The cross is a common symbol for religion. But how does it differ from spirituality? Photo: Pexels
This time I wanted to write about a concept that I have been thinking about for a long time. I’m referring to the belief in god and religion. I asked myself numerous times whether we need a god to make sense of life, how earth was created, whether we are led by something or not, whether there is heaven and hell or not, and so on.
This blog is not based on a particular book or piece of information I found, like my texts usually are. These are just my own thoughts and realizations over the years.
My journey towards faith
I would not say I ever was an atheist – I always believed in a higher power. However, my relationship with god hasn’t always been the same. As I child I definitely did believe in god (probably because children are purer and not yet really scarred by life).
I lost some of my faith in my teenage years – I didn’t go to church and I didn’t believe what the bible said. Then I found my way to spirituality and I started to wonder what the differences are between religion and spirituality.
The hierarchy of Souls
Spirituality is the science of the soul, as I prefer to call it. And the existence of a soul requires a creator. Things don’t just exist – they need to be created. Spirituality is based on the fact that souls are eternal, jumping from one life to the next, learning and evolving to divineness eventually.
We believe in energy, vibrations, the universe – a place of infinite time and space, destiny, karma and the spirit world. We have teachers and eventually learn to teach as well – therefore our spirit guides exist and lead us.
And the older a soul gets, the higher up it goes in the hierarchy – different levels in this hierarchy are marked by color (so stated by Dr. Michael Newton, but essentially too complex to explain in this blog).
God as the creator
Now, the oldest souls are called creator souls. These are the highest power there is, they are the creators, nature or god if you will. Even if we will never know them, our souls do know of their existence.
The psychologist Jordan Peterson explained it like this: “God is what you use to make sense of life. Whatever is at the top of your hierarchy of values serves the function of god for you. It may be a god you don’t believe in or can’t name, but it doesn’t matter”.
Spirituality therefore definitely says that there is a god! God is in all of us and in everything we look at. However, we can’t see him because energy is invisible to our human eyes.
God cannot be human!
However, I have one problem with the picture our religion paints of god (or rather Jesus) today, namely the idea that he could be a human being, a person. You see, humans are full of faults. Souls aren’t! This is important to remember.
When we die, and we shed our bodies like dead skin (because that’s what they are), we go back to our spirit world and we are humble. The soul is good, is doesn’t have any capacity to be evil, because such aspects like hatred, malevolence, jealousy, envy, greed, anger, manipulation, murder etc. are human traits.
We as human beings have brains, we oftentimes act based on logic. We act in certain ways to receive the biggest gain for ourselves. And sometimes – depending on how dominant our brain is – we act in evil ways to get what we want. A soul would not do that.
The existence of evil
No human is perfect – we can’t be. We need our ego to survive on earth and acting based on our ego gives us the ability to adapt to evil traits. God cannot have those evil traits! Also, god would never ask for submission, because he doesn’t have an ego.
I guess that’s another problem of how religion portrays god! (Also, I speak of God as a he, because I falsely have the picture of a bearded man in my head. And because in German it’s called der Gott, which is the masculine form. Of course, god doesn’t have a gender, as no soul does, because we’re energy!)
Heaven – but no hell
Another aspect that doesn’t resonate with me is the concept of heaven and hell. In the past, the idea of the existence of hell has been a tool to trick people into submission. It was a threat that scared people, which is why I’m not quite fond of the church and the christian religion.
Because I don’t think it acts on behalf of god, since god would never use tools like this to trick people into submission. Hell doesn’t exist.
On the other hand, we can equate the spirit world with heaven. As I said, souls aren’t evil, that’s why the spirit world – our home – could never be a place different from pure harmony. The closest thing that comes to hell in terms of how painful it can be, is earth.
The soul is good – the body isn’t
And another thing to note; when we die and come home (and are free from our human body), every soul reflects on their life. And naturally we feel guilt about the things we did ‘wrong’.
‘Wrong’ is a relative term here because everything serves as a lesson. And even if we acted in a way our soul never would, if it weren’t dominated by our human body, it still helped us evolve. We sometimes punish ourselves because of the things we did and are scared to reincarnate.
Let’s conclude
After I have confronted myself in detail with the idea of religion and spirituality and what they both are defined by, I can say with confidence that both parties believe in the existence of god, but in different ways.
Still, I don’t believe that things happened the way they are described in the bible. However, the values that are shared are representative of what god is and how he acts. God is without fault, because he is the highest creator and therefore nature.
To portray him as a person is wrong for me. God is better than all of us, because we are guided by reason and logic – leading us to act in selfish and unheavenly ways.
Also, spirituality doesn’t support the idea of hell, because the spirit world is where souls have their home. Since souls don’t possess an evil nature, the spirit world is totally harmonious and therefore only logically defined as heaven!
Hope, that was interesting to you. Let me know what you think and please share your opinions in the comments 🙂
Love, Valentina <3
Written by Valentina – spiritual writer & founder of Valentina’s Diary
