Introduction

This book has both an unlikely beginning and a logicial one. I never intended on writing a book on spirituality, or, if I did, I never intended on sharing it with the rest of the world. For most of my life, I perceived spirituality as a very personal matter. One of the reasons for my sensitivity on individual spirituality stems from having been in situations where other's conception of spirituality was thrust in my face. Being Jewish, I have come to know what religious intolerance meant both from learning about the history of my people and from first-hand encounters with Anti-Semitic individuals.

Although I always thought of myself as being spiritual, I never considered myself to be a very religious person, Jewish or otherwise. I admit that there were times in my life (in my thirties) when I really saw no need for religion or for being spiritual. This was the prevailing viewpoint of the friends I had at the time. I viewed people who were very religious or outwardly spiritual as eccentric. All that was to change, however, when I came to acquire friends who were more religious and more spiritual than I ever imagined I could be -- or want to be.

I still came to view what my friends said with a jaundiced eye; but, because of our friendship, I became more accepting of their points of view. Even though I began to see how their set of beliefs worked for them, I still did not see how their beliefs could work for me. I was willing to listen to what they told me, but I still felt that they should stick to their religion and I would stick to mine. I did not see any reason to change what I believed or to change my approach to spirituality. I felt that religion and spirituality were really different things.
Little was I to know that this distinction would actually lead me to a deeper understanding of both spirituality and religion.

Traumatic events often cause people to acutely focus on the purpose and meaning of their lives. Traumatic events disrupt our continuity of life and thereby, force us (or challenge us) to change the way we look at the world and ourselves. In my life, there were two traumatic events that had that effect: one, the end of my job, and two the end of my marriage. They did not, however, occur at the same point in time. The loss of the job came first.

This was not the first time I had lost a job, but it was the first time I could not regain one. I became self-employed not by choice but by circumstance. What I lacked in income during my four years of self-employment (and underemployment), I made up for in introspection. The extra time on my hands were spent in thinking about myself and in writing about my abilities. I began to write and what was to become my first attempt at a book. However, it had nothing to do with spirituality. The subject of the book was on how we learn.

I was writing about how much our learning behavior is influenced by our attitudes, and, conversely, how much our attitudes are influenced by what we learn. At first, it seems like a "chicken and egg" phenomenon; i.e., which comes first, "attitude or learning?" What I concluded is that the meaning we attach to what we learn determines our behavior. In other words, it is not what we learn but how we use what we learn and how we reflect upon it.
How does this relate to the search for spirituality?

For many people, their approach to spirituality and their understanding of spirituality is very much a learned phenomenon. They first learn about God and the Bible from their parents. Then, they learn it from their Religious School teachers. When they are young, most of what they come to know about spirituality is learned from others. As people get older, they come to know about spirituality directly from their own experience. What we learn and how we learn affects how we interpret it later on in life.

People may not hold the same beliefs as adults as they held in childhood. When they were children, they were told that certain things are the way they are and children were not encouraged to question them. As adults, we naturally question everything, yet, for some, there are still prohibitions against questioning religious beliefs. For others, however, the religious beliefs that they may have held in childhood no longer have the same validity for them as adults. It is not that they are down on spirituality; rather, they are down on organized religion.
Why is it that people are turned off to or turn away from organized religion and primarily from the religion of their childhood?

Here again, changes in attitude play a pivotal role. For many, organized religion was synonymous with rules and restrictions: restrictions not only in behavior, but also in the exercize of free thought. I was raised in a fairly non-religious environment. I really did not experience many rules and restrictions. Some of my non-Jewish friends, however, were raised in strict religious environments where guilt and the fear of damnation were part and parcel to accepting their faith. It was, “Believe or else.” Other friends of mine were raised in fairly liberal environments like mine.

When they grew up and began to make life decisions for themselves, two things happened. For those raised in strict religions, there was a rebellion in opposition to what they were taught.