Alright, let’s start off by taking a look the term ‘religious’ and what it really means and how it’s used.

“She religiously went to the grocery store every Tuesday evening.”

Now this has nothing to do with her morals and beliefs, but implies more of a routine than anything. It’s what can be stated and proven with little to no explanation and evidence can be traced.

Now let’s take the concept of religious thinking and detach it from organized religion itself. It needs to stand apart from the isms, and beliefs on creation and afterlife.

And then we have spirituality, which essentially implies is that all beliefs are valid but it’s left up to the individual to make that call. It’s more of an embrace of finding personal meaning.

The voice of spirituality says, “stop searching, everything you’re looking for is right here.”

The term ‘spiritual experience’ can be stamped onto any situation, but it is subjective to the person experiencing it.

Organized religion is essentially an all-inclusive package deal that presents guidelines for a lifestyle and looks like more a subscription of ideologies and practices. It’s something that people have historically found to work before.

Religion says, “these methods have worked and have given meaning, and there’s history to prove it.”

It’s ritualistic.

So why is this important to know? Why am I bringing this up?

Out of personal experience, I’ve been able to relieve a significant amount of frustration and anger when I was able to see that people simply approach thought differently.

Coming to peace and understanding about this helped me to affirm my own views.

Being a spiritual thinker, I’ve often felt uncomfortable when my opinions are challenged. Which is totally fair and understandable for a person to question me. At the time I didn’t realize my friends were coming from a “religious” approach, but it left me feeling invalidated. As if my own thoughts weren’t legitimated until I cited my sources.

I became very frustrated and doubted my own intuition, which led me down another series of problems.

In relationship to personality, it could be viewed as the difference between Sensing and Intuition, Thinking and Feeling, or Judging and Perceiving.

In my case, it only makes sense that I was INFP (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perceiving).

Again, how might this knowledge be useful? What purpose does this observation serve?

So what I was able to do was take the ideas and opinions that my friends had to offer, acknowledge them, and respect them. But I knew I shouldn’t feel obligated to believe them until I had experienced them to be true. I had to stop pretending that I needed other people’s perspectives to validate mine. And I couldn’t continue allowing someone else’s skepticism of my beliefs to discourage me from what I felt to be true.

And it freed me.