Concepts
The Concepts page introduces the intellectual framework that underpins my book in progress, Spirituality for the Uninitiated. It is designed as a map for readers who are interested in contemporary spirituality but may be confused by overlapping terms such as spirituality, religion, SBNR, mystical experience, consciousness, the sacred, ethics and belief.
The page should be organised as a set of concept cards rather than a single linear essay. Each card begins with a question: what spirituality is, who is spiritual outside religion, how spirituality happens, what counts as a spiritual experience, how experiences are interpreted through belief, what spirituality does, how art functions spiritually, and how readers can participate in the spirituality survey.
1. What is spirituality?
A guide to spirituality as meaning, connection, experience, practice and transformation — including how it differs from religion.
How is spirituality different from religion? Why has spirituality become separable from institutional religion? What is the subjective turn? What is the sacred? Can spirituality be secular or atheistic?
2. Who is spiritual outside religion?
An introduction to SBNR, nones, seekers, agnostics, atheists and other forms of spiritual identity beyond institutional religion.
What does "spiritual but not religious" mean? Who are the "nones" and the unaffiliated? Can atheists or agnostics be spiritual? Is spirituality an identity, a worldview, a practice or an experience? Why are more people seeking meaning outside inherited religion?
3. What practices and context support spirituality?
A map of the pathways, practices and life conditions through which spiritual experience may be cultivated or emerge unexpectedly.
How do people encounter or cultivate spirituality? What roles do ritual, nature, art, love, embodiment, community and crisis play? What is the difference between a pathway, a trigger and a practice? Can spiritual experience be intentional, spontaneous, or both? How does disruption or suffering become transformative?
4. What is a spiritual experience?
A guide to mystical, aesthetic, numinous, awakening, transformative and anomalous experiences — and why interpretation matters.
What counts as a spiritual experience? Does an experience have to be religious to be spiritual? Is a spiritual experience the same as a mystical experience? What is the difference between aesthetic, numinous, revelatory, paranormal and transformative experiences? Why do some experiences feel so real? How do triggers, interpretation and integration change the meaning of an experience?
5. What do we believe happened?
A look at spirituality as a source of meaning, connection, resilience, mental health, ethical orientation and transformation.
Why does spirituality matter today? How does spirituality help people make meaning? Can spirituality support mental health and psychological resilience? What kinds of connection does spirituality create? What are spiritual values? How might spirituality change how a person lives, relates and behaves?
6. What does spirituality do?
An introduction to art as spiritual technology: how images, performance, beauty and aesthetic experience can alter perception and create meaning.
Can art be spiritual without being religious?
Can art produce awe, wonder, self-transcendence or felt connection?
What does it mean to call art a spiritual technology?
How can art hold trauma, memory, ritual or symbolic intensity?
What do contemporary artists reveal about the sacred in secular life?
7. What can art do?
An exploration of belief, consciousness, ontology and the different lenses through which spiritual experiences are interpreted after the event.
How do people interpret spiritual experiences? Did I encounter God, consciousness, spirit, nature, the psyche, the brain, or something else? What is the difference between experience and belief? How do physicalism, dualism, panpsychism, idealism, theism, animism or pantheism shape interpretation? Can we take spiritual experience seriously without deciding its metaphysical truth in advance?
8. Spiritual Epistemology
Contribute to my research on contemporary spirituality and unlock the emerging survey results after completing your response.
How do you define spirituality?
Have you ever had an experience you would describe as spiritual, transformative or extraordinary?
Where do you find meaning, connection or the sacred?
Do you identify as religious, spiritual, both, neither, SBNR, atheist, agnostic or something else?
Take the survey to see how your answers compare with the emerging results.