This article is about spirituality. If you don’t consider yourself spiritual, don’t stop reading! Consider: when you were a tiny human in elementary school you didn’t consider yourself a mathematician/physicist/historian/economist but just look at you now, Swarthmore student. If we want to and if we make the effort, all of us can access spirituality as a lens on life. As they say in “Wicked: For Good,” “It’s looking at things another way.” Some will find it harder than others, just like with math/physics/history/economics, but spirituality is a human endowment available to all of us.
Don’t worry, we’re not suggesting that if you just look at things in a spiritual way troubles will cease to be! It is true, though, that a change in perspective can be incredibly powerful and empowering. You are in a better position to face troubled times if you can see your abilities as gifts, see yourself as inherently worthy, see your relationships as mutual opportunities to share and grow, and maybe even see a negative situation as an invitation and a calling.
These are some of the transformative, healing perspectives that spirituality can open up, which helps explain why it has always played a vital role in helping humans navigate troubled times.
Research has shown spirituality to have incredibly powerful protective effects against “diseases of despair”: severe depression, extreme risk-taking, and addiction. Adolescence is difficult enough to begin with. There are so many hard choices to make and so many sources of uncertainty, and the times we’re currently living through just compound these challenges. Spirituality can also provide a sense of connection, purpose, and inner peace. It can reduce stress, foster resilience, strengthen community bonds, and connect individuals to something outside of themselves.
We’re not blaming you for not being spiritual. In many areas of our society, spirituality has been neglected and discouraged, sometimes because of its connection to religion. In fact, you may think you can’t be spiritual if you aren’t religious. (If you have been harmed by religion and you’d like help finding resources for dealing with the impact, we’d be happy to offer support and so would Counseling and Psychological Services.) Religious traditions do offer some amazing resources for spirituality honed over thousands of years, and practitioners will sometimes allow access to these resources (so you don’t have to worry about cultural appropriation). But religion doesn’t have a monopoly on spirituality, and there are extensive, rich, spiritual resources independent of religion.
So what can spirituality outside of religion look like? We’re glad you asked. There are as many answers as there are people. This variety may seem daunting at first, but hopefully it also serves as an exciting invitation to explore spirituality for yourself. A common aspect may be a feeling that there is more to life than materialism — more than consumerism, of course, and also more than what a typical materialist outlook defines as reality and consciousness and possibility. Whatever gives you a sense of this “more” could well be a gateway to your own experience of spirituality. Swarthmore students have shared with us that they find spirituality in nature, love, their innate self, and/or a higher power (religion also doesn’t have a monopoly on relating to a higher power).
For the last several years, the Interfaith Center has been offering Awakened Awareness workshops that provide a path into spirituality not dependent on religion. These workshops teach meditation and mindfulness with the goal of enabling participants to be present in the current moment, seek spiritual support and guidance, and recognize ways life (and the people they’ve encountered on this path) has guided them, especially in moments of challenge and disappointment.
Prayer (which, again, you don’t have to be religious to practice), gratitude practices, and service can all deepen spirituality and connect you to its benefits.
One more objection that can unfortunately arise in a highly intellectual environment like Swarthmore: “Spirituality is for people who aren’t that smart.” There are countless examples of brilliant figures in whom intellect and spirit coexist and complement each other — e.g., Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
As the staff of the Interfaith Center, we are eager to support your ability to thrive in these challenging times. If you’d like to discuss what you’ve read here or anything else we’d love to work with you.
Stay tuned — next month we’ll hopefully be publishing a collection of perspectives on navigating troubled times from Interfaith Center staff and affiliate (i.e., non-staff) religious advisors drawing on our particular religious traditions.
