What is spiritual health? A beginner's guide to purpose and alignment

Characteristics of healthy spirituality

Spirituality has the potential to be used in a good or bad way. Often dangerous people have weaponized spirituality into cults or tools of oppression and war by misrepresenting various spiritual beliefs. As an individual, it is important to realize earlier on what healthy spirituality looks like so as not to fall into negative patterns.

Identifiable characteristics include:

• A sense of natural and uncoerced connection. There is a flow to socialization, nature, and communing with the divine/higher source. Negative social traits that hinder healthy connections, like resentment, grudges, and jealousy, are discouraged.

•  A clear alignment of life’s goals with core beliefs. There is a positive strategy of achieving set goals by being true to oneself and not causing harm to others. There is also a positive outlook on achievements and failures. Not every failure is an end, but it can signify a better beginning or a nudge towards the intended purpose.

•  A feeling of inner fulfillment like joy and peace. There is a realness that accompanies accepting who you are truly and fully. This opens up doors for living and appreciating various waves of emotions like happiness while putting in place healthy mechanisms for coping with the negative ones like shame and guilt.

• Enhanced self-awareness, appreciation, and care. It teaches one the importance of putting their wellness first. People are encouraged to practice body care (hygiene, exercise, and nutrition) and emotional and mental resilience (e.g., “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop,” etc.).

• Clear meaning and purpose of life. Spirituality often aids in charting a clear path that allows for someone to identify and live out their life’s purpose with intent and clarity. A wandering soul may realize that their purpose is on a set path, i.e., becoming a peacemaker agent or conserving nature.

• A harmonious connection with the external environment. Spirituality advocates for strong preservation and treatment with dignity of all living creatures; that includes animals, plants, water bodies, and the earth itself. They are considered to be ‘alive’ in their own accord in spirituality.

• Room for exploration.  There is no rigidity or forcefulness towards certain beliefs. Healthy spirituality allows room for questioning and exploring and even mind-changing. It discourages harmful obsession and narrow-minded ideologies.

Why spiritual health matters in everyday life

Spirituality is a concept of health; therefore, the practice itself has to be rooted and ongoing because it affects other aspects of life. For example, spiritual practices like prayers and thanksgiving rituals enhance the sense of hope and meaning and thus are linked to better emotional states like less stress, controlled anxiety, and improved mood.

Some other ways spiritual health matters are

• Adoption of a healthy lifestyle. Spirituality often advocates for a better version of oneself, and that includes better physical care (exercise, rest), emotional and mental resilience (meditation and cognitive modeling), and social wellness.

Following this logic, it allows for an individual to create healthy patterns and habits that improve general well-being. Activities include hitting the gym, joining social clubs and activities, creating emotional boundaries, and regular cognitive upskilling.

• Encourages positive behavior. Practices serve as motivation to not steer off the main path. These teachings thereby reinforce good thinking patterns and behavior by reminding people of their set values.

• Allows for clear achievement of life goals. With spirituality, there is a clear outline of how best one can attain their soul purpose on this earth/lifetime. It maintains a clear path that limits conflicting actions and thoughts, thus enhancing purpose, meaning, and self-direction.

•  Builds overall resilience. Spirituality is a source of strength for many individuals.  By enhancing clarity, giving motivation, and enhancing hope, it allows for one to have better coping strategies and not succumb to life hardships like illness, joblessness, and grief easily.

• Strengthen social connections. Most spiritual paths embrace the unity of surroundings in being connected to a higher purpose. It involves how one lives with other humans, creatures and even the natural environment, ‘mother earth.’ It engages better social connectivity through empathy, compassion, and forgiveness, connecting to nature by treating animals and natural plant habitats the right way.

Bad spiritual practices

People often misinterpret spirituality. Some fall into the trap of misguided spiritual beliefs and practices, being none the wiser. Poor spiritual practices involve:

• Using rituals as an escape from reality rather than resolving the problem at hand the correct way.

• Extreme practices of supposed devotion that are self-harm, i.e., prolonged fasting to the point of malnutrition, bodily harm like self-cutting and heavy whipping, sleep deprivation, and refusing medical care.

• Perfectionism that is obsessive. This is often coupled with the belief of a ‘harsh’ God. There is constant fear of failure and that everything and everyone has to be perfect at all times, failure of which they will be punished.

• Rigidity of beliefs and practices. Everything is black and white; there is no room for growth or change.

• There is control through negative emotions like fear, shame, and guilt. You are constantly reminded of how unworthy you are or will be if you behave in a certain way.

• There is pressure to isolate from the outside world, leading to unbalanced social wellness and connectedness.

• Focus is put on materialistic gains and non-spiritual things like money.

• Fear of emotional expression. One cannot be themselves; their voices are stifled and replaced with the head of the spiritual movement. The leader's voice becomes supreme, while the follower's voice becomes obsolete.