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We hear a great deal of people using the phrase "more spiritual than religious" right now, causing us to ponder what they really mean once they label themselves this way. It's been our experience that there really is a soul deepening difference among spiritual and religious -- an impact we have termed spiritual emergence versus religious emergency.<br><br>Spiritual emergence is a gradual unfoldment of spiritual expression that causes a minimal 'disturbance' in our everyday functioning because we are somewhat prepared for it, given our disposition for the mystical. In contrast, you'll find men and women who experience what we call religious emergencies, which may cause significant disruptions in their life, as these folks are usually unprepared for mystical experiences since they consider themselves to be more religious than spiritual.<br><br>Emergent spiritual experiences like visions, deeply felt meditations, out-of-body experiences, apparitions and precognitive dreams tend to be exhilarating and life altering and may also be very transformative -- for those who have moved to an area of being more spiritual than religious. These same experiences, on the contrary, could also be deeply unsettling for people that fall in the category of being more religious than spiritual.<br><br>People that are more spiritual than religious seem to have less difficulty with these kinds of transcendental experiences. Why? Spiritually-inclined people are often more open to mystical experiences. They feel more connected to the transcendentalness of life. They have a spiritual, not religious, mindset! Their openness to the non-material and ethereal dimensions of reality make them the perfect recipients of these life-affirming experiences.<br><br>Involved in the challenge highly religious people face in transformative experiences is staying grounded after they experience these 'higher octaves' of reality. These 'altered states of being' are generally foreign, and even taboo, in terms of handling their ingrained religiosity.<br><br>As a result of their denominational inhibitions, mainstream religious people often be quite reluctant to integrate highly spiritual experiences into their religious practices. They may even feel they can be bedeviled by these experiences.<br><br>Great spiritual teachers and mystics alike assure us that these transcendent experiences are natural and healthy. They see these experiences as proof of our evolving spirituality and enlightenment. They encourage us to willingly allow highly spiritual/mystical experiences to touch our lives and also to use the memories of those experiences -- and as a consequence the transformative value of those experiences -- to flow into our everyday lives.<br><br>Living our lives determined by embedded religious theology makes it hard to allow spiritual and metaphysical teachings into our world view. What usually happens will be the cognitive dissonance a result of the new mind-stretching 'experiential information' causes people to tighten their dogmatic reins so that any progress -- and openness -- to potentially transformative truths is shut down completely.<br><br>In fact, that is the troublesome dynamic we see occurring in spiritual communities/New Thought churches/liberal churches today. Should the leadership in those communities is stuck in embedded religious theology, it can make it really hard for the membership that considers themselves to be more spiritual than religious to get a spiritual, not religious, message. It also makes it quite challenging for the minister and music director to view eye-to-eye in the event the music director is hesitant to -- or outright refuses to -- change the song lyrics to complement the minister's spiritually-oriented message. It is an old story -- you know, the one about pouring new wine into old wineskins!<br><br>On the contrary, should the leadership is actually more spiritual than religious in a church setting (holding services in a church building characterized by stained glass windows and pews), the members who consider themselves to be more religious than spiritual demand a message and  meditation ([http://proescuela.edu.pe/actividad/allanstandfield site]) music that can be more dogmatically religious than universally open and spiritual. The two factions behave like oil and water. As well as the ministers who serve those divided communities operate between a rock as well as a hard place because making both factions happy is impossible!<br><br>If you have ever been linked to, or are now involved with, a spiritual/religious community comprised of a culture of religious-oriented and spiritually-oriented folks within the same sanctuary at the exact same time, you know it's a recipe for conflict and division. Congregations have a tendency to blame their difficulties on going from a family size to a pastoral size to a program size, etc. While there's some truth to that perspective, a large number of the difficulty lies in the philosophical and religious differences between the spiritual and religious cultures who are at odds.