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Originally Posted by Valis_77
Once spirituality turns into religion there's no room for growth and questions.
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Some religions encourage questions.
While I agree with you that most of the people in forums related to religion are overly concerned with the particulars of their own faiths, there are also others whose main concern is the spiritual. Placing spirituality in the context of religion allows for a communal experience of the Divine.
When a religion becomes stale and is nothing more than ritual for the sake of ritual, at that point it has lost its original intent and needs to find its way back.
Rituals help to give individuals a sense of belonging to something greater and, if carried out properly, should always be done so with a sense of the spiritual.
Aryeh Kaplan showed how many of the practices of Judaism are supposed to be done as meditations. This is the reason for prayer before eating. It is because the eating itself should be a sort of meditation, a sacred act, focusing on the textures and flavors, acknowledging and recognizing the Divine in the food that is also in all of creation.
Anyway, sorry. I tend to go way off topic. I guess you didn't really define what you meant by growth. Personal growth is certainly not absent in all religion and certainly not in the religion I have experienced. And questions and the like are encouraged. Just as some of Judaism can vary in this, I'm sure these aspects are found in other religions.
Dauer
And if you read a little Heschel you will realize that, at least in Judaism, the big thing is realizing what we can't ever possibly know, that is the big whys of existence and everything else. Awe is more essential than belief.