What does it mean to be spiritual?

I used to joke that maybe I should be called the JCrew Shaman. I recognized that as a Shaman, people probably expected me to look or be a certain way and because I didn’t have feathers and beads around my neck, dreads on my head, or wear colorful flowy clothes people may not associate me with possessing certain spiritual gifts and healing abilities. This led me to think about spirituality in general especially at a time when some of the most spiritual people I thought I knew, I found not acting very spiritual. I began to think more about what it truly means.

Sometimes, we have this idea that a spiritual person looks or lives a certain way but we can be easily be fooled by appearances or “credentials.” We may assume that someone is spiritual because they teach a certain class, stand in front of a certain congregration, or attend specific workshops or institutions.

But the truth is, spirituality isn’t something external—it’s something we all have within us. We are inherently spiritual beings, not because we sit on a mat, attend a ceremony, write a book, or follow a particular practice, but simply because we exist.

We express our spirituality in our everyday human lives. It’s in the small moments—when we let someone go ahead of us in line, when we recognize our blessings and the beauty around us, when we spend time appreciating nature. It’s when we feel anger but choose not to lash out, when we refrain from gossip or judgment, when we help someone without expecting anything in return. We are spiritual when we acknowledge our mistakes and make them right, when we fall but rise again, learning the lesson with gratitude rather than resentment. We are spiritual when we offer forgiveness to someone who has hurt us, when we prioritize the needs of the collective over personal gain. We are spiritual when we can acknowledge our humanness, faults and all. Spirituality is anytime we exude love over fear, peace over contempt and anger, light over dark and also recognize we possess them all.

And for this, we don’t need to buy anything, attend anything, wear anything, or seek anything outside of ourselves. Spirituality is realizing that we are no different from anyone else, even our so called enemies. It’s the knowledge that we are all interconnected. It’s understanding that everything we need is already within us. It’s not something to obtain or a badge of honor—it’s intentional choices and expressing our inherent nature.

Many blessings,

Lisa