Developing authentic spirituality should be a goal for everyone. The best way I can illustrate this is by telling my story in more detail than I’ve shared so far.

My Religious Beginnings

For the first several years of my life, I would go to church occasionally, but my family and I weren't regulars anywhere. Then, when I was in fifth grade, we went to a Baptist church for about a year.

When I was in middle school, we started going to the Seventh-Day Adventist church and stayed there for about nine years, though not always with the same congregation. (This is the church I talk about in this post.)

It’s only now, looking back, that I realize it was when we started going there that I started to lose confidence in myself and in my voice. I no longer believed that I had authority in my life—that I could make my own decisions on how to live spiritually. Somehow I let them convince me to adopt what they believed instead of what I felt was true for me.

In journal entries and poems I wrote during that early period, I describe how I felt myself drifting away from myself—drifting away from life. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time, but my spirit understood it. My intuition was trying to tell me something was off, but I didn’t know what. So, I just let the drifting continue.

And not only did I lose my self-confidence when I started attending this church—I began to experience a fear I had never experienced before. The fear grew stronger over the years, but I felt that as long as I did what they told me to do—and what my brain convinced to do based on what they told me—I would be fine.

But I wasn’t fine. To keep the fear at bay, I had to become stricter and stricter in what I did, thought, read, and watched. I was losing myself. I felt disconnected from reality.

Some religious people would say I was just becoming more spiritual—more like God. But that wasn’t what was happening. I don’t believe God wants us to live in fear or act out of fear. And the rituals I performed were becoming hollow. They left me empty. Eventually, I had to let go of all that emptiness.

Re-Establishing What I Believe

Even after my family and I left the Adventist church, it was hard to get all those beliefs out of my head. And the fears continued to grow. They made me paralyzed, as I describe in this post.

To combat them, I’ve had to sort through my beliefs, keeping only those that resonate with my spirit and help me be authentic. These beliefs feel natural to me, like they were there all along but I ignored them. That’s why I describe this process as re-establishing beliefs rather than acquiring new ones. And with these beliefs, there is no fear.

Before I went to this church, it was easy for me to practice authentic spirituality. I took my innate beliefs for granted because I had never had them questioned or challenged. Now that they’ve been both questioned and challenged, I realize how important it is for me to know explicitly what they are.

I’ve actually written my re-established beliefs down and I review them from time to time so I don’t forget them. This way, no one will ever be able to sway me again. Now I hold firm to those beliefs, calling the strongest and deepest ones convictions. And now it’s the fear that’s drifting away.

Developing Authentic Spirituality

After my experience with religion, I’ve come to realize that there’s no reason we have to practice a certain religion at all. Religions are belief systems. If the beliefs of one religion resonate with you, that’s fine. But if they don’t, that’s fine, too.

Or maybe you find something in one religion that resonates with you and then something in another religion. Or maybe you have your own beliefs based on your experiences. Just put it all together and see what you get. That’s your authentic spirituality.

If you feel the desire to look into other religions or read about other people’s experiences of spirituality, by all means, do so. Do whatever it takes to find the version of spirituality that feels right to you.

Depending on your circumstance, this process may seem to involve more acquiring of new beliefs than re-establishing of old ones. But what I’ve found is, when you come across a belief that resonates with you, it’s speaking to something inside you.

Sometimes you have to hear a certain belief expressed in a different way or in a different context before you can embrace it. But when you do, you’ll find that, really, it was in you all along.

You can start this process by examining what you already believe. When you come across beliefs that feel unnatural to you or don’t allow you to be authentic, those are the ones you’ll want to consider changing or letting go of.

The more you let go of beliefs that keep you from being you, the more authentic you become. And you don’t need anyone’s permission to do this. You just need courage.

The Concept of God

The conventional Western understanding of God is that He is an invisible Being “out there.” If you find it comforting to see Him that way, then keep seeing Him that way. But based on my research and my own experiences of God, I understand Him this way.

God isn’t so much a figure as He is spirit. God is a name we give to the Divine. He can’t be limited by one concept or one religion. He’s everywhere all the time. That’s why all the major world religions have so much in common, at least in my view. They have the same Source. And whatever you know God as—whatever you need Him to be for you—that’s what He is.

This has led to a theory I have that a lot of people misidentify themselves as atheists. Oftentimes, they claim not to believe in God, when in reality, they don’t believe in God in a conventional way.

Religions teach us conventional ways of believing in God, worshipping Him, and experiencing Him. But people can experience Him in unconventional ways. That’s what I talk about in this post.

Anyone who claims not to believe in God but has spiritual experiences or moments when they feel joy or happiness too otherworldly to describe cannot be called an atheist. They’re merely experiencing God in an unconventional way. And I believe everyone has experiences of God, whether conventional or unconventional. They just may not always realize it.

For the record, you can’t be an atheist and believe in love. Love is one of the many ways we experience God.

My Wish

I wish everyone would come to their own understanding of who God is for them. I think that would make this world a much better place. Then we wouldn’t be so focused on believing the right things or performing the right rituals. Instead, life would be about doing everything with love.

If we made an effort to do everything with love, most of our problems would vanish. Wars would end. Differences would be embraced instead of feared. And there would be more understanding and acceptance.

All that starts with everyone practicing their own authentic spirituality. I think that’s reason enough to make it one of our goals if it’s not one already.

Now I turn it to you. Why do you think it’s so important for people to develop and practice authentic spirituality?

~ Ashley C.

Note: Parts of this post were originally written in an email I wrote.

Last updated: June 23, 2022