Hey ZenAlex!

I’m not sure if I really consider myself as being part of a spiritual community as such – I guess here on TinyBuddha, this is the closest thing to a spiritual community that I am part of and what I love about it is that there are many different voices and perspectives with different ideas.

In real life, I’ve been acquainted with a few people who are interested in spirituality or would describe themselves as being spiritual. I guess when people place this label on themselves, other people will always try and point out their less-than-spiritual behaviour – I understand that nobody is perfect but this particular person I speak of did tend come across as being hypocritical, preachy and sanctimonious and I don’t really care for that kind of thing. Another person in this group of acquaintances who loved to discuss his spiritual beliefs liked to drag other people into spiritual or theological debates – criticizing the belief system of somebody else in the group, challenging somebody else just because they had no beliefs whatsoever and making stupid ignorant assumptions about me (it never gets old and boring, just because I have tattoos and piercings and I listen to punk and industrial rock that makes me a heretical devil worshipper apparently!)

I guess I don’t like people who are into spirituality for all the wrong reasons – just using it to show off and boost their own ego “Oh look at me I am SO enlightened therefore I am SO much BETTER than you bla bla bla…” -I find people like that have their heads firmly lodged up their own backside. As they say, if you’re gonna talk the talk, don’t forget to walk the walk…

My current, personal definition of spirituality is trying to stay present (still got a long way to go on that one!) and doing things that bring me inner stillness and joy (creating my own weird and wonderful fantasy world with paints and paper with my illustrations, cooking and eating good food, looking at sunsets, playing with my cat and laughing at stupid things).

I really want to meet people in real life who are interested in spirituality but at the same time not coming across as being pious and pretentious.

But this is an interesting prompt for discussion, thanks for bringing it up 😀