Spirituality is a process of personal transformation, either in accordance with traditional religious ideals, or, increasingly, oriented on subjective experience and psychological growth independently of any specific religious context. In a more general sense, it may refer to almost any kind of meaningful activity or blissful experience. There is no single, widely-agreed definition for the concept. Spirituality can never be taught by anyone…..The only teacher is your soul. You have to grow from the inside to become spiritual.

Religion can be preached by many but spirituality is not religion as we perceive it. Religion is connected solely to God but spirituality is the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention. Religion has divided humanity through narrow domestic walls of caste, creed, color and race. Religious gurus say that Jesus is the best or Allah is the best or say Vishnu is the best and urge us to focus solely on our religion, disregard what others say. But I believe that the origins of all religions should be taught because then we will our similarities and not just our differences. I believe that if Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha and Moses were to meet, they would be the best of friends because the spiritual basis of all religions is something that promotes unity.

Today’s youth lives a hectic and pressure filled life. People see a chair and think of it as a piece of furniture….They never appreciate the hard work that has gone behind making it what it is….nor do they sympathize with the tree from which life was torn out with a single stroke of the axe  Spirituality helps us find mental peace and contentment. We learn to be mindful of what we are doing and what we see. While eating a fruit spirituality not only makes us mindful of its taste but also makes us think of the way it became what it is, it makes us see the blossoming tree, the rain, the wind and the sunshine….as well as the farmer’s hard work and the patience and care with which he nurtured the little sapling into a fully grown tree…..

Today’s youth struggles to find the purpose of their existence….the struggle to find peace and support in this harsh and fast paced world. They have started to lose faith in religion because it never gives them what it promises. They fail to relate to what is preached to them…... Depression is rife among the younger generation. People frequently commit suicide under peer pressure, lack of success, lack of fiends, love or satisfaction in what they do. People have lost their will power….they can no longer cling to hope, hope that tomorrow might spell the arrival of brighter times. They no longer find the reason for their existence and collapse under the burden they have to cope with everyday. It is here that spirituality again comes in. “ I am spiritual but not religious” is the ongoing trend….They no longer want to abide by written rules to approach God, they want to explore…find unconventional paths to inner peace and material success. Young people follow spirituality because they want to take their life into their own hands….be free to do what they want and whenever they want without any constraints…they want to feel responsible for their own life and what they do….they no longer want to put the blame of their failures on God nor do they want to give the credit of their successes to Him. They no longer want to box themselves in as A Hindu or a Christian or a Muslim. They believe that when they die, all their accounting will be done to God and then they don’t want to walk through a door with a label on it…because there is only one God and for Him…it doesn’t matter which religion you belong to….what matters is what you have done in your life. And this is what spirituality actually does, it doesn’t teach you about God, it teaches you the fundamental principles of life, gives you advice on how to live and helps you understand the true value of friendship, honesty, love and other qualities…..It makes you see the brighter side of life, see the good in others and keep your faith in humanity…….

Spirituality does away with the concept of Hell and Heaven. It removes the fear of the afterlife. The elusive concepts of Hell and Heaven prevent people from exploring, experimenting and trying new things….because they never know what’s right and what’s wrong. We often make mistakes but spirituality makes us take the responsibility for them.  We lie, cheat and hurt people- sometimes on purpose but we always feel sorry for what we have done and apologize but spirituality makes us do so because we know the values of friendship, love and honesty…we know it’s wrong so we do it but never out of fear for God. 

Today’s youth suffers a lot under depression and stress….peer pressure often makes them think that they are useless and just a waste of space…..they are better off dead so that someone better can take their place. Spirituality calms their troubled soul, gives them hope …..It makes them think rationally. It stops people from thinking that they are just a waste of space and are better off dead so that someone better can take their place because it creates a doubt in their hearts: “How do they know that that someone is going to be better than them….He or she could be worse for all they know”. This gives them hope… hope that God must have sent them into this world for a purpose and that tomorrow might spell the arrival of better times…..The Almighty is as perfect as anyone can be…spirituality opens our mind, removes evil from our hearts helps us reach the stage where we no longer hold any attachment to this material world and where problems and poisonous words and deeds said and committed by mere mortals can no longer hurt us….

To attain enlightenment we must never approach God with the thinking mind because it may only stimulate our intellectual activities, ideas and beliefs…we should try to do so with our crying heart because it will awaken our soulful and spiritual consciousness. Religion, as perceived by us, boxes us in and prevents exploration, experimentation and free mixing between people. True religion and spirituality are so entwined that it is impossible for us to tell the difference between them…..there are scarcely any who understand religion’s true meaning so we just follow what we understand. Religion, as perceived by us, makes us a devotee of God while spirituality brings us close, in terms of qualities and wisdom, to the Almighty Himself….

The majority of this generation may  be self-centered in many ways but we are more concerned with finding the true purpose of our existence and discovering beauty and hope where it seems nonexistent than many generations before us. Our Generation had no Great War or Great Depression….our war is spiritual and our depression is our lives…..Spirituality, peace, happiness and religion, are what we fight for and the quest for which makes us stand up against injustice and fight for what we deserve...