Spirituality without religion

For a long time, the smell of incense made me uncomfortable, and I didn’t know why. It was only when I got older and realised the reason was my estranged relationship with religion. This has now been healed, through a permanent but conscious separation.

When we were kids, my sister and I were sometimes taken to Hindu prayers, or pujas, held at family friend’s houses, where the worshippers lit incense. The incense burns to ash but the fragrance stays (symbolic of devotion). Meanwhile, there are prayers going on.

Sikh prayers are recited from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji (the holy text) in Gurmukhi, a 16th century language that is not spoken conversationally today.

It’s an odd feeling, expected to have an idea of God formed by a language that you can’t even understand. When your entire experience of religion is via a foreign, old language, and the religious institution doesn’t think it’s that important to translate it into English, you start to lose touch with it fast.

I would sit there at the temple and daydream, which is what I’d also do in Maths or Science class when I stopped understanding something. Religion gave me no understanding of God. Sure, the religious precepts were good and wholesome, e.g. don’t lie, cheat or steal, be kind, etc.

But it didn’t answer pressing or deeply troubling questions I had about existence. It didn’t give me answers to any complex questions. All I knew was that because I was born as a Sikh, I had to call myself a Sikh.

Sometimes, religion isn’t so much spirituality as it is tradition. Children are expected to carry on the tradition that parents passed down to them. If you gain meaning and spiritual wisdom from this religion, that’s wonderful. But if you don’t, you have two choices – either stop believing in God, or stop believing in religion.

I stopped believing in religion. It doesn’t help that the granthis in the gurdwara (Sikh temple) didn’t condescend to talk to you, and often (it felt like) looked at you with disdain, like you were a peasant and an inconvenience to land in their line of sight.  This was at odds with my TV-taught idea of what a Christian priest was supposed to be; warm and fatherly and wise.

How I felt at the temple was in stark contrast to how I prayed to God in my bedroom, alone. I always knew God to be friendly and kind, always lending an ear to listen. I still continued to believe because when I prayed in my own way, it calmed and comforted me, giving me answers and insight.

Now I’ve realised that no one can tell me what I need to do or not do to have a relationship with God. I’m guided by my own intuition, and the knowledge that I can connect with him any time that I choose to have a clear mind, through meditation, automatic writing or music, or any other free, creative way that feels right.

Spirituality without religion feels natural to me, as I don’t have anyone mediating or governing my deeply personal and healing relationship with God.

Religion and its followers are human creations, not Godly ones. Again, if religion gives you peace and wholesome connection with God, that’s amazing and there is no disrespect here – this is my personal experience only.

The way I see religion is a part of organised society. It’s a way for humans to categorise a relationship with God, and, often, to create an identity out of it.

Religion deserves examining (on a personal level) just as belonging to a political party deserves examining. What are the ‘policies’ of the religion you follow? And even if it does have good tenets (as most religions do) how is it practiced?

Unfortunately, it’s often the people who run the religion – and the way it’s taught to people – that make it unhelpful and unrelatable. We once had a granthi at the gurdwara who was stealing money from the donations box, like a lot of money. How I am supposed to relate to a criminal who’s teaching me about God in a foreign language every Sunday?

I guess it’s not religion I’m opposed to, by any means. It’s being part of a religion and having no idea why. Just because you are born into a circumstance or with a certain identity you’re expected to adopt, doesn’t mean you are branded with it for the rest of your life.

Examining your beliefs is a good thing, because if and when you do choose them, you are doing so consciously and with reason – not just unconsciously because someone expects you to, even if that ‘someone’ is yourself.