Do you agree with the pundit who said that sitting in church and thinking you’re spiritual is like sitting in a garage and thinking you’re a car?
If so, you may be one of the more than 20% of the population who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR)....
So what’s the difference between many organized religions and spirituality anyway?
Here are 5 key distinctions:
- Many organized religions represent God as an external entity. Spirituality portrays God as an integral aspect of our humanity.
- Many organized religions demand that you follow an external set of rules based on the experiences of others. Spirituality encourages you to seek your own experiences through inner exploration and discovery.
- Many organized religions are about the depths of your beliefs. Spirituality is about the depths of your consciousness.
- Many organized religions preach to us about God. Spirituality encourages us to achieve God consciousness.
- Many organized religions assert that their method of worship is the only true path to God. Spirituality maintains that all rivers lead to the same ocean. Thus, when conflict arises, religion tends to divide while spirituality unites.
And as mystic scholar Andrew Harvey passionately illuminates in the audio clip I’ll be sharing with you below, Jesus himself was spiritual but not religious.
However, over the centuries, theologians and church leaders have edited, misinterpreted and distorted Jesus’ original teachings.
It’s not surprising then that many former churchgoers eventually grew disillusioned with the Jesus presented in organized religion, and “threw out the baby with the bathwater” when they stopped attending.
But “throwing out the Christ with the Christianity” cuts off access to Christ consciousness — an endless source of profound wisdom, inspiration and joy.
Andrew explains that Jesus came to this beautiful planet not to be “the way” but to lead the way… to an evolutionary path that would birth a new kind of human being — one that is an incarnation of the Divine on Earth, just as Jesus himself was.
In other words, Jesus was not a great exception but a great example of what is possible when human consciousness is expanded to receive the Divine.
Jesus Christ may be the face of Christianity — but as Andrew shares here — the authentic Jesus is so very different than the Jesus promoted through many organized religions….
And really, it's not about Jesus the man, but the Christ consciousness he exemplified as potential for us all.