Morality and Religion - and Spirituality

I had to respond to a friend's facebook post about the distinction between Morality, Spirituality and Religion.   Decided, this could be a first post for this blog, as this is in our developmental core as human beings.

Morality is a sense of right vs wrong - and it could be personally very different.   There are some universally 'accepted' norms, like don't cheat, don't lie, don't steal, etc. Then there are grey areas where different people draw the lines at different points - like adultery, for instance.  

Religion is organizationally responsible for drawing those lines for those grey areas and holding people up to it - by guilt, fear, etc.  Often times, religions fail to adapt these edicts to changes in times, and hence, we have a lot of conflict.  

This is just one part of the religion.  The other part of religion that thinks that my God is superior, and those who do not agree are sinners and hence it is my duty to reform you, is a different aspect, that is not relevant to this distinction.  Neither is the organizational nature of religion, of set norms, and practices, a known place of solace, a known source of comfort, and a way to explain the good and bad in someone's life.   I had to mention the above two, to complete what religion provides as a definition. 

Back to morality, there are other organizations that are more organic like 'society' or 'culture' where the moral standards are not necessarily as well laid out like in a scripture, but unwritten and  handed down through generations, often influenced by the predominant religion of the region, nevertheless.   We grow up in these, and norms incorporated in our system, and at different points in life.  Some question it, some don't.  Some re-form themselves, and some don't.  

These organizations have the same problem as religion - their inertia to adapt.  Moral lines have to change with times, in those grey areas.  What used to be immoral, is now more acceptable because we understand more, where we did not earlier.  However, there is inertia, or fear of change, and the organizations resist change - they choose consistency. 

Change is a disruption in a bigger scheme of things.   So, it becomes a huge affair when the Pope says that the church was wrong, and that the earth does revolve around the sun - a truth that had been known for generations before the religion accepted it.    The disruptive nature of such shifts in beliefs in a faith based ecosystem is enormous or at least viewed so. 

Spirituality, is .. er... what is spirituality? It sounds like the part where you deal with your mind - meditation and internal reflection, thoughts, seeing the good in humanity and connecting with that (religion provides a way of doing this), consciousness and conscientiousness of all things natural.  A spiritual person seems to have one or more of the above.  Kind of like religion without the church, guilt, and fear.  There is no judgment in spirituality - people find spirituality in things that might be held as morally wrong by others (like Osho).