Explaining Spirituality to Your Religious Loved Ones
When you're raised religious, but are now spiritual and have a hard time explaining.
I’ve had a few people reach out to me asking me how I handle family members or friends who are religious and don’t always understand my spiritual beliefs.
I was raised Catholic, and attended Catholic school most of my childhood.
Honestly, I loved it.
Somehow I blocked out the “religion” part and focused on the spiritual.
When Jesus was taught to me, I seemed to focus on how he felt to me – what his spirit felt like — rather than what I was supposed to understand or know about him.
It was actually this relationship with Jesus that led me to study further. The more I learned about the real Jesus, the further I moved away from the “church” version I was taught.
Spirituality was never meant to be a departure from the religion I was given at birth.
Instead, spirituality was the result of a deepening of faith within me.
Spirituality is the expression of my pursuit of the Divine.
When you are curious, intrigued and ultimately fall in love with the Divine, you can’t help but want to touch, feel, breathe, and experience it.
This is what spirituality gives us.
The opportunity to commune with the Divine.
Anyone who embarks on a spiritual journey, understands that the deeper you go, the more you realize that the details, names and stories that seem to separate us in religion don’t matter.
Because the more you journey to the core, the more you realize that it is all one in the end.
Not only is it all one, but you are one with it. And the one resides within you.
No middle person necessary.
On this Easter morning, you better believe my Cuban Catholic mother called to ask me if I brought the children to church.
I did not.
But I did explain to them who Jesus was and what the metaphors around the resurrection mean to us.
I explained to them how they can live the resurrection, in case that story may one day add value to their own journey. It’s there, within them, and they can pull wisdom from it when needed.
When someone unintentionally judges you for your spiritual beliefs, they are accidentally assuming that their religion owns the trademark on God (or Jesus, for that matter).
By offering their allegiance to a certain religion, they begin to feel that they, too, own the rights to God, Jesus, and any other religious figure.
God is within them, but sadly not within you.
And it is their duty to make sure you can own the rights to God, too.
This is a misunderstanding on their part. One they will laugh at the day they find themselves reunited with their beloved in the after life. (Believe me, I’ve seen this in my intuitive practice with clients more times than I can remember.)
The way to live in peace with this misunderstanding is to repeat the mantra Jesus has given us, “Forgive them father for they know not what they do.”
They don’t yet understand that they have been manipulated into thinking that we could ever be separated from our Source.
If they knew, they wouldn’t try to separate you.
This post is everything Nikki! You explained so well what I’ve been reflecting on all day. I was raised in a real strict Pentecostal Christian upbringing. So I relate to so much of what you shared. Thank you for sharing.