, service, rest, honesty, or finally admitting that the life you built from expectation no longer fits the person you are becoming.

You do not have to be religious to be spiritual. You do not have to reject religion to be spiritual. You do not even have to use the word spirituality if it does not sit well with you. But you are allowed to have an inner life. You are allowed to tend to your soul, even if you are still deciding what you mean by soul. You are allowed to feel connected to something larger than your individual ambition. You are allowed to draw strength from beauty, nature, ritual, community, love, creativity, silence, ancestors, or God.

At its best, spirituality is not an escape from the world. It is a deeper participation in it. It reminds us that we are not machines. We are not only bodies, minds, brands, jobs, roles, titles, or productivity systems. We are breathing beings. Meaning-making beings. Relational beings. Private selves and collective selves. Practical and mysterious. Shaped by culture, and still capable of shaping it.

So when I use the word spirituality, I am not asking anyone to believe what I believe. I am asking something quieter and, I think, more useful.

What keeps you connected to your own aliveness? What do you hold sacred? What kind of person do you want to become — not just in achievement, but in presence, courage, kindness, and truth? What are you giving your breath to?

Because perhaps that is where spirituality begins.

Not somewhere above us, but right here, in the life we are already living.