Beyond Spirituality
Beyond Spirituality
Patricia, a subscriber to my Substack, recently asked what I mean by words like spirit or spiritual. My answer is simple: I prefer not to use them at all—unless someone uses them first and I must reply.
It’s not that the words are meaningless. Quite the opposite. They mean too many things to too many people—so many, in fact, that they no longer clarify, they project. They function more as Rorschach blots than as language. People hear the word spiritual and fill in the blank with whatever they already believe: an afterlife, an unseen force, a divine order, or a transcendent truth. The word flexes to fit any fantasy at all.
Some mean religious: bound to doctrine, faith, salvation. Others mean mystical—a collapse of the usual self-boundaries, where the self seems to merge into something greater. Still others use it ethically—as shorthand for compassion, integrity, or virtue. In New Age circles, it includes crystals, energy work, reincarnation, and auras. In secular contexts, the word becomes more vague in meaning—a walk in nature, a death vigil, a birth, a vivid sunset, events that defy easy explanation, so they are often referred to as “spiritual.”
The term also overlaps with self-help, being used to mean healing, growth, or inner peace. It can also signify a cultural lineage: rites and symbols that carry sacred value in Indigenous or diasporic traditions. Or it can reject institutions altogether, as in claiming to be spiritual but not religious—a refusal of church dogma but not of belief in God.
Then there’s the marketing angle: spiritual as a brand—calm, clean, upward-facing, progressive—a meditation app, for example. And finally, the euphemism: spiritual as a softened substitute for the irrational, the unverifiable, or the desperate hunch that life must mean something more.
Ten uses. Ten projections. Ten invitations to talk past each other.
None are wrong, exactly. But they are all over the map. The word spiritual is useless unless one defines it from the outset. And that's not the only problem. That word implies a division—the sacred versus the profane, idealism versus materialism—a splitting. That is not how I see this aliveness.
The root meaning of spirit is frankly dualistic. It partitions the world: spirit versus matter, soul versus body, eternal versus mortal. The split is intentional and judgmental. Matter is deemed inert; spirit animates. Flesh corrupts; spirit purifies. The higher redeems the lower. Even in secular forms, that schema persists—spirit as essence, inner truth, light; matter as mistake, illusion, or fall.
I don’t buy it.
The world I see is not divided, not inert, not waiting for a blessing to make it real. I don’t see bodies as husks in need of spirit. I don’t see minds as meat radios tuned to higher realms. And I’m not peeking behind the curtain, hoping to spot the wizard.
This, right now, in all its fleeting, felt contingency, is enough for me.
The breath. The weight. The ache behind the eye. The flicker of a thought. The texture of pain. The startle of a crow’s cry. The collapse of certainty. These are not symbols. Not emanations. Not hints dropped by some hidden realm. They are the thing itself. They require no elevation.
I speak not of transcendence, but of what shimmers before the mind moves to name it. Not the ultimate, but the immediate. The unsponsored. The unclaimed. Neither sacred nor profane. Not sanctified. Not high-minded. Not venerated. Just this.
I understand why someone might call this spiritual. Language runs out, and we reach for what sounds deepest. But depth is not always elevation. Clarity is not always ascent. Higher is not better than lower. And some truths arrive not with radiance, but with fracture.
The trouble is, spirituality comes scented. It implies a ladder—some experiences loftier than others, some people presumed closer to the light. Insight above confusion. Peace above rage. Acceptance above resistance. That schema may soothe, but it distorts. I want clarity, not comfort.
I do not view sadness as a veil to be lifted. I do not view confusion as an error to be corrected. I do not see the difficult, the broken, or the mundane as lesser. I don’t know what enlightenment is, and I don’t aspire to find out. That framework cannot comprehend the world I see.
I focus on what is right here in front of us—before it’s split, before it’s named, before it’s wrapped in concept. Not a system. Not a revelation. Not a promise. Nothing special. Just a quiet noticing. A pause in the evaluation. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, a break in the loop.
Some people say I sound spiritual. I nod, let it pass. But I don’t agree. I don’t believe the word is neutral. I think it carries an intimation of upwardness—of betterment, of ascent, of escape. I don’t believe in escape. I believe in seeing.
If you want to call that spiritual—go ahead. But I won’t. Because that word—like so many others—points somewhere else. And I’m not somewhere else. I’m here.
I want to begin by saying how deeply I resonate with much of what is expressed here. The way language, particularly the word spiritual, becomes a projection screen... yes. The way it accumulates meanings until it confuses rather than clarifies... yes. The way it implies a split between sacred and profane, higher and lower, matter and spirit... yes again.
Like you, I have grown cautious around the word spiritual. I’ve seen how it inflates egos, cloaks avoidance, or becomes a brand. I’ve also seen how it can subtly reinforce the very division we’re trying to dissolve: the idea that this world, this body, this moment... this - is not enough.
But here’s where I diverge.
I don’t reject the word spirit entirely. I recognize that its misuse has done damage, but I also see that, beneath layers of projection, there’s a root meaning that does not require dualism. When I speak of spirit, I speak not of an elsewhere, not of something above or beyond, but of the aliveness that flows through all things without needing to be named.
I experience spirit as the intelligence of life as it is... immanent, not transcendent. It is not something separate from form, but the unfolding of form itself. Not something that lifts us away from pain or confusion, but something that includes it, transforms it, breathes with it. It is not ascent. It is depth within immediacy... that shimmering you speak of before the mind rushes to divide or define.
Yes, the word has been hijacked. But perhaps the work is not only to discard it, but to rescue it from the scaffolding of hierarchy and return it to the mystery of thisness.
I agree: I don’t need the ladder. I don’t believe in escape. I don’t seek a throne in some enlightened elsewhere. But I do witness, over and over, that something moves in us when we are still and open and undefended. A clarity that does not seek to rise, but to dissolve... all pretense, all control, all story. Sometimes this is called spiritual. Sometimes it is simply called love.
I honor your decision to refrain from the word. And I respect your clarity about how language shapes perception. But in my own work, where I guide people through the dissolution of the frozen identity into what I call the flow identity, I sometimes use the word spirit not to invoke something above but to reveal the interconnection within.
In Synergistic Intelligence, we see the human survival instinct creating a false split between life and death, self and other, matter and meaning. When that instinct quiets, when protection falls away, what’s revealed is a shimmering wholeness... not a revelation from beyond, but from within the very fabric of this moment. You might not call that spiritual. I might not need to either. But I’ve found some do, and if that opens the door to deeper presence, then I’ll walk through it carefully, with awareness.
What matters is not the word. What matters is presence without pretense. That’s the real invitation.
I read it twice. The first time i felt love in my heart. The second time i read it out loud and it touched me deeply and i got tears in my eyes. Beautiful ♡ Thank you, Robert.