What does "Being Spiritual" even mean?
- schoolofjoypodcast
- May 1
- 3 min read
What if we've overcomplicated what Spirituality actually is?
Let’s be honest — the word spiritual has a bit of an image problem. I still cringe a bit when I tell people about my spirituality.
It conjures up images of crystals and incense, or people with long beards and white robes. Of a man high up in the clouds.
For many of us, it’s tangled up with our complex relationship with religion. And that’s problematic.
Spirituality in Its Simplest Form
At its simplest, spirituality is actually about developing a deeper connection. To yourself. To other people. To the world around you — the planet, nature and humanity as a whole. And to something greater than any of us individually, whether you call that God, the Universe, energy, or nothing at all.
That’s it. No doctrine required.
Most of us go through life largely disconnected from ourselves. We’re busy, we’re distracted, we’re always trying to achieve our next goal.
We react to things — a stressful email, a difficult conversation, a bad night’s sleep — without much awareness of what’s actually going on beneath the surface. We know something feels off, or that we’re not quite living the life we want, but it’s hard to work out why, so we continue to distract ourselves with doom scrolling, overworking, junk food or sex.
For us at School of Joy, spirituality is the practice of paying attention to that inner world.
Getting curious;
about our patterns, about our reactions, about our deeper needs. And slowly, over time, building a more honest and conscious relationship with ourselves.
Ultimately, changing how we relate to everything and everyone around us.
You can be spiritual and remain detached from any religion
Spirituality almost always gets confused with religion — and while there’s overlap, they’re not the same thing.
Religion offers a specific framework: community, rituals, a set of teachings and often a huge amount of conditions.
But spirituality is broader than that, it doesn’t need conditions; it just needs your attention.
It’s a calling to connect.
You might find that connection through meditation. Or through being in nature. Through creative work, or honest conversations, or sitting quietly for ten minutes in the morning and taking a breath before the day kicks off. The form matters less than the intention behind it — which is simply to show up more consciously to your own life.
What we find is that when people start doing this kind of inner work, they often describe a shift in how connected they feel — to themselves, yes, but also to other people, and to the world.
Less isolated.
Like they belong here.
That sense of belonging, of being part of something bigger than just your own individual story, is really at the heart of what we’re talking about
Why choosing to live consciously is a radical act
We’re living through a time when a lot of people feel disconnected and lost. We’re more “connected” than ever, and yet there is a loneliness pandemic.
That’s not a personal failing — it’s a symptom of modern life.
Many of us have drifted away from the things that used to give life meaning — community, ritual, a sense of shared purpose.
Spirituality - in the way we’re describing it - is the remedy.
It is a shift from distracting yourself from real life to engaging more fully with it.
And when you choose to connect in that deeper way, to notice, to slow down, you start to show up differently…
… and that’s where joy is found
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