5 Signs It’s Time to Transition from Being Religious to Being Spiritual

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While I know that some people can find great comfort in religion, in my experience I’ve found religion to be oppressive, controlling, and stifling to people’s efforts to live freely and authentically.

If you’re someone who considers yourself religious but you’re finding that religion isn’t or is no longer serving you, you might still want to feel a connection to something greater than you. But you would like that connection to be less about believing certain things and performing certain rituals and more about love and acceptance.

If so, it might be time to transition from being religious to being spiritual. But if you’re still unclear whether you should consider making this transition, here are five signs that might help.

5 Signs You Might Want to Consider Becoming Spiritual, Not Religious

1. You’re finding that religious rituals feel hollow.

   I don’t believe your Higher Power wants you to perform rituals that feel hollow or empty to you anymore than you want to perform them. If you’re starting to feel like the religious rituals you’re performing aren’t helping you feel closer to your Higher Power, you might want to switch from being religious to being spiritual.
   
   When you become spiritual, you’re open to exploring new forms of spirituality. That means, you can try out different things and only do those rituals that feel right to you because they help you feel connected to your Higher Power. And you might also want to pay attention to the rituals that help you feel more connected to your true self.
   
   One thing that I experienced with religion was it made me feel separate from my Higher Power and also disconnected from my real self. That meant I had to rely on others for guidance, especially when it came to making big decisions for my life. I no longer thought I had the authority to do that, and I no longer trusted myself to make the best decisions for me.
   
   Becoming spiritual has allowed me the freedom to reconnect to my Higher Power and my real self. While I’m still not at the place I want to be yet, that’s ok. Spirituality is about the journey. But I still feel like I’m in a better place than I was when I was going through the spiritual crisis I talk about here.
   
   So, if you’re finding that the religious rituals you’re performing aren’t allowing you to connect to yourself or your Higher Power, you may want to consider whether you would like to become spiritual instead.

2. You’re struggling with religious scrupulosity.

   Religious scrupulosity is a form of OCD that makes you constantly wonder whether you’re doing what your Higher Power requires. It can make you live in constant fear of upsetting that Power and being punished as a result. In my own experience, I don’t find religion to be very helpful in combatting religious scrupulosity. I find it much more freeing to become spiritual. This way, you can change your understanding of and your relationship with your Higher Power.
   
   In my case, I now understand that this Power doesn’t judge, a concept I learned from the book The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. It’s the human mind that judges. And so, all those efforts I was making to please or appease this Force were really efforts to please or appease OCD voices in my mind.
   
   I find this understanding to be tremendously helpful. Because when I believe this, I understand that my Higher Power doesn’t see things like sin, right and wrong, clean and unclean, pure and impure. All of that comes from my mind. So, rather than trying to please this Power, I realize that all I need to do is figure out what I’m comfortable with and do that.

3. Religious beliefs are making it hard for you to be authentic.

   When you’re someone who doesn’t fit traditional societal molds, some religious beliefs can make it harder for you to feel like you’re being authentic or true to yourself. This can be the case for people of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, for instance. And I’ve also found this to be true for me when it comes to sensuality.
   
   I’ll go deeper into this in another post. But here, I just want to say that I consider myself a very sensual person. But my ability to embrace my sensuality was limited by religion, where I was taught that sensuality was supposed to be controlled and limited to only certain circumstances. Now that I see myself as spiritual, I’m free to embrace my sensual nature.
   
   If you find that religion or religious beliefs are making it hard for you to embrace who you truly are, spirituality might be better suited for you.

4. You’re finding that religion is making you feel small or powerless.

   As I talk about here, I found that religion—or at least my interpretation of religious teachings—led me to feel very small and lacking in power. I used to believe that I had very little control over my life, which led me to take a passive approach to it.
   
   I thought I was just like a helpless child, reliant on a parent-like Higher Power to tell me what to do. If I wasn’t sure what to do with my life, for instance, all I could do was wait to be told. And let me tell you, I’ve done a lot of waiting as a result.
   
   But shifting from being religious to being spiritual helped me reclaim some of my power. Whereas before I used to believe that I was waiting for someone to save me, now I believe that I have the power to transform my reality. And I believe that, while the universe and I work together to do this, the universe takes its cues from me. This means I have a very active role to play in my life. And just knowing that makes me feel powerful.

5. You’re finding that religious beliefs don’t allow you to be as open or accepting as you would like to be.

   When I used to be religious, one of the things that was hardest for me to reconcile with my beliefs was the nature of 2SLGBTQIA+ relationships. (I didn’t even know there was so much diversity in that community until recently. Back then, I focused mostly on the LGBT part, possibly also with a Q.) In fact, one of the reasons I joined a very conservative church in 2017 was because of their strict stance on those kinds of relationships.
   
   Ironically, it turned out that after leaving that church I ended up undergoing a spiritual awakening that allowed me to be more open to all kinds of things, including new ways of thinking and an acceptance of nontraditional relationships and identities. But even then, it took time before I started to consider myself spiritual, not religious.
   
   If you’ve found that your understanding of religious teachings is making it hard for you to accept and embrace things like the diversity of people, women’s rights to control their own body, and the equality of men and women, then you might want to consider transitioning from being religious to being spiritual.

Final Thoughts

While some people may not find it necessary to leave religion so they can feel authentic, open, and free, I find that religion inherently has a tendency to control people in one way or another. And if you’re being controlled, you are not free.

When it comes to spirituality, I believe that we all have our own unique relationship with our Higher Power. And that means we should be able to do whatever feels right to us when it comes to feeling connected to that Power and our true selves. I believe that’s the real point of spirituality.

So, instead of trying to work within religious traditions and make them fit who we really are or want to be, I think it would be easier for everyone to just practice their own authentic spirituality.

~ Ashley C.

P.S. If you’re currently religious but would like to make the transition from being religious to being spiritual, I offer spiritual coaching services that you might be interested in. Feel free to click here to learn more.