It’s interesting how words become defined into narrow corridors of meaning when language is constantly evolving and shifting. Like a lot of things in our culture, spiritual has become cordoned off into it’s own dichotomy of spiritual and secular or to use the religious studies phrasing, “sacred and profane”. And yet, very few people actually stop to think who or what defines the sacred and the profane, except for maybe religious studies scholars, and a lot of those were doing work decades ago and being very specific about it. So we have a chicken-egg type situation happening.
I propose we broaden our definition of spiritual and more directly, broaden our definition of spiritual care. Studies have shown that the vast majority of individuals, especially in America and Europe, do not belong to a specific, organized religion or even identify with a religious group. What this means is that not only are more people becoming “spiritual but not religious”, but also, our definition of sacred, of what creates meaning in our lives, changes. Some people, for example, may not find meaning within a traditional religious context, but they do find meaning through volunteer work, the creative arts, or walking in nature. Certainly I would call these things spiritual: being of service, using inspiration and sometimes intuition, and finding connection with nature.
The thing is, we really can’t wall off various parts of our lives into neat, little boxes. Even if we personally are not spiritual, someone else’s religiosity will spill over into our lives, sometimes through attempts to violate the separation between church and state, sometimes through someone’s own beliefs being stated like a “bless you”.
And for those of us who seek to live an authentic, magical life, then I, and I’m sure others like me, would argue that a lot of what we do is spiritual. One of my favorite religious studies concepts is that of UPG or unverified personal gnosis, which is if it has meaning for you, if it feels spiritual for you, THEN IT IS, and there really is no questioning that because someone else cannot get inside your skin and feel what you feel exactly how you feel it.
So how do we redefine spiritual care?
First, we need to understand that spirituality is so much broader than a religious context, though that’s included too. Spirituality as a general definition is a connection with something larger than yourself. Just as the popular saying about yoga is that “yoga is a way to know the body, through the body”, this connection includes our inner selves (spirit, higher self, intuition, soul, etc.) and the world around us. It’s why my work is so focused on not just ourselves, but also our companion animals, because quite often our animals allow us to connect to the world around us in a physical, tactile way that broadens our spheres of connection. I mean who hasn’t looked at a lion yawning, and seen in it, their house cat yawning, and just how much we live with little goblin cats who act a lot like their larger cousins?
We redefine spiritual care to include care for all the dimensions of our lives that are tied to our core being and our connections to others and the world around us. I like to look at this as caring for our koshas, a yoga concept that refers to the the five layers of our being, and looking at them as a whole being, not just parts of us. Too often, I think self-care gets tossed around like a bandage, much like yoga does honestly, with the intention to patch us up so we can keep being productive.
Spiritual care is different. Spiritual care begins with the belief that none of us are broken; we each have intrinsic value and worth, no more and no less than anyone else, and we deserve to have a multi-faceted approach to nurturing each of our five layers of being. We cannot ignore one and expect spiritual care to fix the void that leaves, just like we cannot keep doing without stopping and checking in to see how we’re feeling.
What are the koshas?
The koshas are the five sheaths or layers to our bodies. They’ve also been framed as the five layers of understanding that veil our true self (our atman). Starting from the outer layer we have our physical body, our subtle or energetic body, our mental body, our wisdom body (this is inner wisdom, or intuition), and our bliss body which is our connection with and union with the universe.
When we break them down into their medical terms–physical, emotional, sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system, and our core essence–we see the divisions that our western culture places around these things. Food and exercise, for example, is often “prescribed” to care for our physical body, but it can also affect the other koshas or layers to our beings, but usually there is something else like psychiatry which addresses strictly the emotional body. These approaches aren’t wrong, but they do often ignore the intersectionality of our experience.
All of our koshas are affected by our environment, the culture in which we live, and what’s happening around us. I wouldn’t take a sea turtle, for example, and put it in a habitat designed for a Galapagos Tortoise, just like I wouldn’t drop a Galapagos Tortoise into the ocean and expect it to do very well. Each of these animals is designed for a specific environment and when that environment meets all of its needs, then it thrives. Our western culture has a vision of “normality” that everyone must conform to, and that’s why so many of us don’t thrive.
Returning to Spiritual Care
Spiritual care means caring for each of our five bodies and cultivating an environment which nurtures each of them, not just gets us through the day. Spiritual care means seeing our fellow travelers, whether they are humans or animals, and having compassion for them, compassion for ourselves, and understanding that each of us are deserving of having all their needs met, all their koshas tended, and making space for that to happen. It means starting where we are at, with gentleness and compassion for ourselves, and going from there. That’s spiritual care.
I don’t ask what you’re doing; I ask how you’re feeling and how you’re caring for yourself and help you create ways to do that–caring for yourself–better so you will feel better, too.
