How do You Define Spirituality What Is Spirituality Definition-Meaning-of
Quick Answer: Spirituality is generally understood as a personal connection to something beyond the everyday self — whether described as ultimate reality, universal consciousness, or the divine — explored through practices like meditation, reflection, and inner stillness rather than through external belief alone. It’s difficult to define in a single sentence because it’s experiential rather than purely intellectual; most spiritual traditions describe it as something realized through sustained practice and feeling, not just studied as an idea.
Key Takeaways
- Spirituality is widely described across traditions as an experiential journey rather than a fixed, easily worded definition.
- Many spiritual traditions describe a process of gradually loosening attachment to worldly desire as a marker of deepening practice.
- Kundalini (sometimes spelled differently across texts) is a concept in yogic and Vedantic traditions describing a dormant energy said to rise through the body during deep meditation.
- Personal accounts of spiritual experience, like the reflection below, offer one perspective among many valid ways people describe this journey.
- There’s no single authority on what spirituality “is” — different traditions, and different individuals, describe it in meaningfully different ways.
About This Reflection
The personal account below is written by Dr. Shahinur Chowdhury, founder of Spiritual Meditation Yoga, reflecting on his own meditation practice beginning in 2007. It’s offered as one individual’s lived experience and perspective, not as a universal or academic definition of spirituality. Following the reflection, we’ve added general context on how various spiritual and yogic traditions discuss related concepts, for readers who want a broader frame of reference.
How do You Define Spirituality- Meaning and Definition- What Is Spirituality: It is difficult to define spirituality in a few words. Because the roots of spirituality have a deep connection with the roots of creation. Where there is an expression of spirituality, it must be understood that it is an expression of the essence of creation. That is, spirituality originates from where the universe originates from the there. And if one can reach the ultimate limit of this spirituality, then he can know the beginning and the end of creation and he can control the whole creation.
And when someone reaches the last frontier of spirituality, he is no longer attracted to the world. And that time there is no other desire of the world in his mind. His mind becomes pure and holy. That time he sees that all the creation of the world is under him. Still, he has no desire to change the creation at all. This is why it is said that those who have the slightest desire for the world cannot reach the last frontier of spirituality.
How far the boundaries of spirituality extend is beyond our comprehension. Because our knowledge is very insignificant near the boundaries of spirituality. It is impossible for us to analyze the scope of spirituality with this little knowledge. Only those who have attained perfection in spirituality can understand its meaning. Spirituality cannot be explained in words. To understand it you need to have strong feeling power. Because it has to be realized through feeling. The famous spiritual person Jalal Uddin Rumi said, if the sun comes close to the earth, the earth will burn to ashes. Similarly, if spirituality suddenly appears in someone’s heart, his heart will be destroyed.
The words above are words of deep high. Usually, we don’t think so deeply about spirituality. Because we don’t keep track of the world’s greatest spiritual people. And we don’t want to know how many steps they have taken to achieve spirituality in their lives. With a little touch of spirituality in ourselves, we think we have become spiritual.
I too was once in this mistake. I started meditating on March 26, 2007. After the first year of meditation, I noticed a lot of physical and mental changes in me. As a result of the huge change in my heart and feelings, I began to think that I had become a great spiritual person. I am still pursuing my meditation in 2021. But as I continue to meditate and start to reach the depths of meditation in 2021, I see that it is a rare thing to reach the last frontier of spirituality.
Now at what stage am I talking about this. If I give a little description of the symptoms of my body, those who understand spirituality will realize something. You may have heard of the famous spiritual greats Swami Vivekananda and Fakir Lalon Sai. Their writings contain profound theories about spirituality. In Swami Vivekananda’s book Rajyoga, he writes that at one stage of meditation, Kurukundali is awakened in the human body. Within a year of me starting to meditate, Kurukundali was awakened in my body. I had no acquaintance with the word kurukundali. Many days after the awakening of Kurukundali, when I read this book, I realized that its name is Kurukundali.
Kurukundali is an energy that originates from the spinal cord . It is not like expressing in words the stream of peace that flows from the bottom of the spine to the top after the awakening of the Kurukundali. The more you are alone, the more the flow of peace will continue to grow. So I like to be alone from March 26, 2007 until 2021 and now like stay alone.
It is impossible to say how many more symptoms appear inside the body after waking up Kurukundali. However, reading the books of the great spiritual people, it is known that awakening in the body of Kurukundali is not a common thing. These are manifested in very few people. And after this long period of meditation, when I tried to realize where spirituality ends, Then I became dumb. After all this time I started thinking that the journey of spirituality has just started.
So we have realized how difficult it is to attain full spirituality. Achieving spirituality requires hard work for a long time.
Dr. Shahinur Chowdhury (Spiritual Person)
Broader Context: How Different Traditions Describe Spirituality
Beyond any single person’s experience, spirituality has been described in meaningfully different ways across the world’s philosophical and religious traditions. In Vedantic thought, it’s often framed as the process of recognizing the individual self (Atman) as connected to, or identical with, a universal consciousness (Brahman or Paramatman). In Buddhist traditions, the emphasis often shifts to direct experience of impermanence and the loosening of attachment through mindfulness. In many Sufi traditions, including the poetry of Rumi referenced above, spirituality is often described through the metaphor of a lover’s longing for union with the divine, expressed through devotion and inner surrender. Despite very different languages and metaphors, these traditions share a common thread: spirituality is described as something realized through sustained inner practice rather than something that can be fully captured in words alone.
Kundalini Awakening in Yogic and Vedantic Traditions
Kundalini, described in some yogic and Tantric texts (including Swami Vivekananda’s writings on Raja Yoga, referenced in the reflection above) as a dormant energy said to reside at the base of the spine, is described as rising through the body during sustained, deep meditation practice in some traditions. Accounts of kundalini awakening vary widely between traditions and individuals, and it’s generally described as uncommon rather than a typical or expected outcome of regular meditation. Traditional texts generally caution that this kind of intense experience, when it occurs, is best approached with guidance from an experienced teacher, since some traditions describe it as physically and emotionally intense.
Common Themes Across Personal Spiritual Journeys
While every spiritual journey is different, several themes appear repeatedly in personal accounts across traditions and cultures: a gradual shift away from attachment to material desires, an increased capacity for solitude and inner stillness, a sense that ordinary language struggles to capture the depth of the experience, and often, as reflected in the account above, a growing humility about how much remains to be understood rather than a sense of having “arrived” at a final answer.
Spirituality vs. Religion: An Important Distinction
Spirituality and religion are related but not identical. Religion typically refers to an organized system of beliefs, practices, and community structures, often built around shared texts and traditions. Spirituality more often refers to the personal, inner dimension of that same territory — direct experience, connection, and meaning-making — which can exist within a religious framework or entirely outside one. Many people describe themselves as spiritual without formal religious affiliation, while others experience their spirituality primarily through religious practice; neither approach is more valid than the other.
Common Practices Associated with Deepening Spiritual Life
Across traditions, certain practices recur as commonly associated with spiritual development: sustained daily meditation, periods of solitude and reflection, study of spiritual or philosophical texts, service to others, and various forms of devotional practice, from chanting to prayer to ritual. No single practice is considered universally necessary, and different traditions and individuals emphasize different combinations based on their specific path and temperament.
How to Begin Exploring Spirituality for Yourself
For those newer to spiritual exploration, starting with a simple, consistent meditation practice, even a few minutes daily, is a common entry point across many traditions, since consistency tends to matter more than intensity, especially early on. Reading directly from primary spiritual texts and teachers, rather than only secondary interpretations, and finding an experienced teacher or community if you’re drawn to deeper practice, are both frequently recommended starting points. Patience is also frequently emphasized; as the reflection above illustrates, spiritual understanding is often described as unfolding gradually over years rather than arriving quickly.
The Role of Solitude in Spiritual Practice
Many contemplative traditions describe solitude, not as isolation from others out of avoidance, but as a deliberate space that allows inner experience to deepen without the constant pull of external distraction. This theme appears in the reflection above and echoes across traditions: Christian desert monastics, Buddhist forest hermits, and Hindu renunciates have all historically used periods of solitude as a tool for spiritual development. Modern life makes sustained solitude harder to access, which is part of why even short daily periods of quiet, undistracted time are often recommended as a starting point rather than requiring dramatic lifestyle change.
Interpreting Intense Spiritual Experiences
Accounts of intense physical or energetic sensations during deep meditation, as referenced in the personal reflection above, appear across multiple traditions under different names and frameworks. These experiences are generally described in traditional texts as uncommon rather than typical, and most teachers across traditions recommend working with an experienced guide when such experiences arise, both to interpret them within a coherent framework and to navigate them safely, since some traditions describe them as intense enough to be disorienting without proper guidance and preparation.
Spiritual Teachers and Texts Worth Knowing
The reflection above references two influential figures: Swami Vivekananda, whose writings, including Raja Yoga, introduced many Western readers to yogic philosophy in the late 19th century, and Fakir Lalon Sai (often known simply as Lalon), a revered Bengali mystic poet and philosopher whose songs continue to influence spiritual thought in Bengal and beyond. Jalal ad-Din Rumi, the 13th-century Sufi poet also referenced, remains one of the most widely read spiritual poets in the world, known for expressing profound spiritual ideas through accessible, often deeply emotional poetry. Exploring primary works from figures like these offers a deeper, more direct entry point into these traditions than secondary summaries alone.
Balancing Personal Experience with Traditional Teaching
A recurring tension in spiritual practice, visible in the reflection above, is how to weigh personal, direct experience against the accumulated teaching of tradition and scripture. Most established traditions value both: personal experience gives practice its authenticity and depth, while traditional teaching and experienced guidance provide a framework to interpret and safely navigate that experience, rather than relying on personal insight entirely in isolation. Neither alone is generally considered sufficient by most established schools of spiritual practice.
Why Spirituality Resists Simple Definitions
Part of why questions like “what is spirituality” resist a tidy dictionary answer is that most traditions treat it as fundamentally experiential — something known through direct realization rather than conceptual understanding alone, similar to how descriptions of a taste or a piece of music can only approximate the direct experience itself. This is why so many spiritual texts, across very different cultures, lean on metaphor, poetry, and paradox rather than plain technical language, and why personal reflections like the one above often communicate something that a purely academic definition cannot.
Signs People Commonly Associate with a Deepening Practice
While experiences vary enormously between individuals and traditions, people describing a deepening spiritual practice often mention a reduced reactivity to everyday stress, a growing comfort with silence and stillness, less attachment to external validation or material outcomes, and, as reflected in the personal account above, an increasing humility rather than certainty about spiritual understanding. These are commonly reported patterns rather than a checklist or a guarantee, and progress along any spiritual path is rarely linear.
Approaching This Topic with an Open Mind
Whether you come to this topic from a specific religious background, a secular interest in meditation and mindfulness, or genuine curiosity sparked by an account like the one above, it’s worth approaching spirituality as a territory explored gradually rather than resolved quickly. Reading widely across traditions, trying a consistent practice for yourself, and remaining patient with not having complete answers are approaches echoed by teachers across very different spiritual lineages.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is spirituality the same as religion?
No, though they’re related. Spirituality generally refers to personal inner experience and connection, while religion refers to organized belief systems and practices, which can overlap with or exist separately from personal spirituality.
What is kundalini, in simple terms?
In yogic and Tantric traditions, kundalini refers to a dormant energy described as residing at the base of the spine, said in some texts to rise through the body during intense, sustained meditation practice, though accounts and interpretations vary across traditions.
Do you need years of practice to be “spiritual”?
No single timeline applies to everyone. Many traditions describe spirituality as a lifelong unfolding process rather than a state achieved after a fixed amount of practice, and everyone’s path looks different.
Can spirituality be pursued without meditation?
Yes. While meditation is a common practice across many traditions, spirituality can also be explored through prayer, service, study, nature connection, or other practices depending on one’s tradition and personal inclination.
Who is Dr. Shahinur Chowdhury?
He is the founder of Spiritual Meditation Yoga and the author of the personal reflection above, drawing on his own meditation practice that began in 2007.
What is the significance of Kurukundali mentioned in the reflection?
This appears to reference kundalini, a concept from yogic and Tantric traditions describing an energy said to awaken during deep meditation. Spelling and terminology can vary across translations and traditions.
Is it normal to feel like you haven’t “reached” spirituality even after years of practice?
Yes, this is a commonly reported experience across traditions, echoed directly in the personal reflection above — a growing sense of how much remains to be understood is often described as a sign of genuine depth rather than failure.